Can #Beachbody Improve Their Social Engagement?

Some of you may be aware of a post I wrote on a disappointing experience I had with Beachbody. They are the company that promotes fitness products like P90x, Slim in 6, Insanity, Turbo Jam and many more.  Anyway, I resolved my issues with them, as it appears to have been some kind of communication problem between the brains and the small toe. But, that’s not what I want to write about today.

I was just working out with my 18 year old nephew – and completely embarrassing him, BTW – when I took a closer look at how they are handling motivation and engagement. Essentially, they’ve provided the same stuff for a long, long time with improvements to the look and feel along the way. Basically it’s a multi-level marketing organization built on recruiting coaches. So, many of the people that purchase the program pay monthly dues to be coaches. Coaches can recruit people like me and get a piece of my action for anything I buy, and / or they can recruit more coaches and get a piece of their pyramid as it grows.

The way Beachbody keeps their customers engaged is by offering the tools and community build interactive meal plans, tutorial videos, a forum-based community and the ability find friends you can workout with virtually. While I’ve never gotten excited about the workout buddies or the community in general, there are a lot of people that keep going because of it. It breaks down kind of like this:

• Contests
• Success Stories
• Message Boards
• Member Gallery
• Videos
• Message Center
• Personal Blog
• A Store

The coaches are offered their own portals, and have to operate within strict guidelines about advertising and words they can or cannot use. These portals are where the coaches drive traffic to from whatever web or WOM initiatives they’ve put in place. Lets face it, most of these people aren’t marketing geniuses as I know from my own coach. However, she won $250,000 in one of their contests. The rest, they do their best – and forget the rest.

Here’s My Idea

Those of us who use the SuperGym do so not because we want to be with all of our virtual friends, it’s because 1) we can track our progress and 2) there’s a chance to win money each time you clock in – about as exciting as the lotter.  Over the past month of getting back into this, I started to realize that they were really missing the boat.

The coaches all have websites and Facebook pages and the drive some traffic back to the site. Yet, the infomercials continue to run all night long, so it can’t be all that great. Each day we work out, we punch in so people in the Beachbody community can see other members that are working out. Yet, there is not a single social media icon anywhere. No Twitter, no Facebook, nothing.

My idea is pretty simple. I was thinking of some of the blogs and sites I go to where posting some kind of content prompted me to share it with my Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections or Facebook friends. I wonder what it would be like if I had that option at Beachbody. When I punch in to workout, I announce to all of my friends and followers:

I just pressed play! I’m starting my PlyoX workout #P90x  Bring It! You can too. I dare ya! #woos

That would be great for Beachbody because it would propagate from thousands of users each day across multiple social networks. But here’s the part that get’s people like me to punch play more often. Instead of just coaches, add an affiliate program to let me earn a little money while I’m working out. Do that and I’ve got more reasons to Bring it! and punch in.

Just like Foursquare and other such applications, we’re just telling people what we’re doing. If they click the link great. If not, that’s fine too. People know that I’m working out and that helps keep me stay motivated (because I’m vain), I also have a chance to make some money without really marketing. For the company, it should add a layer of monetization and possibly a viral component. I can’t see why they’re not doing this. Can you?