How to Manage Social Media As A Personal Trainer

The biggest addition to the workforce of today is social media. This relatively new construct has created new tasks and jobs, as well as new responsibilities for every type of work environment. Put simply, quite a few people are starting a personal training business. Social media has single-handedly changed the landscape of how a company is viewed, promotes itself, and operates on a daily basis. This fact remains true for those that are a part of the self-employed. If anything, the task of handling social media is intensified for those individuals because there is not a person/team usually doing that part of the business for them.

Personal trainers fall into the “self-employed crowd” and they have a big job ahead of them handling multiple social media platforms. However, it is an aspect that they cannot ignore because nowadays social media is a top-tier way of marketing yourself to the community you wish to target. Each platform a personal trainer chooses to involve his business in needs to be catered to in its own manner that best suits that platform. The key is to understand the platforms in-depth and know how to navigate and deliver the proper content for them.

Choosing The Necessary Platforms

As stated prior, the art of managing social media platforms is a lot to maintain especially when you are solely the only person handling it. In order to better manage your platforms, it is important to make sure you are only utilizing the platforms that best benefit you. If you are just trying to cast a wide net online and gather as many people from various places as you can, it may not work well for you. It actually may do the opposite because you have to pick a focus. You must narrow down your target audience to exactly who you wish to get the attention of and go after them (not literally). 

Once you can target your audience you will be able to pick which social media platforms are used to accomplish your goals. For example, instead of having to post daily on 5 different platforms, you may be able to narrow that down to 2 or 3 platforms with increased results. The following information in this article will give personal trainers advice on how to manage their social media presence.

Persona

Just like how social media is app-based, so is Persona. These apps for personal trainers allow for the lifestyle of those that are self-employed or run their own business to become less hectic and frustrating. Persona operates to relieve the stress for business owners that comes with dealing with all the financial aspects of owning a business. 

You can create an online store where your clients can book and pay, hassle-free. Also, their sessions will be tracked so that you and the client can see how much money is owed, etc. and there need not be any unnecessary conversation. Persona offers their Persona Visa Card that you can receive just days after signing up. The card can be used to buy industry-related products that you can receive discounts on. The platform is partnered with Stripe and Goldman Sachs, which gives it very good credibility and is a free app for personal trainers. Signing up to Persona is the best thing to do for your business.

Deliver Consistently and Engage Your Audience

Social media platforms reward consistency, so it is important to post daily, multiple times per day. The easiest way to accomplish this is to create a schedule of days and times you feel are best to post on each platform. However, you must stay up to date and “in the know” so that you can connect with your audience correctly. 

There are apps that can assist with scheduling your posts such as Hootsuite. The app allows you to give access to your accounts so that once you schedule the content you want to be posted, it can automatically post for you. Also, you can set it up for posts far ahead of the current time thus you can plan months ahead and not have to physically do the posting yourself. 

Another pertinent aspect is engaging your audience. The best part about personal training and fitness, in general, is that there will always be an audience. The tough factor is that you have to hold on to the audience or steady their attention elsewhere. This means responding to questions, resolving issues, as well as commenting and liking posts. A successful social media account is not a quiet or an unresponsive account, it takes legitimate time and presence on the app no matter which platform to build a better business.

Multiple Posts Per Day

As previously mentioned you need to be posting on your platforms multiple times a day. It is highly recommended that you post 4-6 times a day. To most, that seems like a lot of posting for one day because most people don’t do that many posts on their personal pages. Nonetheless, the number of posts keeps your pages active and almost forces your audience to acknowledge your presence. 

At first, it may be a lot of trial and error because with so many different types of content you will have to figure out which content your target audience enjoys. Some people love video content, others love pictures, some love inspirational quotes, and others like memes. After trial and error, you may find your audience on Instagram prefers a certain type of content as opposed to your Facebook audience that may prefer something else. You have to be able to manage the differences between the platforms and adjust accordingly. Just to reiterate, this is when using apps such as Hootsuite come in handy.

Measure Your Results  

You want to be able to see the benefits of your hard work after finding the proper content for your platforms. Thus you need to make it a habit to measure your results on a regular basis. You may have found a way to engage your followers and it’s been working for a couple of weeks however if you’re not keeping track of those statistics (likes, comments, followers, etc.) it may begin to decline in effectiveness and you would not know. 

Social media changes every day, from trends to the actual apps changing their formats there is quite a bit to keep up with. Audiences are fickle these days and it can be hard to hold someone’s attention for long periods of time. If you fall behind in that aspect you’ll end up having to win your audience back which can be harder than gaining an initial following in the first place.

Hiring Professional Help

In certain cases, as a personal trainer, you may feel overwhelmed by social media. Whether it is because you do not have the knowledge of the platforms necessary or you just do not have the appropriate time to give to managing it, there is a solution. You can look to hire professional social media management. 

This option should be heavily thought on due to the fact that it will cost you varying amounts to hire the type of help you require. Before making this investment, evaluate different professionals, their offers, goals, and most importantly costs. You want to hire someone with a proven track record of maintaining and improving social media platforms for their clients. 

Again, remember this is only an option if you truly cannot learn or have the time to handle your own platforms. If you can take the time to learn by yourself it would be most beneficial to you in the long term.

Do Not Give Up

The most important piece of information that you can learn is not to give up along the way. Social media is confusing and tough even for those that are “experts” at it. Thus it is OK if some days are not the best days for you. You must bounce back and learn from past mistakes and that will allow you to propel your business to the next level.

Make sure to view your metrics (likes, comments, shares, etc.) and really find what works for you and what does not. Remember not to get comfortable with what you see and remain diligent in seeing how your audience reacts to each post, times change and your posting habits will have to as well. Follow other similar platforms to yours and take notes as to how they are navigating their social media, too.

If all else fails, professional help is available for you to seek out but be cautious as you don’t want to spend money that you either don’t have or waste it on someone that does not accomplish the goals agreed upon. 

Focus and consistency are what will help you achieve proper management of your social media as a personal trainer.