On the two-month anniversary of her mum’s death, yoga and meditation teacher Lucy Stone found herself in tears while broadcasting a live guided meditation on her social media page. She admits she thought about cutting off the stream. “But Nadia’s words were ringing in my ears about that need to show vulnerability and authenticity”, she says of her mentor, celebrity yoga teacher Nadia Narain.
Stone, who founded Meditation Rocks during lockdown, has been working with Narain as part of a project with domain expert and website builder GoDaddy to turn Meditation Rocks into a business designed for online success.
Stone thinks back to her decision to continue her broadcast: “I think Nadia gave me an added bit of bravery to just do it. I got so many positive messages from people saying it was really refreshing. I have to be able to show I’m having a tough time as well.”
Throughout the project to build her new website, Stone has been meeting online with Narain for mentoring sessions. In their latest get-together they discussed the importance of setting boundaries when working in the wellness sector, how to build a community using email marketing, and the benefits of mixing live and pre-recorded content. In all their chat, the notion of being honest shone through. Narain says: “People look at me and say: ‘Oh she’s a thing of health, she doesn’t eat meat, she doesn’t drink, she meditates everyday’, but all of this stuff came from my struggle and my heartbreak. What your vulnerability does is make people think they can be vulnerable too. You’re giving people the space to be themselves.”
Work has continued on the website build, in partnership with GoDaddy and its dedicated team of expert advisers, known as GoDaddy Guides. The guides offer customers personalised advice and can even help develop and build sites, providing a human helping hand when customers need it most.
Stone likens the experience of creating a website to renovating a house: “That last 10%, you’re in the mess with the dust sheets on, but you’ve got a house party in three weeks and everyone’s coming round,” she says. “I must be the only meditation teacher in the world with a spreadsheet … it’s a lot of work but we’ll get there. And it’ll be worth it.”
She has finalised the pricing structure for her membership model, designed a logo, categorised her archived social media videos (which will be reshot for the website), researched and chosen her website keywords, such as beginner’s meditation, meditation video, meditation for sleep, and mindful meditation for children. She is aiming to launch the site by the end of August, and may add an e-shop in the autumn.
Keyword research is a crucial part of search engine optimisation, explains Sakshi Anand, senior director of GoDaddy UK. “Words are the basis of search so it’s important you understand the words that people are using to search for a business like yours,” she says. “Pay attention to the search volume of keywords you consider and avoid those that have few or no monthly searches. It’s also important that your keywords are included in rich, useful, in-depth content on your website that addresses the needs of your potential customers.”
When it comes to content, Stone plans to include a blog on the website to promote the benefits of accessible meditation.
There are a number of ways to find the right keywords, including the GoDaddy SEO tool, which offers keyword suggestions, as well as others such as SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner and Keywords Everywhere. The keywords will also form the basis for any pay-per-click advertising campaign on Google.
Stone is expecting a busy first six months, with lots of opportunities to attract new members: September for (possibly) back to school and back to work traffic; October for Mental Health Day and the end of daylight saving time, which is known to impact mood; the stress of Christmas; and January when thoughts turn to new year resolutions and building good habits.
She will continue to use her social media page as a marketing tool (offering free guided meditations once or twice a week), and also plans to build engagement by hosting social media interviews with other wellbeing experts.
Narain has consistently encouraged Stone not to get too bogged down in the detail, but to think about refining her offering after the launch. She also suggests not going live every day, something Stone has taken on board. “If I’m giving people new stuff every day, they’re not going to have the time to practise it, reflect on it, and I’m probably going to burn out,” says Stone. But she saw a definite downturn in engagement when she took a break after her mum died, and knows the live videos are an important part of what she offers. “When you stop, people stop,” she says. “People want the live element, they turn up because I turn up … I suppose that’s why we hire personal trainers … People are relying on me.”
“But you’re not God,” Narain says. “It doesn’t always have to be you.” Narain and her sister have recently launched a pre-recorded online course, A Gentle Revolution, with the aim of having a source of ongoing passive income, rather than needing to create new content all the time.
Nadia Narain has been meeting Stone online for mentoring sessions
Nadia encourages Stone to collect email addresses to build her database as early as possible, and to record every session – you never know when you’ll say something profound. “The biggest mistake I’ve made through my whole life is I’ve never recorded a damn thing and some of my best words have come in those moments of total meditation and clarity,” she says.
The GoDaddy team is integrating Zoom into Stone’s website to facilitate the live meditation sessions for adults and children, and she’s planning to have a series of recorded courses that members can access each month. Her videos for children have been particularly popular – and one she did with her 12-year-old son, Freddie, and his guinea pig was a big hit.
Having taught many thousands of children in schools over the past five years through Yogadoo, another business she runs, Stone says there’s a lot she takes from that experience when it comes to teaching meditation to beginners. “Children’s classes are stripped back, simple and really engaging – that’s what I’ll be aiming for,” she says.
What is she most looking forward to about the website launching? She says it’s interacting with the Meditation Rocks community in its own virtual space. “You’ll see all these little squares and everyone’s sitting in their living rooms in Amsterdam, or London, or Austria,” she says. “For eight minutes, whatever else is happening, we’ve got each other, we can meditate and then hopefully get on with our days.”
GoDaddy launched the #OpenWeStand initiative offering a number of free tools, widgets, resources and blogposts at openwestand.org to help small businesses keep their digital doors open while their physical doors are closed. More than 50 companies have joined the cause, including Slack, Salesforce, PayPal, and more
