Blogging

I have been blogging now for around 5 years, and I think it’s an amazing thing to do for many reasons.

Here’s my top 5 reasons you should start blogging right now: 

  1. Blogging gives you the appearance of being an industry leader - There are plenty of trainers who don’t have a strong enough opinion on something, and even if they do, there are even fewer who will take the time to put it into words.

  2. Blogging gives you a platform - Your blog gives you an opportunity to speak freely about what you are passionate about.

  3. Blogging builds credibility & trust - The more information and content your clients see from you, the more they trust you and are more likely to want to work with you. Blogging puts you at the forefront of their mind at crucial buying stages. (Think funnel). There’s been some extensive research into how many times you need to contact a client before buying something. 7 is the magic number. This means you have to have 7 quality interactions with every client. 

  4. Gives you an opportunity to pitch - Every blog you write is adding value, and an opportunity for you to help people solve the problems they have. It’s human nature to reciprocate good deeds, so if you have just helped someone with an informative article, you can feel OK about pitching your products for them to buy which will help them further.

  5. Great for SEO - Google loves regular, industry specific updates. 

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Creating the Perfect Blog

A decent blog should:
  • be between 500-1000 words.
  • Include attractive images (stock or real, never steal images)
  • Links to videos, (ideally embedded). Don’t be afraid to steer people off your site, as long as it’s relevant, videos and other links are great.
  • Bullet points, easy to read. Make it as easy as you can to understand.
  • Include a Summary. People always scroll to the bottom of your blog to find out the overall premise of your blog. Make it punchy.
  • More information - This might be a pitch, or your contact details for people to get in touch.​

Case Study

I wrote a blog titled “Is Fulham the fittest city in London?”.

The blog was all about how healthy Fulham was, the cafes, running stores, healthy food outlets, parks, boot camps, fitness opportunities.
It didn’t go viral, but it did well and had plenty of shares and likes.  

The benefits were as follows:
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  • Most of the businesses I mentioned happily re-tweeted and sent to their followers
  • Google loved it as it was local, relevant, had an image and was a decent length
  • Had the chance to pitch and mention our boot camps, which was shown to hundreds of people who read the blog.
  • This blog is still one of the most popular blogs on the site, regularly getting between 20-30 views per month 2 years after I posted it. 
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The benefits of blogging are huge. Get in the game. ​
Top Tip: Take your Time

The more time you take to research and plan your blogs the better. Don’t just sit at your computer and start writing, have a think about what you are trying to achieve in your blog.

We have mapped out the next 12 months of our blog, we plan to write one a month.
The method we used for this was to brainstorm all of the areas we wanted to talk about, such as Fitness, Nutrition, Mindset. Then each category had multiple subjects which we could talk about.
We took into consideration our expertise, as well as common questions we get asked.
 
Here are some of the subjects we’ve chosen for our upcoming content:
  • Get fit with Hiit
  • Training outdoors Vs Indoors
  • The reality of getting ripped
  • The truth about the fat burning zone
  • All you need to know about metabolism - Can you spot reduce fat?
  • Is sugar really that bad?
  • Social fitness
  • The Low GI Theory explained.

Blog from your own personal standpoint, so if you were blogging about your love of the paleo plan, make sure it’s personal to you, and not a company statement. 

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