It’s no secret that social media can be an extremely effective marketing tool for businesses, and fitness centers are no exception.
If you’re looking to keep your members engaged and motivated to look after their health, both while in your gym and after they leave, social media might be just what you’re looking for.
This article will highlight 11 different types of gym social media posts along with health and fitness topics that you can use to take full advantage of the many benefits offered by those platforms.
Let’s get started!
Is social media marketing right for fitness centers and gyms?
If you’re uncertain about social media marketing for fitness and wondering whether it is a marketing channel that’s worth investing in for fitness centers, it might help you to know that this kind of content can help with:
- Brand awareness
- Reaching more customers
- Boosting conversions
- Achieving other business goals
Social media is a versatile tool that you can leverage in many different ways. When done correctly, it can be one of the strongest strategies for unlocking the full potential of your gym.
Let’s dive in!
1. Nutrition-specific health and fitness topics
The average American doesn’t follow a healthy eating pattern. Your gym could play a role in fixing that problem for its members with the right types of social media posts.
Nutrition tips are an excellent fit for social media because they’re usually quick suggestions that can make a meaningful impact on someone’s life.
There’s also a nearly endless number of nutrition tips that you could post to your social media accounts, including information like:
- An underrated source of protein
- The vitamins you can get from different vegetables
- How to calculate your daily caloric intake needs
- Information about macronutrients
- Any other tips your members would appreciate
2. Exercise explainers and workout posts
People rely on your gym for help with pursuing their physical fitness goals. But many people who visit you may not be familiar with all of the different exercises they can do to reach those goals.
Exercise explainers can be another great addition to your social media accounts. Workout posts of this type can introduce people to new exercise strategies and help them make sure that they’re doing exercises with the proper form to get the maximum benefit.
It’s probably a good idea to show these explainers with a video. Not only will workout posts make it easy for members to watch and follow the exercise, but research suggests that 54% of people want to see more video content on social media from the brands they interact with.
3. Before and after fitness posts
Nothing is more motivating than seeing an average person achieve impressive fitness goals. These can also be a great form of fitness promotion and advertisement for the efficacy of your fitness center.
If you know of members who have seriously transformed their bodies by going to your gym, consider asking if you can share their stories on social media.
They may appreciate the opportunity to show off their results — and you’ll get a great gym post for Instagram and other social media channels to motivate your target audience.
4. Meet the team posts
You could also use your social media accounts to familiarize your target audience with the people behind your gym.
Meet the team posts can be especially useful if you offer personal training as an add-on service.
More people will become aware of your personal training offering and, as a result, consultation requests may go up, leading to increased revenue.
5. User-generated fitness topics and content
Part of building a successful fitness center is creating a community. When people feel like they’re involved, they tend to be much more loyal and engaged in what you’re doing.
That’s why user-generated content is great for gym social media posts. User-generated fitness topics and content can include things like:
- Pictures from user Instagram accounts
- Stories about fitness triumphs
- Before and after pictures
- Fitness goals
If you add digital signage to your gym, you can even highlight members’ social media posts in your fitness center. People will be excited to see themselves up on the TVs and you get the benefit of greater online exposure for your gym.
UPshow makes it easy to add this type of content to your gym. Just share a hashtag with your gym-goers, and you can automatically pull in their fitness Instagram posts or even Twitter updates to your on-premise TVs.
6. Motivational quotes and fitness inspiration photos
A big part of reaching your fitness goals is maintaining enough motivation to continue working out and eating right over time.
It’s also important from a business perspective for your gym to help its members maintain a high level of motivation. Otherwise, you could lose clients as they lose interest in working out.
That’s why it’s wise to share motivational quotes and images on your social media profiles.
Doing so can help remind people why they’re doing what they’re doing and it may even benefit your gym’s membership volume.
7. Gym competition ideas around challenges
Challenges help people stay engaged, especially when pursuing their fitness goals. You can choose from a wide variety of gym competition ideas and share different challenges on your social media pages to inspire people.
For example, you could set up a challenge group at the start of the new year on Facebook. You can even give anyone who completes the challenge a reward, such as a discounted membership for a few months. Further, you’ll also be able to vary difficulty levels when it comes to gym competitions and challenges.
Challenges can be shorter-term as well. They can even be as simple as challenging your members to go to the gym and work out at least five days that week.
The key is giving your customers a tangible goal to focus on, which should help them maintain motivation.
8. Gym topics related to special deals
Many fitness centers also use their social media profiles to focus on gym topics revolving around special deals and push gym promotion ideas. These can be a great way to get more people to follow your accounts.
For example, you might post about a limited-time discount on a piece of gear from your gym’s apparel store.
When someone realizes that they missed a good deal because they weren’t following you on social media, they’re likely to give you a follow so that they don’t miss similar opportunities in the future.
Providing exclusive value to your social media followers in this way can be helpful if you want to expand your online audience.
9. Behind-the-scenes gym posts
Behind-the-scenes looks at how your fitness center operates can also be a fun way to connect with your guests online.
For example, you could shoot some video clips after the gym has closed for the night and show your staff having fun in the empty facility. Or you could show a sped-up version of how your gym transforms when you install new equipment and exercise machines.
10. Memes based on fitness topics
The average millennial looks at 20-30 memes per day. This volume shows that younger people connect with memes and enjoy consuming them.
Using your gym’s social media accounts to share fitness memes could be a fun way to get more engagement.
The cool part about these is that people enjoy sharing funny memes on their own social media accounts when they see them. So if you post memes that resonate with your audience, you could get a lot of free advertising on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
11. Fitness engagement posts on recipes
One of the more challenging parts of eating healthy is getting bored with eating the same nutrient-rich ingredients every week. New recipes with those ingredients help to spice them up and keep people on track with their diets.
You can use your gym’s social media accounts to help with this by sharing nutritious recipes that your members may not be familiar with.
You could even combine this type of post with a staff introduction post. For example, you could highlight a new staff member every week and have them share a recipe for their favorite healthy dish.
If you really want to get creative, you could even film the person cooking the recipe and post it to your gym’s TikTok account.
Bring the most popular health and fitness topics from your social media into your gym with UPshow
Many fitness centers are already using social media to connect with their audience online. But fewer are taking advantage of the impact that social media can have inside the gym.
By showing your social media posts in your fitness centers, you get:
- More attention on your posts
- The ability to bridge the gap between your online and on-premise audiences
- Opportunities to keep your customers engaged and motivated by showing their posts across your TVs
- The chance to upsell and grow revenue by advertising your add-on services, such as personal training
UPshow makes all of this possible. With our digital signage software, you can start showing your and your members’ Twitter and Instagram posts on every screen in your facility.
It could be just what you need to start reaching your social media goals.
