Welcome to this month’s edition of “Social Media for Fitness Professionals”! Each month, I bring you three of the latest developments in the world of online social media, explain what each new development means for you as a fitness professional, and tell you how to take advantage of these trends to grow your business and communicate more effectively with your clients.
Here are 3 top social media tips for February 2012:
#1: Rafflecopter For Prize Giveaways
I recently ran a prize giveaway on my website in which I asked people to share my blog post on Twitter and Facebook in exchange for a chance to win a free shipment of organic food to their home. This way, every time someone entered to win the prize package, all their friends found out about my website!
For this promotion, I used Rafflecopter , a free online giveaway service that let me set up entry requirements, get the code to embed on my website, quickly moderate the submissions, and then randomly choose winners.
Whenever you want to run a contest from your website or blog, Rafflecopter is a good way to spread the word via social media.
#2: Posterous + DietSNAPS for Nutrition Logging
I keep an online password-protected diet log that all my personal training clients can access at any time to see what I’m eating or get meal ideas. I occasionally upload new workout ideas as well.
Here’s how I use social media services to share my diet:
On my smartphone, I have the app DietSNAPS , which allows me to photograph my food and upload meal descriptions. I also have a free blog at Posterous , which allows me to auto-post to my blog by simply sending an e-mail to my special Posterous email address. At the end of each day, I simply open DietSnaps on my phone, push a button to send that day’s log to Posterous, and… voilà…my clients can now log in to see my daily diet, complete with pictures.
Sharing my diet log is a free service that I can easily give to my clients and customers, who appreciate being able to see what I eat and “steal” my meal plans and eating patterns.
#3: Posterous + Google Calendar + Facebook
I simply can’t mention Posterous without also showing you a cool trick that allows you to post all your gym, studio or business calendar events automatically to Facebook.
Normally, Google Calendar will not allow you to automatically post events to a Facebook page. Google and Facebook just don’t play nice together.
But here’s how you can work around the problem in just four easy steps:
Set up a free account at
Posterous , which will give you a special e-mail address that allows you to auto-post events by simply sending an e-mail.
Set up a free Google Calendar and put all your scheduled workouts, classes, events, etc. on the Google Calendar page.
Take the e-mail address that Posterous gave you and set that up in Google Calendar as the e-mail address to which event reminders are sent.
Go to your Posterous account and change your settings to automatically post every e-mail you send to your Facebook page.
There you have it! Now all your events, workouts, classes, etc. will be broadcast to your Facebook fans. Pretty cool, eh?
Do you have questions or feedback? Leave them below!
Ben Greenfield is a fitness business coach and the author of “Personal Trainers’ Guide to Earning Top Dollar.” Visit Ben's blog at http://www.trainfortopdollar.com .
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