Instagram, if used properly, can be a great tool in your social media arsenal to grow your fitness business. For those of you who are out of the loop, Instagram is a photo sharing site and smartphone app where users can post images along with text and #hashtags to help others find their content. Instagram can help you gain more fans, maximize leads, increase traffic, and generate sales.
First Things First
Establish Your Goals – First, determine is what is your goal for using Instagram? If you’re like most trainers, your main goal is to acquire new clients. In addition, Instagram can be utilized to educate current clients, keep up with fitness trends, and see what other trainers are doing in their businesses.
How to Make Instagram Work for You
Engage with Audience – Engagement is key. You need to interact with your followers and make them eager to return to your page. Brands are getting more engagement with followers from Instagram than any other platform.
Posts
Your Instagram posts are a great way to tell your story, obtain new clients, motivate people, and create engagement among others interested in health and fitness.
The 4 most successful type of fitness posts:
1. Motivational Posts – Motivational quotes and images are a great way of pumping up your followers to achieve their goals.
2. Before and After Pics – Highlighting your client’s successes also serves as social proof that your training programs work. People love seeing transformations.
3. Exercise Photos and Videos – Posting cool workout ideas and demonstrating exercises will educate your followers and also emphasize that you are an expert in the industry.
4. Recipes and Nutrition Info – Nutrition is an important part of your client’s results that it is paramount to feature nutrition on your Instagram page. People like trying new recipes and will share them with their friends–potentially increasing your following
Now that you have a pretty good idea of what to post, let’s dig into the actual posts themselves.
Tips for Engagement and Interest
1. Use #Hashtags – Using hashtags helps users find your content on Instagram. Users can type in certain keywords and find posts related to them. Some of the best ones to use are #fitness #workout #fit #healthy, etc. There are sites where you can search for the most popular hashtags associated to your industry or niche market.
2. Variety – Not every post should be about you. Your followers will want to see you and get to know you, but if all your posts are about you or a shirtless selfie they will be bored and unfollow you.
3. Call-to-Action – Each post should have some sort of a call-to-action telling the viewer what to do next. Not every call-to-action has to be a sales pitch. You could simply say “Get out there and move” or “Try this workout next time you’re in the gym”. If you are constantly blasting your followers with sales pitches you will lose them. Every 4th or 5th post should have a sales based call-to-action in order to monetize your Instagram.
Invite them to try a complimentary session with you or to buy something you are selling. Instagram is a great tool for growing your business, but be cognizant of your time. It’s easy to get lost “down the rabbit hole” scrolling through other’s posts for an hour or more.
Don’t let that happen.
Log in, make your post, check what your followers are commenting on, engage with them, then log off and get back to work. I’m saying this because it has happened to me. I found myself wasting 10-15 minutes every time I went on to post which doesn’t seem like much but accumulated it’s almost an hour a day. Time is money, don’t waste it.
Stay focused, engage your audience, provide them with value, have fun, and Instagram will be a great tool for growing a successful personal training business.
Now that you have a handle on Instagram, get to know Facebook better:
Four Ways Personal Trainers can Utilize Facebook to Build Business
Mike Kneuer is a professional health and fitness coach and retired pro physique athlete in Boca Raton, FL. He is passionate about health and fitness and helping others make positive life changes. Mike holds numerous advanced training certifications included 2 nutrition certifications from the National Academy of Sports Medicine and the International Sports Sciences Association. He has helped thousands of people around the world change the way they think about eating healthy foods and helped them reach their health and fitness goals by posting every meal he's eaten since 2012 on www.WhatMikeEats.com. (@WhatMikeEats)
