Week 7 Part B: How Other Businesses Use Instagram Including Hashtags

Businesses that I researched for this effort to better understand how businesses are using hashtags in their social media include (these are clickable website links): Crunch , Trainwell , YogaOne SanDiego , ScottLaidler, and Planet Fitness .

Crunch Fitness facebook.com/CRUNCH instagram.com/crunchgym is a large chain fitness gym with over 500 hundred gyms worldwide.  They have been in business since 1989, so I imagine that they have quite a few members that have evolved with them over the years through the social medial growth.  (I have personally been a member since 2019, but I have never actually checked out their Facebook/Instagram until this assignment.)  They currently have 232 followers on Facebook and 161K followers on Instagram and are active daily.  Quite a bit of the content that they post on Facebook spills over onto their Instagram, but their Instagram did seem to have a few more advertisements and giveaway posts.  Their Facebook did have posts that used #hashtags, but not all of them.  They did seem to use them smartly and appropriate to the particular post such as: #CrunchGetsPersonal #TrainerTipTuesday for gym/workout tips,  #gymetiquette when making a post on gym etiquette, and #InternationalWomensDay when they created a post celebrating women fitness goals.  They seemed to use 1-3 hashtags for most posts, but not necessarily all of them. Most posts that did have hashtags had them up front and easy to find. Posts were either dropped in the morning, or early afternoon, which seemed appropriate for times for people before they went to work out. Their hashtag methodology was about the same on Instagram.  Most of their hashtags led to external feeds with thousands of different followers and sites. Overall, I liked the way they sparingly and smartly used these hashtags. 

Trainwell facebook.com/groups/trainwellteam instagram.com/jointrainwell  is a newer and smaller personal fitness trainer company, founded in 2018 with 50-200 employees (according to LinkedIn). They primarily use AI programs for their clients at home workouts, but they also use real humans to validate, coach, and motivate clients along the way.  Their Facebook is a private group with 3.4K members, and I have yet to gain access.  However, their Instagram was open to the public with about 8K followers.  I did like their Instagram content as it was all about fitness video tips such as : how to plank, hip thrusts, mobility routines, proper pushups,  how to properly bicep curl, etc.  They do have over 240 posts, so quite a bit of interesting content to look at.  Most posts had 4-10 hashtags at the end, and were a combination of generic fitness hashtags and more specific hashtags aligned with the posts such as: #fitness #onlinetraining #onlinecoaching #trainwell  #health #healthiswealth #progress  #personaltraining #personalizedhealth #kettlebellswings. I found this to be a good mix of general fitness hashtags, and more specific hashtags that were smaller group more closely tied to their business.  Overall, I liked the way they were using hashtags, and while there were some variations (I could tell different authors were posting), they generally kept to the same format.

YogaOne SanDiego facebook.com/yogaonesandiego instagram.com/yogaonesandiego  is a local yoga studio in San Diego.  They have been in business since 2002 and have active Facebook and Instagram accounts open to the public (which is nice to see because many yoga studios/teachers seem to want to make their social media private).  They have 3.1K followers on Facebook and 2.2K followers on Instagram.  While they are active on Facebook, they post once every several days or so.  Not all posts use hashtags, but most of them do so with about 3-5 hashtags per post.  Hashtags are a combination general yoga information, yoga information specific to the post, and a hashtag of their business, such as: #reiki #restorativeyoga #soundhealing #missionhillssd #sandiegoyoganews #sandiegoyoga .  Their Instagram account also used hashtags in a similar manner, most all of which were found at the end of the post like their Facebook posts.  Overall, I really liked the consistency and the information shared with the hashtags, as it was appropriate to the post, informative, and not too overwhelming.  Good job YogOneSanDiego on using your hashtags!

Scott Laidler instagram.com/scottlaidlercoaching is a popular online personal trainer who prides himself on his large volume of clients as well as his celebrity client list.  He has been in the personal training business for 14 years and has trained (according to his website) people across 54 different countries.  I found it interesting that he had a somewhat limited social media profile, only using Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.  His Instagram account has 7.3K followers, and he does seem to be fairly active on the account with over 300 posts.  His posts are a combination of motivational quotes, podcast recaps, self-advertisement, and workout routine snippets.   He did use hashtags in his Instagram at the bottom of all of his posts, however they varied in number quite a bit from 1 to over 30.  He did seem to use hashtags that were relevant to the post, but at times he did create too many hashtags which seemed to make the post a bit messy with too many repetitive informational tags.  While I appreciate the hashtag effort, I found that there were often too many shared which took away from the post itself.  For example, a simple post on meditation included the following 30 hashtags: #londonpersonaltrainer #fitnessmotivation #personaltrainerlondon #fitnessmotivator #life #exercisemotivation #meditation #meditatedaily #meditate #meditationspace #exercisetips #workoutsession #youcandoit #instafitness #ukfitfam #londonfit #fitfamlondon #personaltrainer #podcasts #britpodscene #leangainz #mindfullness #calm #listen🎵 #zen #fitness #fitnessmotivation #yoga #yogafam #yogainspiration

Planet Fitness facebook.com/planetfitness    is the largest gym chain in the United States, with over 2,000 locations nationwide. They have a very large footprint on Facebook with 4.6M followers, and a relatively much smaller footprint on Instagram with 493K followers.  On their Facebook, they did not use hashtags at all, but had a variety of clickable links.  Facebook content was a combination of personal members’ success stories, and motivational advertisements.  Their Instagram account posted similar content, but it also had no hashtags on any of its posts.  As with other very large companies, Planet Fitness has chosen to not use hashtags on their social media, and they remain consistent in the dozens of posts I looked at in not doing so.

 

Summary:

I found it interesting that there really are no rules to using hashtags on social media, but how you use hashtags can certainly shape your professional brand and image.  I found that the businesses that were consistent in their hashtag methodology (location, number of hashtags, relevancy) came across as the most professional.  Businesses that had inconsistent hashtag use, often came across as a bit sporadic and even a bit overwhelming if too many hashtags were used.  I think that 4-8 hashtags seemed about right for each post, but that is of course just my opinion as a casual reader of the posts. Consistency and relevancy I think are key when sharing hashtags.

Some hashtags that I liked during my research for my fictional business/Facebook/Instagram page include some general information about the activity, some information about the locality, and sharing the business name.  So on my fictitious business social media pages, I could use something like: #onlinepersonaltrainer,  #increasevo2max,  #improvehearthealth, #healthysandiego, #improvemobility, and #fitnessrevival.