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10 Best Practices for Gyms On Social Media

By September 19, 2016January 10th, 2024Guides & Best Practices

It’s 2016. 76% of all regular exercisers are of the millennial generation, and 33% of millennials identify social media as one of their preferred channels for communicating with businesses. In other words, gyms and fitness facilities need to up their social media game if they want to catch the attention of this tech-savvy generation. Here are 10 tips to help make sure your social channels are on the right track:

  1. Stick to a consistent posting schedule! Morning or early evening (commute hours) are often the best times to post but don’t be afraid to do some testing to see what works best for your audience. Aim to 3-5 times per day on Twitter/Instagram and once a day on Facebook/LinkedIn/Google+.
  2. Don’t just share your content – share what you think your members want to see! Post articles from other fitness sites on your social channels sometimes: healthy recipes, workout challenges, upcoming local events, sporting news, workout playlists, and more!
  3. Be social on social media! Never miss an opportunity to respond to (positive) comments, @mentions, and replies, even if all you do is Like it.
  4. Use Lists on Twitter to organize people into categories: members of your gym, employees, fitness influencers, and even competitors to keep track of things during the chaos.
  5. Add 1-2 common fitness hashtags to your Twitter bio, such as #fitness, #workouts, #exercise, etc. This will make it easier to find.
  6. Use link shorteners like bit.ly to track clicks and keep your links looking neat.
  7. Start using a hashtag unique to your gym (make sure it’s not already in use!) and encourage your gym members to use it! You can track this hashtag and use it to interact with your members more directly, or ask them to share selfies while working out on your equipment so that you can reshare them on your channels.
  8. Raise brand awareness with social media contests and giveaways. Weekly trivia, photo caption contests, tagging friends, selfie submissions – there are plenty of ways you can get others to interact with your channels! Just be sure a requirement of entry is to follow your channel(s) and share your content.
  9. Hop on common weekly hashtag trends!:
    • #MondayMotivation: Inspiring workout quotes
    • #TransformationTuesday: Before/after images
    • #WorkoutWednesday: Share a workout
    • #WellnessWednesday: Share a health tip
    • #ThrowbackThursday or #TBT: Discuss something from the past
    • #FitnessFriday: General fitness posts
    • #FlexFriday: Flexing selfies
  10. Make use of free social media tools like Hootsuite and Buffer to help schedule and publish on your social channels.

In addition to all of the above, here’s one more helpful millennial statistic to keep in mind: 73% of millennials are willing to pay more of a sustainable brand. Learn how you can benefit from sustainability by checking out our ECO-POWR™ whitepaper and watching how EcoGym in the UK are making waves in the fitness industry.

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