In a world currently dominated by social media, marketing on these platforms is essential for community rec centers. To fully communicate the programs and facilities that benefit members, social media marketing must be embraced to connect with the community.
That’s why Lauren Bacigalupi, the chief marketing officer at Greater Philadelphia YMCA, and Stefanie Noble, the vice president of marketing and communication at YMCA of Central New York, are successfully showcasing their centers in an ever-changing online landscape.
Below are strategies and advice from Bacigalupi and Noble on how to get the most out of social media marketing.
Successful Strategies
Bacigalupi said her YMCA works with our teams to identify stories, staff, classes and moments that are important to our members. These moments can then be used as behind-the-scenes content, staff features, special pop-up group exercise classes, etc.
To ensure this marketing is supporting the Y’s mission, she said her team first identifies their key target user which are moms in the community. This is because women are the key decision makers for most of the Y’s family purchases, but also because she opens the door to the Ys nonprofit/community impact.
“It’s mom who will put her kid in a swim lesson,” said Bacigalupi. “It’s mom who will encourage her husband to use the fitness floor, who will take advantage of our babysitting service and who will donate to our programs. By establishing the Y as the place that supports her family, that opens the door to repeat business. Therefore, we keep our marketing focused primarily on moms and then add additional target audiences depending on time of year, branch or other factors.”
With the social media and digital landscape changing dramatically over the past decade, Noble said her Y’s marketing team has also expanded and contracted. In fact, they added a new position of community impact coordinator in December 2024.
“This position is tasked — in part — with managing our social media content and searching out stories of impact within our Y,” said Noble. “What this has allowed for is more consistency in our social media efforts and resources to highlight more stories of our programs and individuals. I really think that’s key. If you can’t dedicate the time or resources in some fashion, getting attention will be an accident vs. intentional.”
Pitfalls to Avoid
Despite the positive aspects of social media marketing, they are some pitfalls rec centers can fall into. One of which is incorrect usage of the surging trend of AI and the ease of falling into complacency.
“Avoid AI-generated images and stock photos when you can,” said Bacigalupi. “Every graphic has a use case that makes sense but remember many of our centers are centered around community. It’s important — and a benefit — to show real examples, real photos and real video of your initiatives in action. Social media users don’t need professionally produced content 100% of the time, but they need to feel connected to your content 100% of the time.”
For Noble, avoiding complacency comes back to ensuring your Y’s intention in social media marketing.
“I think any of us could look at our metrics and see that the generic smoothie recipe post is probably at the bottom of the pile,” said Noble. “However, if you have a video of your Active Older Adults all trying out a smoothie recipe after blending them while riding the new smoothie bikes, that’s probably going to do much better. But it’s also going to take more effort to plan and execute that post. My advice to any Y or rec center is to avoid thinking that effective social media can just be done on the fly or by anyone. The planning and skill required to create and manage it are real.”
Consolidating Social Media Pages
One marketing topic of interest in the industry right now is on rather or not to consolidate social media pages for organizations with multiple branches. For example, how does a YMCA in a very large city handle its social media pages for different locations in the community>
Noble said she recently led a conversation around social media consolidation at the 2025 YMCA CMO/Marketing Leaders Conference. What she found is it’s clear there’s no right or wrong answer on this. In fact, some larger YMCA associations may lose some localization by consolidating fully, so it’s a question of what reflects your community best and what your teams can successfully manage.
“We consolidated most of our Facebook pages in 2023, keeping just a few separate that served specific audiences,” said Noble. “We have one LinkedIn page and two Instagram accounts. When we consolidated, we also moved to using social media almost exclusively for sharing photos and stories vs. things like facility updates that would sometimes overwhelm the branch pages. The consolidation was successful for us. We didn’t get much pushback after making our case. It made management easier for our small team and focused engagement more effectively.”
Bacigalupi said the Greater Philadelphia YMCA has a mixture of consolidation as each Y branch has its own account and then there’s an account for the association.
“This allows us to create localized, specific content for each location as well as promoting association-wide initiatives and announcements,” said Bacigalupi. “We use the association account to feature events and posts from individual locations for added reach and to showcase the amazing things happening across the region. The localized content ensures that people still feel connected to what is happening in their immediate area.”
Trends to Watch
Going into 2026, Bacigalupi said with the rise of AI overview and GEO, centers must be ready to tell their stories everywhere they can.
“With the indexing of more social media content, we need to make sure posts are educational but also include important keywords and content,” said Bacigalupi. “Pay attention to data to determine what people are asking for, what comes up in your AI search results and how you can create content that supports your efforts. Also, the change to Instagram layout only solidifies the importance of short-form video. We’ll identify ways to train and equip our teams to capture more video.”
Additionally, with the social media landscape is more fragmented than ever, Noble said trust in social platforms is low, and there are a lot of questions about engagement with younger audiences. I
“Is it healthy? How do you engage safely?” said Noble. “I think maintaining trust, transparency, and authenticity will always be necessary for any Y or rec center looking to engage directly with their audiences, regardless of the platform or any trend.”
Final Advice
For any rec center team trying to expand their reach on social media, Bacigalupi said to first listen to your data and your members. They tell you exactly what they like and what they want to know more about through their engagement and their feedback.
“Feature your staff and their expertise as well,” said Bacigalupi. “Not only does it humanize the topic, but members love to shout out their favorite instructors and coaches, leading to overall better engagement. Your staff are amazing, engaging and qualified, and they deserve to be highlighted.”
Noble’s parting advice was for centers to make it as easy as possible for Y colleagues to support social media efforts.
“Our marketing team uses Asana for project management,” said Noble. “We built a form within it to make it easy for anyone on our staff to type in a short website address on their phone and send our team photos along with any relevant information about their program or event. Creating an overall culture that works to champion the stories from our community not only supports social media outreach, but also makes it one of many tools you have to build your Y brand locally.”
