Instagram can be a cost-effective and valuable marketing tool for your fitness business. When properly used, Instagram can help to extend your reach, increase brand awareness, build brand loyalty, generate leads, and boost conversions.
But to succeed with Instagram, you need to have a strong engagement rate. Engagement refers to the level of your audience’s interaction or involvement with your content. And this level can be measured by the number of likes, comments, shares, mentions, replies, and direct messages your content generates on Instagram.
So, how can you increase Instagram engagement for your fitness business? Well, there are several ways to go about it. In this article, we will share 5 simple ways of increasing Instagram engagement for your fitness business.
Post Consistently
You may have probably heard this a thousand times before that if you want to grow your engagement on Instagram, you must post regularly and consistently. Posting regularly provides more opportunities for your target audience to interact with your content. Ideally, you should be posting at least once or twice per day.
However, you also need to ensure that you post at the right times or when your audience will likely engage with your content. Regardless of how many times you post daily, your engagement rates will remain low on Instagram if you do not post during the right times.
Simply put, you must ensure you post when your audience is most active on Instagram. So, when is the best time to post on Instagram? Based on the available research, the best time to post on Instagram is between 9 am and 3 pm, Monday through Friday.
Maintain Visual Consistency
Instagram is a visual platform. And for visual platforms, having a consistent visual theme can help to boost your engagement. Maintaining visual consistency on Instagram will keep your followers returning to your feed. And this translates to more engagement opportunities. Furthermore, maintaining visual consistency can also encourage new followers to join your community.
And maintaining visual consistency on Instagram is not as hard as it may appear. You can simply use personal trainer Instagram templates. You can hire a graphic designer to create templates for you or purchase a pre-made bundle. Whichever direction you decide to take, you should ensure you tailor the templates to your brand’s unique visual elements.
Post Videos
Besides being eye-catching, video content is also highly engaging. Studies show that video content generates approximately 38% more engagement than images. So, make sure you incorporate videos into your Instagram content mix.
And you don’t need to be a professional videographer to create videos for posting on Instagram. You simply need to capture raw footage using your smartphone. It can be a video of your workouts, meal preparation, or any other type of content that you may want to share with your audience on Instagram.
Once you’ve captured the footage using your phone, you can use free video tools to make the necessary edits. Some free video editing tools you can use include Lightworks, Windows Video Editor, OpenShot, iMovie, DaVinci Resolve, Movie Maker Online, and VideoPad, to name a few.
Add Hashtags to Your Posts
Adding hashtags to your posts on Instagram can help you to reach a wider audience. Also, hashtags will help to increase brand exposure and awareness. Furthermore, hashtags can also encourage audience interactions. And all this translates to more engagement for your posts.
However, you need to be careful when using hashtags on Instagram. If you use too many, your posts will appear spammy. And there’s a high chance that Instagram may end shadow-banning your content, leading to zero engagement. So, you should keep them to a minimum. Ideally, you should use a maximum of 10 hashtags per post. Also, ensure the hashtags you use are relevant to your posting content.
Partner with Influencers
Getting your Instagram posts in front of more eyes is one accessible means of building and increasing your engagement. And one of the easiest ways of achieving this is by partnering with Instagram influencers.
When you partner with Instagram influencers, they will post your brand or share your posts on their feeds. And there’s a high chance that some of their followers will visit your page and interact with your posts.
However, it’s important to highlight that such partnerships cost money. But, if you partner with the right influencer, you may end up with double or triple your usual engagement rates. And, this will be money well spent.
Summing It Up
A strong engagement rate on Instagram will help you attract new personal training clients and sell more memberships. And as you can see, increasing your engagement rate on Instagram is not rocket science. You just need to implement the tips we’ve shared above.
