FITNESS BUSINESS TIPS TO MASTER THE FACEBOOK ALGORITHM

So your gym or fitness business has some great followers on your Facebook page, you’ve been working hard on pushing out some great content, and yet your engagement levels continue to be low. You are probably asking yourself where you are going wrong.

Unfortunately, it is getting increasingly difficult to get your organic content in front of your fans. Why? Because Facebook has a very complex algorithm in place that will be assessing several factors to determine the delivery of your content in the news feed of your Facebook followers.

So what do you have to do, to get more likes, shares and comments on your content? We want to make sure the world sees those exercise and nutrition tips, fancy blogs and all-round awesome photos you’ve been posting for your fitness business!

Let’s take a look at some ways to bring your Facebook A Game.

1. Look at the insights that you have

Spend some time understanding what posts have worked for you in the past. At the top of your Facebook Page, you will see a tab for insights where you can take a deep dive into your page’s performance. Some questions to ask yourself:

• What are the demographics of my followers, this may help you with planning better-targeted content
• What types of posts are they engaging with – are videos proving a waste of time? do they actively answer questions you have posted? are they clicking to your blogs?…work out what your top performers are and use that to your advantage
• What times of day are producing the goods. Naturally, you will always see a busy period in the evening or perhaps across lunch (remember other pages will have these too), but you might see a correlation between good performing posts and time of day – use that!

2. Post Regularly

Yep, if you are just posting once a week that is simply not enough! The social media world moves at an extremely fast pace, so your posts are generally only going to have wings the first few hours they are live. Make sure you are posting as often as you can, once, twice, even more in a day. As with anything in the digital world, test and learn. Get a feel for how often you can post and still get engagement from your fan base. You may be asking yourself how on earth you will have the time to be posting so regularly. Once you have your insights above, and a content plan in place (see below) than why not use a auto-publishing tool such as Later, so you can craft your posts ahead of time, schedule them, set and relax. The publisher tool will then send them live at the time in the future that you have nominated.

3. Plan your content

If you are going to be posting often, then a good content plan is going to be important. Facebook will rank you based on the quality of your content, so ensure you have a good mix of posts that include links, photos, questions, articles etc. Make sure you implement the types of post the perform for you, based on your assessment of insights.

Consider the following types of content for your Fitness business:

• Post questions to your fitness members like ‘what’s the first thing you do on the weekend’, or ‘who smashed their goals this week, and what were they?’, or ‘what’s your most dreaded piece of equipment at the gym?’ Its always a good idea to post how you would answer the question in the post, to give them a head start on what you are looking for in their answer.
• Share high-quality articles from other sources – like health magazines, fitness experts and the like
• Photos – group shots of your member’s pre/post-class, photos of facilities, new/existing staff member introductions, social activities
• Success stories – always a great way to get engagement and to let others support their gym buddies. You may post before/after shots, or a testimonial or review from a member who has achieved big things with you
• Memes – who doesn’t like a funny meme?! One watch out for memes though, the Facebook algorithm does view them as a lower quality piece of content than say a news article, so don’t overdo it. The engagement you will get from your fitness members will likely counteract this downside though.
• Tips relating to health, nutrition and exercise – remember you are the expert, share your knowledge with your members
• You can post promotional content, but we recommend the 80/20 rule here. Only 20% of your content should talk about sales, joining offers or cross-selling.
• Competitions are always well received, so get your fans answering and sharing your posts with the chance to win something
• User-generated content – encourage your fan base to be posting their content to the page, it may be photos from the gym earlier that day, or an article they found useful. It helps when all the content isn’t coming from you as the sole source.

4. Make sure you are engaged too!

If you are expecting fans to like and comment on your posts, then remember you need to be engaged in your post reactions too. Hit like on a comment, or reply when someone comments, or start a conversation. Not only is it great for your fitness business community, but the Facebook algorithm gives this a big tick!

5. Mix organic with paid

Yes, we are talking about organic, but don’t be afraid to boost some of your better posts regularly. Wider reach means more people are likely to hit like or comment and that looks good for the people it also reaches organically.

6. Get a community of likers

Ok, so people don’t like to say this one out loud…but here we go. When you post, it helps when you have someone like it or comment on it immediately. If you can build relationships with other businesses or people willing to do this, you can help each other out on this front. Ot will be beneficial for all. If you are a gym, perhaps you help out the local nutrition store or chiropractor as an example…or just ask a couple of your happy gym members to show you some social love.

If you would like to nail your social media marketing, then why not let a team of marketing experts do it for you? Click here for more information on how More Gym Members can manage your social media content.