The trend of people tracking their fitness milestones on social media channels has opened up a whole new opportunity for digital marketers.

Why is social media used to track fitness milestones?

We put our entire life on social media, and fitness is no exception. Social media is used to show off the highlights of our day, week, month, year, and every aspect that creates those highlights. Fitness, becoming increasingly prominent in our lives, is one of those aspects increasingly being shared. With so many fitness trackers and health trackers available, there comes the gamification and challenge of fitness. Some FitTech brands reward you for walking a certain amount, or give you a medal for completing a workout, and others just help connect you with a community of like minded people. These apps then also have the share feature on every award you get, allowing you to expand the reach of your achievement into your social channels. Sharing your Strava run onto your Instagram story not only allows you to interact with other runners in your network, but also gives a sense of accountability to keep up the fitness efforts. Knowing that your peers are now aware and watching you do your Saturday park run gives the unconscious thought that you could be judged for then not doing one. This can be a positive push or a negative pressure, but for those in the right mindset, the sharing of milestones gives them that extra boost of accomplishment.

How is social media used to track fitness milestones?

Thanks to the interconnection of apps, most that we download can share aspects onto social media channels. Fitness apps are a prime example of this feature with many making their own social templates for when you want to share to an Instagram story, or post to Twitter, or write a Facebook post. 

Social media plays its part in showing off the user achievement whilst also sharing a well branded template from the fitness app. The share can often come with a link to check out your profile on the fitness app and give a follow, further connecting the users whilst building the audience of the fitness app. 

What are the digital marketing opportunities for fitness and tech organisations?

Apps historically struggled to build word of mouth or user generated content. This is down to a variety of things, like the shareability, relevance, perception, and prevalence. So apps would often incentivise users with some reward points or a referral boost for sharing content to social media, tagging the company, and giving them a follow. 

What fitness apps have done well is to create this desire and demand for sharing achievements to other social media channels. It’s not expected of users but encouraged. No reward is given apart from the dopamine boost that can come from some recognition. 

Fitness apps have built this culture of sharing and celebrating, something that other apps enviously try to emulate. So what is the best way for fitness and tech brands to use this culture to their advantage. 

  1. Firstly, branding. The branding of the app and everything that is sharable needs to be highly recognisable. A set number of template variations should give users freedom to differentiate, but still follow the same basic branding principles to allow for brand recall and recognition.
  2. Linking. Anything shared on another platform should link to the original post on the fitness app. This creates a clear CTA for users to go and check out the profile, create their own, or have a look around the app.
  3. Tone of voice. Give [this person] a thumbs up on our platform. Using encouraging language is great in fitness but also great in marketing. Encouraging users with positive language will help the brand perception but also mean it’s more likely for users to want to click through to your app.

There is a lot that can be learnt from the success of fitness apps and their integration with social media, and this is something that many other industries are trying to replicate. Very simply, you need to have something that people want to show off about. Social media is used to share nice pictures of coffee, food, sights, gifts, and your product has to fit within this and be a nice thing to show off. You may be in a sector specific niche where your audience wants to show you off, and that will be something to lean into, but as long as your branding, tone of voice, and linking is prioritised then you’ll have some success in building a community within your sharers.