What Can Yoga Teach Us About the Social Web?
Update August 30, 2009: See "Tweeting to Inspire" in Boulder's Daily Camera for how to use social media to achieve your fitness and health goals
When Patrick (pictured above, inverted) and I decided to open a yoga studio in Japan, we were met with a wall of doubt. Other foreigners in Japan thought we were crazy to give up our high paying jobs to start a company. The Japanese folks we talked to thought we would burn out and bail out on it. People back home refused to invest, thinking it wouldn't succeed.
We celebrate four years in business this July.
This is social web by the numbers. There's a simple formula for getting involved with social media. We use it in yoga and it's applicable in every aspect of our lives.
Social media, like yoga, is 99% practice, 1% theory.
If you want to know how to do forearm balances, you practice forearm balances. It helps to have a teacher model Crow for you, but the basis of your practice eventually shifts from a focus on the teacher to a focus on your breathing.
To a focus on your form.
To a focus on your practice.
The same holds true for engaging in the social web. It helps, if it's your first week on Twitter, to check out what those with thousands of followers are up to. How do they tweet? What do they tweet about? What gets the most retweets? But that's just a guide.
What you can do with social media is going to come from your gut, not from someone claiming to be a social media expert. Mind you, it doesn't bother me that some do claim expertise. In the yoga world, the equivalent would be Bikram Choudhury who famously said, "I have balls like atom bombs, two of them, 100 megatons each. Nobody fucks with me." Then he proceeded to sue yoga studios that he felt infringed on his special brand of yoga. It takes all types.
How FEW hours can you invest in social media? When you have a business to run, you have to think about the time you're investing and when/whether or not you're going to get The Big Payoff.
When folks ask me how few hours they can spend at social media and still be successful, I wonder about the heart they have for it. I've had yoga students ask the same question - how few minutes of yoga/meditation can I do a day to get "results." Honestly, I haven't run those numbers because those numbers can't be run. Maybe the question you should be asking yourself, on a daily basis, is what you would like to offer and get out of investing in the social web. There is no low-level commitment that ensures high yield results.
Just like you don't get fit drinking diet cola, eating energy bars and snacking on "low-fat" cookies, you don't get social media results doing as little as possible and hoping for a big payout at the end of the week.
I can't teach you anything you don't already know. We talk, in yoga, about trusting the instincts of the body. You notice a tweak at the back of your knee when moving through the Salutations, you decide what that means. I can point you to a physical therapist or an anatomy book. I can explain to you what's probably happening and why you experienced pain. But I can't teach you anything about your body that you don't already know.
The same is true for social media. Trust your instincts.
Know that no consultant, conference or book is going to teach you how to be "good" at social media. If you're showing up as yourself and giving it all you've got, if you're passionate in the space and doing what you love, you're going to connect with a base of passionate customers, clients and, as my fellow entrepreneur Forest Linden says, Professional Friends.
If you do good work and trust your instincts, you can't go wrong with the social web. When you get in touch with your humanity as an individual, rather than thinking "on behalf of Company/Organization/Non-Profit X" you will know what is right. We have seen the companies that have lost touch with their humanity flounder, "well, so and so up the foodchain said it had to be done like this," and that results in sad news for the organization, ultimately.
So, maybe it does come down to having atomic balls. I jest. Certainly, it takes a lot of audacity to show up in the social web, where failure seems to lurk behind every corner. For some of us, making a mistake is part of the fun. You will fall when practicing difficult postures in yoga - and you will make some missteps if you take a risk with social media. If your organization takes itself so seriously that you making a mistake with social media would be devastating to your career, you have two choices. 1: Cultivate a new career. Or, 2: Brace yourself for a wild ride.
Either way, you keep getting back on the mat.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Reader Comments (26)
Gwen! I love the comparisons you made here! "Just like you don’t get fit drinking diet cola, eating energy bars and snacking on “low-fat” cookies, you don’t get social media results doing as little as possible and hoping for a big payout at the end of the week. " You hit the nail on the head with that one, Sister! Great Post!!!
Thanks for this post Gwen. Very relevant. I just started yoga (Bikram, no less) and completely concur with your sentiments. Yoga's hard. So is doing anything well. But I've been lucky enough to learn that the best things in life are worth working at. Oh, and the one big thing that yoga has taught me which parallels SM or anything, really, is 'lead with your heart.' literally/theoretically. Thanks again - you're a very good writer.
Crissy, thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to read & know that we're on the same page with this. You demonstrate it every day with the work you do.
since when does social media have to be about getting results? I thought it was about keeping in touch with friends and family...... I am a marketer... but not one who really thinks social media is the place for doing business....
What's your take on Bikram, Jim? I've practiced a few times (in Tokyo) (and it whooped me). Absolutely lead with your heart. That's tough when we're straining/stressing but yoga does teach us it's possible to find a place of effortless effort. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Sam, type in "social media results" or "social media ROI" in your favorite search box & you'll find out who wants them (and companies that profit from delivering those results). I'm not suggesting people go out and practice yoga in search of results, but it definitely is human nature to expect/want/hope for some form of result by doing yoga. And consistent practice certainly does yield results, however you look at it.
Gwen I love your article. I'm a yoga teacher and I mostly teach beginners so I can totally relate! I also just started learning guitar - guitar is hard! I was ready to give up when I didn't sound like jimmi hendrix after 2 months, but i'm sticking with it. it's sheer practice that helps me get better. just like in yoga.
My take on Bikram is that it's a lot like going to AA meetings for me. ;) But seriously, it's very hot.
Julia, thanks for jumping in here - great to hear from fellow teachers. I hear you on wanting to give up. Right now I'm training to get into peak condition and last night saw me grunting to try to do arm lifts with resistance bands (seriously, by the third set, I was ready to throw in the towel). I don't think there should be pain, but there definitely has to be effort. With guitar, it's good to start off at the beginning again - makes us more empathetic to our beginners on the mat, don't you think?
Beautiful photos to boot! Respect.
[...] the rest of Gwen’s great article on Yoga = Social Media, click to gwenbell.com. [...]
Great post - this is very encouraging to social media newbies like me! The last comment you made here reminds me of your Beginner's Mind podcast on Zen is Stupid - after that post I started taking printmaking classes and it really helped get perspective on how to people learn and how to teach. Thanks for the insights! And it's nice to put a face with this Patrick from Zen is Stupid - handsome fellow!
Awesome post girrrrrl :] & cute photos!
Wow, Gwen. You perfectly nail exactly what has been becoming clear to me in the last 3 or 4 days. I have recently found yoga and also experienced a sudden motiviation to utilize social media. As I've been diving in head first I feel like the exact same parallels and points were coming to clarity, though you summed them up nicely here.
Social media and yoga have some interesting parallels. The one that stands out the most for me is exploration. We can certainly learn a lot about ourselves by the way we interact with others. If we stand back and observe, we cannot only see what's pressing in our own minds but the greater collective as well. I find most of us project the best of ourselves and our ideals out into the social media world. This can shape our day to day thinking and may also influence our actions as well as those of others. Namaste.
this is great! as a yoga teacher & small design biz owner these points really hit home. i remember a time (in the not so distant past) when people at the large ad agency where i worked thought i was NUTS for taking a sabbatical to do my yoga teacher training. one of the best outcomes of social media is that it highlights our complexities, and allows us to honor our diverse interests. here's to the demise of having to market ourselves as one trick ponies! kudos to you, and namaste...
Oh my gosh! That was my favorite quote too! I just sent it out to the Schipul office as a "quote of the day" and I want to tell you Gwen.... it's been a long time since someone has said something that resonated with me enough to send it out to all of these boogers ;)
Magsmac, thank you for stopping by & brightening up this rainy day. :) I love hearing that it resonated for you -- can't wait to see in you in September for Interactive Strategies Conf, if not before!
I will be sure to let Patrick know, Sarah. ;)
"one of the best outcomes of social media is that it highlights our complexities, and allows us to honor our diverse interests" - hear, hear! That's exactly right! I think it's great to be able to sum ourselves up in an elevator pitch - if only to give the proverbial carrot to the horse - but we don't have to be one-dimensional in order to sell ourselves. In fact, doing so anymore might be a misstep. Thanks for sharing, sadieswati.
"I find most of us project the best of ourselves and our ideals out into the social media world." -- agreed, Rick. And that bothered me for a while. I wondered if projecting the best would make people think I was always "up." I'm not, and I do share the down times, but I think social media keeps us honest. If people meet you in person and you don't match your tweets (I mean, nobody does exactly), they have just as much a right to tweet/speak about that as you do. We are all empowered through social media - and I think using it to project and _strive to be_ at our best is one of the best outcomes of this space.
Gwen- I love it! I think that the idea of practicing Social Media is a great way to look at this process. I try to stay open and keep evolving in my use. This has been thought-provoking all week. Thank you for always making me look at things in a new way.
This is great advice and reflects my own experience. I started social networking trying to do all the right things. It only got good when I just started following my instincts instead of trying to "figure everything out." That has led me to some very unexpected places, and I'm just getting started, really, even though I've settled on the Yoga Journal Community as my primary place to be. Thanks for a great blog. Bob Weisenberg (co-editor YOGA IN AMERICA)
As I learn and practice yoga more and more, I realize (or maybe realize that I always knew) that I'm wired for it. Not that it comes easy, but that it is fulfilling and makes me feel alive. I feel this way about social media as well, so this analogy totally resonates. I love that you point out that it's not about how few minutes it takes. In fact I find that yoga requires more of my time than maybe any other exercise regime. Perhaps if companies took the "long haul" approach to social media, committed to the results and the process, no matter how long it took, they'd see why one intern or flunkie representing them in social media is not going to cut it.
Gwen- I love how you use yoga as an analogy for social media. You made several 'spot on' points that people need to remember. The problem is that people nowadays are looking for quick solutions to EVERY problem they encounter in life. Now, having said that, I do understand the frustration of newbies to social media, especially when you're also a new entrepreneur. There is this exorbitant amount of time that social media seems to take up, especially when you're banging around blindly, trying to figure things out, and I think some new people worry it's going to always be that way. I think your example of the focus moving from teacher to breathing to form to practice is a very reassuring for the newbies. Also, I can attest to the benefits of putting forth the effort to participate within and promote others in a community- on Wednesdays I do a Window Shopping feature that showcases other handmade folks. I usually send them a Convo on Etsy to let them know, as I'm always flattered when others feature me and contact me to tell me. Not only did I receive comments from many of them, thanking me today, I ended up with an order from one of the artists I featured! Totally unexpected, but oh, so nice!