Praveen Ramarao shares tips for leveraging social media to elevate your fitness facility in 2025 and beyond.
Social media is ever evolving, now more than ever. All we have to do to truly grasp this idea is briefly reflect back on where companies such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn were just even a decade ago. This is not to say that there were great things happening via socials back then, nor is it to take away the communal value that Facebook pages brought back in 2014 and so forth. If anything, we can make the argument that over this past decade even more value has been brought to us by way of newer platforms, increased usage and better brand integration. These are just three of the many ways we can collectively achieve the end all goal as club operators, which is more and better member acquisition.
The great thing about this is there’s no one avenue to implement social media usage into your clubs. Whether you are in a big box, boutique studio, CrossFit box or college gym, anyone and everyone can positively benefit from a strong social presence.
Let’s use Crunch Fitness as an example.
If there’s a Crunch near you, and you have logged on to your Instagram surely you have seen the intentional approach the brand and its employees have taken to paint social platforms with their branding. Whether it is by way of live streams on Instagram, uniformed social media job opening postings, highlights of event days or team based activities one thing is certain — regardless of your platform of choice, you will scroll across a Crunch Fitness post at the least once a week.
For big box gyms, the best takeaway from this is the slow drip of members they can gain from this. By using strategic posting rhythms, not only can you accurately measure month over month growth potential, but then you can also identify at a larger scale what’s best for your brands collectively or market over market. Additionally, as your brands post more virtual engagement contents, and “paint the town” per se, you simultaneously attract a new niche of potential employees who may not have even heard of your company and its offerings.
This I would argue is the best unspoken benefit of a strong social media presence for any company — serving as a valuable recruitment tool. Not only will you have a strong opportunity to grow your member base, but you also create an additional avenue to organically recruit a potentially untapped recruitment pool.
While the above is a great example of how big box can leverage digital marketing via socials, at a smaller scale but higher more intentional frequency boutiques can drive these same initiatives with similar results.
If anything, there are more opportunities here for boutique brands to build a more engaged and loyal customer base. Some avenues here would be leveraging rhythms of posting as well but more tailored to themes and events. Some best practices here could be holiday drives, advent calendars or theme based events if we’re in the holiday season. Outside of this, if the studio has a member night weekly or a larger scale event, they can update their stories to drive engagement and build up. Not only would this drive in new traffic, but as you generate more member activity via location tags, and virtual “check-ins” your current member base will slowly become the feeder to virtual referrals.
With the two examples above, it can be noted that there are two very different approaches one could follow. However, I’d stress that both avenues deeply consider the following three questions in self-reflection:
- Are we landing the intent of our postings?
- What’s the balance needed for each specific company of sales driven content, versus member engagement content?
- Would this be the best initial impression that the respective companies would want to leave on the consumers?
By asking these questions, the respective teams can truly identify their “why” behind the posting rhythm, as well as ensure that the target audience and target actions are both equally reached.
In reflection, it becomes very easy to see just how important a strong social following and presence can be to your brand, its growth potential and even more so the member retention should that be an angle as owners and operators that we would want to strategically target.
While there will truly remain no one way to navigate this way, what can be said is that the methods remain as diverse and broad as our industry offerings do, and while only two examples were spoken on, I trust that the lessons embedded in them are able to deliver some impactful action plans for owners and operators as we seek to embark on a new and prosperous 2025.
