Social Media 4 Personal Trainers

This series of articles focuses on social media and your PT Business.

Part Four is about Social Media and some creative ways you can use it to promote your PT business – and why you want to have a presence on a variety of social media sites.

In Part Three we added a “Special Offers Brainstorming Worksheet” to help you come up with offers for your social media optimization plan.

Social media sites offer a variety of ways for people to communicate online and interact with their favorite businesses, including your PT business! Sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are among the most popular and most visited on the Web, and many of their users check their accounts every day. Here are nine ways you can use social media to better connect with your fans and boost your fitness business.

1. Improve Your Customer Service

Social Media 4 Personal Trainers

These sites give your future and present customers direct access to you. This gives you a chance to listen to what they have to say and learn how they feel about your business. By being responsive and offering them access, social media works wonders for your customer service in your PT business.

2. Manage Customer Complaints

Social media sites let your customers leave comments on how you’re doing. When they complain or criticize your business practices, you not only get valuable feedback, but also a chance to reply and repair your image. Be sure to watch for the feedback and respond to the comment. If they leave a negative comment don’t react, do your best to resolve the situation.

Social Media 4Personal Trainers

3. Share Real-Life Customer Stories

Social proof is powerful in establishing your fitness company’s credibility, and social media gives you lots of opportunities to get real testimonials. Positive reviews from your PT clients can be seen instantly by anyone who accesses your profile or theirs. Share pictures of client workouts, sporting events you have participated in with some of your personal training clients or any special notes of thanks. Be sure to get a picture and use their own words.

4. Boost Customer Loyalty

You can use your profile to run your PT client loyalty programs by offering incentives and rewards. Everything can be done through the site and mobile phones so you don’t need to deal with any more punch cards.

5. Attract New Business

Your social media presence gives you free advertising on the world’s biggest message board. People can find your profile through Web searches and their friends’ profiles. This is a great way to attract new personal training customers.

6. Get to Know Your Market

Social media makes it extremely easy to get to know your target market. You can find out exactly who enjoys your fitness products and services, as well as find out what else they like. Companies have spent millions in marketing research to gather this information and all you need to do is invest a little time to see how what they have learned and apply it to your PT business. Find a way to do companion sales with other business in the PT/Fitness Industry.
Social Media 4 PTs

7. Create a Brand Message

Every company has a brand message, like Nike’s ‘Just Do It’. You can use your social media site to communicate this message to your fans and prospective fitness customers. What is your brand? How can you use this on social media sites to build brand awareness?

8. Connect Everything

By integrating your social media sites with your blog or website, you can generate more traffic and leads. Widgets and apps allow you to link everything together for maximum exposure. If you have a website, find a plugin that can link your blog to your social media sites to make updates easy. If you don’t have a website, you may want to then consider putting a lot of effort into your facebook page and send people there for information. Having a website does give more credibility though.

9. Use Multimedia

Most social media sites have multimedia applications. You can make a welcome video showing what your PT business specializes in or offer a streaming podcast to your customers. These help by branding your company and giving it a more personal touch. It also gives more chances for exposure by using mediums like YouTube and Blog Talk Radio.

The most important thing to remember about social media is that people don’t use these sites to shop. They use them to socialize, share common interests, and generally hang out.

Make your page an interactive place where they can get involved and spend time. This keeps your brand in their mind and whenever they’re ready to buy, they’ll come to you. If you want to see a great example of a facebook page come visit our Create PT Wealth page!