10 Gym Instagram Post Ideas To Attract New Members
Over the past year and a half, pandemic-imposed lockdowns shut down Gyms and fitness studios worldwide. The going has gotten significantly tough for these businesses. But, now things are taking a turn for the better.
Communities are opening up, lockdown restrictions are easing up, and Gyms are reopening. Now is the time to get back to your marketing with a vengeance.
The awareness of fitness and health is at an all-time high. Stuck in their homes, deprived of a healthy lifestyle, and missing social gatherings, customers are waiting to get back to the gym. Ideally, you want to attract as many of these customers as possible to your studio or gym.
To achieve that seemingly lofty goal, you’ve got to harness the power of Social media – especially Instagram.
There are 1 billion active users on Instagram, and 35% of them show interest in posts in the Health and Fitness category.
Instagram is also an ideal place to promote your gym because 71% of users are below 35 years of age. This young audience, that is aware of the importance of fitness, is what you need for your business.
“Social media is unique in that I can have a direct relationship with any one of my followers. It’s reactive and immediate…Influencers have created a new landscape which offers easily accessible and digestible pieces of content to overcome these barriers [to fitness].”
Elliot Burton, fitness influencer, shares his thoughts on social media marketing with Business Insider.
The versatility of Instagram for Gym Content
The biggest reason most businesses shy away from creating content for Instagram is that it has too many features. It can seem kind of overwhelming. But once you play around with those features you’ll see that that’s a great advantage.
In a time when Social media algorithms keep fluctuating, playing spoilsport to your plans, Instagram allows you to experiment to get bigger ROIs. With it’s different content formats you can repurpose a single post idea many times to get a better sense of what your audience responds to most.
You can use your images, graphics, long videos, short videos, and audioclips on Instagram. What more can you ask for?
If you still feel that creating content for Instagram Is a challenge, we got you.
Kimp has curated some of the best Gym Instagram Post Ideas to help you attract new members and grow your business into a formidable fitness brand.
Let’s dive right in.
Gym Instagram Post Ideas to Attract New members
Instagram Feed
Let’s start with feed posts – the original and time-tested place to create content for your gym on Instagram. How can you make your feed inviting and meaningful enough to convince people to join you in the offline world? Check out these post ideas for starters.
1) Motivational Quotes
What’s one of the biggest obstacles for anyone looking to get a gym membership? It’s motivation. That’s the push to finally get up and do something for themselves. So, sharing motivational quotes that relate to working on yourself, self-care, new beginnings, and a healthy lifestyle are absolutely essential for your feed.
It may be filler content for other businesses, but it must be a core part of your content calendar. Ensure that you clearly link it back to how you can help your customers begin the fitness journey through the images you use. And/or in your post captions.
Kimp Tip: Avoid stock images and generic motivational quotes. Create unique, professionally designed, and high-quality images with quotes that represent your brand well. Your feed aesthetic depends on it.
2) Highlight your Team
The trainers and team members who run your gym are an essential part of your brand. In fact, in many cases, they are the face of your business. So, ensure that they are present on your feed.
Customers connect with faces and people more than they connect with brands. This is your advantage over a corporate chain. And it might be just what gets people through the door.
Ways to highlight your team on your Instagram Feed include:
- Weekly highlights such as “Trainer Tuesdays”
- Showcasing their individual profiles and one significant achievement for each trainer every week
- An “Employee/Trainer of the Month” series
- Client Testimonials for trainers
- New move or workout routine showcase by your trainers
3) Gym Equipment
Much like the trainers and the team members, the equipment in your gym defines the experience your customers can expect from you. Customers join the gym for equipment-based workouts to push their limits. And you can bet they’ve been missing their favourites throughout the pandemic.
By showcasing the equipment found in your gym, you reinforce your value to your potential customers. You can also demonstrate how to use a particular type of equipment, its merits, maintenance, and any other interesting fact about it.
These posts will establish your authority and credibility to customers and make them more inclined to join your gym.
Kimp Tip: Ensure that you present the equipment in the best light. If the lighting is unflattering or there are other quality issues, enlist the help of a professional design/edit team to make your images fit your brand image and feed aesthetic.
Want to see how you can use your images in Instagram posts? Sign up for a free trial from Kimp to test out different ways of showing off your brand.
4) Giveaways
Who doesn’t like freebies? Especially when they’re for things that offer a lot of value. Consider organizing giveaways for the fitness enthusiasts following your account. With the right incentives you’ll be able to get their attention and entice them to sign up for memberships.
Giveaways are a great way to generate engagement on your feed. You can run contests and decide to choose a random person as the winner of the giveaways. Or simply release your freebies on a certain day of the month for a limited time. The constant engagement and interaction will propel your reach and also build brand awareness among your followers.
The giveaway could be a fitness product and/or free classes, personal training sessions, or a gym membership for 1-3 months.
When choosing your giveaways remember to keep your goal in mind. In this case, it’s getting new members. So you want your prizes to get them in through the door so you can offer them a taste of what you have to offer.
5. Challenges
Fitness challenges are very popular on Instagram. Every day, you can see influencers across industries promoting fitness challenges and even participating in them. So, why not get in on the trend?
As a gym, your aim is to bring more customers to your space. You can launch team challenges where you post updates and results on your feed to create interest among your followers.
You can also choose to follow a popular fitness challenge on Instagram with your students, trainers, and other gym members. The sense of community and merit of participating in group challenges will make other followers also want to join your tribe.
The incentive to participate could be a discounted fee for the sessions involved or freebies for those who meet the challenge target.
6) Memes
The popularity of memes is universal. Brands capitalize on the latest meme trends to grab the attention of their users all the time. As a gym owner, memes are an especially effective way for you to engage your audience.
Fitness journeys involve hard work and can get quite serious sometimes. So helping your followers crack a smile and even laugh at some of the relatable struggles every fitness enthusiast faces, can go a long way. Your brand can come across as more relatable and your gym as being more approachable.
Kimp Tip: Opt for custom-made memes designed with the help of a professional. Memes are a great opportunity to improve brand awareness and showcase your creative skills. And the better designed your memes are, the faster they’ll spread.
Instagram Feed Tip: Curate your topical, themed, and evergreen content into detailed Instagram Guides so that they are easily available to new followers.
You can update the guides by adding new posts to keep them current.
Customers prefer a curated guide rather than having to scroll through your feed for old posts. You also run the risk of burying engaging posts that could have had a higher conversion rate if you don’t include them in your guides.
7) Instagram Story Ideas to Attract New members to your Gym
Instagram stories allow you to interact with your audience, ease down on the aesthetics, and show them the real person or people behind the brand.
While the content of your stories will disappear in 24 hours, you can always curate them into specific highlights. Story highlights help make important information about your gym readily available.
Story Ideas that can help your gym attract new members include:
- Sharing customer transformation stories with well-designed Before/After images and info on the workout they followed. You can have the customer narrate the story and tag them for more reshares.
- Repost user-generated content such as Class Videos, post-workout selfies, or any fitness journey-related content. Such posts make customers see the real effect of your services and view you as a reliable service provider.
- Interactive content such as answering FAQS, running polls for class ideas, song selections for Zumba sessions, new workout program timing, and much more. You can also host AMA sessions to clear customers’ doubts on health, fitness, and any other related topic.
- Post topical content such as holiday closures, class timing changes, or any other program updates.
- Link to the page for booking classes using the Swipe Up feature.
The supremacy of Gym Video Content on Instagram
While Instagram started as a photo-based social media platform, videos are increasingly popular here too. Instagram allows you to post engaging, interactive, and informative videos across your feed, stories, Reels, and IGTV.
And customers prefer viewing videos vs. reading a blog or a static image post because of their interactive nature.
As a gym brand, you have many avenues to capitalize on the growing popularity of videos on Instagram for your business.
So let’s take a look at some ideas for Gym Video content for Instagram:
8) Instagram Reels for Gyms
People’s attention spans are reducing every day. You are competing for barely 15 seconds of attention with a million brands posting regular content on Instagram. So that’s why you want to use formats like Reels that are great for grabbing attention.
Reels allow you to post engaging videos such as:
- Action videos of your trainer performing mind-blowing workouts, yoga poses, or strength training activities.
- Quick healthy meal plan recipes.
- Customer testimonials.
- A snippet of a new class at your gym.
- Demonstration of a new piece of gym equipment.
- Behind-the-Scenes action in developing a new training program or product launch.
The possibilities are endless. Instagram reels are a very prominent feature on this platform. They are easy to consume, share, and fun too.
And they’ll help you turn someone looking for bite-sized content on fitness into a new gym member.
9) Instagram Feed Videos for Gyms
Not all videos can fit into the ideal 30-second limit that applies for Reels, so what do you do? You post those videos on your feed. Some feed video ideas for your gym to attract new members include:
- A tour of your Gym.
- Tips from your Trainers.
- Customer testimonials/Customer journey showcases.
You can, of course, resize and repurpose this content to post it as stories too. The value of posting on your feed is that it shows customers you believe in your brand and are happy to showcase it in a permanent space.
Kimp Tip: If you are posting videos on your feed, ensure that you don’t disrupt the aesthetic of your Instagram feed. Keep the aesthetic consistent in your video so that you can choose a frame to be your video cover that will get customers to click without clashing with your feed.
10) IGTV Ideas for Gyms
Long-form content is making a big comeback with customers looking for more value from the brands they follow. On Instagram, a format for long-form content in video form is IGTV.
IGTV allows you to go beyond the 1-minute time limit and be as creative as possible.
Some ideas to create content for IGTV for your gym are:
- Weekly workout series with detailed tutorials on the routines.
- How-to videos demonstrating how to handle gym equipment.
- Saved live videos of you interacting with followers, gym classes, and other special events.
- Long-form food content on healthy meal plans and recipes.
Gym Instagram Content – Best Practices
Now that you know how versatile your content on Instagram can be, here are a few tips to keep in mind for best results.
1) Follow the 90/10 Rule
The 90/10 rule states that 90% of your content should follow things that work for you based on your experience to date. It could be images, videos, Reels, or an active Instagram story presence. Whatever works, keep at it 90% of the time.
Then allot 10% of your content for experimentation. Social media algorithms are fickle, and you don’t want to learn a new content form because of an update. Keep experimenting with content; you never know when you will strike gold.
2) Focus on Quality Over Quantity
Yes, this is easier said than done because of the constant pressure of consistency on social media. But, trust us, in the longer run this works.
Choose unique, branded, and professionally designed or edited images for your posts rather than inserting stock images at random because you don’t have time. Ensure your graphics and videos carry your logo, branding, and other elements as per the style guide.
One good post will work more wonders than five average posts. It takes just one brilliant post to make you go viral and get on the explore page to attract new members.
3) Be personal
In the age of social media dominance, you cannot afford to be a brand that hides behind a banner with impersonal content. Leading marketers believe that customers look to social media to buy from people rather than unreachable brands.
Ensure that your unique style, voice, and branding are visible across all posts. You want customers to connect with you on a personal level. That’s what will convert into gym memberships.
Ramp up your Gym Instagram Game with Kimp
Instagram is a visual, versatile, and competitive platform. Branding, design, and aesthetics are what hooks your viewers and convince them to become followers. And as you know very well, followers are potential members for your gym.
Kimp’s design team is well-versed in graphic design for your Instagram posts, image editing, story template design, Instagram video editing, adding effects to your reels, and feed aesthetic design.
We offer graphic design (Kimp Graphics) and video design subscriptions (Kimp Video, and Kimp Graphics + Video), so you can get help with the content that you need most.
With Kimp, you can rest easy knowing that you’ll be getting designs that will only enhance your brand value. Especially as we assign you a dedicated design team that will get to know your brand.
Meaningful Content + Kimp Designs = A winning Instagram Strategy.
Sign up for the free trial today. Let’s get the Instagram marketing campaign for your gym started.