In this article, we'll breakdown step-by-step how to truly take your social media skills to the next level so you don't ever lose a potential customer ever again.
What are the 13 best ways to grow my business using social media?
In this day and age, you can't expect to grow your business without a solid social presence. If someone finds you on Instagram and only sees a couple of posts in the past few years + an incomplete bio... they're probably not going to want to work with you.
In this article, we'll breakdown step-by-step how to truly take your social media skills to the next level so you don't ever lose a potential customer ever again.
Today, we're going to focus on Instagram since IG is the most dominant of the social media players, especially for the personal trainers that run their businesses WeStrive. If you want to try dominating on Twitter you can go here or Facebook you can go here.
Now, let's breakdown 13 steps to dominating on Instagram.
Here are 13 steps to growing your Instagram engagement and following in 2021:
- Setup an Instagram Business account
- Post consistently (try for daily & stay consistent)
- Utilize stories (try to use videos + utilize Canva)
- Re-share others content
- Collaborate with other professionals in your space
- Find your niche (and stick to it)
- Don't waste your money on ads (yet)
- Use online tools to help with timing/scheduling (Hootsuite or Buffer)
- Find YOUR best times to post
- Optimize your bio & Profile Picture
- Track your analytics (find out what works)
- Engage your fans
- Utilize video content (even though it's hard)
1. Setup an Instagram Business account
This part is easy and 100% necessary.
Keep in mind, once you become a business account, you no longer have the private account option.
If you want to understand the analytics of your Instagram posts then you're going to need to setup an Instagram Business account. You'll be able to understand where your viewers (not just your followers) are viewing from through the breakdown by location, age-range, and sex.
Understanding these numbers is crucial to growing your business. If you live in Los Angeles and all your viewers aren't in the US then you probably don't want to promote a local personal training bootcamp in LA until you've built up your following in Southern California.
With that being said, still post about your bootcamp - just know that you probably won't get a lot of conversions until you've grown your local following.
How to setup an Instagram Business account
2. Post consistently (try for daily & stay consistent)
This is something that every business can always work on. At WeStrive, we try to post at least two days a week. Most websites will tell you to post daily - but only do this IF you have the content to do so.
The last thing you want to do is force yourself to post daily and then put out poor content. It's better to post a beautiful post once a week then to post off-brand or low-quality images every day.
In summary,
Post quality content as often as you can
3. Utilize stories (try to use videos + utilize Canva)
With Instagram's algorithm being a little all over the place, stories just might be the best place to promote your business.
If you're new to creating posts and/or graphic design then I'm happy to introduce Canva. It's a free tool with millions of pieces of content that you can easily utilize for your Instagram story. Sign-up and start exploring how amazing this tool is... seriously.
4. Re-share others content
If you're a personal trainer, why not re-share some of your clients content or maybe some amazing trainer's content that inspires you. There's no better way to grow your brand than to share other people's content (OPC).
Who knows, they might share your right back!
5. Collaborate with other professionals in your space
Similar to the point before, find other professionals that you can network with! If you're worried about promoting another personal trainer then maybe find a nutritionist or a health coach that you can work with! The two of you can cross-promote eachother, not be competitors, and maybe even train the same clients! Win-Win-Win!
6. Find your niche (and stick to it)
If you're a personal trainer, you're not going to stick out by just adding Personal Trainer to your bio. Who's your target audience? Are you training Mom's over 40? Do you strictly train athletes? Do you have a ton of experience training patients that have survived cancer?
Figure out where your experience lies and hone in on that niche.
We found this fun article (sorry for all the homework) that can actually help you step-by-step find your niche for Instagram.
7. Don't waste your money on ads (yet)
You're typically too early for ads and you'll be wasting your money (just the hard truth 🤷🏻♀️).
We suggest, if you 1000% want to do ads, working with a business coach who has experience with Facebook or Instagram ads before you move in this direction.
8. Use online tools to help with timing/scheduling (Hootsuite or Buffer)
There are so many tools out there that help with scheduling & auto-scheduling your posts. Some of them are free, some of them aren't. Here are our favorite two: Hootsuite & Buffer
With Hootsuite, for example, you're able to lay-out all of your posts (Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.) ahead of time across all the platforms in one simple-to-use calendar. You can even schedule the post to go to your Hootsuite app so then you have the freedom to just push 'post' whenever you choose and everything will be ready for you.
9. Find YOUR best times to post
You can read blogs all day on the best times to post to Instagram. Here's an article by HubSpot talking about just that. However, did you know that if you go to your profile tab (after making a business profile) - choose Insights - Select See All next to 'Your Audience' you'll get this screen below?
You can instantly see what days and times your own followers are active on IG. How cool is that? Now you can base your times around when your followers will actually see your content.
10. Optimize your bio & Profile Picture
First things first, let's get you a professional profile picture. Lucky for you, we just wrote an article about how you can take a professional profile picture FOR FREE right from your home - check it our right here.
Great, now you have a beautiful picture to represent you so now let's focus on the bio. If you can't think of anything, here's a Tailwind article on 150 bio ideas. Overall, here's a few tips we've pulled from that article:
A) Add keywords & descriptive words about you into your profile name
B) Be upfront about who you are and what you offer. If you're a personal trainer, say that right away. Are you accepting clients? Do you train online? Let the world know.
C) Use line breaks + emojis to keep your bio clean. Don't just make it one big paragraph.
D) Give your followers a link to click on & a call to action like "start training with me today!"
11. Track your analytics (find out what works)
Now, you're not going to become an analytics expert overnight, but a good place to start is simply tracking every week. Since you made your IG a business account (Step 1), you now have access to the 'Insights' button on your home page.
Create a simple Excel document and start writing down your engagement once a week. It will only take a minute and you'll get to watch your engagement, interactions, and audience grow over time!
12. Engage your fans
This one is simple, if people are coming to your page and/or commenting on your posts... ENGAGE THEM! Let them know they are heard. Don't just say, "thanks!" in the comments. Take the time to provide actual thoughtful responses.
13. Utilize video content (even though it's hard)
This is especially important for personal trainers. You're constantly working out and training clients, so provide videos of those exercises and post them on your Instagram! Bare minimum, post them on your story. How fun would that be to have a #WorkoutOfTheWeek that you could highlight to your followers.
If you're trying to get more clients, show them what you can do 💪
The only question now is, are you going to go use these steps to grow your business?
Make sure you're setup for online training with these articles:
- How to price your online training
- Easy Websites & Apps to make your training business better
- How to make reliable & quality client questionnaires
- How to write a memorable and professional fitness bio
Got a question or need help? Feel free to Send Feedback to help@westriveapp.com or Tweet us @WeStriveApp
About the Author:
Cory McKane is the CEO/Founder of WeStrive - a platform for personal trainers to manage & grow their personal training business. He enjoys working out and spending time working with trainers on WeStrive on how to manage/grow their business.
