Title Boxing Club: Navigating the Changing World of Social Media

We asked Brooke Budke, chief marketing officer at Title Boxing Club, how she sees social media changing and evolving - and how her brand is adapting and getting results.

The past year brought numerous new developments and milestones in social media and social networking. From the rise of live streaming on social platforms like Periscope, to instant short-lived videos on Snapchat, to the 1 billion users who use Facebook on a daily basis, brands are being tasked with finding new ways to engage with their customers and fans. Whether your followers deem your content good or bad, they will tell you, and it's how you react that will either win them over or lose them as loyal customers.

As an experience-based brand, Title Boxing Club's social success depends largely on the quality of the relationships we build with our audience, meaning the brand campaigns must live online and also be manifested in physical form in our clubs. We encourage our franchisees to give their local communities a "sneak peek" inside their clubs through engaging posts, photos, and special events.

For example, this past November we had a social campaign called "Planksgiving," encouraging followers to give planks and thanks all month, while inside our clubs the trainers guided members through a 30-day plank calendar to strengthen their core.

The power of social influence is undeniable, and our brand puts a large emphasis on sharing best practices with our entire system, which helps to ensure that, as a brand, we are giving people a reason to follow and engage with us.

A successful social media strategy combines building brand awareness and bringing the company closer to its core follower base. To evaluate if a strategy is successful you need to analyze the results. We pay close attention to the time of day, type of post, and amount of engagement we receive on our social channels. Often we have content designed to drive conversation, while other posts are meant for brand awareness or showcasing what's happening inside the clubs across the country. Our national and regional PR approach also fuels our social pages with third-party credibility: followers love to see their favorite workout featured in pages of Women's Health or Shape magazine.

It's a fun thing to tap into the power of social influence to bring a brand to life - and yet, a wild adventure for a marketer to keep up with the ever-changing trends and technologies. Overall, as social media and social network platforms continue to evolve and grow, they will undoubtedly become an even more integral part of the online experience and a critical part of business growth.