There I was, being interviewed by Yoga Peeps, and Lara put the big question to me (paraphrased);
“If you were on stage at a football stadium, what one thing would you like to say to people?”
This was my big opportunity – the moment when you lead with a succinct key message in a sound-bite length sentence. As a communications professional, I know this. I write this. I advise this. But when it came to my moment in my first podcast interview, all my experience flew out the window and I launched into a long winded answer that I think referenced Jesus and all the other religions of the world.
Doh!
It was a wake-up call.
I have big plans for this website, and for the role I can play in the world with my twin passions of communications and yoga. But it’s one thing to have these plans floating around in my head, and it’s another to take the time to nut them out properly.
It’s time to get serious, and get it down on paper (screen).
It’s time to actually write a communications strategy – and it’s a process I want to share on this website for a couple of reasons.
- Articulating the mission, key messages, intended audience, and tactics of this site will help to clarify what Prana Flow NZ is all about, and also help search engines find this site.
- My grand plan requires the assistance of many, many people, and by writing about it on Prana Flow NZ, I provide other people with the chance to see where they can fit in and what they can do to help bring yoga to the people
- No matter whether you’re a yoga teacher, a body worker, a florist or website owner – you too can benefit from creating a communications strategy for your small business. By sharing the process here, it gives you the opportunity to apply it to whatever matters to you.
So, over the next few weeks, every Monday (kiwi time), I’ll be publishing an section of my communications’ strategy for this website.
So first up - What’s the mission of this website?
Bringing yoga to the people!
That’s the short answer, and it’s reflected in the tagline for this website. Prana Flow NZ has been created to inspire people to practice yoga, live yoga and share yoga. It’s a pretty broad concept, because it means I’m targeting people who are curious about yoga, people who are already practicing yoga and want to take it past asana, and people who teach yoga. You could almost say that’s everyone in the world.
Given that I’m planning to publish three articles a week, it means that I need to address each of those main areas once a week. Narrowing down the mission like that means that when I think about writing an article, or publishing an article, I can ask myself – does this serve my mission? Have I covered this area this week already?
For example, how does this series of articles support my mission? By demonstrating the process of putting together a communications strategy, my aim is to inspire other yoga teachers and studios to put together their own communications strategies so they can reach more yoga students. It’s a good match, and means that Mondays cover off on the “sharing yoga” section of my mission.
It helps here to think about what my motivation is too. Clarifying my motivation will help me to make other choices further down the line in this communications strategy.
WHY do I want to inspire people to practice yoga, live yoga and share yoga?
I want to inspire the spread of yoga because I believe that if every single person on the planet practiced yoga, we would solve every major issue we struggle with.
I know, it’s a bold claim. But based on the change yoga has made on my life, based on how it has changed my perspective and my actions, I believe this to be true. Yoga has helped me heal physical health issues, mental health issues, and it’s helped with emotional health issues. Practicing yoga has completely changed the substances I put into my body, and it’s changed the way that I eat. Not because I made any big decisions to drink less, or become a vegetarian… but simply because my body has become more and more sensitive and so I find now that I literally CAN’T drink the way I used to in my twenties. I can’t eat the way I used it.
This means that yoga has possible applications in health, mental health and addiction – huge issues that face every nation in the world.
Practicing yoga has also made me able to see myself, and the effect of my actions, far more clearly. I enjoy my own company more, and I enjoy the company of others far more. There is no doubt in my mind, yoga has made me a better person. I’m happier, more joyful, more loving, I laugh more, and I’m more at ease.
Why WOULDN’T I want everybody to share in experiencing this with me?
There is another aspect to my mission though – the selfish side. I want to share yoga with people because I absolutely love doing yoga, talking about yoga, writing about yoga and teaching yoga. It’s my way of being me, and I want to indulge in this as much as possible.
Finally, people may get into yoga because of the physical aspects, but ultimately it is a spiritual practice. I believe that this makes yoga the universal method for humans to embrace their divinity, and take responsibility for the world they are creating – regardless of what religion they practice or identify with. We are spiritual beings having a human experience… and when we learn to shift our identification from the ego to the spirit, the changes that take place are akin to shifting from living in Hell to living in Heaven.
If you want more reasons to spread the practice of yoga and meditation, read this great article by Anmol Mehta and ask yourself – does that sound like the kind of person I would like to be, and I would like the people around me to be? 20 interesting ways to test YOUR spiritual development.
Writing out my motivation in this manner automatically leads on to the development of my key messages. These are the ideas that I want to weave into every article, every interview, every guest post so that people, literally, get the message.
What does success look like?
Similar to examining my motivation, this helps me to clarify where I’m going. It defines some measureable attributes that I can use to figure out if I’m on track, or not on track.
So I’m going to make a bold claim here.
Prana Flow NZ’s pinnacle of success is everybody in New Zealand practicing yoga.
Yeah right… sounds like I’m setting myself up for failure! Well, likely I am. But with such a clear goal, it’s every easy to keep my eye on the prize so to speak and ask myself every step along the way – does this help me get toward my pinnacle of success.
Notice too how I’ve defined it – it’s not about the amount of traffic this website gets, or even about the amount of success I personally might experience. No, success is measured in the amount of impact and change that happens in society. This website is a medium for the message – it can come or go and the mission still remains. Having this clarity means I won’t get too attached to the success/failure of this site in particular. My mission might morph over the coming years – into a DVD, a book, a reality TV show, a traveling road show… who knows?
But when I’m traveling around New Zealand and I see people practicing yoga in parks and at the beach… when I see kids playing with yoga in playgrounds and at school… when I hear radio hosts and TV hosts talking about their yoga experiences… when I read stories about youth offenders who had their life turned around by yoga… addicts who have used yoga to release their addictions… and people who have thrown away their prozac because yoga has helped them heal depression… then I will know that my mission has been successful.
And yes, it’s going to make me feel so damn good… joyful… so my mission is inherently selfish, yet along the way, many, many other people will also experience more joy, more happiness, more peace… and that’s a great thing.
Plus aiming for the stars means that even if I only reach the moon… I will have still traveled a long, long way 
What are my key messages?
Yoga transforms lives by healing body, mind & spirit.
Oh it’s a biggie… but it’s true, and I know it – not because I’ve read about it – but because I’ve experienced it. Yoga can help us heal chronic health conditions – for example, it worked wonders on my chronic back issues, which the doctors had labeled degenerative disc disease.
Yoga can help us heal mental health issues – it worked wonders on the way my mind behaved when it was out of balance. Again, I’d been given a diagnosis (bi-polar) based on a narrow field of experiences and questions. I don’t know whether that diagnosis was just “wrong” or whether my practice of yoga “healed” the imbalance, but I know that what I experience has changed. I know that I don’t get depressed at all, ever. And I’ve never experienced the collections of symptoms which were labeled “mania” again either.
And finally, yoga helps us connect with our spirit again. And yep – I’ve experienced this too, moments of samadhi, or bliss. Moments of pure peace. Moments where I felt the presence of God.
But I’m only one person, and my experiences could be a fluke, they might not be entirely attributable to yoga either. So part of this site is about drawing together the healing experiences of other people. It’s about finding out, how did yoga heal your life? Because when people come together and share their yoga stories, it inspires other people to want to give it a go too.
So I want to collect together stories of the ways that yoga has healed body, mind and spirit. I want to collect together examples of research that proves that yoga transforms lives, and I want people to be able to access it all here on Prana Flow NZ. And in this manner, I will have the evidence to support my key message – that yoga transforms lives by healing body, mind and spirit.
My second key message is about breaking down the walls of perception that we’ve built about what yoga is.
Yoga isn’t just something that we do, yoga is the quality of presence that we bring to everything we do.
This is all about getting yoga off the mat. It’s about living yoga – and to live yoga, you don’t need to be practicing asana. Yoga becomes a 24/7 practice when we develop the ability to stay in the witnessing state at all times – when we shift from identifying with our minds to identifying with Awareness. It’s a tricky concept to grasp, but when one practices asana, it becomes effortless. Hence asana is a great entry point to living yoga, but it is not the be all and end all. One can practice yoga postures and not actually be practicing yoga.
This key message is important, because is explodes yoga out of the narrow box many people have relegated it too.
“Oh I can’t do yoga, I’m not nearly flexible enough.”
“Yoga? Lying around on the ground chanting weird things?”
“Yoga – that’s for chicks who want to lose weight isn’t it?”
Well… no. And I want to use Prana Flow NZ to shift people’s perceptions of what yoga is and how they can incorporate yoga into their everyday lives, until they too wake up one day and discover that they are living yoga.
And finally, one last message.
Yoga has the power to transform our society from the inside out.
It’s another biggie. This time because it’s harder to prove – but it’s something that I believe to be true, it’s something I hold a vision for, it’s something I want to inspire in other people so they too can see it and believe it and work to make it true.
Simply put – if yoga can transform a person from the inside out and change their life… then surely if enough people practice, it will transform society from the inside out.
After all…
Would a society of yogis go to war?
Would a society of yogis destroy their environment to make money?
Would a society of yogis experience high levels of stress, mental illness and obesity?
Think of the amazing yoga teachers that you have met. Think about how being in their presence made you feel. Now think about what it would be like to walk into a room full of people like that. How about an auditorium full of people like that? What about a football stadium full of people like that? What about towns and countries full of yogis?
What would that world be like?
Of those three key messages, which one would I have chosen to deliver to a football stadium of people?
Definitely the first one – right now I wish that everybody knew that yoga transforms lives by healing body, mind and spirit.
This is the key message that starts with the personal, the do-able, the believable. Get everyone buying into this message, then you progress naturally into the second message – you start to get people to take their yoga off the mat.
And then finally, with them already experiencing changes in themselves and noticing the flow on effects in their relationships with their partners, family, friends and workmates… the third massage becomes possible and true too. People start to realise the a world of yogis could be the change that our world needs if we’re going to survive past the next 100 years or so. And not just survive, but thrive!
We live on an amazing planet, surrounded by an incredible variety of life forms… and somewhere along the way, many of us have forgotten to appreciate this fantastic gift of life. I believe yoga is one way we can come back to this state of appreciation, of gratefulness, and of joy.
So there you have it – the first part of my communications strategy for yoga! It’s helped me enormously to clarify what it is I’m doing and where I’m heading, and even how I’m going to get there. But it’s only the beginning of my strategy – I still need to cover areas like what my keywords/concepts are, who my audience is, what the obstacles/issues are, who my allies are, what resources I have, and what tactics I will use.
Part 2 Communications Strategy: Who is the target audience for this yoga website?
Oh – and that podcast interview of me on Yoga Peeps? It’s coming soon too…
on Dec 6th, 2008 at 4:04 am
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[...] presents Why writing a communications strategy matters – even for a yoga website posted at Prana Flow NZ, saying, “A website is a way to communicate, and if you’re [...]
on Jan 3rd, 2009 at 5:33 am
[...] presents Why writing a communications strategy matters – even for a yoga website posted at Prana Flow NZ, saying, “A website is a way to communicate, and if you’re [...]
on Jan 5th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
[...] presents Why writing a communications strategy matters – even for a yoga website posted at Prana Flow NZ, saying, “A website is a way to communicate, and if you’re [...]