Category: Blog

Social media

How to Leverage Social Media to Attract and Retain Members

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As a new business–specifically in the health and fitness industry– resources and budget tend to be limited. Social media is an inexpensive way to both attract and retain clients. Follow these steps to start crafting a successful social media strategy to grow your business.

1. Identify your audience

With any social media/marketing campaign, knowing your target audience is the key to success. How does one identify their target audience? As a small business, look at your local neighborhood. Is the facility located in a baby boomer community? Middle class? Or is most of the population between the ages of 20-35? Different images and messages should be marketed to each segment.

When marketing to Generation Y and/or younger age groups, social media is woven into every aspect of life, making it possible to reach them through various channels. This generation is all about doing research before committing to something new. So, pay attention to the fitness trends! A recent study from Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA) indicated a rising interest in group classes among this segment. Highlight group programs by posting videos of your kickboxing, aerobics or group Zumba classes. Use hashtags to make content more searchable!

2. Engage and Build Relationships

It’s not enough to strive for “likes” on posts; the conversation must continue. Actively engage with customers and require actions. Ask them to like a post, retweet, add a comment, subscribe, or share a video. Use these opportunities to offer promotions. Maybe a certain number of “likes” or shares will result in a free group class. This opens the conversation to your client’s friends, and social circles.

Social media creates constant communication between you and clients. Strive to build a relationship through feedback. Feedback is a two-way street; it’s important to respond to both negative and positive feedback-whether on Twitter, Facebook or your own personal website. Post client success stories to demonstrate your brand’s personal relationship with clients and programs with REAL results. If clients feel heard and respected, they’ll WANT to share your content and message, often times resulting in new lead and member acquisition.

3. Develop a strategy

Develop a schedule for posting content and be consistent. Encourage clients to get an early workout in Sunday Mornings at 8am to start the day off with a bang. Or, post “free” information once a week such as, “10 steps to a healthier heart”. Remind clients that your facility cares about them even outside the gym walls.

4. Measure the effectiveness of your social media strategy:

Social Media platforms measure your reach (followers), traffic (visitors), leads from referral sites, customers, and conversion rates. Utilize these metrics to identify what is working and what isn’t. For example, you can determine if promotions offered on Tuesdays at 12pm are more effective than Fridays at 12pm.

Identify, Engage, Develop and Measure to begin growing your small business. These days, you would be hard-pressed to find a successful business NOT using social media to expand their client base.

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Making Your Facility Wearable-Friendly

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After the recent release of the Apple Watch and continued release of Android Watches, wearable technology (wearables) seems to be all the buzz these days. With the involvement of these major players and their cult-like following, it’s clear that wearable technologies are not going away anytime soon. If you haven’t already, it may be time to start thinking about how to make your facility more wearable-friendly.
Wearables are electronic devices that are physically worn, either incorporated into a piece of clothing or as an accessory. Their capabilities make it easier to monitor certain aspects of your life, such as calories burned, distance ran, emails, and even messages. In essence, wearables aim to make life much more convenient.
The wearable-tech market is filled with a variety of products, with the two popular ones being fitness trackers and smartwatches. But what’s the difference between the two? A fitness tracker monitors physical activity without the need to manually input data, while smartwatches act as an extension of your smartphone. Despite their differences, fitness trackers are slowly being developed to display time, incoming calls, emails, and notifications—much like a smartwatch.
So why should this matter to your business? According to Business Insider, it is expected that in 2019 there will be more than 145 million wearables shipped worldwide, as compared to this year’s 30 million. With Google and Apple in the mix, it’s believed that many mobile users will gravitate toward the Apple Watch and devices that operate Android Wear. A common thread among those adopting smartwatches into their lives is that a majority will be using them for fitness purposes. Keeping that in mind, how can you incorporate wearables into your facility?
Opening your facility up to wearables can be done by making a convenient device even more convenient to use. For example, a recent Android Wear update allows users to escape the tethered range of Bluetooth and operate their smartwatches without their phones being near—as long as both devices are connected to Wi-Fi. Apple Watch is expected to incorporate this feature in the near future. Consequently, it’s a great idea to offer your clients free Wi-Fi so they may take advantage of such a feature. In addition to free Wi-Fi, send your members who have wearables with displays their ID card via email. Having their ID card (compatible with your club management software) in their inbox encourages them to use their device to check-in, and it’s also one less thing for them to carry. Technology is always changing, as are consumer preferences, which is what makes it so hard to predict the next big thing. One thing that is clear is all signs point towards the continued integration of wearables into daily life—which makes this the perfect time to make sure your facility is accommodating these devices and their owners.

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Train Employees Efficiently—Online

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If you run a sports facility, fitness center, or gym, you’ve probably embraced technology—these days, it’s impossible not to. You have your social media sites streamlined and constantly updated. You have your employees carrying around tablets for instant accessibility and communication. You have gym members uploading data from their personal fitness devices into your club management software. You might even have your fitness studios hooked up so members at home can stream classes. But have you thought about online training for your employees?
In this industry, training is crucial for some skills and types of knowledge. Think of pool management, for example. No matter what type of facility you run, if you’ve got a pool, your aquatics team needs to know, for starters, how to circulate and filtrate water, how to test for contamination and handle disinfection, and how to understand water chemistry concepts and calculations. Maybe you have the in-house resources—the time, the personnel—to pass this knowledge along.
If you don’t, signing your employees up for online training courses is the most efficient and effective way of getting them up to speed. Athletic Business runs a pool management course in partnership with the National Swimming Pool Foundation. Eight hours long, the interactive class promises to give your employees all the information they need to operate a pool expertly. The Aquatic Training Institute also offers a course, culminating in pool technician certification. Universities and MOOC (massive open online course) providers, such as Coursera, edX, and Udacity, are likely to offer free online pool management classes of their own.
In fact, universities and MOOC-providers are go-to web presences for all of your facility’s training and professional development needs. Personal trainers can find specific classes to address areas of knowledge they may be lacking, such as how to work with elderly or disabled populations, how to incorporate high-intensity training into existing workouts, and how to work with injured athletes. In this age of the Internet, almost any skill you or your employees need to develop can be learned cheaply and effectively online. You might have to invest some time into researching the options, but the investment will pay off in spades when you find yourself with a crew that knows what it’s doing (or knows how to find out what to do when it doesn’t know what it’s doing).
So how do you begin to incorporate online training? Whenever it makes sense, require new hires to educate themselves via courses you specify or allow them to choose from. This is an excellent way, in fact, to use inevitable downtime during the first couple weeks of employment, when new hires are learning the ropes. For existing employees, offer incentives. Give them a day off in exchange for completing a course, or throw a giant staff appreciation party—maybe even consider paying a small amount for each class an employee takes. It won’t be long before your staff realizes that, in addition to boosting your facility’s overall performance level, you’re offering them an opportunity for personal growth.

different workouts

Boost Retention: Help Your Members Achieve Their Goals

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There’s a powerful little word in our industry, one we love (when things are looking good) and hate (when things aren’t). I’m talking, of course, about “retention.” The word carries some kind of magical power. If retention is working in our favor, that’s an indication that business is good and we’re making the right decisions. If it’s not, it’s an indication that something — something — is off, but often it’s mysterious what that something is.
The thing that makes great retention an especially slippery goal is that it depends so much on factors in the lives of our individual members; factors that we couldn’t possibly control. Whether each member is happy or depressed, employed or suddenly unemployed, in a good relationship or in a psychologically draining one — each of these factors, and dozens of others, contributes to a member’s decision to stay or go.
Fine. Some stuff you have to let go of right? No sense in getting worked up over things you can’t do anything about. But what about the things you can do something about? That’s what you’ve got to focus on, and for gyms, fitness centres, health clubs, and the like, that really means one thing: helping members achieve their individual fitness and weight-loss goals.
The key here is the word “individual,” because the fact is that no two bodies are alike. There’s no one-size-fits-all fitness or weight-loss program. Diet books, workout videos, and advice blogs might want us to believe otherwise, but the fact is that what works beautifully for one health club member might not result in any improvements for another; the HIIT routine that allows one person to become mean and lean in four weeks might not show results for another person until after six or eight weeks. This, incidentally, is the beauty of the gym. The gym is staffed by real, live humans: trainers, concierges, nutritionists, class instructors, and cardio equipment experts who can listen to members express their goals, worries, and limitations, and help them chart out the best possible course for themselves. The best, most successful businesses in our industry do just this: They listen and respond accordingly.
So, back to that magical equation: improving retention by helping members achieve their individual fitness and weight-loss goals. If you want members who keep coming back, you have to offer them human attention. Employ knowledgeable, caring staff who are trained to:
1) Ask your members what their goals are; these can be tiny or huge, about health or about weight, short-term or long-term. The important thing is that they have goals, and that your staff knows how to help them define those goals.
2) Construct a realistic plan of attack to help them meet their goals. This means finding out what they enjoy in a workout and what they can’t bear — if they aren’t enjoying it, they’re not going to do it. It also means determining what kind of commitment is sustainable for each member. If they can’t keep up with the schedule, they’re likely to quit.
(3) Offer them support and guidance throughout. You just can’t do this kind of thing without a community, without someone cheering you on.
(4) Revise the plan if it’s not working. Help your members check their progress and make adjustments as needed. Can they handle more reps? Should they be doing less? Is there any measurable improvement? What are they struggling with?
It is also crucial to have a gym management software that allows you to track this critical data. With an all-in-one software that allows trainers and staff to create client profile pages, scheduling for both trainers and clients, as well as client fitness assessments, you will be making your lives and the client experience so much better!
Again, the purpose of all this — in addition to helping your members — is to keep them coming back. With the kind of attention outlined here, and the kind of help that will lead them to a better understanding of the individual plan that’s best for them, they won’t be able to help themselves.

senior workouts

Designing Senior Fitness Centres for All Seniors

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When my father went for his routine checkup with his doctor, he was sent straight to the hospital for a triple-bypass operation. Needless to say, my family started focusing hard on getting him to exercise. We found a weekly cardio class for him at the senior center in his small town, but it wasn’t enough. He felt uncomfortable and self-conscious in that setting — too exposed to the non-exercising seniors — and he didn’t like the routine of the one class that was offered. When the instructor began poking fun at him for being the only man there, he quit on the spot-and while my family all understood- we didn’t want him to quit exercising altogether.

So we sent him for a trial session at a local gym. He took one look at the young, pumped-up clientele and turned tail. It was intimidating and overwhelming for him to think of learning, or re-learning, how to exercise among such a crowd.

What did my father need?

What he really needed was a senior center that incorporated a fitness facility focused particularly on the needs of an older adult population. We found this harder to locate than we thought would be the case. There were many senior centres in the towns surrounding his, but few of them incorporated adequate exercise facilities. They either offered meager pieces of machinery that seemed older than the population they served, or classes that attempted to be one-size-fits-all for a community that was really quite diverse.

This, it turns out, is a common problem: As a recent article in Athletic Business magazine states, “One of the greatest misunderstandings about senior centres is that they serve one generation. In fact, as currently configured, senior centres target members of the so-called Silent Generation, Depression-era babies who are now between 69 and 89; the remaining members of the Greatest Generation, the youngest of whom are now 90; and increasingly, the Baby Boomers, who are now in the range of 50 to 68 years old.” None of the offerings at the places we checked out seemed to fully target my father’s generation.

Eventually, we found a gym that isn’t perfect for him, but is a good enough fit. It has a special “Senior Room,” where older adults in particular are invited to gather for classes — and one of those classes is particularly for men in their seventies who were recovering from heart surgery. That kind of specificity is rare and welcoming. A corner of the room, overseen by trainers who specialize in older adult fitness, is equipped with free weights and cardio machines that allow my father to undertake the independent, free-weight sessions he likes best, but without the pressure of younger adults killing it on their reps all around him. He still wishes he had access to a center that would cater solely to the needs of older adults like him, but he’s making it work. Maybe eventually we’ll find a place for him like The Summit, located in Grand Prairie, Texas.

The Summit was “specifically designed for active adults ages 50 or older.” It operates on the principle that senior centres should serve all seniors, whether they’re in their 50s or their 90s. It strives to incorporate spaces for socializing, but to keep those spaces separate from the workout areas. For now, we’ll settle for the fitness centres that consciously create spaces for seniors.

Maybe it’s time to consider how your own facility might better serve an older adult population. How can you create a space just for them? How can you cater to the varying needs of the many different generations who make up “older adults”? How can you design a program that benefits both that sizable population and your own facility? Do you currently have a health club management software that utilises senior discount programs like Silver Sneakers? My father will thank you if you figure out good answers to such questions.

Bringing Sales to the Next Level

Retaining Employees

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Some of the challenges fitness centres, gyms, and health clubs face are seasonal: getting members into the facility when the weather turns warm, dealing with the New-Year’s-resolution rush, running a member-recruitment campaign. But the challenge of holding on to valuable employees is perennial. After you’ve invested in a costly advertising and interviewing process, you spend a great number of resources training your staff and giving them time to acclimate. How do you then hold on to them for as long as possible?
Some club managers focus on keeping personal trainers happy. Gerard Oliver, General Manager of the Al Corniche Club Resort & Spa in Kuwait told IHRSA in a blog post that his facility keeps its fitness team incentivized by deemphasizing the revenues generated from personal training sessions. Without the pressure from the club to chase money by packing in as many sessions as possible, trainers are free to concentrate on the quality of their work. As Oliver says, “They have the desire and the time to education themselves, and interestingly enough, they have increased our revenues… They help members achieve the results they want and this helps with member retention, which is our top priority.”
For Aydin Buyukyilmaz, General Manager of Renewaclub in Turkey, the key strategy for successful employee retention is establishing a performance system that depends not on the budget of the club, but on the relative performance of the employees. Offering a competitive salary and a strong benefits package, while paying attention to market dynamics and making frequent adjustments accordingly, makes employees feel valued. But most of all, Buyukyilmaz says, the club works hard to create a sense of family among employees, which keeps them feeling connected and also benefits the club.
Lisa Welko, President of Ellipse Fitness in Appleton, Wisconsin, says the key is mentorship. “Build confidence in [employees’] abilities and allow them to grow within the organization,” she told the IHRSA blog. “We place special emphasis on training and continued development of everyone’s skills.” Fostering employees’ professional development increases their loyalty and keeps them motivated, Welko says.
One strategy might be to fire all these guns at once: Free your personal trainers from the pressure of increasing their number of sessions, focus on your employee compensation and performance packages, consciously create a sense of family among your staff, and emphasize mentorship and the development of specialized skills. Doing any one of these things takes time, money, effort, and a certain amount of vigilance; doing them all certainly will complicate a manager’s workload. But the potential payoff is huge: money saved, investments coming to fruition, and loyal expertise on staff. What more can a fitness facility ask for?
No doubt you have your own strategies for retaining your best employees. What are they? Share your best practices, and others will share theirs.

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Why Conventions are Good for You

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It’s almost that time again, folks—IHRSA convention and trade show time. The upcoming event, slated for the mid week of March in San Diego, will mark IHRSA’s 37th year of gathering industry members for discussion, exploration, learning, marketing, and all-around celebration of the health and fitness world. Here’s why, if you haven’t registered already, you should consider doing so; if you have registered, here’s why you’ll be happy you did.

1) Connection. First and foremost, attending a convention or trade show—any convention or trade show, but especially the industry’s largest—gives you the opportunity to connect with others in the field. Sure they may be competitors, but your competitors have something to teach you. Happily, participants who choose to attend events like conventions generally do so with an open attitude. Through casual conversations, over meals and beverages, meetings and introductions, ideas are transferred and transformed. Want to know how the gym down the street handles retention issues? Want to understand why that other baseball center is so successful at attracting new customers? Here’s your chance to find out.

2) Education. The latest industry news comes out during conventions like IHRSA’s. Statistics on the health of the industry, trends to keep an eye on, threats to look out for, and the most up-to-date word on major players all get talked about here first. Also, conventions can be an invaluable source of information about best practices. How do other clubs handle issues like employee training, member retention, locker-room cleanliness, and difficult clients? Every topic is fair game for discussion at such conventions, and you might find yourself going home with ideas you want to implement immediately.

3) Relationship-building. Okay, this is a lot like the first item in this list, but what I’m talking about here is bigger and deeper than a mere connection. Connecting with others in the industry is important and building relationships with them is crucial. I want to emphasize this. As with any endeavor, you’re more likely to succeed with your business if you’ve got a solid, reliable support system; this is true on all levels. The salespeople looking to sell you products at a trade show are not merely trying to fill their pockets. They really want the opportunity to meet you, get to know you, understand your needs and desires as a customer. Industry reporters, trade organizations, fellow business people—everyone is worth considering as the source of a potentially valuable relationship.

4) Sharing. Even if it’s easy to forget for most of the year, conventions and trade shows can serve to remind you that the difficult work you do is the same as the difficult work others do. And just as you can gain ideas and tips from other facility folk you meet at such events, other facility folk can gain ideas and tips from you. You might even seek to take part in a panel or give a talk. The pay-off might not be immediate, but eventually they’ll become clear, in tangible and intangible ways, you’ll reap the benefits of having been a part of a major event for months to come—at least until next year’s convention.

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How to Increase Social Media Reach

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Boosting sales and leads is one of the greatest assets that social media can offer a business.  When done properly, social media can transform into a lead generation monster for your company. To unleash the monster, people need to know that you exist and are ready to make an impact on the social media world. So how do we do this? By building a social media presence. 

The Foundation 

Before you do anything social media related, you need to start from square one — which is building a foundation. The first step towards building a social media infrastructure is choosing the right social networks: Facebook and Twitter. These platforms both have well over 300 million monthly active users, giving them the largest demographic and making them the most popular among all social networks.  To get the maximum benefit of these networks, you need to optimise your bio and visuals. The ideal bio will include a clear and concise description of your company and its URL. The visuals should include an awesome logo that is on both the profile picture and background image; this will further increase brand association. A fully optimised profile will allow customers, who are researching your industry, to see who you are and what you’re all about. Laying a sturdy foundation is just the first step to creating a social media empire. Now let’s give the industry something to buzz about and discuss the art of posting.  

Be a Problem Solver

The secret to any successful social media page —first-rate content. Creating quality posts is vital; it gives followers a reason to come back to your page(s) and an opportunity for potential new fans to discover and follow your organization. What specifically will make people return to your social media accounts and gain new followers? One thing all humans have in common, besides being human, is they experience conflict; which is why many people are attracted to material that pertains to their particular issue(s). For instance, let’s say you’re the owner of a gym whose members are mostly men in their late 50’s and are having troubling lowering their cholesterol. To help your members combat their problem, find and post educational information about the topic; this could include an article on the “10 Best Ways to Lower Your Cholesterol” or a video on the “7 Best Heart Healthy Exercises”. Not only are you helping your clients, but you’re demonstrating an expertise within the field. Content like this will have people raving about you and will aid in building your social media presence. Let’s strengthen that presence even further by getting social.

Get Social

Social media is more than a publishing tool, it’s an engagement tool. The conversation aspect is what makes social media unique, which is why Facebook and Twitter have made it easy with their internal search functions. However, there are also outside search platforms such as www.buzzsumo.com— a website that makes it quick and easy to discover relevant industry content and influencers. Identifying and communicating with well-known industry bloggers is essential to expanding your social circle and gaining some serious social clout. When it comes to an interaction strategy think beyond just industry thought leaders, and stay open to finding industry groups and getting involved with their circle. Last but not least, make sure you’re engaging followers with thought provoking questions and discussions; it will add value to your page(s) and keep followers hungry for more. The more interacting you do, the more of a name you will be making for yourself. Get involved and let your presence be felt. 

The Conclusion…

Start from the beginning and optimise your profiles so people will have no question about who you are and what you stand for. Next, tackle the posting beast to show people what industry knowledge you bring to the table. Finally, use social media for its purpose—to communicate and share ideas with others. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your social media empire be. Although it might take time and patience, in the end it will all be worthwhile as you see the tweets fly-in and the likes accumulate.

 

Time to Get a Passport

Time to Get a Passport

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Think any of your members have ever tried traveling without a passport? If they do, they risk getting out of shape, inducing an injury when they start working out again, and losing their momentum for regular exercise. I’m not talking about their actual passports, of course; I’m talking about IHRSA’s Passport Program. If your facility doesn’t take part in it, you might be doing your members a disservice.
IHRSA’s Passport Program is a worldwide network of 1,700 health clubs that offer guest access to their facilities for members of participating clubs. Participation in the Passport Program is free for clubs; you merely have to register. Once you do, your members need to follow only a few steps in order to be able to use health clubs around the world. First, they have to obtain a valid Passport I.D. from your facility. Then, they have to check IHRSA’s list of participating clubs to locate one in the area where they will be traveling. Finally, they have to call ahead to confirm the availability of the facilities and find out about any guest fees that might apply. It’s that easy.
When you register, you agree to two stipulations. One, that you will reciprocate and offer traveling members of other clubs access to yours. Two, that you will discount your regular guest fee by at least 50 percent for Passport guests.
Those aren’t small stipulations, but the potential benefit to your club should be clear. Imagine the added value you’ll be offering prospective members when they’re considering signing up for a membership. You tell them that by signing up they’ll be giving themselves access to 1,700 clubs around the country — who can say no to that? What’s more, you’ll demonstrate your commitment to their good health. Traveling can be hard on the body, especially if it means breaking off from a regular workout routine. And traveling around the holidays can be particularly damaging, given all the indulgent treats available. If your members know they can head to Great Aunt Glenda’s place and eat her fruit cake and butter cookies with a clear conscience, because there’s an accessible gym in town—you’ll be providing them with a valuable service.
Keep in mind, IHRSA’s network isn’t the only one out there (though it’s probably the biggest). Look into the available options and consider which ones would be a good fit for you and your members. They’ll thank you if you do.

Face Time

Face Time

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In this digital age, it’s possible to go for days without seeing another person and still be in constant contact with others. Texting, emailing, social media, video-chatting: All which create a level of communication unheard of in previous decades. But guess what? Health club members still prefer in-person interaction with staff than communication via technological device.
A study in the recently published IHRSA Member Retention Report, lays out the details on this topic. Conducted in partnership with The Retention People, IHRSA’s study draws on survey responses from more than 10,000 health and fitness members in the U.K., who answered questions about their exercise habits and membership behavior between July and September 2013. The survey showed that an overwhelming 87 percent of respondents value interactions with fitness staff. The clincher? Less than half—43 percent—of respondents feel they have such interactions.The other clincher? Despite everything you constantly hear about how crucial it is to have an effective social media campaign—to get out there on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, to try to speak personably and familiarly with members via those platforms—only 34 percent of respondents said they value social media updates. Almost twice that number—65 percent—said they value receiving emails.
Considering the numbers, it’s worth devising a strategy for increasing face time between staff and members in your own health venue. This goes for sports facilities, too. The nature of the exercise business is interdependence—whether you’re talking gym, niche studio, or batting cages. Members depend on trainers, instructors, front desk folk, and support staff, and vice versa. So anything you can do to foster interdependence is going to result in a happier customer base—which, in the long run, means better retention, more word-of-mouth advertising, four-and-five star ratings on social media, and ultimately more members.
How do you make interactions between staff and members the norm at your facility? Make proactive interactions a requirement for the job: Staff should know, even before they’re hired, that you have high expectations for warm, interpersonal, and in-person communication with members on a daily basis. Have a greeter at the door, and give them a script that includes introducing him or herself by name, welcoming members, shaking their hands, and offering to help them with anything they need. Instruct front-desk staff to smile and to try to learn members’ names. Trainers and class leaders should also learn members’ names and should go out of their way to talk to members. In the weight room and cardio court, and on the ground at sports facilities, they should circulate and check in with members, ask how they’re doing and whether they need anything.
As for out-of-club communications, remember almost twice the number of survey respondents prefer email to social media interaction. Maybe it’s time to step back from your social media activity and refocus on effective emailing; the more personal the better. Consider a gym management software that allows for direct email blasts and the ability to group clients into categories. For example, create an email group called “New members” to track clients who have just signed up. Then, devise an email campaign where your staff sends a “checking in” email once a month for the first few critical months of the client’s membership.
Service of this sort takes your club or sports facility to the next level. If members feel you truly care about them, they’ll be coming back and telling their friends to do the same.