Owning a successful gym is about more than just handing out t-shirts when new members sign their contracts. It’s about creating a community where everyone feels like they’re getting the support they need to meet their fitness goals and marketing toward those people who will want to help build a real community. Using social media for fitness marketing can help.
By definition, social media is built for relationships. People connect, share information, and ask questions in a virtual interface. Using social media as part of your fitness marketing strategy can help build a sense of community among your gym’s members.
For example, you can set up a Facebook page for your gym and foster lively discussions on the discussion boards. Encourage your personal trainers to answer questions and respond to members, and they’ll keep coming back and interacting with each other, as well as keep coming back to the gym. You can also use Facebook to find out if members would be interested in classes or group training sessions and find convenient times for those. Let’s say five members were interested in a session on the best exercises to build core strength. You could poll them with Facebook to find out when a good time would be and schedule classes and sessions around that.
Social media is not, however, a place to blast marketing messages. If all you do with Twitter and Facebook is post promotions, without engaging followers and fans, you’re not building a community. You’re reverting to old-fashioned marketing methods that don’t work in today’s social media marketing world.
Add social media to your marketing strategy and use it to engage your members. You’ll find that the community you build will go a long way toward keeping your members motivated and as members.