Neil has one line about free posts in his book:
"Free posts on platforms like Facebook and Instagram usually don't get very many impressions (people seeing the post), so you should try to automate these as much as possible."
Impressions meaning people seeing the post. Here is what "not very many" looks like with a number on it.
How many people see a martial arts school's posts?
Socialinsider's 2026 Facebook benchmark report is drawn from 25 million organic posts, meaning the ones nobody paid to promote, published by 139,000 brand pages. It gives its figures by page size.
For a page with 1,000 to 5,000 followers:
- An image post averages 60 views. A status post, 60. An album, 85.
- Comments average 1, whatever the format.
- Across all page sizes, the average Facebook engagement rate is 0.15%, flat on the year before. Socialinsider counts that as reactions, comments and shares divided by follower count.
The same report covers Instagram, same follower bracket. There, an image averages 417 views, a Reel 580, a carousel 993. Comments run 1 on an image, 2 on a carousel, 3 on a Reel. Instagram's average engagement rate across all sizes is 0.48%, which is down 24% on last year, with carousels at 0.55%, Reels at 0.52% and images at 0.37%.
So the grading photos you put up on Sunday night did roughly what grading photos do. Those are the benchmarks for a page your size, which is a different thing from being bad at this.
Does posting on social media bring in new martial arts students?
Our answer is a few, and mostly through the families who already know you. The reason is in who is on the other end.
A follower is somebody who went looking for you and pressed a button. Your own students' parents. Students. Ex-students. The instructor from two towns over. People who came to a birthday party in March. That is a warm, loyal, genuinely valuable list of people, and every one of them went looking for you first.
Which is the thing that no amount of posting changes. A family three miles away with a six-year-old who has never heard your school's name is not following you, because nobody follows a school they have not heard of.
ClubRight, a company that sells software to clubs, puts this first on its list of what holds martial arts clubs back: "Posting for existing students, not potential ones." Their line after it is the useful bit. "Your social media should be doing two jobs: retaining members and attracting new ones." They also describe Facebook as a community and conversion tool rather than a discovery one, which is a polite way of saying the same thing.
That matches what we see. The owner doing it is not being lazy, he is doing real work three times a week aimed at the wrong half of the problem.
So what is organic social actually for?
Two jobs, both worth doing, neither of them filling Tuesday's beginner class.
It is a second website. Here is Neil on it: "Profile pages on popular social media networks like Facebook and Instagram are a must-have and you should have links on your social media profile pages and bios so that people can easily book a class from there. In some ways these pages serve as another website. They're also free to set up so you may as well use them." A parent who hears your name from a friend looks you up before she rings anybody. What she finds is your profile, and whether there is a way to book from it.
It is where referrals get asked for. Referrals are the warmest thing you will ever get, because a friend has already vouched for you. Neil's point about them is that most come early, while a new student is still excited and still has friends who have not heard about it yet, and that the moments to ask are after they book, after they show and after they enrol. Your own feed is one of the few places where the people you want to ask are actually watching. We have written up the referral offer worth making and what to do with the siblings and friends of a brand-new student separately.
If you are not yet at thirty students, organic is the work. Neil's position is that you get to about thirty through the free channels before you spend anything on ads, and we have the whole argument for that on its own page.
How often should a martial arts school post?
Often enough that a parent who looks you up finds a live account. That is the bar.
Socialinsider's figure for brand pages is 39 Facebook posts a month, down 22% on the year before. Neil's advice is the practical version: write a batch, schedule them, and get the month off your mind. Posts can be created and scheduled in advance, so you set them up once a week or once a month and the account stays active without you thinking about it on a Tuesday night.
What we will not do is hand you a content calendar. We have no evidence about which posts work for your school. What we will say is this: decide who each post is for before you write it.
Your profile, audited on your own phone
- Open your own profile on a phone, logged out. That is what a parent sees when a friend gives her your name. Can she tell what you teach, what ages you take, and where you are, without scrolling?
- Is there a way to book from the bio? Not a link to your homepage. A link that lands on the trial booking. If it is missing, that is tonight's job and it is the most valuable thing on this list.
- Look at the date on your last post. A parent who finds an account that stopped in March wonders whether you are still open. Live beats polished.
Is it better to post or to advertise on Facebook?
They are not in competition, so you do not have to pick.
Posting talks to people who already found you. Advertising is how you get in front of a family inside a few miles of your school who has never heard of you, with your offer, at a time you choose. That is the only one of the two that fills a class next month, and it is why Neil tells owners to start paid on Meta: almost everyone in the group you want is on Facebook and Instagram, and the targeting is strong.
One thing gets muddled here, so it is worth saying plainly. Do not go looking for the format that wins. Owners ask us whether it should be video or images. Our answer is both, and whatever gets results is what we keep running. There is a fuller version of that if you want it, and the Facebook-or-Google decision has its own page too. Showing up in Google's own local results is a separate job again, and what that actually returns is written up on its own.
What we cannot fix with any of this
Three things, and all three sit on your side of the line.
A profile with no booking link. An offer nobody would cross the road for. And a full timetable, which is the one that catches people out, because it turns a good month into a bad one.
Those are yours. We will tell you on the call if we think we are about to cause you a problem you have not planned for.
Where we sit in this
We find the families, get them booked and remind them to come. You welcome them, run a great first class, and enrol them.
No retainer, no contract, and we get paid when a student walks into your school. If you want to talk it through, bring your timetable and the number of spaces you can genuinely take this month, and if we do not think we can fill them we will say so.
The one thing to do Monday
Open your Instagram or Facebook insights and put your follower count next to your active student count.
Then look at your last ten posts and write a single letter beside each one: C for a current family, S for a stranger. If the column is all Cs, you have not been bad at social media. You have been doing the keeping job well, and nobody has been doing the finding job at all.
Questions owners ask
Does posting on social media bring in new martial arts students?
Some, through referrals and through people who already know your name. Not many directly. Socialinsider's 2026 benchmark report, built on 25 million organic Facebook posts from 139,000 brand pages, puts the average post on a page with 1,000 to 5,000 followers at about 60 views and one comment. That is the benchmark, not your failing. Treat posting as the job of keeping and growing the families you have.
How often should a martial arts school post?
Often enough that a parent checking you out finds a live account, which is a lower bar than most advice implies. Socialinsider found brand pages published 39 Facebook posts a month on average in 2025, down 22% on the year before. Neil's advice is to write a batch and schedule them, so the account stays current without eating your evenings.
What should a martial arts school post about?
We do not hand out content calendars, because we have no evidence about which posts work for your school. What we would do is decide the audience of each post before you write it: a current family, or a stranger. If every one of your last ten posts was for a current family, that is worth knowing.
Is it better to post or to advertise on Facebook?
They do different jobs, so it is not really a choice. Posting reaches the people who already follow you. Advertising is how you reach a family inside a few miles of your school who has never heard of you, and Meta is where Neil tells owners to start, because almost everyone you want is on it and the targeting is strong.
How many followers should a martial arts school have?
There is no number worth chasing. A follower count is not a student count, and growing it is not the same work as filling Tuesday's beginner class. Compare the two numbers once, to see which of the two jobs your social media is currently doing, then stop measuring yourself on the one that does not pay your rent.