Creating any community is a team effort, but a gym community starts with the staff members who are responsible for communicating the value.
What do we mean by saying that creating a community is a team effort? Since a team brings many different skills and points of view, this increases the chances for a brand to capture the interest of more participants.
Creating a sense of value for your gym members begins in the understanding of your staff members who are then tasked with the responsibility to communicate that value in a way that is friendly and encouraging participation.
Having a community might seem like a mainstream trend, but it is an important feature to have today if you’d like your business name to stand out from competitors.
Steven Bartlett asks the same question every week on Dragon’s Den:
What’s your community activity like – is it actually part of the brand experience?
While his question might be aimed at online communities, it raises a valid point. The members of your community need a meeting place – online or in-person.
What better place to shape your community than your gym floor where the magic happens?!
Community building questions
Let’s get started with a couple of foundational questions to determine how engaged are your gym members currently.
- From your total member base (active and sleeping), what percentage of your members are engaged with your gym?
- How do they engage with your gym?
- When do they tend to engage with your brand?
- Where do they engage with you?
- Why are they engaging with you? (if you know)
A quick Google search will tell you the definition of the word “community”.
It is a ‘’group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.”
What’s more, “being part of a community can make us feel as though we are part of something greater than ourselves”.
Let’s look into two more questions:
- When someone enters your gym, comes in and moves around your facility, maybe having made eye contact with your staff or a quick chat with a fellow workout pal, is this member engaged and a community member?
- What about a member who comes religiously to the same 3 classes every week, and actively chats to the other class attendees, is this member engaged and a community member?
We could say in the second example, the member is more likely to be closer to a community member than the first example, but that’s an assumption.
Before you make that assumption, you need to define what a community member means to your own brand, along with your staff on the gym floor, including the reception team and your freelance class instructors.
Bringing the team together and discussing the difference is the first step you need to do to make sure everyone is aware of your gym’s mission and the “Big Why” behind it.
While you’re doing this exercise, see if you can spot any individual roles, which will in turn allow different team members to lead community “themed” events that encourage gym members to bond organically.
For example, do you have any team members who love pets? You can organise a dog walking gathering every quarter, meeting at the gym and allowing members with the same love for dogs and fitness to meet and spend time with like-minded people in the local area. This example can start the ideas flowing of how there could be so many ideas from the team.
Defining your own community
Here are a couple of easy steps that you can follow to define your own gym community. Use these steps as the stepping stones to unite your staff members behind the same vision:
- Create a community mission
Think of your community mission as a sentence that explains what you are trying to do and how you are going to do it.
Remember to think about and include your target audience in this statement. You are not just building a community to elevate your brand’s name, you are trying to help someone achieve something too.
- Get your team aligned with the mission
Tell the story to your team FIRST – this is your inner community.
Once your staff members accept and embrace the mission, they will be the ones to drive its success down the road.
- Organise events that blend everyone's passions
The goal of a community is not to get everyone acting the same way but to unite individuals who share a common passion, so that they can create shared memories together.
Diversity, or embracing everyone’s individuality both when it comes to the organisers and the participants, will only help you drive community adoption.
- Keep the communication going
Talk about your community events, activities and success stories.
Actually, don’t just talk about it – live and breathe it!
Set the bar high and make sure you shout about community based events and share feedback from the community itself to drive user-generated content (the best kind of marketing).
- Track your community success
Make sure you understand what success looks like for your community, so you can work towards it continuously.
Don’t forget to celebrate the little wins and the big milestones along the way!
Creating a gym community is only as stressful as you make it out to be. Allow yourself to have fun as you set the foundation and lead by example – who doesn’t want to be part of a group that is fresh, exciting, friendly and welcoming?!
👉🏻 Continue reading: Gym Community: Creating Lifelong Fans from Short-Term Members
Craig McNeill 👋
HEAD OF DIGITAL FITNESS
Starting his journey back in 2001, Craig’s knowledge of the leisure sector is varied and he has held numerous roles within the industry, including those of Fitness instructor, Club Manager, PT, PT Tutor and Assessor. Today Craig supports our clients in 20+ countries and blends his passion for fitness and technology as the host of our podcast mPowered where he chats with global health and tech experts.
