Executive Summary
Instagram has a lot to offer a Personal Trainer. In this post we will explore how you can set up a business page, what kind of posts you can create and how you can grow your follower numbers.
Introduction to Instagram
How to set up a business page / social account
Instagram Image Size Guide
How to use Instagram as a Personal Trainer
How to get bookings with Instagram
Examples of Posts from Instagram
Conclusion
Introduction to Instagram
Instagram has over 1 billion Monthly Active Users. The photo based sharing site has, after much debate, released a very similar feature to SnapChat called Instagram Stories. Following this introduction, Instagram has enjoyed substantial growth and keeps on growing year on year.
How to set up a business page/social account
You can choose a business page rather than a personal page, which we highly encourage you to use. A business page enables you to add a physical location, an email and contact details so your customers can interact with you directly within the app. You will also get access to analytics for your business page.
To set up a profile follow the on-screen instructions. Instagram has a limit of 150 characters for your bio so try and keep it brief. You don’t have the option to add a cover photo. On Instagram make sure the profile photo and description best represents your brand.
Instagram Image Size Guide
Profile Photo: 400 x 400px
Post: 1080 x 1080px
Video length: Min 15 seconds Max 60 seconds
How to use Instagram as a Personal Trainer
Instagram has many useful features for businesses. What kind of content could you produce for your Instagram feed?
● Share photos or videos during your sessions. Also you could showcase various training techniques you offer your clients.
● In Instagram, user generated videos are viewed 10 times more than video content created by a brand. You now can post more than one image or video to a post. This could be great if you wanted to show off multiple videos of your clients’ sessions or the progress one of your clients has made.
Hashtags
The key to using hashtags on Instagram is to use relevant ones. For example, if you post a picture of your workout outfit, you could use hashtags such as #fitness or #instafit but you wouldn’t use hashtags such as #wanderlust or #traveller since they are not relevance to the content of the post.
You don’t want to add too many hashtag in your posts either, so it is suggested to use the maximum of 9 on each post. This amount can help get engagement on a post. Something to bear in mind as well is that we don’t recommend using hashtags such as “#followmeback”, “#followforfollow”, “#likeforlike” which may attract spammers and not an authentic audience.
Stories
Instagram launched Stories in 2016, and has seen some great success with more than 300 million people using Instagram Stories. There are many features within Stories such as GIFs, Questions, Polls, Music, and more.
Unlike the Instagram feed, Stories is a much more relaxed platform where people upload video, Boomerang (a looping set of photos going back and forth) or photos in the moment.
You have a lot more freedom to post less-polished content through Stories than on your feed. Why not go behind the scenes of a session, showing the prep that is done beforehand? Or, use Boomerang when someone starts a workout.
The questions feature is a great way to get to know your new audience. Get them to ask any type of question, which you can reply to by placing their question on the Story and your response by either text or video. Why not use the Poll feature to see if your audience has a good understanding of your sport or activity?
Research suggest profiles that posted seven or more times a week get more Likes and gain more Followers. As a result, think about planning content you may wish to put onto Instagram before your sessions so you have a steady flow of content.
How to get bookings with Instagram
As a personal trainer, you’ll want to use Instagram to promote your availability and encourage your clients to book you on fibodo, the booking management platform.
As a Host on fibodo, you’ll be able to take bookings 24/7. As part of your subscription you get web pages and apps for people to book you. So, simply add your fibodo web page URL onto your Instagram bio and you can increase the bookings you get.
Examples of Posts from Instagram
Good Examples
Vimmia
Vimmia has a very clean style that they adopt for their Instagram posts. If you scroll through their feed you might see a lot of photos shot in front of a white brick wall, which makes their outfits centre stage.
They don’t have a specific colour scheme but they have a unique style that helps to make the brand standout on a busy feed. Vimmia have a great way of mixing in video content when necessary. Their video content is a great mix of either high quality content or content shot on a smartphone.
Key Takeaways
● Make sure you create clean images and potentially adopt a style for your Instagram feed. Think of something that will help to make your brand unique. A lot of brands create different content for different platforms and Instagram is a great way to visually represent your brand.
● Aim to only use 8-10 relevant hashtags related to the context of the photo.
● Remember to mix up your content and produce not only images but also video content. Think about taking videos on your smartphone during a Personal Trainer session.
Bad Examples
Prabhat Chaudhary
Key Takeaways
● He actually managed to get a lot of likes on the post, however this may not be an authentic audience coming to the photo.
● The photo is slightly dark so it is hard to see the subject of the image. Aim to take photos with good natural lighting.
Conclusion
Instagram has many features for businesses which you can take advantage of. There is always something which can help your Personal Trainer business growing. Find what works for you and in the mean time try to experiment with posts.
Need some inspiration for what to post on Instagram? Then follow us on Instagram
You can sign up with fibodo for your personal training business and get going today.
