Come on, how cool does that look. It would be even better with one of the workers in their space suits.
Many of you may have heard of CrossFit. It’s an amazing workout program that has seen explosive growth over the last few years. I’m a big believer. I work out at crossfitminneapolis.com and love it. LOVE it. And that’s the thing I want to write about today. It seems like everyone that works out at CrossFit loves it. I believe it’s part WOD induced psychosis and part brilliant community building.
There’s two things that every CrossFit Gym seems to have. Those two things are a blog and a camera. If you’ve been following along you should already have an inkling of where this is going. The blog, at its surface is a great way to post what the workout of the day (WOD) will be, but scratching at it’s surface, it’s also a way to keep the community engaged and consuming content on a daily basis. A $600 digital SLR (like the one listed in my Amazon.com bar to the right) is all you need to produce high quality images or, better, video to really draw in your users.
Even better, my gym has their Facebook page and blog linked. They post photos of the workout, ask for comments and stats on the WOD, encourage general camaraderie and “embracing the suck” online. The truth is, every time I go on to check today’s WOD I look at yesterdays post. If I comment there, my friends might see that I work out at CrossFit (as if they didn’t already know by my strange footwear, eating habits and persistent soreness) on their Facebook wall and be enticed to enroll at my gym. I’m also connected to the gym by their Facebook updates, photos and comments.
Can you produce daily content that users can’t find anywhere else? If you’re a coffee shop that has a daily soup, a spa with a daily special or foundry with a daily pour schedule, there are things you can post that can clue your customers into your daily operations or what they can expect from you today. Getting users to come back time and time again is the key to building a successful community. Even if you don’t know what it is yet, you can find something interesting to post every day. I’d love to see daily pictures of a foundry ladle pouring different chemistry, that would be a photo series that would be valued by people that have nothing to do with a foundry, let alone people in the biz.
What’s your business? Post it in the comments and what you can post every day, or if you cant think of something, post that too! Maybe we can help!
