If you have just recently become a yoga teacher and want to open your own practice, you will need to start thinking about building your brand. As a company or individual, it is crucial to build up a brand and following to become noticed and successful in your career.

Here are some great tips for building up your brand from the ground up and making yourself stand out from the crowd:

1. Find A Gap In The Market

The first thing you need to look at when you want to build your brand and make a name for yourself is look at the current market and size up the competition. It is the best way for you to work out where you can fit in the current market and where you can stand apart from the rest. Take the time to look online at other teachers and classes and see what kind of things they are offering. It may be that you want to incorporate something new into your classes such as beer yoga, dog yoga, or something entirely new. Things like this may already exist so this is the time for you to check the market, and see what you can offer which is new and exciting for the yogis in your area.

2. Decide Your Brand’s Identity and Personality

As you start out and make your way into the business world, you need to take some time to really work out what it is that you aim to get out of your company or brand. What are your values? Do you aim to help people with anxiety to feel more confident, is raising money for underprivileged children or animals in captivity? Before you go ahead and make huge decisions about your brand name, logo and social media, you need to decide what you stand for.

Make a mantra and stick to it. This will be the deciding factor of how your business will run and the persona you put across to the public from now on.

3. Choosing Your Business Name

Your business name is an important step which you don’t want to rush into too quickly, because in the end your brand name is what you will see every day, and it is what people will come to associate with you and the service you provide. Before you look into choosing your name, you need to check on the company register that the name you want isn’t already taken. It might take you a while to find the perfect name for your business, but once it feels right, go for it. You don’t need to overthink it too much- the point is that you brand name should be short, snappy and unique. Other than that, you can name it whatever you like.

4. Graphic Design – Colour Schemes and Fonts

Once you’ve chosen the name for your business, you will want to be looking into how you want your brand to come across visually. The colours and fonts you choose will set the tone and image for your brand.

Colours

The colours you end up picking for your brand will determine the vibe you set for your customers. For example, many hardware stores which try to aim their brand at men will choose bold colours such as black, orange or blue. Whereas brands aimed at women mainly go for colours such as red, pink and white. If you want to create a modern feel and a calming atmosphere for your brand, you’ll want to go for white and pastel colours to set a relaxing tone for visitors to your website, social media accounts and studio.

Choosing Your Fonts

The font may not seem like the most important part of your brand, but if you think about it: your brand name will be written in this font and it will set the scene for your entire brand. Many bloggers use cursive fonts such as brush pen calligraphy on their sites because it is feminine, soft and sleek. It portrays a sense of trend and creativity. Look at websites such as Dafont to find the perfect font for your brand.

5. The Logo and Slogan

Finally, once you’ve got the brand name sorted, your colour schemes chosen and the perfect font pick out: you need to think about your logo. The logo is arguably the most integral part of your brand design, because it is what people will most associate with you and your brand. Don’t overcomplicate your logo, a simple image or initials will do just fine- you can either get someone to help you design the logo, or design it yourself using a site such as Canva. Take your time with this, as it is crucial for your brand.

Next up is the slogan- you might not want to add one, but if you do, it should be short and snappy, positive and confident. Look at other similar brands and see what kind of things they use for their brand.

6. Social Media Presence

Once you’ve open up a website, chosen your brand and logo, you will need to work on building your follower base. Open accounts on site such as Instagram to share beautiful photos of poses, and then on Twitter or Facebook to interact with your audience and build a relationship on a personal level. It might take time but if you target the right people and share good quality content, it will all fall into place.

7. Evolve and Adapt With Time

Don’t think that once you have designed your brand and logo that it has to stay the same forever. You will come to learn what your brand needs as time goes on, and you may find that what you initially thought was great for your business needs updating or changing. If so, you can enlist the help of someone like CandidSky to help you rebrand yourself and put out a fresh new image. It will likely help you boost your business because you will know that what you are doing is right for the brand and the image you look to portray.

Image for this post can be found here.