How to start a fitness Instagram

Instagram is considered as one of the major marketing platforms in social media. It can be a vital strategy for boosting your fitness business. Starting a fitness Instagram can be an excellent way to establish your brand. Whether you run a personal training business, gym facility, or sell your products online, Instagram marketing channel is most likely to be an effective platform. But the question is, where do you start?

First of all, let’s look at how to start a successful fitness Instagram. Here are the tips you need to look at:

• Remember, fitness covers a broad topic. Those people who would be interested to follow a bodybuilding fitness account may not be the same people who have the interest to follow an Instagram yoga blogger.
• Do you want to increase the number of cross-fit followers, bodybuilding followers, or yoga followers?
• You need to select your target market guided by your niche carefully.
• To have authority over a specific area, choose your niche, and strictly stick to it.

When starting a fitness Instagram, picking a specific area and focusing on it can be much easier to capture more audience than generalising the approach. In this article, we share how to start a fitness Instagram.

Get clear on your goal and objectives

Just like any other marketing activity, you must have clear goals and objectives. This is crucial because it will influence the kind of content you will post. For example, Are you trying to get new PT clients or gym members? Are you interested in promoting fitness programs regarding post-pregnancy or promoting active ageing classes? Or will you want your website to drive more traffic to where you sell fitness products? Once you get a clear idea of why you want to create your Instagram account, you can now go ahead and tailor your content and profile accordingly. Before you set your intentions on Instagram, the first step is to determine what achievement and success mean to your business. These key questions will help you to answer how to start a fitness business on Instagram.

• In the end, what do you intend to achieve through your Instagram marketing?
• Are you creating brand awareness to reach out to your target customer base?
• Do you want to use the platform to display your services and products?
• Are you using Instagram to acquire new clients or to educate your followers?
• Are you trying to engage your community?

Instagram account for business can be of use in various ways to assist meets your overall goals. That is why it is crucial to set realistic objectives, and this will further help you match your strategies with the objectives. For instance, if you want to use Instagram to endorse a new instructor or trainer, then you should target an audience that will generate excitement and buzz in the lead. To find the right audience, you can use a tool like Instagram insights.

Create an amazing business profile

To create an Instagram that magnetises followers, a high business profile is essential. To appear in search web results, you need a strong business profile. The first item people see is your profile, so it must make a positive impression. Three most vital elements must appear in your business profile:

• Profile Photo – use a headshot picture with a professional logo.
• Bio – to make any potential business prospects find your online content, you must include the keyword in your bio.
• Link – this will not only take followers to your homepage but also your lead page.

There is a lot more to be included in the business profile, but these three things are fundamental. The business profile feature gives you a way to other online tools such as Instagram adverts, contact information, Instagram insights, and many more.

• Instagram adverts – it allows you to advertise on the platform and promote your posts. These help your business to grow both your engagement and your reach.
• Contact information – the contact button is indispensable and allows your users to contact you very quickly. The button can be set in a way that people can call or email you. Also, you can set your location through a map.
• Instagram insights – this allows your users to see what content works best for them. It gives your business all the crucial data concerning the account as well as how posts perform. Insights provide weekly performance data on clicks, reach, followers, impressions, the website, etc. Additionally, it gives comprehensive data on your follower’s demographics, such as times they are most active and location.

Develop quality content for your target audience

Here we are talking about starting your Instagram content and including things like hashtags, captions, and images. Also, inspirational quotes such as ‘mouth-watering healthy meals’ as well as aspirational fitness activities such as ‘beach yoga’ work very well. However, you must come up with the right content that will appeal to your specific target audience and is authentic to your brand. You can use consistent filters and colours to give your theme a cohesive mood. Include relevant fitness, yoga, and health hashtags. Several captions can be used according to what you see best fits your needs. Keep the captions short and snappy. People will absorb the message more efficiently. Blog posts must be longer, and a lot more detailed, and emoticons should be used to break up the text. Create a clear call to action such as ‘follow our bio link’ etc. For high-quality Instagram content:

• Create different posts by using varying formats – play around with different inspirational quotes and formats. Instagram has a variety of different formats, and you can use a mix-up. Use video to provide demonstrations and tutorials. Create posts that allow you to share several photos at a time. Play around with different inspirational quotes and photo formats.
• Use ready-to-use templates – many online tools can help you create engaging content for your ideal clients. The templates are amazingly useful, and you don’t need a top-notch designer. You can create Instagram stories and insights using the tools.
• Use high-quality pictures – people want to see beautiful thought out content. If you use fuzz photos slightly, it may not draw attention.

Follow and interact

Creating a fitness Instagram is not just about quality content, but should be interactive too. Many people tend to look at who follows you, and a few will follow you back. The key to having a fitness Instagram is to interact with your followers genuinely. To achieve this, like and comment on their content, and that way, you will start building relationships. Avoid unfollowing those people you follow. At last, this will develop fans that might finally purchase what you offer.

Instagram can build a community and a perfect place to interact with people. You can repost customer photos, use call-to-actions, and host competitions just to keep followers engaged.
• Utilise call-to-actions – you can ask followers for suggestions or feedback. You can ask for an answer to a question. You can as well reward your followers after entering into a competition and many more
• Regram – this allows you to share the content of other people. By doing so, you can create further connections.
• Tag people – when you post content from customers, tag them. If you are working with influential people, share their posts, and tag them.
• Engage other accounts – do virtual networking. Ask questions, comment on photos, and suggest tips.

Reach your ideal clientele with ads

Instagram, just like other significant channels, has a dominant ads platform. Facebook powers the ads, and you can post the same ads across both Instagram and Facebook. The ads have a stunning visual design layout that helps to create ads to be simple. Popularity with Instagram is growing and causing it to become an essential part of the general marketing strategic options.

• Use A/B Test to your ads until you configure which combination gets the best result for you.
• Create a promotion ad that gives value like free introductory classes.
• Use quality videos and images.
• Create a dedicated landing page on the website. Provide a direct ‘call to action’ when the person gets there.

Rinse, repeat and scale what’s working

Identify what is most effective and double down on the efforts to achieve that. After a particular milestone, review your Instagram posts and profile. Evaluate what needs to change, what can be improved, and what worked well.

• Were there particular hashtags and themes that worked well?
• Which of your accounts followed you back the most?
• What content was the most popular?

After you have identified the most popular elements, then focus on them for the next like 30 days. This ensures you don’t hit a plateau in your fitness program. Instead, it helps you to continue to grow.

Make a content calendar

To maximise your reach, ensure you create a variety of useful content and a content calendar. Schedule different types of posts and share them on different days. For example:

• Monday – share a workout tip.
• Tuesday – share a motivational quote.
• Wednesday – make it a transformational day by posting a photo of ‘before and after.’
• Thursday – share a healthy meal recipe.
• Friday – let it be your networking day. You can promote a company to push existing partnerships.
• Saturday – make it an interacting day by asking a question.
• Sunday – make it a light sharing day by posting a health and fitness meme or a funny Gif.

Summarising, by following the above steps, now you are aware of how you can start a fitness Instagram for your business. For a long term success, use this information to create and set up your account in a strong foundation. Having a clear goal and well set up objectives will ensure your focus on social efforts align well with your business goals. Great creative content and a strong profile will help your services and products appeal to your target audience. Following others will enable you to develop a lasting relationship with people who might get interested in what you are offering. Evaluating your social efforts can help you to quickly scale up and build your fitness program to be an amazingly effective marketing platform.

Once you’ve got your fitness Instagram set up and the enquires start to flowing through. You’ll need to invest in fitness management software to organise all your clients. That’s where Gymcatch gym booking software comes in! Get in contact with us today to see how we can help you.