fitness marketing Archives

How to start a health blog

If you’re interested in health and wellness, you might consider becoming a professional health blogger.

Of course, starting a blog is difficult. You’ll need to be tech-savvy and take time to strategize how to promote your content. But if you want to share your knowledge with the world, being a blogger might be right for you.

Likewise, if you’re a health brand, starting a blog can improve your marketing efforts by helping you attract more customers.

Health blog posts are similar to other types of blogs. For example, you can write an opinion-based blog or one that focuses on the facts. Health blogging is not the same as health writing. Blogs allow you to take a more personal approach and provide stories or anecdotes from your life, while health writing is based on facts. However, they can both make a blog with valuable content.

When starting a health blog, you’ll be the expert or authority on a topic, so if you’re not already a health expert in some way, starting a blog will be difficult. But you can interview other experts and use research to inform your audience about different topics.

Interested in becoming a health blogger? Let’s discuss everything you need to know about starting a health blog.

Get your blog up and running

Before you can start blogging, you’ll need a website. You can easily start a blog with a few platforms like WordPress or Wix. In fact, many platforms make it easy for you to design and implement a website in less than a day, depending on your skill set and how much time you want to invest.

Remember, the better the quality of your website design, the more users you can attract, so consider investing time and money into the process to ensure your blog looks its best.

Creating a website is a process in and of itself, so we won’t get into all of the details here, but you can learn more about how to get started with a little research online.

Start a content calendar

Whether you want to write about supplements, exercise, diet, or a variety of health topics, you must have a content calendar to help you organize your ideas.

If you don’t start a calendar, you could get stuck not having anything valuable to write, preventing you from staying on schedule. A content calendar allows you to organize different topics and decide when you’ll write and publish them. They’re beneficial for new bloggers because they’ll keep you on a schedule so you’ll never forget when to publish your articles.

Of course, to start a content calendar, you’ll need to have topic ideas. Since you’re starting a health-based blog, you probably already have some ideas ready. Keep a Google Sheet of all your ideas to help you see the different topics you want to write about. From there, you can start to brainstorm titles and begin research.

Check out our eight tips to create an effective content calendar.

Do keyword research

You’ll need to learn about search engine optimization (SEO) if you plan to become a full-time blogger and make money off of your blog.

Luckily, SEO is fairly easy to understand, and anyone can optimize their websites to help them rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Explore these 10 free courses online to level up your SEO skills.

One of the most important aspects of SEO is keyword research since search engines crawl your content and use Keywords in titles, subheadings, and body text to determine the topic of your article and its relevance to various search queries. Once you have a topic, you can enter a few keywords into Google and read the top results to help you get an idea of the types of content that rank highest.

If you really want to improve the odds of ranking higher on SERPs and increasing your website traffic, you should invest in SEO tools to make keyword research easier. These tools will tell you everything from search volume to top-ranking pages, and they can help you evaluate your competition.

Check out these 11 free SEO keyword research tools that you should consider.

In addition, you’ll need to monitor updates in search engine policies and algorithm changes. Health and wellness blogs fall under the Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) category on Google, which refers to any type of content that can impact someone’s health, happiness, safety, or finances.

Since your blog may offer advice about disorders, medications, and other health topics, you’ll need to ensure your content follows Google’s EAT Parameters. EAT stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, and there are several ways to make your content all of these things.

If you’re an expert in your field, ensure your credentials are on your website. However, if you’re not an expert in the field of health and wellness, you should interview experts and provide citations in your articles to ensure Google understands whether or not your content should be trusted by users.

Check out our 12 SEO marketing tips for beginners.

Invest in marketing

Marketing is crucial if you want people to read your blog. You can write the best health blog in the world. However, if you’re not doing any marketing, it’s unlikely anyone will read it.

Definitely market your blog in many different ways, but we recommend having a robust strategy with different campaigns to ensure you can get as many readers as possible.

You can use everything from email marketing and social media to paid ads to attract new website visitors. What you choose may depend on your budget, so try to set aside some money for advertising in case you need it to attract visitors.

Check out our 19 tips to drive traffic to your new blog.

Monetize

Blogging is time-consuming, and you deserve to be paid for your time.

Many people blog as their full-time career, but earning enough money to make a living blogging can be difficult.

Once you start getting enough visitors, you can monetize your vlog in a few ways. The easiest way is to allow for ads. However, you can also work directly with brands to offer advertising space, become an affiliate, or join their influencer program.

Check out 10 of the most profitable blog niches. Plus, see these four ways to sell advertising on your website.

Establishing your health blog

Building a successful health blog takes time. You won’t be able to establish yourself as an expert overnight.

Instead, you’ll need to continuously write valuable content and attract website visitors through the right marketing efforts. Building a credible blog can take months or even years, depending on your background and whether or not you have any marketing skills.

Monitor the performance of your blogs to help brainstorm new ways to improve them, attract new customers, and write valuable content to increase the number of visitors to your website.

While you’re starting your health blog, consider leveling up your digital marketing strategy. DailyStory specializes in automation, email marketing, audience segmentation and more. Level up your process, and schedule a free demo with us today.

About the author

Ashley Nielsen earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration Marketing at Point Loma Nazarene University. She is a freelance writer who loves to share knowledge about general business, marketing, lifestyle, wellness, and financial tips. During her free time, she enjoys being outside, staying active, reading a book, or diving deep into her favorite music.

11 fitness content ideas you can use today

If you’re responsible for marketing a fitness brand in any way, it might be challenging at times to think of creative fitness content that not only tells your brand story but also attracts and retains clients.

The goal is to produce high-quality fitness content that’s consistent.

The COVID-19 pandemic reduced the fitness industry’s market size by about 16 percent, so it’s more important than ever to invest at least more time and effort into the effectiveness of your fitness content.

Of course, you’re always going to want to keep your target audience in mind with all content that you produce and publish.

Keep in mind that about 81 percent of Millennials exercise or would like to, compared with only 61 percent of Boomers. So, if you’re not considering Millennials as a group you should target with your fitness content, think again.

The following are 11 fitness content ideas that you can start using today to engage with your audience and grow your fitness business.

Offer tips and advice

You are an expert in your field, so what bits of advice can you highlight in your fitness content? For example, three ways to get more steps in per day or explaining when to stretch (before or after a workout).

You can easily brainstorm ideas by starting with the topics that you get asked most about.

Then, it’s all about considering where you want specific pieces of content to go. For example, you can dive into a topic with a blog article, but a vibrant infographic would do well on Instagram and so on.

Share your story

Whether you’re representing an entire gym or acting as an individual fitness trainer, it’s important to share who you are and what drives you.

Perhaps you have a fitness journey to share, or maybe it’s more about you as a gym owner. You could create a video interview diving into your story as a whole and/or post little snippets on different platforms.

The key is that clients and potential clients have an opportunity to relate to you and form a bond with you.

Of course, if you’re more than a team of one, you’ll want to share the stories of your gym employees as well.

Share client stories

Client testimonials are a powerful form of social proof. Essentially, you’re highlighting different people who are happy with your brand for whatever reason (their results, your customer service, etc.) so that others can see the value of your fitness brand firsthand.

A simple way to go about this is sharing a photo of the client with a quote, either on the image or in the caption (or both). This could even include before-and-after photo collages. But you could also expand this into short video clips across platforms.

Check out these five reasons why your business should be creating more videos.

Create workout videos

Now, we’re not referring to a full-on Jane Fonda-style workout video. But you have the built-in opportunity to create and share video clips from before, during or after a workout that be used to inspire viewers and show them a tiny piece of what your fitness brand is about.

There can be a lot of apprehension for a newcomer when arriving at a gym for the first time. Giving them a peek at what they can expect can be helpful and reassuring.

You also can focus on breaking down a single exercise and talking through good form and modification options. This also adds to your credibility as a brand.

Offer healthy recipes

Nutrition is a big piece of anyone’s fitness journey, and there is no shortage of healthy recipes that you can highlight and share with your target audience.

Consider making the recipe a graphic image on social media platforms. You can even take it a step further and do a cooking video on YouTube.

Share fitness articles

All content does not have to come directly and uniquely from you. Lean on curated content and share relevant fitness and industry-related articles that you think your audience would appreciate.

The fitness industry is full of evolving trends and research that can be very engaging fitness content. Leveraging it also shows you to be an industry leader.

Just make sure that whatever articles you’re sharing are from a credible source.

Check out our four tips for finding curated content to share on social media.

Show your personality

Consumers don’t just want to connect to a business. They want to connect with the human behind the business. While you want to ensure that your branding offers its own sense of personality, you shouldn’t be afraid to share your own as well.

Clients want to trust you. They’re putting very important personal goals in your hands, so your authenticity is important.

But a “great personality” can be subjective. Focus on being you, and check out these seven traits of online fitness personalities.

Dive deeper with our five steps to determine your brand personality.

Post inspiring quotes

When thinking about creating engaging fitness content, was inspiring quotes your first thought?

It’s a popular go-to because it really can work. Just make sure that you are:

Picking relevant quotes for your audience.
Designing the quotes in a graphic illustration so that they’re shareable on social media.
Not over-posting quotes. Mix them in but don’t let a majority of your fitness content ride on quotes. Your engagement can trail off without a good mix of content.

Lead a Q&A

Q&As are popular with many audiences, and they give you the opportunity to be the expert in an engaging way.

There are a number of different ways to structure your Q&A based on the platform you decide to use, but just keep in mind that you want to promote your Q&A in advance, accept questions in advance (to fill any gaps or holes during the Q&A itself) and set an engaging topic that drills into what many of your target clients must deal with or face.

In case you’re interested, check out these seven tips for marketing on Quora and other Q&A websites.

Explore promotions

First things first, you should aim to have a majority of your fitness content be organic and non-promotional. But promotions are key to moving the needle toward your goals, especially when done in an engaging way.

Promotions include:

Discounts and coupons
Contests and giveaways
Freebies (otherwise known as premium content), such as workout guide, healthy eating plans and more

Check out our tips for keeping your giveaways legal.

Collaborate with other brands or influencers

Brand or influencer collaboration is a great way to not only reach a new audience but to develop creative content inspired by your partnership.

Of course, you don’t want to dive in with just any brand or influencer. It’s important to do your research on their:

Company mission (if it’s a brand)
Branding
Audience

Then, you can decide if everything that they are and have to offer meshes with your fitness brand. From there, you decide what your partnership will look like and commit to a plan.

Check out our seven tips to know before starting your first influencer marketing campaign.

In conclusion

Ideally, you’re planning regular brainstorms to generate as many fitness content ideas as possible that you can pull from along the way. To stay organized and ensure a great content mix, consider using a content calendar.

While you’re working on creating and sharing the most engaging fitness content, 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 segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

6 things fitness professionals should know about marketing

Joining the fitness industry typically means that you’re passionate about helping people.

It doesn’t always mean that you’re a digital marketing genius.

Whether you’re the best personal trainer, group trainer and/or gym owner, you must be able to get the word out about your facilities, services and skills. Otherwise, your fitness business is only going to go so far.

Especially when you’re already contending against the natural industry trend of high turnover. About 50 percent of all new gym members quit going within six months.

So, while you’re honing your fitness expertise and becoming the best trainer you can be, take note of these six things every fitness professional should know about digital marketing. Embracing any or all of these tips will only strengthen your fitness business.

Know your target audience

This recommendation expands far beyond just fitness professionals marketing themselves and/or their gym.

It’s imperative for successful digital marketing on any medium and with any campaign.

The obvious temptation when it comes to answering the question, “Who are you trying to reach?” leads to the answer: “Everyone.”

Resist this temptation.

Striving to reach (and appeal to) everyone is generic and will yield lackluster results. When you’re trying to engage everyone, you might as well reach no one.

Why? A few reasons.

You likely already have a specific niche within your own fitness expertise.
Potential customers want to feel like you’re speaking directly to them and the problems they’re looking to solve. If your message is more of a broad stroke than a targeted bullseye, you won’t stand out from the noise they’re exposed to daily.
No one converts “everyone.” So, step out of that mindset. You’ll find more success targeting a specific group of people.

Now that we’ve addressed the “everyone” temptation, you need to ask yourself: “Who am I really trying to reach?” If that’s a difficult question to answer, then ask yourself: “Who is my ideal client?”

Of course, the characteristics could cover age, gender, average income, geographic location, whether they have children or any other lifestyle demographics. If you already have an existing client database, dive in to find out more about who already is paying you. If you’re about to launch your fitness business, think about what makes your services stand out and go from there.

Knowing your target audience for your fitness marketing also will save you time and money because you’ll only invest resources in the methods and mediums that make sense for who you’re trying to reach and convert.

Embrace social media

Whether you like it, love it, hate it or can simply co-exist with it, social media is a must for fitness professionals. Millennials and Gen Z now make up about 80 percent of gym goers worldwide.

That’s right.

And not surprisingly, most social media users also are Millennials and Gen Z.

So, if you’ve been lagging on your social media presence, now is the time to recommit.

Of course, there are a number of social media platforms. Instagram and Facebook are obvious choices to focus on. If you need help deciding where to start, check out our guide.

But no matter what platform you focus on, quality content rules. It’s your personality, authenticity and expertise that will set you apart from the noise.

Plan out your content ideas in advance, using a content calendar if possible to stay organized. Ideas can include fitness tips (keep it simple yet visual), exercise or workout ideas, Live broadcasts, AMAs (Ask Me Anything posts), behind the scenes content and so on.

Social media is truly the space where you can project your expertise and set yourself up as an industry thought leader.

But the most important aspect of your content is that it reflects you. People can’t connect with you if you’re hiding behind a brand or pretending to be anything other than who you are.

Then, commit to a publishing frequency that works for you. You can also increase it if needed.

Yes, email marketing is a thing

Assuming that email is a marketing tool of the past? Think again.

In fact, we have 48 email marketing statistics that show this method is alive and well. Plus, the benefits are undeniable. Email marketing is affordable, easy to do and measurable.

Whether you’re creating and sending out a weekly email newsletter with fitness content or something else, you can start collecting email addresses even without a website (although a website can be very helpful).

If you do have a website, check out our 12 strategies to capture more email leads without annoying your visitors.

Remember that you want to offer value in every email you send. That could be educational content or even promotional content (such as a limited-time discount).

See the anatomy of an effective marketing email so that you can make an impact from the start.

Consider offering premium content

While it might seem counterintuitive to offer premium content for free, it’s a fantastic way to generate client leads and establish yourself as an expert in the fitness industry.

Premium content can include ebooks, whitepapers and so on. It typically features a deeper dive into a topic and is of high value to your target audience.

Offering a 30-day nutritional challenge ebook, for example, can be appealing to your target audience, and giving it away as a free download can capture more email leads that you can follow up with.

No matter what, it will only boost your brand’s value.

Feature your credentials

The fitness industry is a crowded field with a lot of competition. Reminding your audience of your certifications and credentials as often as possible will help you stand out.

You’re not just another Instagram face in the crowd. You have real expertise through any number of certifications that you’ve worked hard for. And this knowledge can better help your clients achieve their goals.

Of course, your website can help feature those credentials, but you also can include relevant mentions in your social media content and social media bios.

Get creative! Your expertise (and the perception of which) is built on that foundation.

Have a fitness marketing strategy

Posting inconsistently without a thought-out plan is not going to help you achieve your fitness business goals.

It’s important to sit down and think through:

Who am I trying to reach?
What platforms are they using?

Then, think about what type of content they’ll find engaging (images, videos, articles, etc.) and what problems or needs you can serve with your content.

Start off slow and simple with your plan and measure everything along the way. What’s working? What’s not? Then, you can use those insights from the data to further inform your plan and overall strategy.

As you get more comfortable, you can add in more frequent content and additional platforms if you like.

As you’re exploring digital marketing for your fitness business, check out our Digital Marketing 101 Guide for Beginners.

Then, consider the strength of your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation capabilities, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.