How to use yoga images on social media
By Ehron Ostendorf
The final part of our yoga social media series is all about images – why you should resize your images for each network, and two different ways to do this.
As a yoga business, you might not have pictured yourself being on social media as much as you are. If you’re not on social media yet, don’t waste your time trying to be on all channels — it’ll be too time consuming and draining for you. We listed the top social platforms in Which social media channels should your yoga business use? and gave suggestions on which platforms suit which types of yoga businesses, so this should help you prioritise..
When images aren’t properly formatted, your social media account could end up littered with blurry, poorly cropped images that look very inconsistent. In this article we lay out ways for you to avoid this so that you can clean up your account and have it looking more professional and engaging. You’ll learn how to edit photos individually per social media platform, as well as how to edit images in social media scheduling software like Hootsuite or Buffer.
Sourcing your images
First and foremost, you need high quality images of your business’s space, of you/your teachers in a staged class taken by a professional photographer. Tip: Maybe one of your students is a photographer and is willing to do a skill swap? If you can’t organise a photoshoot then the second option is to use externally sourced images.
If you find images from an external source, don’t simply do a Google search and grab images that you like, as this is going to be a copyright infringement of someone’s image. Instead, use a royalty free photo library like Unsplash, Pexels, PikWizard or Pixabay. When choosing an image from a photo library make sure that you choose a large version to download – around 2000px wide should do the trick. The next step will be to resize it, either in your scheduling software or in your individual social media accounts, so that it looks great on each platform.
Why does resizing my social media images matter?
It’s all about making a professional impression. If your images are strangely cropped or look blurry, people will most likely make an unconscious decision that your business is not professional. It’s a small thing, but first impressions count. And if you’re looking to attract a younger audience (under 30) then this generation are very social media and smartphone savvy.
Tweet ThisIf you don’t resize your images, you’ll also run the risk of the image not translating properly in your post. Why does this matter? Imagine that a potential yoga student found your social media account and saw nothing but poorly cropped, blurry images of your studio/yoga business. It could look like your shala is unprofessional or lacks the knowledge to post beautiful images.
Social media isn’t going to define your business or make/break it — being a good teacher with an approachable teaching style in a nice space is a lot more important. But, in the modern era, social media is your professional image, the first thing many new students will see. So, what you post sets up their expectations of your yoga business, how you teach and whether you take the time to make your images look good.
Also, ask yourself when was the last time you visited a social media account and saw blurry images that didn’t fit the posts — did that make you want to follow it? Then why should people follow your account unless you take the time to make it look professional?
How do I edit my photos on each social media platform?
In this section we cover how to edit an image on each of the 4 top platforms:
First, click the plus button to add a photo to your post and then click the paintbrush (edit icon).
From here, you can individually crop your image, add a filter to make it more visible, add text and/or ‘stickers’ like emojis, etc.
Next, schedule your post to be published on a future date. Why? So you can preview it before it’s published and check that it all looks ok.
Go to your page and click the ‘Publishing Tools’ tab at the top (depending on the device you’re using, it may be on the left-hand side of your screen).
Click on the post’s title that you want to view. As you’ll notice, there’s less space at the sides of the picture compared to the original, so the cropping worked and the image isn’t blurry as a result of the cropping. You can also test how the post will look on a mobile device, which is important because more than half of people access social media on a mobile device, like a tablet or smartphone.
When you open your app, click the photo button as you normally would. If your image doesn’t fit properly, click the bottom left arrows that point away from each other.
After expanding the image, you can go through and find a filter that makes the image clearer to see (if it’s needed). Notice how Wildheart’s name and brand mark is cut off in the first image above. Now, look how it fits perfectly in the second image below — Instagram has several size variations (landscape, portrait, story-size, etc.), so you don’t have to worry as much about image sizing with Instagram.
From your feed, click to make a post and from there, select the image button at the bottom.
As you’ll notice, LinkedIn may be the easiest platform because it automatically resizes photos to fit in a post.
You may be thinking, why use LinkedIn at all as a yoga business? We advised in our first post in this series that you may want to use your personal LinkedIn account to make informed, business-related posts and utilise your personal connections to grow your yoga business.
Click the top right quill symbol to form a Tweet. Then, select to add an image (or it’s often already suggested to you to take an image with your camera, use a recent image, or click the mountain symbol below your camera icon to access your image library).
After you’ve selected an image, click the paintbrush (edit icon).
From here, click the crop button, which is second to the right in the bottom toolbar.
You can then edit your image to fit more precisely and, as you’ll notice, you can select what type of image you have — landscape, square etc. This can also help to simply cut away areas of the photo that are unnecessary, not just to make it smaller in general.
How to edit images with social media scheduling software
Wildheart’s advice: It’s a lot more efficient to schedule your social media posts in advance, rather than posting them on an ad hoc basis. This means you’ll be able to take control of how you spend your time on social media and also set an even schedule of posting. We recommend Buffer if you prefer using a mobile device and Hootsuite if you prefer using a desktop to schedule posts (a mobile device may be quicker, while a desktop will help you see the posts better).
Photo editing with Buffer
Click to add a post to share on social media — we chose Instagram as you can’t make any posts there unless they have a photo or video. From the post scheduler, click ‘Add photos or video’.
Click the ‘Edit Image’ icon at the bottom left corner of your image.
From here, the image automatically has the cropping ability on it. So, grab one of the corners and begin to drag — the background will begin to blur as you focus on the exact size you want. If you aren’t sure whether you really want to crop something, click the button second to the right and it will provide different proportions. All dimensions are set up so that when your post goes out, the individual platform will interpret the size and fit it into its dimensions.
Click the ‘Done’ button and there you have it. If you want to share a post from an outside source, like an article about the health benefits of yoga, drop the link into the post and then select ‘Add Media’ like you normally would — Buffer will give you ‘Suggested Media’ based on the post you’re sharing (the more images in the post, the more options Buffer will give you to choose from).
Photo editing with Hootsuite
From your desktop login, go to the ‘New Post’ button in the top-right corner.
Just like Buffer, you can either drop a link from an article you want to share, or simply select an image from the ‘Open Media Library’ if you want to make a post that’s paired with a visual.
Dropping a link gives you suggested images like Buffer, which makes it easy to create a post where you share an article you find interesting.
Click the ‘Edit Image’ button after you choose the picture you want.
From here, the great thing about Hootsuite is that you can visually see every major social media platform on the left-hand side of the screen. Depending on where you’re uploading to, select the dimensions for that platform that makes the most sense for your image or post.
As you’ll notice, each major platform is represented here and they all have different dimensions. Some of these platforms have a single, pre-set dimension they prefer. Most platforms want a landscape size, while Instagram has many options since their primary purpose is to share images/videos. As you might also notice, each platform has slight variations for its sizes even though most prefer landscape.
Over to you!
Now you know how important images are in your social media posts and how to make yours stand out. Keep in mind that if you want to save lots of time, scheduling your social media posts in advance is the way to go!
Of course, making sure your images look good is only one piece of the puzzle in creating unique, engaging social media posts for your yoga business. If you want to know how to make each of your posts distinct from each other, then check out our previous post in this series 6 tips to improve your yoga social media posts.
Or go back to Blog series: Social media for your yoga business.
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2 Comments
That’s a very informative article. It will help us make our blog better. We will try editing our images now by the way you explained. Thanks for writing.
Hi there, Kratika. Thank you very much. We hope it helps your blog posts pop! If you ever have questions about this process though, feel free to reach out to us.