Connect and Engage During COVID-19

For fitness and multiple other industries, the rise of COVID-19 and the dramatic impact it has had on the way we live our day-to-day lives has also meant a sudden and unprecedented shift in the way we run our businesses.

Here at Precor, it has only emphasised the importance of putting our operators and exercisers at the heart of everything we do. This is our community. During difficult times, we need to strengthen and support this community in order to stand united for the future. This is the same for operators and their members. As a gym operator, your members’ needs are at the forefront of every decision that you make and, for many, a sense of community and belonging has always been a crucial aspect of member retention. In the current situation, we need to revisit these core values and act accordingly. Doing nothing could be fatal but being proactive and adaptable will help you thrive.

It’s no secret that “going digital” has already proven to be a saviour for most facilities. But if you’ve never dabbled in the digital world before, it can be quite a daunting prospect. Let’s start by being clear on our objective—to bring members together and keep them engaged throughout lockdown.

Here are some tips to help get you started:

COMMUNICATE FOR MAXIMUM REACH

Start by considering which communication channels your members are most likely to use. Do you already have member data that can give you an indication of this? On which channel (if any) do you already have the greatest following? If you don’t know where to start, take an educated guess by researching the most  popular platforms.

Then consider realistically how many and which channels you have the bandwidth to manage. For example, if you have a reduced workforce, you may need to keep it simple and stick to two or three of the big players such as Facebook, Instagram and email.

Although social media is such a huge aspect of our daily lives, don’t forget that there will always be a portion of your members who are not on social media. Don’t neglect them—ensure that you utilise another channel such as email, a blog or your website. These channels are just as effective and engaging.

IMPORTANT: Ensure that you actively promote your online community across all your channels so your members can pick and choose to follow those best suited to their interests and lifestyle. Your members won’t know about the community unless you shout about it, so spread the word!

BE VERSATILE AND VIBRANT

Create a quality offering within your community that is easily adaptable to the home environment and delivers an engaging, fun workout. Here are some ideas:

Workout of the Day (WoD): Offer a workout for your members every day, focusing on different muscle groups. You can deliver this in a number of ways, for example: hosting an Instagram or Facebook Live at 7 a.m. every morning; pre-recording short demo clips of a personal trainer performing each exercise, loading these as a multi-picture post onto Instagram and writing up the full workout with reps and sets in the caption; setting up a Zoom meeting for participants to meet… the possibilities are endless. Be creative!

PT Takeovers: Personal trainer takeover days allow your clients to become familiar with your personal trainers who they perhaps haven’t engaged with before. The idea of this takeover would be to allow the personal trainer to manage your social channels for the day, delivering engaging workout content, speaking about a topic such as the importance of warming up and stretching, or running a Q&A session.

Challenges: Setting group challenges can be a great way of introducing a bit of healthy competition and it doesn’t even necessarily need to be member-on-member competition. You could set a challenge  in which members compete against themselves, such as improving stats on their previous workout or run. Activities like this can help keep members focused and goal-oriented at a time when life lacks a bit of structure.

Personal Training: You may want to consider offering personal training as a free trial throughout the lockdown period. Think of it as a “try before you buy” for members. This could be offered either though a video conference call in which the trainer conducts physical workouts, or on a more prescriptive basis  in which the personal trainer discusses the member’s health and fitness goals and creates a qualitative tailored training and nutrition programme. This is an effective way of keeping members engaged, but may also help to boost secondary revenue when facilities re-open.

HOST WITH THE MOST

When it comes to platforms for hosting workouts or activities, we have many choices. Ultimately, you want to choose the hosting platform that will accommodate your chosen activities most effectively. Some of your social channels can double up as hosting platforms. For example:

• You can run workouts using the Instagram or Facebook Live feature
• You can post workout sets on your Instagram feed by using the multi-picture feature and detailing the exercises in your caption.

Influential personal trainers such as Alice Liveing & Whitney Simmons demonstrate creative ways of hosting workouts across their social channels.

Other hosting platforms could include YouTube – the second-most popular social platform globally. This gives you the ability to pre-record workouts and edit before posting live.

Meeting platforms such as Zoom and GoToMeeting are also definitely on the rise. Zoom offers a free account in which you can host up to 100 participants, run an unlimited number of meetings, utilise HD video and voice quality, and host using a virtual background. However, the free account limits meetings to 40 minutes.

CREATE A SPACE FOR SHARING

Step 1 is getting your members online.

Step 2 is keeping your members engaged.

Step 3 is building that sense of community through sharing and championing your members’ achievements.

In some ways, this brings them even closer than before as they are breaking the ice from the comfort of their own home. Some would argue that this will lay the foundations for a friendlier, more familiar atmosphere once facilities re-open.  

Promote and encourage the use of @ tags for your facility name and unique hashtags consistent with the relevant theme or workout. Encourage your members to share their stories to build a narrative that will encourage other members and help you learn more about your existing members.

BUILD YOUR CULTURE AND IDENTITY

Brand identity is built by celebrating and engaging with culture. We live in a time where the world is finally embracing health and fitness as a lifestyle. Fast food is being ditched in favour of organic wholefoods; Friday night clubbing sessions are being ditched in favour of candlelit yoga. Your audience is exactly where you need them to be— all you need to do is capitalise on their interests and ensure that you offer a strong, unique proposition to keep them coming back for more.

Whatever channels or platforms you use to build your community online, ensure that you have a consistent, strong brand presence by using your logo, colour palette, fonts, high-quality imagery etc. Ensure that your personal trainers are delivering a consistently high standard of energy and experience while remaining approachable and supportive. You could even create a slogan or a tagline that you use to project the moral basis of your brand. Some examples of this are:

• Gold’s Gym – Know Your Own Strength
• Energie – Where You Belong
• FitRepublik – Power to the People
• StudioRepublik – Come to Life
• The Gym Group – Find Your Fit

These brands also demonstrate an extremely powerful sense of identity. Use them as your inspiration.

In summary, the five key elements addressed in this article are the ingredients needed to create a strong and engaging community. This sudden shift to digital should not be viewed as a temporary measure, but more as an extension of your facility’s offering. Technology will never act as a viable replacement for physical interaction, but under the current circumstances, it provides us all with an alternative support system that we may not otherwise have.

Precor is always here to support our community. If you need any tips or advice, get in touch or follow us on social media for the latest updates and webinars.