The Only 3 Types of Social Media Content Gym Owners Need

This episode contains several visual examples. For the best experience, head to our YouTube channel "Run a Profitable Gym."

Get a free audit of your gym’s Instagram with our custom GPT tool: GymIG.com

If you’re a gym owner who wants to post more content but doesn’t know where to start, this episode is for you.

Many gym owners have the misconception that they simply need to post more. But getting the right mix of content actually matters more than how often you post.

Today on “Run a Profitable Gym,” Two-Brain CEO John Franklin breaks down the three types of content every gym owner needs to be posting on Instagram.

He shares real examples from gyms who are doing this well and walks through exactly how to replicate their posts.

You’ll learn how to use your gym’s Instagram page to make people like you, trust you and move closer to doing business with you. 

Tune in and walk away with a simple three-post-a-week plan you can start this week.

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0:00 - Intro

0:55 - Why variety beats volume on social media

1:07 - Posts that get people to buy from you

2:43 - Social proof that actually works

7:30 - Building connection through Instagram

10:10 - Becoming a trusted voice

11:31 - Your exact weekly posting plan

Transcript

0:02

If you're a gym owner, I guarantee you've had this thought, I need to post more content. I just don't know where to start. And that's why most gym owners will post a few times or try and post every day and ultimately get burnt out while other gym owners post three times a week and stay full. It isn't because they have some secret script or understand trending audio or have hacked the algorithm. It's because they've posted three different content types that move people down the funnel quickly. And today we're going to break down each one. I'm John Franklin, the CEO of Two Brain Business, the world's largest gym mentorship company, working with over 3,500 gym owners to help them bring home six figures in profit because, yeah, it's possible. So before we get into this, I'm going to tell you this isn't going to be some. Motivational video where I just tell you to work harder and post every day. Some of the most successful gyms in Two Brain are only posting on social media three times a week. And what separates them from the people who are posting one, two, or even three times a day and getting no results is the variety of content that they post. So let's get into the three different post types and how often to post them. The first one's conversion-based content. And this is anything that makes prospects more likely to buy from you. This is content that pushes people down the funnel and this is the type of content that is most often overlooked by gym owners. If you're only going to take one thing from this video, what I would like you to do is what I call the essential three. These are your pin posts on Instagram. You're allowed to pin three posts to the top of your profile and when prospects are looking for your gym, they're almost certainly going to go look at your Instagram and try and get a vibe check. Now this is your opportunity to showcase what you're all about and get them to book a consultation with you. What I recommend is for your first video, explain what is your gym, who's it for and what type of training do you offer. The second pin post is just going to be a video explaining what a class is actually like. Walk them through the type of training you do and what a session actually looks like as if they were just like in your gym observing. And the third post is the clear next step, the call to action. How do you get started? Do you come in for a consultation? Do you start with a phone call? Do you just go on the website and buy? Explain to them exactly what you want them to do and remove friction in that starting process. And one important thing to note here is that a lot of your social posts are posted today and gone tomorrow. These pin posts stay at the top of your feed forever so you only have to do them once so, spend a lot of time making them good. Now, once your pin posts are done, the next thing I recommend doing to get people to raise their hand and say they want to learn more about your gym is posting social proof. And what I see a lot of gym owners do from a social proof standpoint is they'll just go do a screenshot or they'll do a text-based post that is from a Google or Yelp review. And while that's better than nothing, it isn't by much. What the best gym owners are doing is they're showcasing. Actual member results and they're showing their actual members. So this is ultimate performance. They are, um, the world's leading expert in body transformations. And so this is the type of gym you go to if you are a movie star and you got to get absolutely shredded for a role. And so you can see that this is a more higher end gym and they cater to a more affluent population. So they posted this carousel showcasing members with their personal trainer and the personal trainer, the members just holding a whiteboard. And if you look really closely, this whiteboard is blank. They added this text after the fact. And so you can take this picture once and you can turn it into 30 different testimonials based off of the information you have about that client, right? It could say first pull up at 65 or lost 15 pounds in 12 weeks. And you can run a gazillion different iterations of this. And this is a carousel post. So if you just click, over and over and over again, they're just going to pepper you with social proof. And the way we can turn this into a conversion based piece of content is at the end, we just write something like, if you want to learn more, DM us. Or if you want a transformation like this, comment strong. And from there, we just start a natural sales conversation. But this just gives us an opportunity to reach out to people who are looking for the same result as the people in our photos. Now, if you don't have time to do a social proof post and you want something that's just like quick and dirty, we recommend doing something called a 5-1-30 post. So this is literally called a hand raised post and all of five, one 30 post is, is a framework for posting, right? Uh, the most common one you'll see on the internet is some variation of, I'm looking for five people to lose 10 pounds in 30 days, DM me to get started. Or, um, you know, those six week challenge ads that have been popular for the last 50 years. It's like, I'm looking for 10 Philadelphia residents who are looking to transform in six weeks or less, right? All you're doing is saying, um, a call out. So this could be Philadelphia residents, uh, new moms who don't have time to work out dads who want to get rid of the dad bod. That's the five. The one is the offer or the result that we're promising, right? So lose 10 pounds, fit back into your pre-pregnancy jeans, get shredded for pool season, whatever the thing is that we're promising. And then the final piece, the 30, that's just the timeframe. And so a common one is 30 days. You can say six weeks, uh, whatever it may be, but you just want to vary these up and throw something out into the world at least once a month. And not only does this work well as an Instagram post, but you can also do this as a Facebook post. You can send it out as an email and I recommend posting them in your local Facebook groups as well. You can't make too many five, one 30 posts and don't worry about something like fatiguing your market, right? There's so much noise on social media. People are not paying attention to what you're doing. I posted an example in our two brain growth group of a gym owner who had been posting in my local. Facebook group, the exact same five one 30 posts every single month for the last three years. And. I'm someone who looks at gym content all day and it took me three years to pick up on it. Now, one word of caution. The reason most gym owners don't like doing conversion content is one, it feels salesy and two, it doesn't perform well. Like a piece of conversion content is never going to go viral. It's never going to get you a million likes. It's not going to drive a bunch of followers, but the reality is you can't pay your rent in likes and conversion content makes you the most money, which is why it is the thing we talk about first. It is the piece in the mix that most gym owners are missing. By the way, if you're curious about how your gym's Instagram is doing, we created a free custom GPT where it'll audit your Instagram and tell you any gaps that might be costing you leads to get it. Just go to the link down below or scan the QR code. And then keep watching as I break down the other two content buckets. So now that we got the hardest one out of the way, let's move on to everybody's favorite, which is connection-based content. And all connection-based content is stuff that makes people like you. And whenever I talk about connection content, I like to put up a slide that says people buy from people. Your advantage over the planet fitnesses of the world is you. And if you are a gym where your primary service offering is training or coaching, you need to be showcasing you. You are part of the brand. Just think of the type of content that you consume on social media. It's probably from personal brands that have a business attached to it. So your business should be an extension of you. Show your weird side. Let me give you some examples. So this is Mike. Brannis of Stoked Athletics. He had a staff meeting and he pulled out a vert pad and him and his coaches just had a contest to see who could jump the highs. Just a fun way to showcase their coach's fitness. And I just loved it. Next, Joe Stradov on Leash.com. So Joe loves White Monster and he loves making videos talking about how much he loves White. Monster. And he has a serious strength training gym. And guess what? The people that train at his gym also love White Monster. And even if they don't, they get the reference. So it's sending signal to the exact type of people he's trying to bring into his community. If you are a power lifter who loves White Monster, you see Joe's gym, you're saying, this is the place for me. You're not even looking at other gym Instagrams. Now, a more fun one. This is Elvis Fisher. And he did one where he was just pretending to sing karaoke. But if you're someone who has a special talent, showcase that. It's totally fine. And so the way I recommend doing posts like these, where it's something that you're showcasing your weird side or something you like, is posting on your personal. So John's Instagram. And then collabing in the gym. And that's super easy to do. When you go to post, just, uh, there's a little button that says invite collaborator and make your gym a collaborator. So these are all video examples. And I understand if you're starting out on Instagram, doing video can be intimidating. And if that's you, I recommend starting with a carousel and all carousel is, is a series of five to 10 images where you're telling a story. This is an example of one Joe Strada made where he's highlighting some of the things that make his gym unique, obviously starting with his love of white monster and every single slide you do, he's just telling you a little bit more about his gym and using a photo to tell that part of the story. That's all it is. So we talked about conversion content, stuff that moves prospects down the funnel faster. We talked about connection content that makes people like you. The third piece is value content. We need to showcase our authority. We need to prove that we are an expert and can get the result that we're promising people. And the easiest way to make value content is to just think about what are questions that you got asked this week as a gym owner, right? What are questions that in sales consultations come up over and over and over again? If you're a strength training gym, my guess is you've been asked by a female prospects will lifting weights make me bulky, right? You've probably answered that question a gazillion times. That is a piece of content you should be making. Right now, GLP-1s are all the rage. You've probably had members ask you, should I go on GLP-1s? What happens if I go on GLP-1s? If you serve that clientele, that is a piece of content you should be making to demonstrate your expertise. Another approach you can take is think about your contrarian takes. What is something that everyone in the industry is saying that you do not agree with? What's your opinion on cardio? Should old people do squats? Can you eat ice cream every night and still have a six-pack? If any of these trigger a response in you where you're like, I need to answer that, that is a great feeder for value-based content because you are answering questions that your prospects are already having, and you're saying something that is different from everybody else out in the industry. So that's all there is to value-based content. So we talked about the three buckets. Now the next question is, how often should you be posting? And the answer to that is simple. Every week you should post one of each type of content. So one piece of conversion content that moves prospects down the funnel. So this can be social proof or a 5-1-30. Then we do one piece of connection content. This is just something that makes people like you. So this is showing your weird side or telling a story with a carousel. And then finally we have one piece of value content where we're answering questions we get asked over and over again or we're talking through a contrarian take we have so the reason this works is because of the variety the connection content makes people like us the value-based content builds authority and the conversion content gets people to buy if you found this video helpful you're gonna want to watch this one where we break down the five biggest mistakes that gym owners make on their. Instagram page and how to fix each one of them