Tips on Personal Trainer Instagram Marketing

Latest statistics show that 60% of users discover new products on Instagram! This is a great reason for Personal Trainers and Fitness Professionals to set up a business account and utilise the platform to promote their business.

In 2016, Instagram was used by 71% of U.S businesses, and that percentage has been on the rise each year.

Here, we have listed 5 tips on how you can get the most out of Instagram for your business.

1. Post consistently (probably the most obvious)

 If you were to take a look at your favourite Instagram influencer, along with their upload rate, you’ll likely find they’re putting up a post per day at a minimum. This will be accompanied by an Instagram story or IGTV post.

It has been shown that those who post at least once per day are much more likely to grow their followers and engagement rate. With follower rate doubling from a simple post per day!

Create a weekly content plan and work in advance to ensure you’ve got something great to share each day. This can cover anything from training tips and recipes to highlighting particular events and promoting any special offers you may want to run.

2. Collaborate

 This isn’t something many Personal Trainers often do, unless it’s combined with some form of giveaway for a consumable, such as whey protein or protein-packed treats. However, collaborating with other Fitness Professionals and Fitness Bloggers can be a great way to expand your reach and attract a new audience.

One great thing you can do is take a popular Fitness Blogger through a 1-1 session or invite them to attend a class you offer and share their experience!

You can even collaborate with local fitness centres and businesses, which is particularly good if you offer a face-to-face personal training service.

3. Utilise Instagram stories & going live

 Did you know that going ‘Live’ on Instagram automatically pushes you to the front of the stories feed?!

As Instagram grows, so many new features are released, enabling professionals like yourself to reach a much greater audience than before.

When posting a story, you can now tag your geo-location, add interactive features such as polls, ‘ask me a question’, countdowns, hashtags and even quizzes (a new one recently added which we love!).

Engagement for videos is now growing quicker than engagement for images, so make sure you’re making the most of this trend.

4. Upload time

 This can be a tricky one to nail, especially if you quite often ‘boost’ posts. Not to mention, there isn’t a universal ‘best’.

The optimal time to post is when your followers are most active, but how can you determine this?

If you have a business account on Instagram;

– Head to your profile and select the three horizontal lines in the top-right

– Select ‘Insights’ and then ‘Audience’

– Here you will be able to view the locations, age range and gender of your audience, plus the time of day and day of week that they are most active on Instagram

This should give you a clear understanding of the best time to post.

5. Cross-post

 If you’re on Instagram, you’re more than likely on Facebook and/or Twitter too. Cross posting is a great way to let your followers on other platforms know that you are also on Instagram.

It’s super easy to cross-share using Instagram, when creating a post, you will notice that below the area used to enter a caption, you have a ‘Post to other accounts’ option (note, this will only show if you have linked your other platforms, this can be managed through Settings). You can simply select the platform you wish to cross-share with. This is also now available through Facebook.

Another great feature is embedding your Instagram feed into the bottom of your website.
Some users may be more comfortable contacting you through Instagram rather than a contact form or via email.

There we have it, 5 quick and simple tips on how you can grow your business through Instagram. Give them a whirl and watch your engagement grow!