Fitness hashtags for personal trainers & fitness coaches

Hashtags are a powerful tool for personal trainers to expand their social media reach outside of their known audience. In this guide, we’ll explore what hashtags are, why they matter, and how to use them effectively. Plus, we’ll share a comprehensive list of fitness hashtags to help you connect with your audience and grow your online presence.

What are fitness hashtags?

A hashtag is a word or phrase prefixed by the hash symbol (#) used to categorise content. On social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, hashtags act as searchable keywords that make it easier for people to discover relevant posts.

Fitness hashtags are widely used by personal trainers and fitness enthusiasts to promote workouts, tips, blogs, or lifestyle posts. They help attract new followers, engage specific audiences, and build a sense of community around your content.

Example fitness hashtags to reach new accounts

We've completed some research into some hashtags you could use for your personal training business:

Why do fitness hashtags matter for social media success?

To make fitness hashtags work for us, we must investigate how they make a difference in our social media content. We've looked into the top ways they can impact what you post:

Boost visibility: Adding hashtags to your post increases your audience size by reaching those outside your typical community. People follow hashtags, not just accounts. In a study by Zipido in 2023, Instagram posts with at least one hashtag received 70% more likes than posts that did not contain hashtags. It was also found that 48.1% of Instagram users heavily rely on branded hashtags to discover new products.

Engaging the right audience: Using the right hashtag will ensure you're attracting people who have already shown an interest in what you share. For example, if you're a strength coach, using #StrengthTraining will get you significantly more engaged traffic than just using #Training.

Trending vs. niche hashtags: You should hit a healthy balance. Some generic terms, such as #fitness, may get lost in the crowd, but when combined with #HIITWorkouts and #LondonSE1, your reach can become much more targeted.

Best practices for using fitness hashtags

As with everything, there are optimal and suboptimal ways to use hashtags. Here are some simple rules to follow to get them working best for you.

Hashtag count: Using the right amount of hashtags varies from platform to platform, but generally, three to five is a good rule of thumb. However, here's what we suggest for the most popular platforms:

• Facebook: Use one or a few hashtags 
• Twitter: Use up to two hashtags 
• Instagram: Use 3–5 hashtags per story, reel or post
• TikTok: Use 3–5+ hashtags 
• LinkedIn: Use up to three hashtags 
• YouTube: Use 3–5 hashtags

Variety: As we suggested earlier, using a variety of popular and niche hashtags will help guide your posts to the right audience.

Research: The importance of using effective hashtags cannot be understated — taking the time to research your hashtags will pay off.

Mistakes to avoid when using hashtags

As you get to grips with using hashtags in your posts regularly, there are a few things you should avoid.

Overusing hashtags: Posting too many or irrelevant hashtags may have a detrimental effect on your post. Here are some of the reasons:

• Spamming: Posts with too many hashtags look spammy, especially if irrelevant to you or your brand.
• Dilutes your message: Your audience may overlook the key messages in your post as the hashtags can dilute your message.
• Confuses the algorithm: The algorithm used by social media platforms may have difficulty deciding who to show your posts to if there are too many mixed or irrelevant hashtags.
• Wasted space: Hashtags count toward your character limit, and using too many can waste space that could be used for valuable content.

How to capitalise on increased engagement

After using hashtags in your social media content and attracting new followers and engagement, make sure you have somewhere they can visit to learn about and purchase your programming. The two most common options are:

Website: If you have a website, this is a great place to send your new audience to learn more about you and your business. They can meet your team, see your programming and contact you.

FITR Storefront: We offer all of our coaches a website-like page that automatically populates with programs and other information potential customers would find useful. It’s a more cost-effective option than a website that’s included at no additional cost when you sign up on any account.