Robin Arzón and (Yoga With) Adriene Mishler try to build their Instagram followers using the same tool. Their wildly different tactics yield wildly different results.

Last December, I noticed something odd happening in my Instagram stories. A bunch of friends were sharing a calendar graphic with the hashtag #3for31 and the tag @RobinNYC. Each day, they posted an updated calendar with another day crossed off.

I guessed 31 was for 31 days in December, but what was 3? And who was Robin?

Later that month, another friend shared an empty calendar graphic and invited people to join her on a January-long yoga challenge led by Adriene, of Yoga With Adriene. (I had, incidentally, heard of Adriene.)

What was happening? Were month-long fitness challenges now the social media norm, or was it a fluke that I happened to see two back-to-back? Was Adriene copying Robin?

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It’s December again, and Robin’s #3for31 is back on. In January, Adriene’s month-long yoga course will start. So let’s talk about how these two fitness influencers are taking advantage of the holidays and of New Year’s resolutions to grow their followings. In particular, I want to explore how Robin and Adriene use the same tool–the month-long fitness challenge–but implement it in very different ways.

This is a long one, so here’s a quick outline of what you’ll find:

1. An introduction to Robin and Adriene

2. More details about each month-long challenge: first Robin’s, then Adriene’s

3. Robin and Adriene’s different objectives for growing their followings

4. Results: did the challenges pay off?

Before jumping in, let’s take for granted that the two instructors truly do want to help people on their fitness journeys. This piece explores the financial motive and marketing tactics behind the altruistic sentiments.

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For some, December is a month of Christmas songs, family time, and doing a month’s worth of work in two weeks. For others, it’s a month of getting a head start on next year’s fitness resolutions. It’s no secret that gyms do best in January: that’s when they acquire 12% of their new members.

Savvy fitness influencers use this time to grow their followings, too. In the influencer world, more followers mean more paid opportunities: think sponsored posts, subscriber-only content sales, gear sponsorships (just like professional athletes have), and more.

Let’s introduce our two players today: Robin Arzón (@RobinNYC) and Adriene Mishler (@AdrieneLouise).

Robin Arzón is the Head Instructor and VP of Fitness at Peloton, which is how she has become a household name. (She was one of the first employees and started there in 2014.) Robin’s many accomplishments include running 27 marathons, teaching a MasterClass, and writing New York Times best-selling books. She quit a promising law career in 2012 to pursue fitness, something she realized from personal experience had the power to heal.

Adriene Mishler started Yoga With Adriene, a YouTube channel with yoga instruction, in 2012. It is now one of the top 1,000 most subscribed YouTube channels. As a spin-off to Yoga With Adriene’s success, Adriene launched Find What Feels Good, a subscription-only series of yoga content. Adriene initially pursued an acting career and has since pivoted to coaching yoga full time.

Although Robin and Adriene have different backgrounds and athletic focuses, they have a comparable number of Instagram followers–about 1 million each. This puts them in a similar category for sponsorship opportunities. (1 million probably sounds respectable to you, but they’re not the biggest in the sea of fitness influencers. Take a look at this list of fitness influencers to see some of the biggest accounts.)

Robin’s #3for31 Challenge

The #3for31 challenge is Robin’s way of motivating people to run 3 miles or to do 30 minutes of exercise every day in the month. To launch the campaign–oops, challenge–Robin shared a video of herself explaining the concept. She also posted an “accountability tracker,” a calendar graphic that people can use to track their progress.

This year’s challenge is different than last year’s because there is a prize. Participants win the possibility of becoming a Swagger Society Club member. No, completing the challenge doesn’t guarantee membership. (It’s not super clear what Swagger Society is, exactly, but Robin calls it a “lifestyle membership club in Web3.”)

To win the #3for31 challenge, people must exercise (duh) and post their accountability tracker on two social media platforms. On Instagram, they must tag @RobinNYC, and on Twitter, they must tag @SwaggerSociety. On both, they need to use #3for31 and #swaggersociety.

These rules are designed to gain exposure and followers. To complete the challenge, individuals will have to share Robin and Swagger Society’s names 124 times, if you count both the graphic content and the post caption required. Robin’s handle, that of her new club, and the associated hashtags will get thousands–if not millions–of views. This organic (free!) exposure will lead to increased interest and many more new followers.

Every day, Robin shares a few #3for31 posts in her stories, which would be exciting for any fan and could lead to more followers for them. Robin has an Instagram story highlight that saves all her #3for31 stories–some fans might get visibility in perpetuity!

Here’s the downside, though. More complicated rules (and a nebulous prize) lead to fewer participants and steeper drop-off in participation.

Adriene’s 30 Day Yoga Journey

Every January since 2015, Adriene has released a new series of classes called a “30 Day Yoga Journey.” The course is free (“a gift to you!”, as Adriene’s website says). Each course, posted on YouTube, has a one-word title that is the theme: the January 2023 class is “Center,” the January 2022 class was “Move.”

The purpose of the course is to get people hooked on Adriene. Oh, and to introduce them to yoga. The course is welcoming to beginners and experts alike. The course builds on itself: it is not 30 disjointed classes. Participants are encouraged to start at the beginning rather than picking and choosing classes. The classes vary in length, with some as short as 17 minutes and others as long as 47 minutes.

Adriene announces the new course and its theme every December through her personal Instagram account as well as through her professional Find What Feels Good account. To sign up, people input their email address on her website. Adriene then sends an email every day in January with the latest class link.

Adriene’s 4-minute long announcement video immediately sets herself apart from typical influencers today. The length of the video alone requires patience for a social media crowd, though it may be perfect for someone interested in the rhythm of a yoga class. The horizontal aspect ratio is a stark contrast to the Instagram-friendly vertical aspect ratio. This video was not created to go viral on Instagram stories–in fact, it didn’t even go up in her stories.

There is no challenge here. There is no prize. There are no hashtags. There is a calendar, which Adriene sends out with the first email about the course, but there is no encouragement–much less requirement–to share it on social media. In a true “find what feels good” Adriene way, the reward is showing up for yourself.

The only word-of-mouth marketing nudge Adriene gives is in the email confirming participation. She suggests you invite a friend to do the course, too. For accountability and for more fun. This is a clever psychological move because much has been written about the power of accountability buddies in building good habits. It is also a savvy move because Adriene makes people think that it is in their interests, not hers, to ask more people to sign up. She turns her existing community into behind-the-scenes advocates.

In January, the course does not take over Adriene’s social media presence. In fact, in January 2022, she only posted about the course in her personal feed on 4 out of 31 days. She didn’t share original stories about it, but she did reshare some stories about it in which she was tagged.

Adriene spent hours and thousands of dollars creating new course content, and yet she doesn’t promote it as much as she could.

Two Different Objectives

Both Robin and Adriene want to increase their number of followers, but they want to do so for different reasons.

Robin Arzón

Robin rose to digital prominence thanks to Peloton, which has a history of launching fitness instructors into stardom. (Most notably, instructor Cody Rigsby competed on Dancing With the Stars.)

Robin’s fans love her classes and stay with Peloton for her. They love her personality, her energy, and her approach to fitness. Robin therefore gives them more of that on social media. She puts herself forward: she is in every single one of her Instagram feed posts. Her Instagram story videos encouraging people to stick with the #3for31 challenge are similar to the encouragement she gives during class.

Robin is following a typical influencer path. Her prominence and social media following has unlocked brand partnerships, speaking engagements, and books. On Instagram, Robin identifies as a public figure. On her website, Robin has a “Work With Me” section with a media kit, a press contact, and a list of all the brands she has represented. This shows her aspirations to work with more brands as an individual.

Once Robin achieves an even greater standing than she already has, she’ll remove the entire section from her website. All she will need is a press contact who will handle all requests for her.

A campaign like #3for31 increases Robin’s name recognition, sparks interest in partnerships, and adds fuel to her pricing power.

Adriene Mishler

Adriene does not seem interested in pushing herself forward but rather wants to build a community. Her personal and professional Instagram accounts are categorized as “community.” A bigger community leads to more recurring revenue through Adriene’s Find What Feels Good yoga subscription service. It may lead to more sponsorships and speaker opportunities as well, though Adriene doesn’t seem to seek those out.

At first glance, Adriene seems like a social media newb who stumbled her way to 1 million Instagram followers. Her feed is not a series of perfectly filtered photos of Adriene. It is not polished, curated, and with a unifying aesthetic. It seems to come directly from Adriene’s heart: between a couple of promos for her yoga videos, she shares her own photos, unfiltered and unedited. (See: a series of 5 photos of purple and white roses, nearly all identical, none of them particularly beautiful.)

This natural and organic content strengthens Adriene’s relationships with her audiences. By using @AdrieneLouise on Instagram, she makes her followers feel like they’re getting the real Adriene. (Yes, you know her middle name!) They’re seeing her personal account, not an account managed by someone else. It does, however, make it harder for fans to find her. Parenthetically, it is surprising that Adriene doesn’t own and use the @yogawithadriene handle on Instagram to be consistent with her YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.

Adriene’s use of email reinforces the community aspect of her work. Email is more personal than social media. It feels private. Adriene creates a one-on-one relationship with the people in her community.

There is another huge benefit to building a community through email. Adriene is “de-platforming:” she ensures that she does not rely on Instagram or any other platform to access her fans. Once she owns their email addresses, she can speak to them whenever she wants. De-platforming is a huge trend for social media influencers who worry that algorithm changes will affect their content reach.

The Results

So how are each of these campaigns performing for Robin and Adriene? Let’s take a look using publicly available statistics.

#3for31 Doesn’t Help Robin’s Following Much

This graph (source) shows that Robin’s #3for31 challenge didn’t provide a noticeable bump in Instagram followers last year. (Let’s give her a couple of months to see if she gets one this year.)

Overall, Robin has a consistent upward trend in followers. Her ongoing social media efforts and Peloton coaching generate a steady source of new followers. Her biggest increase in followers came at the beginning of the pandemic (first blue circle), when Peloton gained millions of customers. Since then, the other major shift in trajectory was mid-2021 (second blue circle), though I do not know to what that’s due.

This report also gives Robin a yellow “average” rating for her engagement rate (ie, the number of likes and comments per post, divided by the number of followers). According to Hootsuite, influencers with over 100,000 followers have an average engagement rate of 0.49% — so Robin is doing better than average. Compared to Adriene (who we’ll discuss next), Robin has a lot of room for improvement on this front. The content that she shares is only resonating with a very small number of her followers.

In this year’s #3for31 challenge, Robin is trying to gain followers for the Swagger Society Twitter account (which has 1,307 followers as of 12/19). That number of followers is surprisingly low, given Robin’s solid Twitter following and significant Instagram following. On Twitter, Robin has 72,000 followers. This means only 1.8% of her Twitter followers also decided to follow Swagger Society. And that’s assuming none of her Instagram followers decided to follow Swagger Society on Twitter.

Swagger Society–a web3 club–is clearly not of interest to Robin’s existing following, who love her for her fitness tips. It looks like Robin will not be able to depend on her followers to build momentum for Swagger Society. She’ll need to find and build community from scratch within the web3 world.

30 Day Yoga Journey Provides Big Bump for Adriene

This graph (source) shows that the annual 30 Day Yoga Journey provides Adriene with a noticeable increase in followers every January despite her limited social media promotions. (I added the blue circles to highlight the already-evident bumps.) In recent years, Adriene barely gains any other followers through the year: the annual 30 Day Yoga Journey is her only boost. And that makes sense, given the low-key, personal content that Adriene shares throughout the rest of the year. It does not call attention to herself or make asks of her followers.

This report shows Adriene’s average engagement is almost 3x that of Robin’s. Adriene’s followers love the content that she shares. The casual, unfiltered vibe works for her community.

The 30 Day Yoga Journey also provides a bump to Adriene’s professional Instagram account, @fwfglife. Unlike Adriene’s personal account, the professional one steadily gains more followers throughout the year. It would be interesting to see how the overall bump across both Instagram accounts translates to Find What Feels Good paying subscribers.

Fitness influencers, focus on creating engaging classes!

Existing and aspiring fitness influencers can learn from how Robin Arzón and Adriene Mishler run their month-long fitness challenges. Both use these challenges to gain followers in order to achieve their long-term business goals. Ultimately, Adriene’s approach is the most successful at providing that follower increase.

The major difference between how the two influencers’ approach is that Adriene creates hours of yoga classes every year for her 30 Day Yoga Journey challenge. This is the tipping point that leads to Adriene’s success. New class content means that people spend hours practicing yoga with Adriene, getting to know her personality and her style. Those who love it get hooked. And that’s Adriene’s objective, because that means those people will follow her on social media, take more classes, and buy subscriptions and gear.

In contrast, Robin does not create new class content for her #3for31 challenge. She merely encourages her followers to exercise every day, with her or without her. That lack of bonding through class leads to a less-engaged audience on social media and fewer followers–but it does generate many more mentions of Robin’s name. Robin’s true loyal fanbase likely comes from the people who take her classes and who get to experience that special Robin energy. If they do not get that chance, they will see her as just another influencer.

Yes, Robin and Adriene use wildly different styles on social media. But that’s ok. What’s important is that their different styles resonate with their followers. For Robin, it’s putting herself front and center. For Adriene, it’s building community.

Fitness instructors become influencers because something about their personality and style during class clicks with their audience. Investing big in giving followers more of that will deliver results. For fitness instructors (and wannabe influencers), more class content is the key.

The tactics around releasing that content–for example, how much self-promotion the influencer does–need to align with the influencer’s personality. That personality is the hook, and using it effectively is what will keep followers engaged.

Marketers always say that content is king. And in this head-to-head fitness challenge, it proves to be true.

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