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 with your clients.
Here are the top 3 social media announcements for January 2012:
#1: Gamification Catching On
Check out this interesting graphic about the emerging importance of “gamification.” By using technology to provides your customers or clients with badges, rewards, prizes and points, you can vastly improve their interaction with your service or product.
I recently interviewed Benjamin Young, whose Nexercise app rewards fitness activities. And at Endurance Planet, users can log in, share their race story, and receive special points, awards and votes from sharing.
How can you gamify your business? Think about it.
#2: Facebook announces Sponsored Stories to show in News Feeds
Let’s say somebody likes your business Facebook page or interacts with a comment on your Facebook page
Did you know that you can start an ad in Facebook that will display that interaction to all that user’s friends? And now, Facebook is allowing that to show prominently in the News Feed.
I’ve personally been using this at http://www.facebook.com/triripped, and it works like a snowball...as more users like and comment, it shows up more and more on other users’ pages. I currently pay about .08 per click for this – basically a few bucks a day.
#3: Turn Your Gymgoers or Clients Into Social Media Promoters with Incentibox
At Incentibox, you can run contests in your gym or studio, or on your website, and give away special prizes and packages to folks who do the best promotion for your service online via Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets.
Best of all, Incentibox is free! I recommend you check it out now, and experiment with a new campaign.
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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