Instagram for Personal Trainers: 10 Tips to Get More Followers and Clients

A couple of years back, personal trainers mainly had to rely on paid adverts on TV and newspapers to get noticed by prospects. And while it's always a good idea to look at paid advertising, it's also important not to limit yourself to it. Thankfully, the days of having nothing but ads to turn to, are long gone. Today, personal trainers have plenty of channels and platforms they can use to market their services. And Instagram is one of them.

Instagram can be an effective channel for personal training lead generation, building brand awareness and acquiring personal training clients. The problem is, it’s quite a competitive platform, especially for fitness businesses. Therefore, standing out from the crowd can prove to be a serious task, especially if you are just getting started. But, it’s doable.

In this article, we will share 10 effective tips for personal trainers on Instagram. These tips will help you to grow your following, increase your reach and generate more personal training leads for your fitness business.

1. Optimize Your Bio

Your Instagram personal trainer bio is the first thing that your visitors will read when they land on your profile. So, you need to keep it relevant. However, you should note that Instagram has a character limit for this section. Hence, you need to ensure it contains all the relevant details without going over the character limit of 150 characters.

For instance, you can have an Instagram personal trainer bio that reads, “I help older people attain their best physique and hit their fitness goals. And I make it fun.” This example bio is relevant, sweet and short. Besides, it falls within the 150-character limit.

Such an optimized bio will capture visitors’ attention fast. And it can you earn a following or even a client right away.

2. Use the Right Photos

Instagram is more of a visual platform. So, if your feed features a collection of low-quality, poorly-lit videos or photos, they will not be visually appealing to look at. Consequently, there’s a high chance that a visitor on your feed will not engage with your content. As a result, you may have lost a potential follower or personal trainer lead.

Therefore, whether you are posting a photo, video, reel, screenshot or quote, make sure it’s as visually appealing as possible. High-quality and visually-appealing content will stand out instantly and attract your target audience. And, they may end up following your Instagram personal trainer’s page.

And you don’t need to invest in professional videography equipment, just to capture high-quality videos and photos for your Instagram fitness trainer’s page. You can simply hire a professional to do it, at a fraction of the cost.

3. Make Use of Hashtags

Hashtags can be an effective tool when it comes to personal training lead generation on Instagram. They will help your posts to get discovered by more people. As a result, your content will end up with more likes, comments and shares. Without hashtags, it’s highly likely that your content will only be visible to your followers. And if you only have a handful of followers, then growing your following will prove to be an uphill task. So, make sure that all your posts on Instagram feature hashtags.

But, it’s important to mention that you just don’t use any hashtags. Instead, you should use hashtags relevant to your fitness business, which is personal training in this case. Also, avoid using the most popular personal training hashtags. Considering that almost every fitness fanatic on Instagram is using such hashtags, your content will get buried within seconds.

Instead, it will be advisable to use specific personal training hashtags, mixed with a couple of popular ones. You should also consider using location hashtags too. For example, if you are a personal trainer based in Dallas, Texas, then you can use a hashtag like #PersonalTrainerDallas, among others.

Also, leverage hashtags that are commonly used in the personal training community. Such hashtags will provide an effective means of building your personal training brand and earn you targeted followers.

4. Connect with Fitness Brands and Fitness Influencers

According to the Digital Marketing Institute, approximately 49% of consumers depend on the recommendations of influencers to influencers to make a purchasing decision. Therefore, influencer marketing remains one of the most effective marketing strategies today. And if you are an upcoming personal trainer, networking with fitness influencers on Instagram can help you to gain followers and clients faster, compared to relying on organic traffic only.

Fitness influencers on Instagram have a massive reach. They also have thousands of dedicated and loyal followers, who purchase most of the products or services they recommend.

Hence, it’s important for every personal trainer that wants to have a strong presence on Instagram to network with fitness influencers. And you don’t necessarily have to network with influencers with millions of followers, as it may prove to be a challenge to get hold of them. You can simply connect or network with micro-influencers with a following of approximately 5,000 to 20,000 or nano influencers with a following of between 1,000 to 5,000 followers.

Besides having a higher engagement rate than mega influencers, micro-influencers and nano influencers will also charge you a lower fee. Hence, they provide yet another cost-effective personal training lead generation method on Instagram. So, do your research and identify a few influencers who align with the services you offer and reach out to them.

5. Leverage Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories appear at the top of your main feed. Therefore, they provide a great means of keeping your personal training brand at the top of your followers’ and visitors’ minds. Hence, they should be part of your Instagram personal trainer’s overall strategy.

So, what can you post on Instagram Stories? Well, you can use them to give your followers a sneak peek into your life. And you don’t have to limit the content you share on these stories to workout photos or videos only. You can also use Instagram Stories to share some personal details like a renovation you are working on at home or pictures while you are on vacation.

By sharing such details with your followers, it makes them relate to you at a personal level. Also, they will feel that they know more about the real you, thus making your personal training brand relatable. And as you may probably know, consumers these days want to do business with individuals or brands that are transparent, honest or relatable. Simply put, Instagram Stories will not only help to grow your following but they can also convert some prospects into long-term clients.

6. Share Success Stories

Instagram provides a great platform to motivate and inspire your audience. And you can do so by sharing success stories on your fitness trainer Instagram page.

For instance, if one of your personal training clients has unlocked a certain milestone like achieving a weight loss goal through your personal training sessions, you should show them off.

Sharing success stories on your personal trainer Instagram page will not only provide social proof that your personal training methods work but it will also inspire other people to pursue and achieve their own goals.

Also, sharing success stories will help to make your brand relatable and authentic. And this will boost engagement with your content while attracting new members.

7. Host Contests

If you are looking for an easy but effective way of gaining more followers on Instagram, then you should host a contest. And it doesn’t have to be something complicated or costly.

You can simply partner with a local business and then offer your followers some cool prizes for liking, commenting, or sharing your posts. Also, you can offer a free personal training session for the winner.

With some creativity and proper execution, a contest or giveaway will earn you several new followers, who may be interested in the personal training services that you offer. And this translates to more personal trainer leads.

8. Diversify Your Content

If possible, you should try to mix up the type of content that you post on your Instagram personal trainer’s page every day. Diversifying your content will keep your followers hungry and looking out for more, thus helping to keep the engagement levels high.

Mixing up your content on Instagram will also help to keep your page interesting and earn you more followers.

Some of the different types of content that you can be putting out on your fitness trainer Instagram account include motivational quotes, behind the scene shots, educational posts, and reposts from your followers or those from others that you follow.

9. Use Instagram Paid Ads

Organic reach on Instagram for personal trainers is getting more challenging by the day, considering how competitive this platform is. According to a survey conducted by Ignite Social Media, a post on Instagram has an average reach of 9%.

Hence, assuming you have 5,000 followers on Instagram, only 450 will see your content, meaning most of your followers will not see or interact with your posts. Fortunately, you can boost this reach by using Instagram paid ads.

Instagram paid ads will help to position your content and your personal training business in front of your target audience, using various targeting options. And as a result, more people will see and interact with your content, thus increasing your chances of attracting new followers and potential clients.

10. Switch to a Fitness Business Instagram Account

After growing your following on your fitness trainer Instagram account, you should consider switching from a personal account to a business account. A business account will unlock more features and tools such as insights, which you can use to track your engagement and following.

Also, a fitness business Instagram account will allow you to add a contact button. And whenever a visitor clicks that contact button, you can optimize it in a way that they can call you, email you or even show your business on a map. You also have the option of adding an action button. For instance, you can add a button that leads directly to your personal training website, thus making it easy for prospects to sign up for your personal training classes.

11. Wrapping It Up

Growing your Instagram following can sometimes feel like an uphill. But, by following and implementing the above strategies, tips and techniques, you will be able to attract more followers, generate more personal training leads, and convert prospects into long-term personal training clients.