The 10-week Facebook (FB) Outreach Campaign will help your community learn about their new AARP Sponsored Outdoor Fitness Park and the grant funded FitLot classes available for everyone to participate in.  This campaign will build awareness and engage your community members to use the park properly and safely. In addition to the advertising funds ($500), this guide and the pre-approved images, copy and videos will position you to maximize your outreach efforts.  Our goal is to help make your outreach efforts as impactful and streamlined as possible. Please do not hesitate to reach out to programs@fitlot.org if you have any questions. For a downloadable PDF of this guide, click here. 

Content & Post Templates

The FB Outreach Campaign funds supports two (2) posts each week of the 10-week campaign. In collaboration with AARP, FitLot has created twenty (20) pre-approved posts for the campaign, including images, copy and call to action (CTA) links for you to include. All the posts, image links and social media report form can be found on separate tabs within the Facebook Outreach Campaign Template.

How to post

The campaign requires two posts per week over 10-weeks. We suggest scheduling and “boosting” your posts from your recreation department’s FB Page. Be sure to include the provided “call to action” (CTA) link, as well as the associated image or video for each post. 

Facebook Ads

You and/or your social media manager may utilize the Facebook for Business advertising platform to create ads. If you create ads, you may use your discretion as to when to end them. Ads do not count towards the 20 posts of the campaign, but are certainly a great tool for outreach. You are welcome to use some of your social media support funds to support FB ads.  

Timing and Budgeting

Plan to start your campaign at least one (1) week prior to the start of your first class at the park. You have up to eighteen (18) months to complete the campaign (from the date of receiving funds). We recommend that you allocate campaign funding evenly across the 10 weeks ($50/week or $25/post), or ($40/week, $20 a post and $100 for facebook ads)

Facebook Pixel ID 

To help track conversions from campaign posts to fitness class registrations, FitLot’s program onboarding form will ask you to provide the Facebook ‘Pixel ID’ of the account page you plan to use for the outreach campaign. If you need help finding your Pixel ID or creating one, this article will walk you through it.

Reporting

Please report your campaign’s metrics to FitLot in accordance with the AARP grant agreement, within 15 days of the last post of the campaign. There is a “Campaign Report” tab in your Facebook Outreach Campaign template document; use this spreadsheet to record the performance numbers of each campaign post. Understanding these metrics helps our organization refine our outreach efforts so that community partners can run stronger awareness campaigns overtime. Thanks for taking the time to share this information with us! 

*Grant recipients who fail to submit the report will be ineligible to receive FB advertising funds in future funding periods if made available.

Tags Increase Engagement

We encourage you to utilize “tags” in your social media posts that are relevant for your park, city/community and/or region. In addition, please consider using some of the following FitLot-related tags so your content can have national reach among the broader FitLot community.  Posts that include #FitLot, get featured on the homepage of FitLot.org. We love sharing how our community partners are using their parks!  Please also feel free to tag @FitLot in your posts so we can like, share and support. #FitLot #fitnessparks #fitness #health #exercise #FitLotMethod #AARP 

Engaging AARP

If you would like to engage your AARP State Office in your program outreach efforts, please reach out to their office to see if they’d like to be tagged in your posts. AARP’s national guidelines on in-person events are continuously changing due to the pandemic, so please check in with the AARP State Office to see if they are able to help promote in-person events when you plan to start your outdoor fitness classes. They may want to add the season schedule and park page link to their program calendars or newsletters. 

Creating Your Own Content

We love seeing how program partners are putting their parks to good use. Sharing photos/videos of classes, coaches and moving participants is a great way to spread the word and share a glimpse of what is happening at your park with the rest of the community. If you create your own content, please remember those posts do not count towards your 20 pre-approved campaign posts.

Additional Content To Share

FitLot has created high-quality instructional videos, workout materials, guides, and resources for community members to benefit from and utilize to learn how to get the most out of their equipment. Please feel free to share links to:

• — Instructional videos from our Movement Library
• — Downloadable Exercise Guides including charts of resistance band exercises, a printable deck of exercises, sample circuit training workouts to use at the park and progress tracker worksheets.
• — FitLot’s Resources Page has a ton of information about the the public health challenges our country faces and the importance of outdoor fitness spaces and programs. There are also tools and resources to support the planning and creation of outdoor fitness parks. 

Feel free to share information you find on AARP’s Healthy Living page, which has great articles and information about living an active, healthy lifestyle. 

Now that your fitness park is built, the next challenge is teaching people how to use it, fostering an active community and culture of health around the park, and inspiring your community to get outside. We wish you the best of luck as you start your outreach campaign and launch your programs. We can’t wait to see how your community enjoys their new park, and we will be here to provide support whenever needed.