Sweating the Social Media Game: Gymshark’s Social Media Game Plan | by Rana_RTA402 | Apr, 2023

Social media has become a big part of all our lives, and it’s no surprise that even athletic wear brands are using it, for example, Gymshark. Gymshark is an athletic wear brand known for their fashionable gym wear among fitness enthusiasts. The brand started off in 2012 as an exclusively online brand, however, they have recently opened up a store in the UK. It massively grew in recent years and that is thanks to social media since they are an online brand. It is amazing to see how successful a brand can become through the use of social media. As a fitness enthusiast myself, I thought it would be suitable to critically analyze Gymshark’s social media usage and dig into their strategy, engagement, posts, and more. Maybe Gymshark can provide us with lessons about social media that would be worth learning.

Content and Posts

Gymshark’s most significant social media platform is Instagram and that is what we will be analyzing. I have been following Gymshark for years and one thing I’ve realized with their account is that their content strategy is excellent. It is full of vibrant colors, very aesthetically pleasing, and very high-quality that is attractive to a viewer. A critique I have for this area is their profile. Their photo is fine since it is a company and they use their logo as their profile photo, but my issue is with the bio, it just says “chapter 2023: the comeback”. I’m not sure what that means but I’m sure it’s not their slogan. I don’t think this bio captures what the brand is really about and a newcomer wouldn’t know what their slogan means. However, the only way I can describe their feed is “alive.” They find interesting ways to showcase their products rather than just models wearing their clothes. Their posts consist of their products in action, fitness influencers and professional athletes, sharing tips and workout routines, and even daily motivational quotes. Their posts have a little bit of everything and Include what needs to be included for someone who is into fitness. Through their content, you can really tell what their values are and what they are trying to promote as a brand which is a community or a “family”. The reason I say community is not because of the fact that they mention the word community, but their photos speak. Most of their posts Include two or more people working out together.

Tags and whatnot

A brand’s reputation is important, so taking a look at your tags is important. I was curious to see if Gymshark cleans up their tags or has somehow filtered them because others tend to tag random brands to receive engagement despite the fact that it may be irrelevant. After practically stalking Gymshark and its tags, you can trust me on this, it’s pretty clean. I only came across one irrelevant post that was part of the most recent tags so I’m not sure if it was because there was an error or they haven’t gotten into cleaning that up yet.

Engagement

Gymshark actually does a great job when it comes to engaging with their audience. I have witnessed brands deleting comments regarding shipping issues or problems with a certain product, but Gymshark constantly responds to comments and messages no matter what they are.

They also include a lot of polls (that are sometimes really funny), questions, contests, challenges, and giveaways on their stories and posts and this is a great way to interact with their followers. Since Gymshark’s social media shows that they are all about community, their way of engagement proves their point right because this two-way communication they have with their customers creates that sense of personal connection. I would say it’s kind of like they have their followers’ backs.

Influencers

Influencer collaborations are a big part of what got Gymshark to be where it is today. Just like other brands’ Gymshark sends out their products to influencers, celebrities, and athletes, and they promote the products. Gymshark leveraged influencer marketing as a big part of their brand and continues to do so. However, the only difference between now and then is that at the time, Gymshark used it to grow the brand, but now they heavily rely on it to keep their brand going. It has kind of become what Gymshark is known for and their page features a ton of famous athletes and influencers, but no regular people. A little critique I can give here is that there is a chance that this may seem inauthentic or just the brand being too commercialized. As a viewer, it is nice to see your favorite personality wearing a brand you like, but too much of it is not great either.

Is Gymshark achieving its social media goals?

Because Gymshark started off as an online brand and it technically is an online brand for people outside of the UK (where the shop is), Gymshark’s best bet to become known was social media. Knowing this, we can assume that their social media goal was and still is brand awareness. Another idea to consider here is whether Gymshark’s brand values align with their content. According to Gymshark’s website, their values are being human, giving a shit, doing the right thing, putting family first, and finding the Gymshark way. Digging into their posts and taking a deeper look into their profile, I do believe that some of their values are visible. Some of their posts are raw and motivational, they showcase all the gym/fitness related things, but with the point I mentioned about their influencer collaborations, I think it takes the sense of being real away. Again, this doesn’t apply to all of their posts, but we’ll get to improvements in a little bit. So I think they do align their values to their social media, but they can either be better at it (or change their values).

Metrics

Metrics are super important for a brand to know what their next move is and us viewers and followers can certainly learn from other brands. Let’s take a look and see which Gymshark posts do the best and what doesn’t work. From what I’ve noticed, their likes range from 15,000 likes to 100,000 likes, or potentially even more, but the average falls between that range.

Heres an example of less likes vs many likes:

The left picture is the typical influencer collab post while the right picture is a series of authentic memes that Gymshark created. I’m not sure the influencer collabs are the reason for lower likes and engagement because I’ve seen similar posts reach higher likes, however, I’ve realized a clear pattern of what gets the highest likes, which are typically memes and “funny” posts like the left example above.

Here are a couple more examples of the memes, take a closer look at the likes and comments:

Whats unfortunate is that I cant see how many re-shares their posts get, but it is safe to assume that their memes get a lot of reposts (not only because I’ve seen it) but because of the higher engagement than their regular average.

Areas of Improvement

A brand will always have room for improvement no matter how strong their social media presence is. After stalking and analyzing Gymshark’s Instagram, I have a couple of suggestions that could potentially Improve their page. First, they should create more original content rather than relying very heavily on influencers and athletes. I believe that this would make them seem more authentic and less of the “basic influencer brand” (if you know what I mean). Second suggestion that is sort of linked to the previous one, is incorporating their values more into their posts. After all, social media shapes your brand Image and can either hurt it or strengthen it. Since Gymshark has followed the same footsteps its been following since they started their brand and looked for more brand awareness and getting recognized, it may be time to change it up and become known for their values. Last suggestion that I can give Gymshark that may improve their Instagram page a little is changing up their bio to something more relevant to their brand. The brand’s overall social efforts are quite good and well thought out, and they have established the aesthetic that they want through their feed and posts.