Whether you’ve already started a fitness blog or are considering it, there’s more to success than just writing and posting.
Blogging itself is definitely a valuable strategy for your fitness business, whether you’re a personal trainer, gym owner or influencer. In fact, about 80 percent of companies that use blogging as a part of their marketing strategy said they acquire customers through their blogging efforts. And about 82 percent of businesses say that blogging is critical to their business success.
But what can you do to ensure the success of your fitness blog (and therefore your business)?
The fitness industry, in general, is full of tons of people and companies offering their take on how to lose weight, live healthier and so on. It’s a noisy arena that you must cut through to find and grow an engaged audience.
First things first
Of course, key considerations to have a quality fitness blog to promote in the first place include:
Understanding your audience
Who are you writing for? What problems or obstacles are they facing? What do they care about?
Determining your niche
A fitness blog that tries to be everything for everyone is going to connect with and engage very few. What is your expertise? If you’re a nutrition expert, for example, what unique angle can you focus on? Meal planning for families? Paleo eating? Something else? Don’t be afraid to get specific. The more uniquely you can leverage your expertise, experience and even personality, the better.
Establishing your target keywords
Once you know the niche you’re pursuing, it’s time to start researching relevant keywords. Don’t get distracted by the most popular keywords. Big websites are already targeting those. Focus on long-tail keywords that might have a lower search volume but also are more easy to rank for. Need help? Check out our list of 11 free keyword research tools.
Committing to a consistent publishing schedule
Inconsistent fitness blogs will struggle to gain traction. Set a schedule that you can stick to. You can make this easier by planning topics ahead of time (i.e. a content calendar). A general rule of thumb is to strive for at least three posts per week, but ultimately, the commitment has to be something you can keep. Feel free to refer to your competition for how often they are posting and use that as a gauge as well.
Quality over quantity
While you should be posting consistently, you also have to be hyper aware of the quality of content you’re offering. In the fitness world specifically, you have to be extra cautious about offering health advice. We recommend that either you’re an expert (with a diploma or certifications) or you focus only on sharing your experiences as they pertain to health and fitness (like how you lost weight, for example). Of course, you can always hire or interview experts as well. With every post, ask yourself: “Am I helping my audience overcome their problem(s)?” The goal is to create content that is as good or better than what’s already available online.
It’s important to take your time on each of the above factors because even the best marketing strategies in the world are only going to take an unengaging, unfocused blog so far.
The following are six ways that you can market your fitness blog.
Your SEO matters
Great search engine optimization (SEO) will reward your fitness blog with organic website traffic.
There are loosely three types of SEO techniques:
- Technical SEO, which involves the indexing and crawling settings of your website. It’s about search engines being able to read and index your website properly. Check out our 13 tips to get Google to index your website faster.
- On-page SEO, which involves making your web pages search-engine friendly. This involves page titles, page descriptions, text formatting, mobile optimization and so on.
- Off-page SEO, which involves everything that’s happening outside of your website. For example, other sites linking to yours and even social media posts directing users to your fitness blog. Check out our nine tips and tricks to boost your off-page SEO.
Learn more about the difference between on-page and off-page SEO, and see if you’re making any of these 13 common SEO mistakes.
Just remember that great SEO takes time and consistent effort. There are no worthwhile shortcuts that will serve your fitness blog in the long run.
Promote on social media
This method is likely obvious. Most fitness bloggers share their content on social media platforms.
Where to post
The trick is to optimize your presence on the social media platforms you’re already on, prioritize those existing accounts by where your target audience is (and is engaging with you) and decide if there are any platforms you should be on that you aren’t on yet.
(On the flip side, are you wasting your resources on any given social media platform? For example, Twitter isn’t the best platform for every business.)
We can help you determine the best platform(s) for your fitness blog promotion and goals.
How to post
As far as posting, go beyond the simple sharing of links. Identify opportunities to promote your content with visuals, whether they’re eye-catching photos or designed graphics. Canva is a free tool that can help even the self-declared non-designers design compelling images.
Just as you want to be consistent with publishing your fitness blog, you also want to be consistent (and engaged) on your chosen social media platforms. Remember that social media is a space for conversations, not just broadcasting links.
These 11 social media management tools and seven social media automation opportunities can help.
Consider an app
Creating apps for iOS and Android devices is a great alternative way to get your fitness blog discovered. While there’s definitely competition, you’ll find that it’s not as intense as the intense noise you’ll find on the world wide web.
Be sure to connect with a knowledgeable app developer that can best reflect your needs and branding.
Another bonus of this method is that anyone who downloads your app can be notified when new blogs are published.
Email marketing a must
Creating and publishing consistent content naturally leads to the need for establishing an email newsletter that website visitors can subscribe to.
Email marketing is a powerful tool. Simply refer to these 48 statistics.
Treat every email you send as an opportunity to engage with your subscribers and deliver on the promise of value your newsletter offers.
Here’s a breakdown of the anatomy of an effective marketing email. And if you’re in need of building up your subscriber list, here are 12 strategies that will help you capture email addresses without annoying all your website visitors.
Once you solidify your email marketing rhythm, consider any sale opportunities that can be mixed in. Refer to our 14 best practices for email drip campaigns for inspiration.
Look into trust badges
Because of the noise in the fitness content space, any sort of verification you can obtain to reflect the quality of your content will build trust with website visitors (who will be more likely to return if they trust you).
Regarding health and fitness specifically, consider working with Health On The Net, which is an independent nonprofit organization that promotes transparent and reliable health information online.
While trust badges won’t directly grow your fitness blog traffic, they do boost the perceived value of your website and better establish your authority in the fitness industry.
Find out more about the types of trust badges you can embed on your site.
Explore what the competition is doing
The best digital marketing strategies are constantly evolving, and the fitness industry changes at an equally fast rate.
Take the time to follow your competition and other thought leaders in the fitness industry.
How are they promoting themselves and their content? What appears to be working for them? What doesn’t seem to be working? In addition, take note of:
- Top-ranking websites on Google in your niche
- The type of content the top sites publish
- How often new content is published
- The average length of blog posts
- What they share on social media (and how they share it)
- Any multimedia assets used (video, images, etc.)
This type of competitive analysis will only help inform you on alternative ideas and tactics that can influence your own fitness blog marketing.
Being engaged in your niche industry is a great way to stay on top of trends and continue to be creative with your own blogging.
To more efficiently conduct your competitive analysis, tools like Buzzsumo and Semrush can help.
In conclusion
While you’re looking to better market your fitness blog, consider DailyStory. Our digital marketing platform integrates with Mindbody and Rhinofit to better serve fitness studios and gyms and offers such features as SMS text message marketing, email marketing, automation, dynamic audience segmentations and more.
