Raise your hand if you wish your front desk staff would work harder and at least pretend they’re trying to advance the mission of your health club. It’s the same complaint everywhere. But we do it to ourselves by paying these young kids $7.00 an hour to have a warm body at the entrance. Well I’ve found a way to fix the problem (without firing them).
What can you do to keep your front desk staff productive and worth the money you pay them, while also allowing them to enjoy their job? Let them play on Facebook and Twitter!
What?
That’s right. Your front desk staff probably spends half their time at work on these sites anyway, so why not let them put their talent to good use and promote your health club on these sites? They’ll enjoy their time at work and you get to reach out to prospects in your community and develop loyalty among your members.
Did you know Facebook now has more users than the total population of the United States? Your members and prospects, old and young are on Facebook; and Twitter is just one more way to connect with your members and prospects. But, you don’t need to spend hours on this. Let your front desk staff do the work since they likely already know the ins and outs of these sites already.
You’ll want to set up a Facebook Fan Page for your club at www.facebook.com. Again, your front desk staff can do this very quickly and easily. Have them add plenty of pictures, fitness tips, recipes, videos, announcements, etc. on your page. Make sure there is a lot of good, interesting content (and of course update it regularly).
Have your front desk person invite all of your current members to become a fan. Facebook has a great search function if you don’t happen to have all of your members’ e-mail addresses. You’ll want to announce your new fan page through signage at the gym as well. Or, better yet, have your front desk staff ask every person who comes in to work out if they have a Facebook account, and add them to the fan page right then.
Your front desk staff can also invite everyone they can find in your community, and those people can invite their friends, causing the whole thing to become very viral. I think it’s an ego thing, but there are people who feel they can’t have enough friends on Facebook and they will gladly add you even if they initially have no interest at all in your facility. Facebook has great search capabilities and allows you to find and invite everyone in your community.
Similarly on Twitter, your front desk staff can post fitness tips, links to your blog, links to your Facebook page, links to your website, fitness tips, announcements about member accomplishments, and maintain conversations with people in your community. You can set up an account at www.Twitter.com. Similar to Facebook, you can search for people in your community based on their interests. There are tons of people on Twitter interested in losing weight or getting in better shape.
You’ll want to direct your front desk staff to www.twellow.com. It is essentially the yellow pages for Twitter. It allows you to search for people based on industries and interests, but more importantly allows you to find Twitter users in your city.
There is even a feature on your Facebook Fan Page that allows you to sync your Facebook and Twitter pages automatically. So your staff only has to post something once, and all of the followers and fans of both sites will get the message.
Stop getting upset with your indolent front desk staff and start praising them for spending so much time on the Internet while they’re working. They’ll be happier with their job, and you’ll not only have that warm body at your entrance, you’ll also have a constant flow of lead and loyalty generating activity on an ongoing basis.
Curtis Mock is an author, speaker and consultant to health clubs worldwide. He is the Executive Director of GymSuccess.com.
This article does a great job in de-mystifying and simplifying Facebook and Twitter. While I agree with the benefits of health clubs incorporating social media networking sites into their overall marketing plan, I disagree with the principle points of the article: Using Front Desk staff to ‘play on Facebook and Twitter”. One, employees should incur consequences spending your time with their ‘friends, fans and followers’ on SMN site and this should be included in your employee manual/policies. Two, are these the people you really want communicating your club image to your community? SMN sites run the risk of inappropriate or unfavorable postings or comments which can damage your reputation and brand. Instead, I suggest you determine what your goal is for using SMN, and then select personnel who best understand and are able to communicate, in an engaging, conversational way, your image, your brand, your club to your community. Don’t leave something so important up to those employees with questionable skill and investment in your company.
Hi Debra,
First thank you for your comments. As for the front desk staff, I agree with you. If a club has a front desk staff “with questionable skill and investment in your company”, this would not be a task for them. In fact, if this is the staff someone is currently employing, they need to skip social media and go back to the basics of staffing. I am assuming a club already has a front desk staff that is loyal to the mission of the company. And as you mentioned, just letting them post and play as they want wouldn’t be a good idea. This was meant to be assumed, and I apologize if it seemed otherwise. Everything must be according to a system, or at least a predetermined set of guidelines. As long as a club has a competent and loyal front desk staff, then I definitely believe these are the right people communicating the club’s image to the community. Remember, they’re already the “face” of your club when someone arrives, so this wouldn’t be much of a reach for a responsible staff member.
When I mentioned “play” on those websites, it was meant to be interpreted as a “play” on words. They would certainly find it more fun to do that job than to sit and wait for a member to check in. You are 100% correct in your statements that it shouldn’t be a task taken lightly, but there just wasn’t enough space to outline the details of the entire system 🙂
Thank you again for your thoughts…I appreciate hearing your perspective!
Curtis Mock
I 100% second this and have always been insisting on happy front desk staff. However its a shame that @ my work place all managers regard Facebook as some ill-time consuming alien that has to be shoved where the sun doesnt shine. It gets them so angered that access has blocked for all staff. This has made marketing so difficult as a result, yet they are not even prepared to spent anything on that department as a whole. Someones seriously needs to shed some light to these decision makers, honestly!!!