Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media applications have come to dominate our world in quite a few ways. We scroll those endless feeds daily, watch videos online to perfect our form or look for fitness inspiration. We post videos of ourselves online completing a flawless clean and jerk or taking part in a Crossfit competition.
Like it or not you, likely everyone you know interacts with social media at some point in the day. Because of how widespread it is, and because your target clients are already spending a lot of time on social media, it makes perfect sense to promote your fitness business using platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
It’s easier than it looks, and if you’re a personal trainer then your clients are looking for businesses like yours on social media already. You just need to show them that you’re there.
Social media marketing for you fitness business
Marketing a Fitness Business on Facebook
Facebook requires no real introduction. You probably know quite a lot about it already. Setting up a business profile on the world’s most popular social media platform just makes sense.
It’s quite simple really:
- Go to Facebook and sign up for an account, if you don’t already have one.
- Once you have completed that, set up your page and you will have access to a neat set of extra tools that you can use to manage your Facebook presence. There are:
- Publishing tools,
- A job manager,
- An ad centre, and
- Even information about how many people are viewing and interacting with your posts.
What’s good about it?
Facebook has a massive reach and its basic publishing options are free. You only need to pay if you choose to boost your posts so that they have a much higher, and far more targeted reach.
The abovementioned targeting options are easy to understand and quite customisable. To be honest, you get great value for your money when boosting posts.
For sharing videos and pictures, Facebook is great. Considering the nature of the fitness industry, videos and images are the exact type of content you want to be sharing if you’re a personal trainer. The thing we like most about Facebook is that you can schedule posts, which makes planning ahead that much easier.
Things to Remember
Boosting posts can be a little risky. If you make a mistake with the budget options things can get expensive fast. You can, however, use the ‘Billing’ tab to set a billing threshold, which is highly advisable.
Facebook also has a fairly strict set of rules about what can and what can’t go into a boosted post. If you try to pay to have a post boosted and your ad gets rejected, make sure that it is in line with Facebook’s Ad Guide. This link is also helpful if you don’t intend on paying for boosts, since it contains helpful information on best practices.
Post Scheduling Best Practices
Remember to post regularly but without overdoing it. It is best practice to stick to a regular schedule. Perhaps daily; three times, or twice a week.
Start an Instagram Profile
Instagram markets itself directly to mobile device users, and as of 2019, 63% of all Internet users access it using their phones.
Instagram shares its popularity with Facebook; both are very widely used, and are perfect for sharing media such as images and videos, that you can use to get your brand out into the world.
What’s good about it?
Instagram is fairly simple to set up, even when setting up business profiles. It is regarded as the most widely used visual sharing platform, and this is because it has been designed to be used on the go.
It is also free, and content on Instagram is highly shareable, which makes it a great way for small brands to get their name out.
Hashtags, too, are a powerful tool for getting your content out there; they are also essential to your posts, so make a point of including plenty of them.
Things to Remember
Unlike Facebook, Instagram (as of yet) doesn’t allow you to schedule posts, but that doesn’t mean that consistency is any less important. You will still need to stick to a (planned) posting schedule, except that you’ll need to be vigilant and do it yourself.
There are third-party scheduling tools that can be used, but it’s probably easier to just do it yourself.
Instagram also has a set of guidelines that you should stick to for your posts to be effective. Pay particular attention to the aspect ratio of images (1080px by 1080px) to have them display properly on smartphone displays.
Learn More at the Trifocus Fitness Academy
Trifocus Fitness Academy is an online, accredited provider of fitness courses. Enroll with us today to learn how to start and run your own fitness business, by visiting our website.
