We all know that social media marketing is a vital part of business, but it can take a lot of work to fit it into your busy schedule as a personal trainer.
In this article, we will look at ways you can make your life easier by saving time, working smarter, and ensuring that the time you do spend on social media is as optimized as it can.
This means taking a professional approach right from the start and ensuring that this is reflected across all social media platforms.
Draw a clear distinction between your personal and business accounts, and consider how your tone will reflect this. It’s fine to show some personality – and it’s great to come across as relatable and authentic – but avoid being too goofy or opinionated.
Commit to keeping your social media accounts up to date by setting time aside and making a proper timetable rather than having a vague plan.
Scheduling tools can be useful in many ways, not least because they encourage you to focus and think ahead, but even if you don’t use them, try and be disciplined in your planning. Keeping to a weekly or monthly timetable will help you be more strategic and consistent, avoid distractions, and use your time more efficiently. Planning further ahead can also help you identify ways of tying in with upcoming events and holidays.
This is about being organized and knowing where to find things. Set up a system for storing all of your social media assets (e.g., images, infographics, videos, audio clips, articles, templates, lists of keywords, and hashtags) in such a way that you can easily upload and find them (and share them, if that’s relevant).
Having this library of valuable assets at your fingertips will enable you to create and repurpose social media content more quickly.
Good quality images are important in engaging people and reflecting your professionalism. It’s worth spending a bit of time learning how to take and edit good photos; they don’t need to be perfect, but even a basic understanding of things like lighting, focus, and composition can make a huge difference to the quality of your images.
You can find plenty of advice about this online and lots of free tools for enhancing and creating images; this Buffer article is a helpful starting point.
Video continues to lead the way in terms of engagement, and as this trend shows no sign of slowing, do think about channeling some of your resources into video if you don’t already. Find a good hook, keep them short (especially if you’re using TikTok), and post regularly.
Get your clients to do the work for you; user-generated content (UGC) is highly rated and can be very effective. Ask them to make videos about a particular subject or for a specific challenge and to tag you when they post them (remember to ask for permission before sharing).
When people are unsure how to use hashtags properly, they tend to avoid them completely or overuse them. Avoiding hashtags is a missed opportunity, as they can help a wider audience find your content; overusing them can cause annoyance or confusion, as this makes your posts harder to read.
Aim for a few carefully chosen hashtags, included within your posts or at the end, that will help to identify and categorize your content and tie in with any significant themes. This Hootsuite article on how to use hashtags is a good introduction.
It’s beneficial to spend some time going through your social media analytics, but try not to get too bogged down in detail or distracted by data that isn’t very useful.
For example, it’s exciting if you notice an increase in your number of followers, but what does it really tell you? The most important stats to focus on are those that give you useful insights that you can apply going forward, for example, what type of content gets the most engagement and when are the best times to post.
Sharing other people’s posts – particularly if you add your own comments – is an easy way to increase your social media output while at the same time providing something useful for your followers.
You can use tools such as Feedly to keep track of news in your sector, filtering out the most relevant stories. Another idea to consider is ‘shoutout for shoutout’ (SFS), which involves businesses in similar fields (not direct competitors) mutually promoting each other on social media.
Do you know what your competitors are up to on social media? Keep an eye on them to help you gain insight into what works – and what doesn’t.
Whichever social media channels you use and whatever kind of content you post, maximize the impact of your efforts by actively encouraging people to engage with it. Rather than just presenting passive information, try and spark some discussion.
Ask for opinions, set quizzes, run polls – there are many ways to get followers involved – and always respond to questions and comments as quickly as possible. This kind of engagement will help you build your community.
There’s no escaping from the fact that social media marketing requires some time and effort to get results. Still, hopefully, we’ve given you some insight into how to use your limited resources wisely. One last general tip is to always keep an eye on social media trends and developments; this includes any free new tools that might make your life easier.
We'll get you up and running in no time. Start with our zero-risk free trial and build your personal training empire today.
