When it comes to marketing fitness businesses on social media, most fitness professionals only focus on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. And, while LinkedIn is also considered a social media platform, most fitness entrepreneurs don’t pay attention to this platform.
However, with approximately 810 million users, LinkedIn can be a great platform for expanding your professional network and generating more leads for your fitness business.
But, just like any other social media platforms, you will need the right approach, to break through the noise and reach potential clients. In this article, we will walk you through seven key strategies that will help you to land fitness clients and prospects through this platform.
1. Optimize Your Profile
Before going any further, you first need to optimize your LinkedIn profile. Your profile is the first thing that potential clients will see when they visit your page. Therefore, it’s more of your online business card. Hence, you should use it to inform potential clients who you are, the services you offer, as well as why you are the best fit for their fitness needs.
First, make sure you have a professional profile picture. While topless gym selfies may endear you to your Facebook and Instagram followers, it will not cut it on LinkedIn. Therefore, ensure you upload a decent photo, which will make you look like a professional.
You should always keep in mind that LinkedIn is more of a professional network. Also, it’s a visual representation of your fitness brand. Hence, the more professional you appear, the more potential clients will trust you and hire you as their fitness coach.
After choosing and uploading a professional photo for your LinkedIn profile, you should then proceed to fill your profile with the necessary information about your fitness business.
First, you need to indicate who you are. You can mention you are a certified fitness coach, with experience of a certain number of years, depending on how long you’ve been providing fitness coaching services. Also, you can mention the fitness certifications that you may hold.
Second, you need to indicate the type of fitness coaching services that you offer as well as your target audience. For example, if you are a yoga instructor, you can mention that you offer yoga classes to men, women, children or mixed. And if you are a strength and fitness coach, you can mention whether you offer one-on-one personal training or online sessions.
Third, you will need to provide a means for potential clients to get in touch with you. If a potential client reads your profile and they want to inquire more about your services, they will need a means of getting in touch with you.
So, make sure you include your contact information, whether it’s your phone number or email address. You can also add a link to your other social media accounts, to make it even easier for potential clients to reach you. Also, remember to add a link to your fitness website.
2. Post High-Quality Content Consistently
Similar to other social media platforms, LinkedIn also allows its users to post and share content with their followers. And by sharing relevant, helpful, meaningful and interesting content, you will be establishing yourself as a fitness expert in your niche, and your following will grow.
But, before you start sharing or posting content on this platform, you first need to research your target audience to determine the type of content that would draw their attention to your page.
Once you’ve determined your target audience, you can then start sharing different types of posts. For instance, you can share stretching exercises or fitness tips for people who sit in front of a computer the whole day.
You can also share a sample of a workout, which someone can do in a hotel room, whenever they are out of town on a business trip. And if you also double up as a certified nutritionist, you can share healthy meal plans or diet tips for professionals who lead a sedentary lifestyle.
Also, remember to throw in a couple of photos or videos, whenever you can. Short videos of yourself sharing tips or a series of images showcasing how to undertake different office workouts will make your content more interesting and captivating.
And most importantly, make sure you post consistently. If you only post occasionally, or whenever you feel like it, you will struggle to establish a strong online presence on LinkedIn. Ideally, you should post at least once every day if you can or at least two to five times weekly.
By sharing helpful, meaningful, interesting and actionable content consistently, some of your followers may click through to your website, where they will find more information about your personal training services.
3. Engage With Your Audience Regularly
Just because you’ve created a great profile and you are posting high-quality content doesn’t mean that potential clients will automatically come flocking to you en masse.
You also need to create time to engage with your audience on LinkedIn. Just like other social media platforms, building strong relationships with your audience is key to succeeding on LinkedIn.
So, make sure you are actively replying to comments, replying to messages, sharing other people’s posts, sharing ideas and helping whenever you can. Whenever you can make it, make sure you are actively engaging your audience on LinkedIn.
Actively engaging with your followers on this platform will help to build rapport. Also, your followers will trust you more as a fitness expert. And the chances are, some may want to take their relationship with you to the next level – which is signing up for your personal training services.
Furthermore, building strong and meaningful relationships through engagement may earn you some referrals. And this means you will end up with more clients for your fitness business.
But, it’s worth mentioning that you should always keep it professional at all times. Regardless of what your personal views may be about a certain topic, make sure they remain on your other social media platforms. LinkedIn is a professional social media platform. And you should keep it that way always.
4. Join LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn groups provide great opportunities of finding new clients for your fitness business. But, it doesn’t mean that you should start advertising or promoting your services immediately, you join those groups. If you use such an approach, it’s highly likely your posts will be reported as spam and you will be removed from these groups.
Instead, you should focus on providing value first and building relationships with the members, before you can even think of promoting your services. Some of the methods that you can use to add value include sharing free webinars, surveys, data-backed industry reports, live-streamed sessions, or other types of content that may be helpful to the group members.
Also, ensure you are an active participant in these groups by answering relevant questions, which other group members may have posted. You can also offer advice to anyone member who may ask you about a topic you are knowledgeable about.
By contributing regularly and establishing yourself as a valuable member of these communities instead of being pitchy, some of the members will eventually spot you and, they may get in touch with you, to ask more about your services.
5. Leverage LinkedIn’s Advertising
With thousands of other fitness professionals using LinkedIn to search for clients, cutting through the noise and reaching your target audience can prove to be a challenge, especially if you’re still new to this platform.
The good news is, LinkedIn ads can help you to reach your target audience faster. With LinkedIn ads, you can target prospects by various variables such as industry, company size, company name, skills, and seniority, just to name a few.
With such specific targeting options, you can then set up your ads, to reach your target audience. For example, if senior managers are your preferred clientele, you can simply launch LinkedIn ads, and they will be specifically directed to your target audience. And with the right nurturing process in place, some of the leads that you generate from these ends may end up becoming paying clients. So, if your marketing budget can allow, you should consider setting up LinkedIn ads.
6. Get Endorsed
LinkedIn has a great feature, which you can leverage to show potential clients that you are a fitness coach that they can trust. And this is the endorsements section.
So, if you have a couple of clients that you have helped them achieve their fitness goals, you can request them to endorse for skills like strength training, personal training, conditioning, training program design, or cardiovascular fitness training, depending on your area of specialization.
By getting endorsed by the clients you’ve worked with or other fitness professionals, you will be viewed as a reliable and trustworthy fitness professional, who can help clients to achieve their fitness goals. And the more prospective fitness clients trust you, the higher the likelihood of signing up for your fitness training.
7. Wrapping It Up
Regardless of the nature of your fitness business, LinkedIn can be a great platform for prospecting for more fitness clients. So, if you are yet to establish a presence on this platform, it will be highly advisable to give it a try. After all, it doesn’t hurt. Does it?