“Consistency is the key to getting the results you want.”
As a gym owner, you’ve no doubt said something exactly like that to a client.
Today, I’m saying it to you as a media person.
At a recent one-hour seminar for Two-Brain clients, I identified the two main problems gym owners have when it comes to building an audience:
1. They struggle to create content.
2. They struggle to post or publish their content.
These problems are personal and organizational: Many owners have these problems, and they often struggle to solve them with staff people.
Two-Brain’s huge Content Vault of done-for-you resources solves the first problem for a gym owner for an entire year. Two-Brain clients can access more than 50 done-for-you blogs and 270 social media posts, among other things.
The solution to the second problem involves the same element that’s missing when gym clients fail to lose weight, gain strength or get fitter:
Consistency.
How important is consistency? Here’s what Stacy McLachlan wrote on Hootsuite.com in February: “On average, businesses post 1.6 posts to their feed per day. If that sounds like way too much for your mom-and-pop operation, rest assured that just showing up consistently (every weekday, for instance) is enough to keep the ball rolling.”
Stick to the Plan
I’ve often said that media output is not more important than creating an avatar and client journey, adjusting prices, improving retention, training staff, learning to sell and all the other essential operational tasks for a fitness business.
Those elements are “key parts of the car,” and you must have them in place before you can go anywhere. But media is fuel, and if your tank is empty, your sweet ride will just sit in the garage.
As you improve your business, you need to tell people about it regularly. Content produced for current clients is part of retention, and content produced for others is part of sales. Your gym won’t grow without retention and sales, so you need to produce content. Everyone understands this, but gym owners often struggle with media anyway.
The solution: consistency.
Build a Following
Building an audience is all about developing a publishing habit. You’re in the business of helping people develop healthy habits, so you understand the process. The key: sustainability.
Despite their success getting clients to make life-changing adjustments to habits, many gym owners employ the media equivalent of an extreme diet. They create and publish at an unsustainable pace for a brief period, then they get overwhelmed and quit—and the business suffers.
If you’re trying to ramp up your content output, do this: Pick a minimum level of output you can sustain no matter what. You will be committing to this, so aim low to start. You must hit this level of output even if a coach quits or the gym floods or the Open rolls around. This is your no-questions-asked baseline.
If you’re really struggling right now, start by publishing anything once a week.
A greater commitment: publish twice a week. Say, a blog and a social media post.
Level 3: publish three things a week. Maybe three social posts.
And so on. Create an output plan and then commit to it for at least three months. Actually block off time on your calendar to do the work. This step is essential. For best results, block off the same time every day or week to grind the habit into place.
After three months of habit-building, decide if you want to commit to another three months on the same plan or level up. If you level up, add only the amount of output you can sustain for another three months.
Always adding more isn’t necessarily better. You’ll have to experiment with your platforms to see what level of output works best, but here’s more info from Hootsuite: “During Instagram’s Creator Week in June 2021, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri revealed that a posting cadence of two feed posts per week and two stories per day is ideal for building a following on the app.”
You’ll note the word “cadence” in that quote. Even if you choose a different output level, remember that it’s all about consistency on social media.
Just like it’s all about consistency in your gym.
To build your audience, work on your publishing habit today.
