It's January, and that means at least two things for most people: taxes, and New Year's resolutions. When it comes to the latter, many people are promising themselves to get in shape. According to a YouGov survey, 50% of Americans who are making New Year's resolutions are hoping to exercise more, beating out saving money (49%), eating more healthy (43%), and losing weight (37%).

It's a bit too early to see how foot traffic at America's largest gym chains will be affected in 2020, but "Talking About" data via Facebook shows that, at least for 24 Hour Fitness ($PRIVATE:24HOURFITNESS), people are already busy talking about going to the gym.

In mid-December, 24 Hour Fitness was seeing around 1,000 daily mentions on Facebook. On December 31, that number jumped to 3,870. By January 5, 24 Hours Fitness had been mentioned 5,390 times in just 24 hours.

This spike is an annual occurrence for the fitness chain: in 2019, it saw its Facebook mentions top out at nearly 10,000 by February.

"Talking About" counts on Facebook are triggered when users mention a brand by name in a status update. In this case, Facebook users may be saying they're heading to a 24 Hour Fitness or simply asking for other users' opinions of the gym. But, as some say in marketing, any mention is a good mention.

24 Hour Fitness operates more than 400 gyms throughout the United States, heavily favoring western states. This makes it much smaller by geographical outlay than Planet Fitness, which operates 1,859 clubs. For comparison sake, that gym saw nearly 200,000 Facebook mentions during New Year 2018, and 65,000 in New Year 2019. 

While Planet Fitness sees many more mentions per day, the New Year uptick for 24 Hour Fitness is hard to beat this year.

About the Data: 

Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

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