Writing Social Media Posts That Attract Personal Training Clients

To win a new client you usually have to take them through a process: catch their attention, build trust, demonstrate success, offer a limited-time deal, and sign them up. This post is about the first step, catching attention, because if a post doesn't do that, nothing else gets a chance.

What a good post is made of

To grab attention, a social media post needs five things:

• An amazing title. Lists are one of the most reliable ways to write these.
• The most eye-catching yet relevant image you can find.
• A promise in the first sentence that is about the client, not about you.
• A body of text that stays on that promise. Most trainers try to cram too much into one post; resist it.
• A specific call to action. Not "get in touch", but "click this link and type in your email".

A process for writing the title

The title does most of the heavy lifting, so it is worth building properly rather than firing off the first thing that comes to mind:

1. Free write everything you want to say in the post.
2. Pull out the one big thing you actually want to say.
3. Start writing titles. Make the first few as long as you like, just to get the information in.
4. Take your favourite two or three and combine the best parts of them.
5. Write it again in half the number of words.
6. Check it is compelling: catchy, easy to grasp, rhyming if it can, with the promise made clear.

The image

I use free image libraries such as Pixabay and tend to modify the picture a little to make it specific to what I am saying. Sometimes an image is strong enough on its own, so use your judgement.

The body text

After the image, choose your next few words carefully. Short sentences and lists work well, partly for clarity and partly because they look good on a social feed. Rewrite the description and the list a few times, always going for fewer words, and make sure every point stays on the one message.

The call to action

Once you have listed the benefits of taking up your offer, spell out exactly what to do next. For example: click the link and fill in your email address, and the website will send you what you have been promised straight away. Leave no doubt about the next step.

The three keys

Strip it all back and a post that converts comes down to three things:

1. A compelling title that has been written and rewritten many times.
2. Content and lists that speak to the client and what they gain.
3. A specific instruction for what to do next.

None of this happens in a single draft. The trainers who win clients online are the ones willing to rewrite, cut, and stay on one message until the post does exactly one job well.