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How To Invite Friends to Join and Follow on Strava Fitness Platform

Strava is a popular fitness tracking platform used by over 100 million athletes globally to track their running, cycling, and other sports activities. With its social features like leaderboards, challenges, clubs, and the activity feed, Strava aims to motivate athletes by fostering competition and camaraderie.

If you are new to Strava or looking to expand your connections, inviting friends to join is a great way to enhance your experience. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to invite friends to join and follow you on Strava:

Getting Started on Strava

Before inviting friends, make sure you have created a Strava account yourself.

  • Go to www.strava.com and click on “Sign Up” to create your account.
  • Download the Strava mobile app on your iOS or Android device. This allows you to record activities which automatically sync to your Strava account.

Connect Strava to Find Friends

Strava allows you to find friends in a few ways:

Import Contacts

  • On the Strava website or mobile app, go to your profile and click “Find Friends”.
  • Click on “Contacts” and select which contacts to import from your phone or email contacts.
  • Strava will match any contacts already using Strava and send them a connection request.

Connect with Facebook

  • Similarly go to “Find Friends” and click on “Facebook” to connect your Facebook account.
  • This allows Strava to find any Facebook friends already using Strava to connect with.

Search for Specific People

  • You can also directly search for someone by name. Just type their name in the search bar to find their Strava profile.

Once connected as friends on Strava, you will be able to follow each other’s activities.

Send Invites to Join Strava

If your friends are not yet on Strava, you can easily invite them to join:

Web/Mobile App

  • Go to your profile and click “Invite Athletes to Strava”.
  • Select contacts to invite. This sends them an email invite with a link to join Strava.

Shareable Link

  • You can also get a generic referral link to share however you want (text, social media etc). Just click “Get Link” on the invite page.

Challenges

  • If you create a challenge, you can invite non-Strava friends when setting it up. They will be sent an email invite to join Strava and accept the challenge.

Following Friends on Strava

Once connected as friends, the key is to follow each other’s activities. Here is how following works:

  • Mutual Following: You and your friend follow each other. You will see each other’s full activities in your feeds.
  • One-way Following: If they don’t follow you back, you’ll only see a summary of their activities.

To follow someone:

  • Go to their profile and click the “Follow” button.
  • Or from your own profile, click your “Following” number to access your full following list and follow people.

Following allows you to support your friends as well as discover new routes, segments etc from the activities they share.

Interacting with Friends

Here are some ways you can interact with friends on Strava beyond just following their feeds:

Comments and Kudos

  • Show support on any of their activities by giving Kudos or writing Comments.

Flybys

  • See if you crossed paths during a run or ride using the Flybys feature. Exchange Kudos and plan to train together next time.

Group Activities

  • Easily add friends to your existing activities using the “Add Friends” option. Or coordinate starting an activity together from scratch.

Challenges

  • Create challenges and compete on segments, distance, elevation goals etc. Tag friends to directly challenge them.

Clubs

  • Join the same clubs to share activities, advice etc with friends as part of club feeds and chats.

Tips for Inviting Friends

Here are some tips to help convince your friends to join Strava:

  • Emphasize the social motivational aspects of sharing and competing with friends.
  • Explain how Strava provides much deeper statistics and segment features compared to just using a generic workout app.
  • Send them inspiring activities from the Strava feed showcasing amazing places people are training.
  • Start your own club or challenge focused around a shared goal like running a 10K together.

The more friends you have actively using Strava, the more fun and motivating it becomes. So go ahead and start inviting people now!

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