What is an AMA and Why Should I do one?
AMA stands for Ask Me Anything. Think of it like a forum based Questions and Answers segment. You can see examples of past AMAs here.
How Does it Work?
You get to engage and interact with the largest home gym community on the internet.
You pick a month out of the year, and then two days in that month (schedule pending with Joe Gray). On the first day of your AMA you’ll make a post titled “I’m X from Y, Ask Me Anything” (or something similar). In the post description you’ll have details about who you (or your company) is/are and why someone would want to talk to you. Maybe you’ve handled more barbells than anyone else, or you are a professional powerlifter, or you run a successful manufacturing site, or maybe your company makes the best functional trainer or power rack around.
All day long members of the Home Gym section of Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/homegym/) will hop in and ask questions. They could be about you, about your company, about your equipment, future equipment being made, etc. So that’s why the post description is very important, it gives them some guidance on what you may be (and not be) knowledgeable about.
You answer their questions, sometimes it’ll spark a back and forth conversation. But it is that simple.
How Do I Schedule an AMA?
You’ll pick two consecutive days and run it from about 8AM the first day, till 5PM the second day.
When you pick your date, make sure you will be able to:
- Log-in that morning
- Create the AMA post
- Be active throughout the next two days
You do NOT need to sit in front of the computer for the entire 8 hours, but make sure to check in periodically to keep answering questions and comments and keep engagement high. Nothing worse than a stale AMA. More involvement on your end, means more involvement from our community.
Work with Joe to pick a date. He manages the schedule. Once you have that, we’ll book our call for the AMA Warm-Up.
The AMA Warm-Up
New for 2024, we have kicked off a series called the AMA Warm-Up. You get to sit down with myself and briefly introduce yourself to the audience. I ask 5 questions, it goes up on YouTube, we get some Social Media clips from it, and it serves as the AMA announcement.
- who are you, what do you, why are you here…
- tell me about your lifting experience…
- what is your experience with r/HomeGym and the home gym community as a whole?
- tell me something unique about your company
- tell me one reason why people should be excited about your upcoming AMA
FAQs
Why should I do an AMA?
The benefit for the community is getting to pick your brain on whatever topics you know about. This is a group of people who LOVE home gyms and spend (arguably) too much time thinking about gym equipment. Thus they love getting a sneak peak, behind the scenes look from YOU!
The benefit for you is a dedicated TWO days of interaction, engagement, questions and answers with the largest home gym community on the internet. With over 1 million subscribers, 335k views per week, and 10,000+ unique visitors a day, AMAs are garnering 20k views and hundreds of comments, with bigger AMAs reaching 70k+ views and/or 600+ cumulative comments.
You get to tell your story, plug your products, inform the audience of why they should be your next customer, get product feedback and ideas… really whatever you want to give and get from this community, this is your chance.
Your AMA gets added to the Past AMA list for ever and can easily show up in searches and more providing continual return on your investment of time.
Is it live?
No, at least not in the sense that you have to answer questions in a live format. It will be “live”, as in open and available for a certain time frame, but you can answer questions as they come in, at specific times, in bursts throughout the day, or whatever works for your schedule. We have had AMAs take place from companies in Norway while the majority of our audience is in the US. The more active you are, the more engaged the community is, the better the response.
What about giveaways?
One potential bonus… is giving away a prize/prizes during the AMA. Not required, many do not do this, but people love free stuff. The typical requirement is that people participate in the AMA to win. You can create whatever rules you like, including email registrations, social media follows, you name it. You can split giveaways and have one on Instagram, one on Reddit, and encourage people participate in both. Or you could hand out discount codes to your favorite question every hour. In other words, get creative and have some fun.
Can I link to my Social, Website, etc?
The AMA is for YOU to do what you want. Links to sales, new products, YouTube videos, your new TikTok page. You can link to your Social Media pages or Website, you could answer some questions via an Instagram Story post. You can answer every question with a GIF, or include multiple members of your team. The more creative and engaging you are, the more everyone will interact, the more you get out of the AMA.
What does a good AMA look like?
The current reigning champ is Freak Athlete with their AMA that had over 900 comments and nearly 70k views. They had a great post title, a solid giveaway, they promoted the AMA through their newsletter and social media, partnered with Joe on additional promotions, and made sure it was a bumping event.
REP Fitness has been the king of BIG AMAs over the years, with over 80k views on their most recent.
Other great examples are Inspire Fitness, Titan Fitness, Gluck’s Gym, and the very creative Freedom Fitness Equipment.
And you can see how I ran my own AMA in 2023.
You’ll see that the giveaways range from $1000 gift cards, a power rack, and dumbbell sets, to $50 gift cards. Yet they were all successful AMAs.
They were active, engaged, and answered all questions (even the tough ones). They had great descriptions, were creative, and created a buzz on their own communication channels as well.
How Do I Prepare For An AMA?
Great question… Such a great question, that I have some tips and tricks and day of details for you. Ready for an AMA? – head here.