1. Capture and upload your video to your Facebook account

The easiest way to do this is using your smartphone and the Facebook mobile app. Click here to go to the Facebook help site for instructions. Once your video is uploaded it will be added to your Facebook Timeline and look a little like this:

2. Copy the embed code

Click on the video to open it and then select Options in the menu at the bottom of the video.

Select Embed Video to bring up the embed code and copy this to the clipboard.

3. Paste the code into Bodybook

Go to the item you want to add and paste the code into the comment box like this:

The highlighted part of the code is all you need so go ahead and delete the other parts of the code so it looks like this:

Click the Update button and you’re done. The video will now be embedded in your post and can be played without having to visit Facebook.

The video is embedded using Flash so unfortunately can’t be viewed at all on iPhone or iPad

One final point to note is that even though the video can be played in the Bodybook feed it will only be playable if the Facebook post is set to Public. Any video set to private can’t be played by someone else who happens to view it in Bodybook.

After your first one it’s pretty easy and it really makes a big difference for the other players to see what you’re up to in a video – can’t wait to see what you post!

IMPORTANT NOTE: All Facebook videos are NOT in the public domain. Videos posted by Facebook users maybe copyrighted, personal, private, and may NOT be permitted for distribution or illegal to use without permission. So before you go ahead and embed any Facebook video other than your own, ALWAYS seek permission from the video owner / creator.

What’s it all about?

Bodybook is designed to help you get fitter and become more active in a social and supportive environment. From walking the dog to hard-core workouts, you can choose a fitness challenge that’s right for you and track your progress in a fun, engaging and highly social way – without having to count every single rep or calorie. You can invite your friends to play along, setup personal ‘FitRewards’ and earn stickers for inclusion in your personal ‘StickerBook’. These stickers build up to an impressive collection which you can show off in your StickerBook. But there’s a twist – the stickers are programmed to ‘fade away’ over time so you need to revisit older challenges if you want to keep your stickers fresh and clean. Just like fitness, you need to use it or lose it!

Activity Feed

If you want to know what’s happening in Bodybook, the feed is the best place to start. You’ll be able to see the latest activity posts, comments, replies and shared media from all Bodybook users. You can like a post, add a reply or paste links to pictures, videos and even Spotify playlists. There’s also a similar feed in your profile just for the activities of you and your friends, plus any challenges you may be following. You can narrow down the content of the feed to just you, you and your friends or everything. If you see something interesting, write a reply, give it a like or add a photo or video – it only works if you join in!

Setting up your account

Once you’ve signed up and landed on your profile you’ll probably want to make things more presentable so that other players can see what you look like and learn more about you. The first thing to do is add your ‘real’ name and a bit about yourself. You can upload some photos and choose the one that’s just right and can be seen in all your challenge and comment posts – smiling is optional but recommended! It’s also useful to enter your country and location as in the future you’ll be able to compare the performance of international players and lots of other useful stuff.

Friends

Bodybook is much more fun if you play with friends. Recent research also supports the fact that you’ll be more inclined to stick with a challenge (and get fitter) if you’re doing it with others – not just other players but people cheering you on and liking your comments. You can invite friends not already in Bodybook via email, or search existing Bodybook players and send them a ‘Friend request’. All friend requests have to be confirmed by the other person to confirm the connection. Also, if you change your mind, you can remove a friend from your list. Once connected you’ll be able to see their comments in your feed and filter lists and leaderboards to show just you and your friends – perfect for when you want to confirm bragging rights!

Challenges

To play a challenge simply go to the challenges area and have a browse. You can filter by the most popular or latest and see some basic information to help you decide. There are challenges for all sorts of activities ranging from cardio to specific exercises such squats, planks and so on. There are also branded challenges where you can earn prizes and discounted goods and services to go with your hard-earned stickers. You can track your best score each time or record what you do in each session to build up a cumulative total. As you progress, you’ll be able to keep track of your personal progress, plus see where you are in relation to other players on the leaderboard and progress board. Don’t forget to post comments and replies to other players, everybody needs a little encouragement! Clicking the Join button adds you into the challenge, ready to start adding your updates. Some challenges are invite only, however, so you’ll need to get the access code from the challenge organiser first. You can view all your current and past challenges under the My Challenges tab in your profile.

Stickers

Stickers are the record of your achievements in Bodybook – the more you have, the better your book will look! ‘Everybody Wins’ challenges will always present you with a sticker if you finish the target activity in time. Only the players in the top three positions of ‘Best Score’ challenges receive a sticker at the end of the challenge, so you’ll need to be on top form every month if you want to claim yours. Other stickers attached to challenges are created by third parties such as health clubs and sporting goods suppliers and they often have ‘real word’ rewards attached in the form of discounts, vouchers and prize draw entries. Other, more exclusive, stickers are available but we can’t tell you how to win them, you’ll just have to find out!

FitRewards

Everybody needs a carrot, and you know best what will give you the incentive you need. It could be a personal treat or something for your partner or family. You just need to make a note of your reward and your friends and followers will be cheering you along in no time. You can see all the FitRewards you’re  currently playing for, and a list of previous rewards, under your FitRewards tab. Go on, you deserve it.

Sharing

Sharing your triumphs and tribulations is at the heart of the social fitness elements of Bodybook. In the same way that you want others to do well, they’re also rooting for you. Link your Bodybook account to Facebook and/or Twitter and you can then log in with your existing social media user details as well as share your updates and comments with your friends and followers outside of Bodybook. If you want to change your sharing settings you can go to the Sharing tab in your account area to set things up.

Notifications

Notifications keep you on top of what’s happening in your challenges. You can be notified via email when friends join, leave, progress or finish a challenge. If you want to change which notifications to receive, you can head over to the Notifications tab on your account settings and make your changes.

That’s all for now. See you on the leaderboard!

Once you’re all signed up as a Creator you’ll want to make your first challenge. Think about what kind of player engagement you’re looking for and consider challenge ideas that will drive this behaviour. Once you’ve decided this it’s time to get started on creating your challenge.

1. Choose a challenge type

There are two main challenge types you can currently choose from:

1. Everybody Wins – this is based on collecting a cumulative score e.g. Collect a total of 50,000 steps over time. More…
2. Best Score – this is about recording your best score attempt e.g. the most burpees in a minute.

2. Give it a name and description

Think of something catchy that will attract attention and will make people want to join in. Be creative - what would make you join a challenge?

3. Choose the activity

Bodybook is about focusing on a single thing in a challenge, so now you need to decide what it is that’s going to be tracked. It could be something universal like calories, time or miles, or it could be a very specific exercise such as squats and press-ups.

4. Set the challenge duration

You can keep the challenge open as long as you like or crank up the pressure by adding a deadline for when the challenge closes. If you choose a deadline a countdown timer is displayed in the challenge. More…

5. Make it your own

Make it your own by adding your own artwork for a banner, sticker and your background. If you’re using our Concierge service we can also add your content such as articles, videos, terms and conditions and charity donation links in your activity feed sidebar. More…

6. Decide who can play

You can make your challenge public and available for anyone to play or you can make it private so that only players with an invite code can join and play. More…

If you don’t want your challenge to be visible straight away you can leave it as a draft and use the edit and preview functions to get it just right. Once you’re happy, making the challenge active will publish it ready for players to join in and start playing. Now go and create your first challenge!

‘Everybody Wins’ (EB) involves the player aiming for a cumulative total at their own pace. This is particularly good for beginners as it’s relative to their current fitness levels, i.e. they do as much as comfortable each time and there’s always a contribution to their overall total. When that cumulative total is reached, the player finishes the challenge and receives their achievement sticker along with a record of how long it took. Most players will either move onto a different challenge or play the same one again to try and hit the cumulative target quicker than before.

To make your new challenge you need to go to the Challenges tab of your Creator area and select the Create button in the ‘Everybody Wins’ option box. If you want to preview an example you can select the view example link. If you don’t have a Creator account yet, you can sign up here.

The first thing you’ll need to do is enter a title and description for your challenge. This needs to be immediately clear and attractive – be creative, what would make you join this challenge?

Challenge Type, Activity and Goal

There are 4 types of challenge you can create:

Cardio- The list includes most of the activities designed to get your heart rate up and burning calories, both indoors and outside, including:

1. Cycling – indoor and road
2. Step counts from a pedometer
3. Elliptical machine
4. Rowing – on water or machine
5. Running – treadmill and road
6. Step machine
7. Swimming
8. Walking
9. Other – you can add the name of a different cardio activity

Reps- Or ‘repetitions’ of a particular exercise. These can be a single total or in exercise ‘sets’. Default activities in the list are for basic bodyweight exercises but you can add your own when you select the ‘Other’ category in the list. Default exercises are:

1. Burpees
2. Dips
3. Press-ups (aka Push-ups)
4. Pullups (aka Chins)
5. Sit-ups
6. Squats
7. Other

Attendance- Here, players can simply add a ‘check-in’ date and time to build up a total of attendances for a loyalty or retention programme. Default items include:

1. Fitness
2. General Activity
3. Lessons
4. Sport
5. Other

Time- Time-based challenges include cardio activities, plus bodyweight resistance exercises based on holding a position, such as wall-sits and planks. Default items include:

1. Cardio – Cycling, Elliptical, Rowing, Running, Stepper, Swimming and Walking
2. Resistance – Flexed-arm hang, Plank, Superman (or woman) and Wall-sit
3. General – Crossfit, Pilates, Yoga and Other

You can combine these characteristics in many different ways to get exactly the sort of thing you need.

Once you’ve chosen your challenge type and activity, you need to set a goal amount and unit. Think carefully about your goal as it needs to be challenging enough to require effort, but not so big that it puts people off. For example, it’s better to have multiple challenges with smaller goals that can be achieved over a shorter period than one large number which may take many weeks of hard work. Depending on the items selected, there are some suggested units, along with a category for Other to put any type of unit you like.

Default goal units include:

Kilometres, Laps, Metres, Miles, Steps, Calories, Feet, Floors, Lengths, Yards, Reps and Minutes.

Once you have the basics entered you can save your challenge at any time and come back to it later. Don’t worry about players seeing a half-finished challenge as they can only see a challenge once you decide to ‘publish‘ it. Until then it stays as a ‘draft‘ and remains hidden from your players.

In part 2 we’ll look at how you set a duration for your challenge…

In certain situations it’s useful to be able to create a sense of urgency where the challenge is only available for a limited amount of time. The duration depends upon what you think is a reasonable time to complete, or you may want the finish date to coincide with a competition, public holiday or event.

There are 2 options for closing the challenge:

1. Manual- This is the most flexible but you need to remember to go to your Creator area, locate the challenge in the Active list and click the close button.

1. Automatic - You can also choose a date and time when the challenge with automatically close. By selecting a date and time from the date/time picker. With this method you don’t need to do anything else to make the challenge close on the selected date and time.

When the challenge closes a number of things will happen:

1. People playing the challenge who haven’t finished will receive an email explaining that the challenge is now finished and they won’t be able to see the challenge on their list or add any new updates.
2. In the Creators area the challenge will move from the Active list to the Closed list and display the date the challenge closed, along with the number of players who finished and how many didn’t.

Once you’ve decided on your method of closing a challenge, you can then focus on making it look nice. This is explained in Part 3 of our create a challenge article.

This is where you can really start to make the challenge your own as Bodybook is designed to help you to promote your brand rather than ours. You can add your branding to the banner, sticker and background, then preview the results so that nothing is seen by your audience until you’re completely happy with it.

Banner

It’s well worth spending some time and effort to make sure your banner is as striking as possible. This will usually be the first thing potential players will look at to evaluate if they want to join in. You may be promoting your brand, a product or event, or trying to raise money for your favourite charity. Follow the on-screen instructions to add your banner. Remember, you don’t have to have a banner to make a challenge. When you make your challenge public it just won’t have a banner at the top.

Banner Link

As well as adding a stunning banner you can also choose where to send the player to if they happen to click on it. For example, you might send them to your website, to an area related to your challenge prize or even to a charity donation page.

Sticker

This image is used when the player completes your challenge and earns a sticker. Try to make this as attractive as possible so that players will be proud to add it to their StickerBook collection. If you don’t upload a sticker design of your own, the displayed default sticker will be used.

Sticker Link

As with the banner, you can add a different link URL  if people click on your sticker. A common use for the link here is to take players to a prize redemption page.

Background Image

As well as customising the challenge page with banner and sticker images you can also add your own background. Ever time the player or follower goes to challenge, the background will be redrawn showing your image. This image could be purely decorative or you could add further promotional details.

Background Colour

If you don’t want to add an image, you can still modify the background colours to match your preferences

Here’s a good example of a branded challenge from Ugi Fitness inc:

If you don’t have access to a good designer, we offer a full design service as part of our Concierge plan. Our professional designers can create stunning banners, backgrounds and stickers that will bring your challenges to life and provide much higher levels of player engagement. If you’d like to know more drop us a line at team@bodybook.com.

When it comes to deciding who can play your challenges you have two options. You can make your challenge public which means anyone can see it and join, or private where players need an invite code in order to play.

Private challenges are really useful if you want to restrict who can play. Examples include only those who are:

• Members of your Health Club
• Subscribers to your blog
• Customers who bought your product
•  Employees of your company
• From a particular geographic location
• Patients of a particular Doctor or Hospital

When you make a challenge private, Bodybook will generate a permanent link (permalink)  url to locate the challenge as it can’t be seen in the challenge list or when searching for a challenge. Once  a player follows the permalink and lands on the challenge page they will need to enter the 4 digit invite code to join the challenge. After that, they can go into the challenge as a normal player. The challenge will also show up on the players ‘My challenges’ page.

If you’ve read all the articles on how to create your first challenge, it’s time to go and make one. If you haven’t setup your Creator account yet you can do it here.

1. Select the attendance challenge you want to update.
2. Click the date and time field to see the drop down.
   
3. Select the date and use the sliders to set the time of your attendance.
4. Click ‘Done’ to add your date and time of attendance to your list.
5. Your record will be updated and added to your existing attendance total in your history and on the progress board.
   

That’s it!

If you’re an organisation or brand, becoming a Bodybook Creator allows you to create and publish your own branded fitness and physical activity challenges. Unlike other fitness sites we want you to promote your brand, not ours, so there are lots of ways you can make it your own – without the need for complicated design or web development. Here’s how it works:

Create amazing challenges

Create and brand your own challenges to drive behaviour in line with your objectives. Encourage players to earn and collect stickers for any activity you decide – cardio, reps, attendance – anything you like. Once you decide on the activity and targets you can choose when you make it active.

Here are just a few examples:

• Steps – how quickly can you do a total of 100,000 steps?
• Cardio – the quickest to 100 miles of walking, running, cycling or rowing.
• Attendance - achieve 12 visits in a month for a nice reward.
• Reps – Maximum burpees in a minute. Winner takes all.

Build your audience

Once you make your challenge active it has its own permanent link that you can distribute via your normal marketing channels. Players can follow the link to easily join and get started. Bodybook integrates with Facebook and Twitter so you can promote your challenge and go viral with ‘Likes’ and ‘Tweets’. Want to limit your audience? No problem. Make a challenge private and players can only join if you send them your unique invite code.

Make it stick

Bodybook challenges contain all the features you need to encourage social interaction and ‘sticking’ to activity. Post, reply, and ‘like’ comments, share posts via Facebook and twitter – all help to attract, engage and retain your audience. Add a valuable reward to the players who earn a sticker and see engagement levels skyrocket!

Spread the word

Your players will help to spread awareness of your brand using the value of their existing social networks on Facebook and Twitter. Comments from trusted friends and followers provide much more influence than simple advertising or promotion.

Bodybook is currently completely free to sign up and try. So, if you want to start your engagement engine and bring the power of social fitness to your audience, please get in touch with us at team@bodybook.com.