I’m going a little off-topic today and talking to fitness professionals like personal trainers, coaches, yoga instructors, and others in the fitness industry about the importance of social media marketing to spread the word about your services.
While you, as a fitness professional, may understand the need for social media marketing to promote your business, buy you may not really know where to start. Or perhaps you’ve created a Facebook or Twitter account, or even started a blog, but aren’t exactly sure where to go from there. Here are a few tips that can help you tweet like a pro.
Social Media Marketing Tips for Fitness Professionals
1. Sell yourself, not your services
What, you may say. I thought the purpose of marketing was to get more business! That is true, but you don’t do that by pushing your business. By engaging with clients and potential clients, by being yourself, by being a knowledgeable professional, you will bring people to you, who will want to work with you, and who will share their experience with their friends.
2. Be the expert
Don’t be afraid to educate your followers. Learning more about fitness, form, and nutrition will not lead them off to work on their own. Instead, your knowledge will convince them that you are the person that they want to work with. You can share articles that you’ve written, photos or videos that demonstrate form, offer a tip of the day. All of these things will help to establish you as an expert in your profession.
3. Share what inspires you
Go beyond just sharing your own words of wisdom. Share photos, inspirational words, and tips from other sources that you respect and that motivate you. Not only does it keep your feed from being all about you, it helps your followers get to know you a little better by learning what inspires you.
4. Be personal, but stay professional
Funny thing about social media. Maybe it’s the anonymity of the internet, maybe it’s the feeling of being among friends, but sometimes we let our “professional mask” slip a little bit. Do not let that happen. Be friendly, be personal, but don’t forget that you’re on stage. Stay positive, watch your language, basically imagine that your mother is reading everything that you write.
5. Engage in conversations
Don’t just make pronouncements. Ask questions, ask for opinions and ideas. The goal is to get your followers to engage with you. Ask them to comment with their favorite glute exercise, or what form of cardio they prefer. Of course, once you start conversations, make sure to stay involved with them. Comment back, connect your readers. Make sure to respond to all of your followers questions, comments, even complaints.
By following these guidelines, you will be creating a community of members who want to be on your team. They see you as the professional who can answer their questions and safely get them in shape. Some will become your clients, others will refer their friends, and some with do both. Following these guidelines will establish you as a knowledgeable fitness expert and help you grow your business.
Are you a fitness professional? Do you use social media marketing to increase your business? What tips would you add?
Weekly Linkups
My weekly linkups! Please stop by and check out all of the great recipes, workouts, and information that all these awesome bloggers share every week!
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These are fantastic tips! I coached part time for 2.5 years before I quit my full time job to focus on building my coaching business and I’ve gotten a lot of clients through social media but I think there is definite room for improvement / growth. Tip #3 is a good one and something that I never really thought about sharing. I do need to get better at interacting with people via blogging again. Unfortunately that’s one thing that’s fallen by the way side since I quit my job. Thanks for posting this!
Thanks, Phaedra! I’m glad you find the tips helpful. I think sharing other people’s words is really important so that it doesn’t end up sounding like you think you know everything. It helps people know that you’re always learning too.
These are such helpful tips! Thank you!
Thanks! I’m glad you find them helpful!
I agree being personal and sharing what you are passionate about makes you more relateable and real to clients
Love these tips, especially about being personal and passionate.
I teach group fitness classes everyday and I am actually not on social media platforms. Luckily the classes are still full each week. I feel like if people enjoy your class they will continue to come back.
I sell myself, EVERYDAY! hahaha! But it works, it really does! If you sell how awesome you are as an individual, your unique talents, there will be brands that resonate with what you stand for/who you are, who will want to work with you 🙂
These are great tips. I do pretend my mom’s reading everything I write so I keep it clean for sure. I’ll definitely use these other ones, though. Thanks!
These are great tips to keep in mind! Totally agree with selling YOURSELF. Build trust and be you– that’s key.
I love to workout an your post helps me alot in that. As i was searching for such a post from long time . Thanks for inspiring me. 2017 Social Media Apps
Great article and very well explained. I believe in professionals so this is a very useful article for everyone. Many thanks for your share.
Debbie, thank you for this amazing tips of yours. How is everything? Hoping to see more of your amazing articles in the future. Keep up the great work!