With a huge community of more than 1 billion people, a business presence on Instagram is a must for anyone starting as an online personal trainer.
This guide will help your fitness business stand out on this popular platform with advice from our own experiences of using it along the way.
Set up you Instagram business account
Let’s start with the basics. You need to switch to a business account.This is simple to do. Follow our guide, which will help you get set up with the Instagram basics.
Drive awareness, While Building a Community
81% of social media users use Instagram to research products and services. That same statistic also showed that 90% of Instagram users follow a business.To get in front of these active users, ensure you understand how to create posts, videos, and stories to engage with these audiences.
You may ask your community to share how and why they use your fitness products and services. This falls into the category of user-generated content and loyal customer reviews and will give you lots of content to repost or share. These also form a great way of selling your services to new customers. To make sure you get more reach with your posts, add a minimum of three hashtags that describe your business, service, or products to reach potential customers who may be interested in your products but have yet to be made aware of you.
One of our favorite hacks is taking your highest-performing posts and turning them into an advert. The Instagram advertising dashboard will allow you to target your audience by their likes, interests, and job titles. Consider using clear call-to-actions on your ads if your objective is to drive people to a landing page.
Try following accounts that inspire you. This could result in someone following you back. Be proactive and reach out to people to tell them how much you love their product or brand. Finally, Instagram is a great space to inspire others. Engage directly with your followers by responding to their comments, reactions, or posts. Or even replying to direct messages. This can help you build trust with new customers and encourage people to start conversations with your business
Get More PT Clients on Instagram
People like your perfect customer use Instagram to shop more than 130 million people engage with a shopping post every month. Your goal is to help those people discover your products and build their confidence to purchase from you.Here are some additional tips for using Instagram to get more clients:
Use Stories -This is a great place to understand what type of content your audience wants — simply ask them what they want to see with tools like question stickers and polls.
Use Instagram Insights - As with all other platforms, analytics will allow you to understand what is and is not working with your audience. In addition, it will enable you to optimize all future posts to ensure you are only posting the content and formats that perform best.
Educate and Inspire your Audience - Utilize your fitness brand's persona to educate, and inspire your current and potential customers. This is your chance to become the aspirational influence your clients need and give them the confidence to purchase from you.
Use all Creatives at your Disposal
As with all other social channels, the different posts you can create on Instagram give you a different way to speak to your audience.Stories
Use Instagram Stories to repost organic user-generated content your business gets tagged in, or try out the “Add Yours” feature to encourage users to show how they use your product.
Reels
Reels allow you to show behind-the-scenes fitness content related to your products or give your audience an insight into what it would be like to have you as their coach. You could also keep your followers engaged with competitions or nutrition advice.
Go Live
Go live on Instagram and host an interview with a customer or even try introducing a new product. Some of the highest-performing posts on Instagram tend to be user-generated content. However, the content doesn’t have to be perfect. People are looking for authentic content, and if you can shape this to promote your personal trainer business, you will have a much more engaged audience.
Some Final Tips
There are a lot of features and hacks we use on Instagram. Here are a selection of our favourites:Post Content that will Intrest your Audience
Search for specific hashtags or trends to identify the content and content types that resonate with your audience. You may even want to use a news aggregator application like Feedly, which will help you curate content that you can then share with your audience.
Use Hashtags
It may sound obvious, but this is often overlooked. If you have a small following, not adding hashtags is a little like shouting about your product on a deserted beach. Hashtags are an essential part of the Instagram algorithm, so try and add a minimum of three for each post, but try to stay under ten. You can even add hashtags to a reply to your original post.
Consistancy
Try a regular posting schedule to get on top of the Instagram algorithm. But remember, your audience will only sometimes like being sold to. So try a formula of one sales message for every four posts. These posts could be sharing articles from publishers or influencers.
Use a Posting Tool
We get it. You are not a Social Media Manager; you just want to train your clients. Therefore, investing in a good social media posting tool
. This will save you time and ensure that you can have a consistent posting schedule while also being able to post on the channels you know your audience is on.
