A Fitness Studio Makes Full-Court Social Press



In this series, we'll learn the way brick-and-mortar businesses ar boosting their digital presence and raise social-media consultants for his or her best suggestions.
Pure Barre, a exercise that uses a ballet barre to tone and strengthen muscle, began as one fitness studio within the basement of a Birmingham, Mich., building in 2001. It quickly won fans, turning into a franchise in 2009 it's adult to a hundred thirty five locations in thirty six states. Today, regarding thirty folks work on Pure Barre's company headquarters in Spartanburg, S.C., and every studio employs up to ten folks. the corporate strives to be over a exercise complete and its social-media profiles promote fashion charm, posting pictures of fashion and merchandise and songs utilized in categories. increasing the life-style component is a very important a part of its positioning, per mollie Cashman, director of selling for Pure Barre company, and also the company recently employed New York-based Likeable Media to amplify its reach and on-line efforts.
 
A Fitness Studio Makes Full-Court Social Press


Pure Barre encourages ladies to share however they incorporate its exercise into their daily lives, as during a recent campaign that doubled its Facebook likes.
Image credit: Pure Barre

What's operating

Personalized, sharable campaigns. To drive engagement, the corporate noncommissioned Likeable to launch a #purebarrelife campaign, a contest that asked shoppers to share personal stories concerning group action Pure Barre into their daily lives through text, photos and videos on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest for an opportunity to win prizes.The company noncommissioned the agency’s facilitate as a result of Likeable has the experience to navigate the challenges concerned in running a national social-media contest, like time demands, potential legal problems, and also the distinctive rules and pointers of every individual platform. per Cashman, 2,800 individuals entered, and in 3 weeks the corporate upped its Facebook likes by fifty p.c to quite thirty four,500. Winners were arbitrarily elect and declared on the sites. Social-media knowledgeable Emily fodder, founding father of Birmingham, Mich.-based fodder There Social Media and TweetTeam, loves the manner Pure Barre uses stories from shoppers, teachers, franchisees and owner Carrie Rezabek Dorr to ascertain the whole. "If you'll relate to at least one of these ladies, you'll see yourself in Pure Barre," Hay says.

Allowing franchisees to run their own profiles. Pure Barre includes a sturdy company presence across social platforms, nonetheless encourages franchisees to control their own social media severally, through Facebook and Twitter, one thing consultants say several franchises struggle with. per Cashman, Pure Barre franchisees ar needed to possess a Facebook page, however different social media is ex gratia. Pure Barre generates three to four posts daily at the company level that franchisees will share, and recently launched a map on Facebook that enables fans to search out an area studio and check in for categories with a click. Likeable provided a social-media session at Pure Barre's recent franchisee conference, coaching homeowners to use the voice of the whole, produce mini-social-media plans, and respond quickly to posts from followers and fans. "We wish to relinquish them best practices and steering however we have a tendency to conjointly wish them to be inventive and show their own native color," Cashman says. fodder says Pure Barre strikes a decent balance between giving support, nonetheless empowering native homeowners to require management. "It takes trust on either side," Hay says.

What the consultants advise:

Expand videos. Pure Barre has quite sixty eight high-quality technique videos on Vimeo, that ar promoted through Facebook and Twitter on "Technique Tip Tuesdays." however Pure Barre will take video promoting more, the consultants say. Lee notes that whereas the corporate includes a YouTube icon on its home page, the account hasn't been updated during a year, and whereas Vimeo may be a nice video website with high standards of quality, YouTube may be a higher suited the fitness market with quite one billion distinctive guests a month compared to Vimeo's seventy million, and a large choice of fitness videos with countless views. YouTube is additionally a lot of searchable through Google. He recommends victimization each platforms by change YouTube and adding a Vimeo icon to the house page. fodder recommends branching out with short, iteration videos on tracheophyte and Instagram. "It's a natural work," Hay says.

Get blogging. to actually establish itself as a way of life whole, the corporate must resuscitate a diary that hasn't updated since last Sep. A diary is that the excellent platform to speak concerning the Pure Barre way in additional depth, Lee says, by covering such topics as fashion, nutrition and even healthy consumption. "A diary will certainly facilitate categorise and organize content and it reaches a wider audience as individuals ar perpetually sorting out data to boost their way," he says.

Lee suggests moving "Pure Barre Ambassador" and "Fan of the Week" stories out of Facebook and into a diary. Long-form posts don't seem to be Facebook friendly, he says, though Facebook and Twitter may well be wont to feed traffic to the diary. once the corporate promotes ambassadors and fans, they must tag everybody they profile to extend shares and likes. Cashman says plans for a revamped diary ar enclosed within the company's web site forthcoming relaunch.