Social media gives you an opportunity to put your business in front of your target audience. If you’re a gym or a personal trainer, social media can be your ticket to leveling up. Instructors like Robin Arzón and gyms like Gold’s Gym all have one thing in common: they post consistently.
Keeping your audience hooked is key to growing your social media account. There’s only one problem: Ideas don’t come easy. You can only post so many pictures of people using your gym equipment. At some point, you’ll need to give your audience some flavor.
If you’ve already got your creative juices running, but need to spice up your content, you should consider signing up for a free InVideo account. It will help you beautify your videos instantly and earn some love from your audience. If you’re facing a creative clog, though, we’re going to share some gym social media post ideas you can run with right away. And if you stick around, we also give you some pro tips for your social media game as a gym or personal trainer.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
1. Teach how to use new equipment
2. Show your trainer’s chops with a short training video
3. Show the “fun” side of gyms
4. Give tips and address your audience’s pain points
5. #Related posts
6. Share a recipe
7. Before and after posts
8. Everyone loves a little comedy
9. Motivational posts
10. Testimonials
11. Show your team
12. Challenges
13. Greet your audience (but be creative)
14. Talk about current affairs
15. User-generated content
Let’s dive right in
Best Gym Social Media Post Ideas
Social media is one of the most powerful elements of a gym business’s marketing stack. It lets you connect with your target audience without spending time or energy on people who aren’t a part of that group. This is why gym owners should focus on creating the best impression via their social media posts to ensure they hit the nail right on the head.
To that end, let’s dive into gym social media post ideas you can use right away.
1. Teach your audience how to use new equipment
Workouts can sometimes feel like a drag. Some variation in the workout routine or introducing a new piece of equipment can help spice things up a little. You can use this idea to give your audience information about how they can use a piece of equipment differently or for the first time in the workout routine. This video by The Gym Group does an excellent job with both its caption and video.
The caption introduces a medicine ball as a way to break free from your repetitive workout routine and do something different. On the other hand, the video is crisp, has a clean intro, and tips added as captions throughout the video.
Notice that the video isn’t too fancy. It doesn’t have a lot of effects (which aren’t all that difficult to add, though). It’s just basic trimming of footage, text-based effects, and captions. It’s that simple.
If you want to add this idea to your queue of gym social media post ideas, you can implement it with a user-friendly editor like InVideo. Just insert your footage into the editor, trim out the excess portions, add text, and insert captions. If you want to go a step further, consider adding an upbeat background track and an intro. You don’t need to be an expert video editor; just use this template for the intro and edit the relevant elements, and voilà, you’ve got an attractive post ready to share with your audience:
2. Show your trainer’s chops with a short training video
Showing your trainers to your audience helps build a connection because the audience now feels like they’re engaging with a human rather than a brand. Shoot footage of a trainer providing valuable training tips or instructions and share it with your audience.
The key is to keep the video short, so it’s not too overwhelming for the beginners in your audience. You want your brand’s image to be associated with making workouts easy rather than more complex. Here’s a great example from Crunch Fitness of what your video could look like:
If you’re hoping to add a similar video to your gym social media post ideas pile, there are a few ways to make your video even better. The content in the video itself is great—crisp and packed with value. However, the video could’ve been much more engaging with an intro, cool effects, and, most importantly, no background noise.
If your social media manager is finding it tough to edit videos, you might want to recommend creating a free InVideo account. With InVideo, they’ll be able to add a refined intro and effects that make your video pop. For instance, just replacing elements like text in the following template and adding footage somewhere in the middle gives you a perfect video with an intro and an outro:
You can also add branding elements at the end, add more stock footage, or sprinkle some animations in there.
3. Show the “fun” side of gyms
Gym social media posts don’t always have to show sincere faces chasing fitness goals on a treadmill. Showing your audience that people can also have fun at the gym, especially if they have made new friends or go to the gym with existing friends, helps communicate that it doesn’t only have to be hard work.
For instance, notice how Retro Fitness reshares an exhilarating video of a group of friends enjoying their gym experience:
Not only does this video give their brand a playful touch, but it’s also encouraging for people in your audience who feel that gym is all work, no play.
While the video is fairly simple, it shows working out together can be fun. If you’re keen on adding this idea to your gym social media post ideas shelf, you’ve got a lot of room for creativity. From fun gym conversations to footage of a picnic with gym friends, there are plenty of things you can share with your audience.
Ideally, it’s best not to add a lot of branding to such videos because you want them to feel more personal. However, you can still fine-tune its aesthetics and improve its “fun” quotient with color adjustments, adding stickers, or animations.
4. Give tips and address your audience’s pain points
Yes, you’d want to encourage people to join the gym. You’re a business, and you need to pay the bills. That being said, you shouldn’t assume that offering solutions that don’t inherently require a gym are bad for business.
Your aim with social media posts is to get your name out there and position yourself as an authority so people trust you with their fitness goals. Offering solutions to problems your competitors aren’t talking about makes you top-of-mind for your audience when they do feel they’d like to join a gym. That’s exactly what Anytime Fitness aims to do with the following video:
They’re teaching how you can still manage to workout throughout your day even if you have a 9 to 5. Also, notice that the video was originally posted on TikTok, which is currently a surprisingly underutilized platform for marketing. The video is fast-paced, has a peppy background track, and on-screen text boxes that quickly instruct how you can work out even at the office while you’re working.
Like what you see? Add it to your line-up of gym social media post ideas and when it’s time to create the video, start with putting your raw footage into an editor like InVideo, so you don’t end up spending a lot of time on editing. Trim the footage down to make it concise and add a background track. Add instructions as on-screen text, but in case the text isn’t visible in front of a bright background, be sure to add a background color to the text box. Alternatively, you can make adding text animations and background track even easier by simply replacing the footage in the following template:
5. Create #relatable posts
Relatable posts are funny, witty posts that draw on a common sentiment of a specific group. Often, these are things that are otherwise not mentioned explicitly. Such posts typically earn higher engagement and are also more shareable.
For instance, here’s an excellent post shared on Pure Gym’s page:
It’s a scene from Family Guy, the satirical show, with a caption that comments on the pain you experience after a leg day at the gym.
If you want to create a similar video, you don’t need a lot of editing. You’ll just need to add some text to a video clip in most cases. However, you can add a tinge of extra comedy by adding memes or funny background sounds. You can easily do both with InVideo and get your relatable post ready within minutes.
6. Share a recipe
Having broccoli for breakfast, lunch, and dinner isn’t sustainable. You need some flavor, but flavor comes with calories. As a gym owner or a personal trainer, you might have some recipes that are both delish and guilt-free, so why not share the knowledge and give your audience a tasty dish to enjoy in the evening?
For instance, Gym Global on Instagram gives their audience a healthy, flavorful recipe that their audience can immerse in:
There are a few things you should notice in this video. First, it focuses on only the bowl in which the food is being prepared. However, you can also choose to put yourself in the frame if you have a tripod or someone to help shoot the video. Second, notice how the video is well-lit. Your best bet is to use natural daylight.
The third thing you should be mindful of is the caption. This is where you should insert your recipe. Gym Global’s post lacks a caption because it’s a repost, but when you post a recipe video, you need to add the ingredients in the caption, so it’s for your audience to read and prepare the dish.
If you’re hoping to add sharing a recipe to your list of gym social media post ideas, you’ll need to start with a bowl and a clean table. Once you have those, get your ingredients stacked where you can reach them easily and start recording. When you’re recording the recipe, try not to spill anything.
Once you have the footage, put it into an easy-to-use video editor like InVideo so you can quickly beautify your video. You’ll probably need to trim a big chunk of the footage. Next, if you’re not speaking during the video, consider adding background music to give your video pace. Alternatively, you can make the entire process a breeze by directly inserting footage into a template like this one:
7. Before and after posts
Before and after posts are an indirect and a more visual form of a testimonial when posted from a gym’s account. It works as social proof that your trainers are capable of helping people achieve their fitness goals. The more people you’re able to help succeed, the more you’ll be able to grow your account through before and after posts.
If you’ve helped people succeed, get in touch with them and ask for a before and after shot. You can encourage them to post the photo through their account and then reshare, or post on through your account directly.
In most cases, before and after posts are images with a center line separating the before and the after shots. However, using videos can be a lot more effective here. See for yourself in this post by Gymtears:
Notice how since it’s a video, the person in the frame is able to move and show the results of their work out more accurately. On a photo frame, you’ll be able to show any one side of yourself, while on video, you can move around and give viewers a better idea of the degree of your transformation.
Videos are more effective in grabbing a social media scroller’s attention, and creating them isn’t all that time-consuming with InVideo. You can add a voice-over to the video by having the person in the frame narrate a short description of their journey, how different they feel, or the gym’s contribution to their success. Alternatively, you can add a catchy background track.
8. Everyone loves a little comedy
Don’t limit yourself to memes. Visual platforms give you plenty of wiggle room to make your audience laugh with clever videos. If you’ve got an idea tucked in the corner of your creative side, let it out and get shooting. Before you get started on this idea though, it’s always worth running it by a few friends to see if it’s actually funny or if it’s just funny in your head.
Here’s a great example from Gym Resident of what a funny video could look like for a fitness brand:
There’s one caveat, though. Before you can implement this idea, you’ll need to come up with an idea or a short storyline for the comedy video. You can always draw inspiration from the content you see elsewhere, but be sure not to plagiarize any of it.
Once you have your story in place, start shooting the footage. Then, put it in InVideo and start trimming the extra footage. Add some cool effects, transitions, funny sound effects, and clips from the stock footage library to your video to make it more engaging. In any case, don’t make the video too long. You don’t want to create a movie, just a short clip that your audience can chuckle at as they scroll through their feed.
9. Share motivational posts
Consistency is harder for some people, especially when it comes to working out. As a fitness brand, you should aim to motivate your audience every once in a while with quotes, examples, or stories from existing members that can help fuel a person’s willpower to achieve their fitness goals.
Here’s a post from BodyBoss Portable Gym 2.0 that you can use as an example:
From well-recorded footage to adding a branded outro, the video checks all the right boxes. It has a background music track playing in the background, on-screen text, and a few effects that make the video dazzle. The video also has a crisp caption that manages to captivate a social media scroller.
If you’d like to add some motivational content to your list of gym social media post ideas, start by finding gym members who are willing to share their inspirational stories with your audience. You don’t need to record an hour-long interview. Just request them to summarize their challenges and how they managed to stay motivated.
Once you have the footage, work your magic and make the video stand out using InVideo. Add transitions, effects, and a low-volume background track to produce a professional-looking video. If you want to add a branded outro or a logo reveal like in BodyBoss Portable Gym’s post, use the following template:
10. Showcase Testimonials
A lot of people use star ratings, text, or static images for testimonials, which is great. But video is far more powerful when it comes to testimonials. It allows your viewers to connect on a more personal level. But the key to a video testimonial is to not use a script. People can see right through a scripted testimonial, so just let the gym member give an honest testimonial, because you can always edit the video later.
Here's an excellent example from Vision Personal Training where the testimonial video includes both the trainer and the trainee, which gives your viewers a better understanding of their journey from two POVs:
There are a lot of things to like about this video, but notice how it gets the basics right. It has captions, so the video is more accessible. It also has a background track with the level of volume set just right so it’s audible but doesn’t overpower the conversation.
Plus, the video has plenty of footage shot in different environments, and the conversation has been recorded from multiple angles. You’ll also find multiple transitions, effects, and other elements if you look closely. There’s also an intro about 7 seconds into the video, and a logo reveal at the end.
So, how can you replicate and create a well-produced video such as the one shared by Vision Personal Training? Well, it’s not all that hard once you have the footage. When you’re shooting, be generous with your footage; you never know what you’ll find useful.
Once you’ve compiled the footage, you can put it on the InVideo timeline and get cracking. Start by using a template for the intro. Here’s a good one you can use:
Here’s another great template you can use:
11. Show your team
Your team is essentially what keeps your gym (and its members) going. Gym members interact with one or more of your team members several times a day. When members build a personal relationship with your trainers, they enjoy the experience and tend to stick around for longer. Since your team is such an integral part of your business, it makes sense to show their faces to the audience.
You can create a video or an image for each trainer separately or show your entire team in a frame. For instance, here’s how 24 Hour Fitness (Spring Energy, TX) shares their team with the gym’s logo in the background.
The team at 24 Hour Fitness uses the opportunity of holidays to share some happy faces. Think about it. Creating a greeting post for holidays with a picture of your team is far better than a graphic of a Christmas tree and some text that reads “Happy Holidays!”
It’s fairly easy to take an image for such posts, but you should still make sure you get the basics right. For instance, make sure you take the picture or video in a well-lit area. Ideally, you should also try and get your logo in the background. That might not always be possible, of course, but make sure that the background immediately communicates that it’s a gym.
12. Share & participate in challenges
Challenges promote a good cause. They’re meant to raise awareness about something over social media by having people do some activity. If your gym doesn’t already do challenges, it might be a good addition. It’s good for society and your brand image.
Here’s a great example of how LA Fitness promotes their UCI Anti-Cancer challenge:
While this is a video, you can just as well use an image. However, when you post a challenge on your social media, be sure to clarify how someone can participate and, more importantly, the cause you’re raising awareness for. If you choose to go with a video, using InVideo will ensure you finish editing quickly.
13. Greet your audience (but be creative)
It’s easy to find a stock image of a pumpkin and write “Happy Halloween,” but guess what? Literally, thousands of brands out there, including your competitors, are doing the EXACT. SAME. THING.
Instead of taking the run-of-the-mill approach, do things a little differently. It doesn’t have to be an art of work or require you to go out of your way to spend hours brainstorming ideas. Go with something simple, but something that others aren’t doing.
For instance, Orangetheory Fitness shared an adorable Valentine’s greeting for its audience:
Now that’s a Valentine’s greeting your audience won’t forget. Now, it’s not very often that you can find similar stories at the gym, but the idea remains fairly consistent in that you should send out a greeting that sticks with your audience rather than putting a generic one.
The caption is key when you’re greeting your audience. Be sure to make it authentic and conversational rather than formal. When it comes to the visual part of your post, you could either with a video or an image. If you have footage to share, video is almost always better for engagement.
If not, posting high-quality images with plenty of smiling faces will do just as well. When sharing a personal story, you’d want to keep the relevant members in the frame. In other cases, you might consider gathering around with your team to wish your audience.
14. Talk about current affairs
If there’s a major event happening somewhere in the world, you might want to talk about it. Your core motive for such posts, ideally, should be genuine concern or happiness about an event. However, such posts also have some additional benefits.
For instance, if people search for that term or hashtag on a social media platform, your post will earn you some engagement provided you’ve used the right keywords. People will also appreciate that you’re being vocal about something your brand stands for.
Talking about current affairs can be one of the simplest gym social media post ideas because you don’t need to make anything look fancy. You just need the post to be authentic. For instance, here’s a post by YouFit Gyms about the recent outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine:
It’s a fairly straightforward post and doesn’t involve a lot of creativity, but it must be authentic. The difficult thing with such posts isn’t creating them, but it’s about tackling members in your audience that may be against your stance on the matter. Remember to treat everyone’s opinions with respect and maintain a professional tone, and you should do fine.
15. User-generated content
People love taking selfies at the gym. If you’ve been operating a gym for a while, there’s a good chance that a lot of your members have posted an image from your gym at least once. Even better, if you’ve got a big enough community at the gym already, your members may be generating a lot of content that you can reshare with the rest of your audience.
For instance, one of Pure Barre’s members shared a post about their journey so far that Pure Barre shared on their Facebook page:
Such posts also work as testimonials, though there typically isn’t a recommendation involved. If you’re about to reshare a post from one of your members, you may want to add a small snippet to the caption yourself as well.
When you’re reposting someone else’s post, you should focus on captions since that’s where you will have the most flexibility to make changes.
Don’t just repost what the member has written. Instead, add a response to the post and then reshare. It makes your reshare more personal for the member who originally created the post. For instance, consider expressing gratitude for being a member of the community.
You might also want to add something to encourage other members of the audience to take action. For example, you could ask them if they’d be excited about being part of the community as well.
Bonus: Pro Tips for Acing Social Media for Gyms and Personal Trainers
If you’re green to the social media landscape, you should know certain best practices you should follow to maximize engagement and grow your account quickly. Following are some pro tips you should be mindful of as you create social media posts for your gym or personal training business:
Tip #1 - Focus on select platforms
Don’t spread yourself too thin by going after every social media platform you can think of. Focus on ones that will produce the best results. In the case of gyms and personal trainers, Facebook and Instagram might work the best. If you’re a personal trainer, even TikTok can be an excellent platform to connect with your target audience.
Tip #2 - Use video generously
Video posts receive 38% more engagement than image posts. Images may be easy to make, but videos are definitely a key component in your social media strategy. If you’re worried about videos taking a lot of time to create, you can always use an editor like InVideo using which you’ll be able to edit your videos and export them in high quality quickly.
Tip #3 - Add variation
Don’t line up a whole bunch of training videos on your social media manager. Instead, give your audience some variety in terms of content. Post something funny or motivational and let your audience have a laugh or be inspired. Even if you’re doing a series of posts on a single topic, you should spread them out over a couple of days or weeks, and share other types of posts in between.
Tip #4 - Use high-quality visuals
Whether it’s an image or a video, quality is critical. People don’t like looking at blurry visuals that look as though they were shot on a camcorder from the 90s. In some cases, your visuals might degrade as a result of an editing tool you’re using. When you’re exporting the edited image or video, be sure to check that it has preserved the visual quality. For instance, using a cloud-based editor like InVideo will help ensure that your video exports are always high quality.
Tip #5 - Consistency
Consistency is often something that’s easier said than done. When setting time aside to work on your social media handles, factor in the time you’ll need to create content, fine-tune it, and then populate it into your social media management tool. In many cases, the biggest hurdle to consistency is fine-tuning the content. Editing can often take a lot of time, especially if you’re not a professional editor, and that’s why having the right set of tools is important. An editor like InVideo will save you plenty of time because of a massive library of templates and a user-friendly interface.
Tip #6 - Timing is key
The time at which you share the post can have a major impact on its engagement metrics. According to Hootsuite, the best time to post on social media overall is 10 a.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. However, the best time to post is different for each day and every social media platform. Aiming to post at the right time can have a marked influence on your engagement metrics, and consequently, your account’s growth.
Check out these blogs to know the right time to post on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
Wrapping Up
Social media offers gyms and personal trainers a unique opportunity to directly engage with their target audience at scale. By posting relevant, high-quality content consistently, you’ll be able to grow your gym’s social media account quickly and put your name in front of a large audience.
However, there are a few caveats you should be mindful of. First, social media platforms make changes to their algorithm every once in a while. A change in the algorithm could require you to pivot your strategy and impact your engagement metrics, at least for the short term. You’ll need to keep yourself updated with the changes in the algorithm and different tools to make sure you’re always in a position to make a quick decision if required.
Lack of ideas is another major problem that can put a dent in your consistency of posting. You can use this guide for inspiration or as a go-to shelf of ideas for when you need them. You should, however, always be mindful about not compromising on quality just to maintain consistency. Don’t share poorly edited videos or low-quality images.
Instead, rely on other methods of saving time, like using the right set of tools that make the process easier. Check out this blog to know more about the tools you can use for social media. For instance, consider using a tool like Hootsuite for scheduling posts (and the more managerial aspect of social media) and a video editor like InVideo that makes editing a breeze. InVideo is fairly easy to use, but if you ever have questions, you can view a tutorial for almost any feature on our YouTube channel if you ever have questions.
This post was written by Arjun and edited by Adete from Team InVideo
