Following on from our previous article about growing your business with Instagram, today we’re taking you through some helpful tips for using Facebook to wisely to grow your fitness business.
Engagement and Reach
The two most important Facebook marketing metrics to familiarize yourself with are “engagement” and “reach”.
“Reach” refers to the number of people who have seen your posts. “Engagement” measures the interactions people took on your posts, including liking, commenting and sharing.
In simple terms, a higher post engagement level means they will be seen by more people (reach).
So how can you generate more engagements on your Facebook posts?
Here are some helpful tips to get more Engagement:
1. Interest
Create posts that are interesting! People would much rather follow a business page that they feel they are benefitting from. When they realise your posts are frequently engaging and interesting, they will more than likely follow your page.
Interesting posts can be things like; tips for getting started on your fitness journey. Or giving short exercises people can do from anywhere. Keep them interesting while also staying on brand with your studio mission.
Keep these few things in mind when you’re posting on social media; Teach, Inform, Entertain or Inspire. When you ensure your posts are teaching your audience something valuable or entertaining them by putting a smile on their face then you will quickly see your audience grow organically.
2. Authenticity
People are hungry for authenticity so be relatable and human on your posts. You can share some behind the scenes images or videos, introduce some team members. Or even take them along the journey of starting something new and the struggles you encounter along the way. It creates a story which people would be interested in following, eager to see the outcome.
Also take this to heart when writing the captions on your posts, speak to your audience directly. And refer to your business as ‘We’ which creates the human to human element.
3. Post consistently and at the right times
Facebook’s news feed is based on algorithm, so your followers won’t always see your posts right when you post it. According to Facebook it’s more beneficial to post when your audience is online.
You can easily find this by going on your page > Insights > Posts > When your fans are online
This will show you the days and times of the day that majority of your followers are online. This is also where scheduling your posts comes in handy. If you have some of your upcoming posts ready then you can easily schedule it to be posted on the days and times that your insights have given you.
Posting consistently also will force the algorithm to show your posts more frequently to your followers, compared to if you only posted once every two weeks. Social media experts suggest that you post 2 or 3 times per week for optimal results.
4. Boost your posts
You can drive a lot more traffic to your page by boosting certain posts on Facebook. A boosted post helps you to reach a much wider audience. When boosting a post you determine the audience that you want to target as well as the budget you’re willing to spend.
You can create an audience based on their likes and interests, age, location and also determine for how long you want this boost to run for.
Facebook will then use your total budget and split it over the amount of days that you’ve set. Advertising in newspaper or magazines are usually quite expensive, but with boosted posts you can decide how much and how often you want to spend on these ads. Boosting an event, retreat or a special, will get lots of traction that you might have missed out on otherwise.
Once you’ve posted your post, simply click on the blue Boost post button (bottom right corner of your post). Select the goal for your boosted post (you can also let Facebook choose an automated goal for you). Choose what the call-to-action button on your post will say. Choose your audience (Or create one if you haven’t created one yet). Select your duration and timeframe that your post will be boosted. Then decide where you want your ad placed (Messenger, Instagram..). Double check your ad preview and the estimated results that it will get, and that’s it! You’re set up for success!
Remember, you might go through a few trials and errors. If your first post didn’t perform well, then try changing your audience by either narrowing or broadening your audience. Or by increasing your budget until your find the sweet spot.
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5. Campaigns
Running a fun little campaign like a giveaway or competition is a great way to get your engagement up. Giveaways and competitions are a great way to get people excited to follow your page. You can welcome newcomers to try out your studio by giving away a few free classes.
Keep in mind though, Facebook does have some regulations for competitions on Facebook. Familiarise yourself with their terms and conditions before you go ahead and start your next campaign. They take you through which pages are eligible to promote, and what type of competitions and events you can run.
Running a competition is an inexpensive and easy way to increase your engagement achieve measurable results. You can ask your audience to like and comment on the competition post. And you can also ask them to follow your page.
What’s not allowed is to ask your audience to share the post on their timeline, tagging a friend or share it on a friend’s timeline. This used to be allowed on Facebook, but they’ve gotten quite strict recently.
The type of competition you run will depend on your business goal. Do you want to increase engagement with likes and shares? Or awareness with impressions? Or maybe you want to drive traffic to your website?
6. Ask a friend
Don’t be afraid to ask your students, friends and staff members to share and review your studio. When they share your posts with their own network, it puts you in front of their followers and organically boosts your studio.
Another great option is to get an influencer on board or someone with a bigger following base who already loves your studio. When their followers see them recommending your studio, the curiosity will quickly bring more people to join.
7. Free content
Sharing workouts online is an incredible tool to get people hooked on your type of classes. Sharing short 10 – 15min workouts online will give them a good indication of your style of workouts as well as your teacher style.
Make use of multiple platforms here. If you’re posting your workout on your website or YouTube channel, share it to your Facebook and Instagram platforms to drive up your engagement. Through this strategy you will be able to reach a wider variety of people using different platforms.
If you’re already doing online classes, then the work of filming is already done for you. But even if you don’t have any tech savvy tools to create video content, taking short clip videos on your phone is just as effective. Just ensure that you upload in high resolution and that your audio is clear. You can also make use of voice overs or writing the instructions in the captions if it’s simple rep style workouts.
But most importantly, make sure you have fun! Energy is contagious, so show them how joining your classes will brighten their day.
Facebook Inspiration
Our studios on Bookamat are making the most of their Facebook pages, so we thought we’d share a few with you. From reels, inspirational posts, tutorial videos, or using it to promote upcoming events. It’s always interesting following along their journeys and seeing how each studio uses this platform to grow and reach their audiences.
Specialized Performance and Recovery
At Yoga – Floor & Flight Yoga Studio
We hope that with these tips you would be able to take on Facebook like a pro and get the most engagement while growing your business online! Make people love your studio and the people in it as much as you do. Share the funny moments, the grafting, and all the moments in between. Take them along your journey as you grow and expand into your dream studio.
