Since the explosion of Facebook and Twitter, social media has risen to the top of many businesses’ marketing plans. With over 2.45 billion monthly active users just on Facebook, it’s easy to see how having a social media presence has strong marketing potential for your organization. For parks and recreation and fitness organizations, a great way to grow their user base and community is to make their facilities more social media friendly.

Although screen time can frequently be a distraction to interpersonal interactions and fitness, we believe physical activity can be increased via social media. Here are some tips for making your recreation facility social media friendly.

1. Establish your Social Media Presence

Determine the most popular social media networks that are used in your area. In 2016, this might include of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, LinkedIn or a few others. By having an established social media presence that encourages engagement, visitors to your recreation facility are more likely to tag you in their posts. To do this, you’ll need to come up with a great digital marketing plan that has a strong social media plan with effective outreach strategies for your community.

2. Focus on Visuals

Even posts that aren’t focused on visuals should contain a picture. For an industry-specific example, the NRPA’s case study on Five Rivers MetroParks found that “photos can result in three times more engagement than non-photo posts.” The key here is to increase the chances that a guest of your recreation facility will take a picture, along with the likelihood that the picture will get a lot of engagement on social media. There are a few ways of achieving this. Reducing clutter and creating clean, minimal, design-forward spaces will help a lot, as will having beautiful, modern, higher-end designs. Making your space unique and beautiful is a surefire way to boost your social media attention, for a while.

3. Run Campaigns and Contests

First off, your social media accounts’ names should be intuitive and easy to find. Having a poster with your social media accounts and your branded hashtags is a no-brainer. Just make sure it looks good in your space, while still remaining professional and on-brand. Once that’s out of the way, you can focus on creating special campaigns or contests. For example, you could start a contest called #OwnYourRoutine, where people can post a picture of their fitness routine, to enter for a chance to win a free month’s membership.

4. Host Special Events and Guests

Doing collaborations with influencers and businesses that have a high social media following is a great way to boost your own. For example, hosting a professional athlete at your recreation facility to teach a workshop can result in a huge social media boost for your business. You would share it on your network, while the person you’re collaborating with would tag you on content on their own networks, with a flurry of posts coming from the attendees. Hosting these kinds of events on a regular basis is a surefire way to make your recreation facility social media friendly.