BJJ Social Media Marketing: Platform-Specific Strategies That Convert Students

You've spent an hour after class filming. Comprehensive technique breakdowns, rolling footage demonstrating the techniques you've covered, and explainer videos.

They're incredibly helpful.

You package them up and post clips to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok in the evening. In the morning, you wake up to 1,200 views and zero trial sign-ups.

Sound familiar? Many gym owners grapple with this problem. They're frantically posting content on social media because they were told to. They're caught in a vicious cycle, believing that they just need to keep posting and students will come.

Why Social Media is Important for BJJ Academies

According to Member Solutions, 63% of gym-goers discover their gyms through social media. If your students are looking for a gym to join, there's a good chance they're using social media to find one.

Here's the catch: IBJJF academies have exploded, growing from 304 academies in 2012 to 8,928+ in 2026—more competition than ever before.

That's a problem because most BJJ academies are following the same social media strategies:

1. Post random content on social media: it tends to be a mix of updates, self-serving content, or trendy content.
2. Spam technique videos: There's a massive volume of people posting technique videos. These videos don't necessarily lead to student sign-ups.
3. They don't post anything: These academies rely on word-of-mouth and referrals. Their growth is slow with frequent feast-and-famine cycles.

Adopting a platform-specific strategy beats technique spam and random content. It provides a clear plan of action and shows you what you shouldn't post. Here's the best part: if it's done well, it's much easier and requires less time and energy than random content.

Why Platform-Specific Social Strategy Matters for BJJ Gyms

Here's a common mistake businesses make with social media. They post the same content on all of their social media profiles. The same exact content.

Let's say you have several social media profiles—YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. You post the same content across all of your profiles. Are people more or less likely to follow you on all of your social media profiles?

Ding ding! If you said there's no need to follow you, you're absolutely right. If I can watch your content on YouTube without going to Facebook, why would I bother following you on Facebook?

This is why treating each platform the same is a disaster for your marketing.

Platform Quick Reference

Tie your social media profiles to your website, and you suddenly have a lead-generation machine in place.

Content That Attracts Students: Platform Comparison

Some of these content pillars have built-in virality because they're feel-good posts people love to share.

Here's the best part about these post types: They also lead to free trial sign-ups.

At their core, these posts are about three things:

1. Relationship: People can see the relationships you have with your students and your team.
2. Outcomes: The results your students achieve directly align with the outcomes prospective students want.
3. Shared goals: Prospective students want the outcomes that your students have achieved.

Instagram Strategy for BJJ Gyms

According to digitalmarketingcommunity.com, the average Instagram engagement rate is 0.45–0.6%.

Your engagement rate measures the level of interaction—likes, comments, shares, saves, and clicks—your content receives. This is relative to your follower count, reach, and impressions. The more your content resonates with your audience, the better your visibility. 

This also reflects brand loyalty and content quality. 

Historically, Instagram’s organic engagement rate has been low (they want you to spend money to increase reach, visibility, impressions, and interaction).

Instagram values quality over quantity. This is less about production value (though that’s important too) and more about the relevance and meaning to your audience.

Instagram Reels, carousels, or single photos?

Buffer analyzed 4.2 million Instagram posts to find the answer. They found that Reels generate 36% more engagement than static posts.

Here’s why:

• Reach measures the number of people who see your content (visibility/awareness). Reach shows you how far your content travels.  
• Engagement tracks actions taken on your content, e.g., likes, comments, and shares (interaction/depth). Engagement shows you how well your content resonates with your audience. 

Reels are a great way to extend your reach. 

If you want to introduce yourself to more people, Reels are a great way to do that. Reels generate more engagement than static posts, but other post types (e.g., carousel, stories, and lives) generate more engagement overall. 

This means it’s still a good idea to use a variety of post types to attract attention and recruit new students. 

Posting frequency and timing: Remember, it’s about quality, not quantity. A good rule of thumb is to post 4–6 times per week (including daily Stories). 

A meta-analysis (27 studies) found the time frame for the best engagement: Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 4 PM.

Format strategy

• Reels: Use them to drive discovery
• Stories: Boost retention with story, transformation, gratitude, and outcome posts
• Feed: Use it to build credibility

Related: Here’s the secret to Instagram growth for your gym

Generating revenue with Instagram

Here's a detailed breakdown showing you how to make money using Instagram:

Instagram and Facebook are both owned by Meta, so I’m going to go deeper into the nuts and bolts of advertising in the Facebook section. The formulas, tactics, and tips apply to both.

Facebook Strategy for BJJ Gyms

"Facebook is for old people; no one uses it anymore."

That attitude may be overblown—data from the Pew Research Center found that 71% of Americans use Facebook. 

One notable aspect of the platform is how people use it: they use Facebook to research small businesses they’re interested in working with. 

Here’s how businesses use Facebook. 

Pages vs groups

Academies focus on two aspects of Facebook. 

1. Pages: Successful gyms like Simple Man, Kingsway, or Renzo Gracie, post announcements and run ads
2. Groups: Gyms use Facebook groups to increase student participation, engagement, and retention

These two destinations on Facebook should be paired with goals that work well. 

For example, Facebook groups work well for student fight breakdowns, while Facebook pages are great for status updates, sharing your student’s wins.  

Posting frequency: Less is more—Facebook is very much like Instagram; 3–4 posts per week is more than enough to build your audience consistently over time. Facebook throttles organic reach on the regular. Contrary to popular belief, Facebook is a pay-to-play platform; Meta wants to funnel you towards paid social ads. 

Events

Use Facebook events to create seminars, workshops, events, and promotions—make these shareable and available to students—your members will invite their friends automatically if the event is structured properly. 

Facebook Ads basics

Before you advertise, you’ll want to calculate your break-even cost—how much you can afford to spend to sign up an individual student. Here are two simple formulas you can use: 

Want an easier way to do this calculation? Here’s a calculator for ya:

Calculate these numbers carefully. If you make incorrect assumptions or skew the numbers, your ad budget could become a money pit. 

Not sure what your cost-of-service numbers are? Here’s a list of items you can include: 

• Rent
• Instructor payroll
• Marketing/advertising
• Software
• Insurance
• Legal
• Utilities
• Cleaning

Add these up, then divide them by your student count.  

What does this look like? 

Scenario: Advertising for a new jiu-jitsu gym

This means you can afford to spend $95 to win a single student and still make money in your first month/billing cycle. 

Something important to note: your cost of service (CoG) should include: 

• Instructor pay (or owner draw)
• Rent portion per student
• Utilities
• Cleaning
• Software
• Insurance

Now, set a daily budget. 

You can start with $5 per day and use the 60-30-10 method I mentioned in another post. A budget of $750 per month ($25 per day) and a lead cost under $6 will deliver strong results. 

What about running a Facebook ad campaign? 

Isn’t this the sort of thing that you need an agency or thousands of hours to manage? Not at all. Brian Moran, founder of Samcart, shares a simple and efficient method for managing your Facebook ads.

TikTok Strategy for BJJ Gyms

TikTok ranks fourth, with 37% of Americans using the platform. 

Pew Research shares some interesting data on TikTok:

• Their engagement rate is (much) higher than the other social media platforms, sitting at 1.73%
• About half of adult TikTok users in the U.S. have never posted a video of themselves 
• A small minority of users produce the vast majority of content
• The typical TikTok user posts seldom, if ever
• And with 65M+ BJJ-related posts, the audience already exists

“The top 25% of US adults on TikTok, by posting volume, produce 98% of all publicly accessible videos.”

What does this mean? Most TikTok users consume content; they’re much more interested in doomscrolling or bingeing content they like than in creating it themselves.

Content that spreads quickly

• Highlight reels 
• Training fails
• Beginner FAQs
• Warnings
• A-day-in-the-life clips
• 15–30 second technique breakdowns

Here’s the interesting thing about TikTok. 

The platform culture expects authenticity—users seem to prefer homegrown video that’s recorded on their iPhone, over video with high production values. 

Posting frequency: Again, less is more—TikTok’s core value is authenticity, so 3–4 posts per week is enough to generate growth and traffic. 

Why should TikTok creators put out fewer posts when its algorithm rewards frequent posting? 

Gym owners and creators often find they need to throttle their post frequency. Why is that? They need to avoid triggering TikTok’s spam filters, which can lead to:

• Shadow bans 
• Content suppression 
• Reduced engagement due to audience fatigue. 

When gym owners focus on high-volume, low-quality, or inconsistent posting, they hurt their academy’s visibility. 

TikTok’s algorithm rewards frequent posting, to a point. But it’s unclear where that line is. 

Smart academies prioritize meaningful engagement (shares, saves, and longer watch times) over sheer quantity.

TikTok ads for beginners

Remember the numbers we ran for Facebook? The ones where you identify your break-even cost and cost of service? Those numbers apply here as well. The key question you’ll want to answer in your ad campaign is this. 

Which platform sends the best students at the lowest cost?

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the basics for beginners advertising on TikTok. 

Start slow and test everything. 

YouTube Strategy for BJJ Gyms

YouTube is the most popular social media platform in the United States. 

According to Pew Research, 84% of people in the US, 277 million people, use YouTube. YouTube is the second-largest search engine (no surprise since Google owns it). 

Like Google search, YouTube is oriented around searcher intent. People use search queries to find video answers to their questions. 

There’s more to it than that. YouTube favors channels with a clear thematic identity—e.g., channels that use animation, focus on ethics, or offer in-depth analyses. 

This isn’t about your topic; it’s about the format, style, and approach you use to communicate.  

It needs to be consistent. 

Approach to publishing on YouTube

YouTube is designed for two purposes: 

1. Education: You teach viewers how to do something that’s relevant to jiu jitsu (e.g., how to compete, how to escape mount, starting a gym, etc.). Think news, helpful how-to content, instructionals, rants, analyses, philosophy, etc.  
2. Entertainment: Your content delights viewers in a way that’s compelling or captivating. They’re interested in the stories you have to tell.  

At a minimum, you’ll want to post once or twice a month. Each video should get the full SEO-GEO-AEO treatment. 

How local BJJ academies can generate revenue with YouTube

Here’s a simple hub-and-spoke process for attracting students on YouTube. 

1. Do keyword research: Look for keyword clusters that are oriented around an idea or topic
2. Use AI to organize your keyword list into thematic clusters 
3. Create anchor videos: These are 5–10 min. videos that are divided into chapters, covering all of the topics in your thematic cluster
4. Create shorts: Break each video chapter into clips that you can publish as shorts. Use these shorts (spokes) to send viewers to the anchor video (hub)
5. Add end screens and title cards: Use these tools to link anchor videos together 
6. Set videos up for search: Remember the keywords from your thematic clusters? Work those keywords into your videos, transcripts, titles, and descriptions. Add hashtags where appropriate 
7. Syndicate your videos: Embed these videos in your web pages, add them to your Google Business Profiles, and add links on your website that point to these videos   

One important factor in these videos is searcher intent. 

When people enter keywords into Google, they have a goal. That goal is called search intent. Every keyword has a goal (e.g., learning, visiting a site, shopping, or making a purchase).

Here are some keyword themes to show you what I mean. You should create one video for each target keyword to ensure you get visibility across each idea.

YouTube content by search intent

With this list of keywords, you can: 

• Create anchor videos around these three clusters
• Add end screens and title cards to anchor videos 
• Break anchor videos into shorts and use the keywords in your theme
• Set videos up for search engines 

See what I mean? This takes some practice, but it’s straightforward. 

Posting frequency: Posting 1-2 times per month is a reasonable and sustainable approach. It’s also one that will draw new students in over time. The most important detail is consistency.

Creating a Content Calendar That You’ll Actually Use

Creating content is really hard. It doesn’t have to be, though. 

If you use a process that’s already in line with your gym, you’ll find it’s easy to create meaningful content for your gym. 

What do I mean? 

Your content should follow the Pareto Principle: 80% value, 20% promotion.

This simple five-step process tells you how to promote your academy and where to share it. When you share, don't cross-post.

Paid Social Media Basics: Facebook & Instagram Ads

Social media platforms are pay-to-play. Platforms incentivize gyms to pay for growth. It’s unpleasant, but it works. Here are some tips to ensure that paid ads work for you. 

Set a conservative budget and a simple ad campaign. Figure out what works, then spend more.

Facebook & Instagram ad targeting setup

Use Platform-Specific Strategies to Convert More Students

As we’ve seen, 2/3 gym-goers find their gyms through social media. If your students are looking for a BJJ academy to join, there's a good chance they're using social media to do it. 

Adopting a platform-specific strategy beats technique spam and random content. It gives you a clear plan of action, showing you what to post and what not to post. 

Here's the best part: When you follow a plan, social media marketing is easier—it requires less time and energy than random content most gyms are spamming the internet with. 

Use this guide to define your approach, create a plan of action, and attract more students.