Mini Instagram Growth Guide: Fitness Edition

The fitness industry on Instagram is kind of a big deal. After all, over 287 million posts are filed under #fitness to date. While you may know hundreds of fitness Instagram accounts by their handle, there are thousands that go undiscovered.Why? Perhaps it’s because they’re tagging their photos with soley #fitness and getting lost in a big blue sea of #fitness posts.
Growing your fitness Instagram may seem daunting because of that. But it’s actually not impossible. With the right guidance and advice, your Instagram account can boost sales for your fitness brand – whether you’re a training, meal prep, or equipment company.
At Into the Blue, we’ve worked with numerous health clubs, sports & wellness supplement brands, high profile athletes, trainers, coaches, and fitness equipment companies. In working with them, we’ve nailed down how to navigate fitness Instagram and use it to our advantage.
Here’s what we know works:

What makes you special?

With the fitness niche containing millions of active accounts, standing out is a must. If you try to appeal to everyone you’ll end up appealing to very few. Whether you are a personal trainer trying to get their coaching businesses noticed or design fitness apparel, you’ll need to ask yourself this question: what about you or your brand can you amplify that makes it unique?
It doesn’t matter if there’s thousands of other people selling the same service or similar product, there’s always a way to make it interesting and build followers. Tweak your product to solve a problem that nobody has before. This can be a product that reduces soreness and strain from workouts or apparel that blocks sweat. No two brands or services are alike. Even if there’s a product on the market similar to yours, give yourself the competitive edge with your Instagram presence. Give your social media a personal touch, one that your competitors don’t have. Make yourself the go-to person or brand for your niche. The more specific you get, the more of a connection you can establish with people who come across your page.

Increase your value — Fitness Instagram is competitive

Fitness Instagram is obviously filled with content. Make yours noticeable. Of course, this is going to be different for every audience and brand. Increasing your value can mean making your content more personal, even if you’re a brand not dependent on a single person, like a trainer. Personal content should be easily relatable, and not really hyper-specific. For example, a CrossFit Instagram probably wouldn’t be posting yoga tips and poses. Instead, they would be posting transformations and plyometrics content, because that’s what CrossFit is about.
Fitness Instagram should provide value to aid healthy lifestyles. And if you want your account to grow, that’s what you need to do. Your content should leave the viewer with something they didn’t know before. This can be something like workout tips or meal prep inspiration. But in the branding aspect, you should still include what your brand specifically brings to the table.
Amplify what makes you special
If your brand or product enhances a certain workout, then make it known on your social media.  As a person, if you have higher education, more elite training or a unique transformation experience you’ve overcome or are in the midst of, share your uniqueness with others and true followers will… follow.

See how we add value to our part of our audience, which consists of yogis:

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

To know what’s best for you, you need to first understand yourself. A daily yoga practice, even if just for a few minutes, can help you become better in tune with yourself? – ?♀5 Ways Yoga Can Help You:?♀ 1. Improves your flexibility 2. Builds muscle strength 3. Makes you happier 4. Founds a healthy lifestyle 5. Helps you focus . . Featured: @fernlconn and @tyla_laure, yogis & personal trainers. . . . #yogiquotes #yogisofig #yogispirit #selfawareness #selfdiscovery #selfexploration #stretchitout #yoginilife #happyyoga #happyyogi #yogalifestyle #yogilifestyle #beyourbestself #innerpeace #innerhealing #stretches #mobilitytraining #flexibilitytraining #injuryprevention #feeltheburn #stretching #stretchingtime #chakrabalancing #balancing #ommm #meditationtime #mindsetiseverything #mindsettransformation

A post shared by Wedge Effect: Smart Workouts (@wedge_effect) on

Listen to your audience, create for your audience

Your fitness Instagram is about your audience, not you. Your audience should determine your content, depending on their niche and interests. Don’t just look at your Instagram insights – analyze them. Did your yoga post perform better than your weightlifting post? Did your workout tutorial perform better than your transformation post? Once you answer those, you can post content that gets shared and seen more, which leads to more clients.
Listening to your audience can be more personal than digging through Instagram insights. There’s another way to create for your audience: ask them. Here are just a few of the many ways to conduct market research via Instagram (stories, specifically):
  • Polls: It doesn’t get any more straightforward than this. Ask your audience whether they want more workout videos or nutrition tips, and they’ll tell you in real time.
  • Questions: Using the questions feature, ask your audience open-endedly what they want more of and get genuine insights into their niche. Record their answers and discover what fitness branches they’re into.
  • Sliders: Post a slider on your story and let people judge the content for themselves. Use sliders as an indicator of how much your audience liked your post.

Pay it back

Ultimately, followers won’t come to you if you do nothing. The best way to grow your fitness Instagram is to actively seek followers. As valuable as your content may be, you need to make it discoverable. You can do this by following and engaging with similar brands to place your account on more and more feeds. Give shoutouts to like-minded brands, and if good karma is a thing – they may do the same. Here’s what you can do to engage more on other Fitness Instagram pages:
  • Respond to their call-to-action
  • Like their posts
  • Comment what you love about their posts
  • Promote their content on your stories
  • DM some of their followers

Collaborate with like-minded influencers & brands

Collaborating with local gyms and influencers is essential to marketing your fitness Instagram. This is especially true for startups, since an influencer can help get their name out to the public. By teaming up with new or traditional brands, you can tap into a whole new audience. Depending on the influencer, you can reach people using a popular medium that maybe your brand hasn’t explored. For example, if your brand is primarily present on Facebook and Instagram, search for a YouTube fitness influencer to collaborate with. That way, you can reach people that may buy into your brand that you can’t reach otherwise.
Besides exploring outside your specialty platforms, it’s also necessary to work with influencers and brands that are active in your platforms, too. Establish a list of goals and coordinate influencer content to achieve them. So for example, if you want more brand awareness and engagement you might run a giveaway or create a challenge for followers to participate in. You could also create exclusive content with the influencers that’s only accessible when followers join your email list. The opportunities are endless. For our fitness Instagram purposes, we aim to engage with gyms, apparel brands, and coaches.

Example:

No matter what your fitness realm is, growing your following takes dedicated time, attention to detail, crafting a visual and engaging plan and implementing influencers and collaborative partners to broaden your reach.
Into the Blue can help your account grow and flourish. We’re experts at converting Instagram followers into customers with engaging content, just check out our original (never Stock Photo) pictures and videos on our fitness client, Wedge Effect. We know just how to make your awesome brand stand out and not blend in with the other 287 million #fitness posts. To get started growing your Instagram presence today, email [email protected].
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