As a fitness business owner, it is important to make sure that your customers find you online. And a fitness blog is one of the best ways to market yourself to your target audience.
This probably isn’t news to you.
But the challenge of that initial push to get started – when so much else is going on – can be the toughest part.
Blogging doesn’t have to be a chore, and once you get started, it’s easy to keep going.
I’ll show you how to start a fitness blog that people will love to read.
Fitness Blogs: The Technical Stuff
First things first, do you have a domain name and hosting provider.
In other words, do you have a fitness website already set up?
If you don’t, I recommend starting here with my post on how to choose a blog domain and hosting.
As soon as you have your blog name, domain name, and hosting provider figured out, you’ll want to start blogging.
How Do I Start a Fitness Blog in 2022?
As soon as you have your blog name, domain name, and hosting provider figured out, you’ll want to start blogging.
If you’ve never blogged before, you might run into that all too familiar feeling of analysis paralysis because you aren’t sure where to start.
Here’s how to start a fitness blog no knowledge:
Step One: Who is this Fitness Blog For?
Before you worry about getting the blog up on your website, I would recommend creating a battle plan.
The first step is to come up with a topic for your blog. This can be anything related to fitness, health, or nutrition but it must be directed at your target market.
For example, you wouldn’t want to write about the best muscle building workouts to look like a Mr. Olympia bodybuilder if your market is made up of moms in their 40s.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- What does my business provide customers?
- Who makes up the bulk of my customer base?
- Is this who I’m trying to market my products / services to?
- What are the customer pain points that I’m trying to help with?
- What value can I offer readers that others in my niche can’t provide?
For example, let’s say you’re a supplement company that specializes in a keto supplement line for weight loss.
Your primary focus will be the ketogenic diet, but from this, you can write about the best keto ingredients, workouts that help with the keto weight loss, and quick tips for keto meal prep.
Step Two: Choose Your Blog Categories
Categories are important for both you and your audience.
Blog categories allow readers to find certain content faster. For example, if your customers want to find a blog on fat loss workouts, you should have a “workouts” category.
Blog categories also help with search engine optimization (SEO) for your website. Categories become a part of the hyperlink that your blog is under, helping search engines like Google further define the content.
For example, if your domain name is trainersmith.com, then your blog with a workout category would be trainersmith.com/blog/workouts.
So, what categories does your fitness product or service fall into?
For example, if you sell supplements, you might consider some – not all – of the following categories:
- Pre-Workout
- Post-Workout
- Muscle-Building
- Fat Loss
- Supplements for a specific goal (e.g., powerlifting supplements)
The idea is to select three or four categories and build topics around those categories.
If you’re stuck here, just stick with the three most basic fitness categories (workouts, nutrition, recovery) and revisit these later.
The categories are automatically generated in your website builder (e.g., WordPress), you simply click a button to define the post.
Step Three: Time to Brainstorm
Now that you know who you are trying to market your fitness blog toward and what the categories of your blog will focus on, it’s time for some brainstorming.
Brainstorm as many topics and ideas around your part of the fitness industry as possible – don’t hold back!
You will edit these ideas and narrow them down later. For now, just write down whatever comes to mind.
I find that it helps when you make a few columns – one for each category – and write down all your ideas that relate to that category.
Here’s an example using my own website: My categories include fitness writing, fitness business, fitness website, and fitness marketing.
For each of these categories, I write down several ideas I believe can really help my readers:
Fitness Writing
- 225+ Fitness Topics to Write About
- Is Your Fitness Blog Boring? 7 Tips on How to Write an Interesting Blog
Fitness Business
- How to Energize Yourself and Your Fitness Business
- Do Personal Trainers Need a Website?
Fitness Website
- What Are the Benefits of Hiring a Copywriter vs. Doing it Yourself?
- The 5 Essential Pages for a Fitness Website
Fitness Marketing
- Does Your Fitness Business Need a Blog?
- What Does a Fitness Copywriter Do?
Above all, do not try to censor or self-edit during this process. We’ll get to that step next.
Step Four: What Does Google Have to Say About This?
Look at that incredible list you have in front of you. Admire it and prepare for most of it to be tossed aside.
This is normal.
A mess of brainstorming usually only provides you with a handful of good ideas.
This is where you start to narrow down your ideas. A free and easy way to do this is with Google Ads and Google Trends.
The idea is to see what people are searching for and if any of your ideas match or can be tweaked to match.
Google Ads
Google Ads is a free service that allows you to find out how many people are searching for your topic.
It displays a general number of searches per month for your target keyword. But don’t be fooled by higher numbers.
If “best weight loss diet” gets 150,000 searches a month and “weightlifting workouts to get ripped” only gets 70,000 searches a month, that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to use the former.
Higher searched words are typically more competitive to rank for.
I’d consider starting with keywords that don’t have a lot of competition. Once your blog is well-established – a year out or so – then you can start shooting for those high competition keywords.
Google Trends
Google Trends allows you to type in a keyword or phrase and see how popular the topic has been over time as well as how popular it currently is.
This can help you plan content based on when people will be searching for it.
For example, if you find that people are looking for “new year’s resolution workouts” in November, then you might want to consider posting content about that topic around that time.
Both provide you with an insight on what’s popular and what people are searching for.
Don’t Get Intimidated by Keyword Research
This might seem a bit intimidating but just hear me out.
You are literally taking your ideas and plugging them into Google.
You’ll see what Google spits back at you as far as the exact terms and phrases people are searching. Then you modify your topics and titles according to that.
You don’t need a degree in computer science. Trust me!
Continue this process of plugging your ideas into Google to see what’s going to work and then come up with a list of 12 solid topics and titles. We’ll start slow here – One topic for each month.
Step Five: Start Writing Your Fitness Blog
Now that you have your topics, it’s time to start writing! This is where the real work begins.
Here are some hard and fast rules when it comes to fitness blog writing. Every blog post should be:
At Least 1,500 Words Long
Fitness is a competitive niche and unless you have a specialty, you’ll want to try to hit around 1,500 words.
This doesn’t mean you should fluff out your pieces. The content needs to provide value to your readers.
Every blogger will have their own opinion about the minimum number of words for a blog.
As someone who has been doing this for over a decade, I can confidently say new bloggers cannot go by the traditional 750-word mark.
This is what everyone was saying years ago! There’s a lot of competition out doing exactly that – writing 750 words.
Don’t be a small fish in an over-crowded pond. Aim for 1,500 words and you’ll find yourself in a less competitive space.
Yes, it’s tough work but it’ll be worth it when you see your site ranking higher.
Focused on One Main Topic
Each blog post should be focused on one main topic.
It’s tempting to go down a fitness rabbit hole but focusing your fitness blog post on ONE central topic will make it easier for both you and the reader.
If you become inspired while writing, that’s good! Write down those ideas and come back to them later. In the meantime, stay focused on that one blog post topic.
Packed with Value
This is how you’ll get readers to subscribe. Write enough value-packed content and readers won’t want to miss out on your fitness blog posts.
But how do you make your posts irresistible?
By providing the right amount of value. That means fully answering your reader’s question, giving them the how-to that they are looking for, and going above and beyond what other fitness bloggers are doing.
You want your reader to say, “Wow, I really learned a lot from this blog.”
The more value you can deliver, the more likely that reader is to purchase your product or service when the time is right.
It’s a long-game strategy but it works!
Do Your Research, Include Your Experience
You want your readers to learn something new or feel like they gained valuable information after reading your fitness blog posts.
And that’s usually going to require doing some research in journals focused on exercise science.
This ensures you’re staying up to date with the latest developments in the industry.
At the same time, your readers want first-hand experience.
If your actual experience matches the research, write about it!
Readers love when a blog educates them on what the latest science is saying AND can detail an actual first-hand experience.
For example, have pictures of a client after a success weight loss on the keto diet? Post the before and after images.
This is the perfect blend of anecdotal vs. empirical evidence.
Make it Engaging and Easy to Read
Finally, if you want readers to click on your blog post AND stay to read the whole thing, you need to make it engaging and easy to read.
That means shorter lines, bullet points, and images to break up the content.
You want white space!
Alternating longer sentences with shorter ones like I just did above can help to create that white space.
This makes it easier for the reader.
People tend to scan online before devoting the time to reading, so it helps to also incorporate eye-catching subheadings.
For new fitness bloggers, I always recommend using the following trick.
Ask yourself:
“How would I explain this topic in a face-to-face conversation with my client?”
Yes, you would edit out things like “uh”, “hmm”, and natural conversation breakers, but overall, this makes it much more real for the reader.
Want some more tips? Check out my post on how to write an interesting blog.
The Golden Rule: DO NOT PLAGIARIZE
I’m sure you heard it enough in school, but plagiarism hits differently when you’re an adult with a business.
Not only can it cost you your reputation, but you can also get sued for doing it.
Seriously, don’t copy someone else’s work. It’s just not worth it.
I’d also recommend going the extra mile and running your content through Copyscape, which is the most trusted plagiarism for writers of all niches.
Step Six: Grab the (Figurative) Red Pen
Ernest Hemingway famously said, “Write drunk, edit sober.”
While you should let that creative spirit flow during your first draft, when you start editing, it’s time to get serious.
Let me warn you now:
You’re probably going to cut (at least) 20% of what you wrote in your first draft.
And again, that is normal and okay!
Another one of my favorite quotes about writing is from Louise Brooks.
“Writing is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent elimination.”
Step Seven: Publish and Promote Your Fitness Blog Posts
You’ve edited your post and you’re happy with it.
First, congrats on your blog post!
As someone who has been writing for most of his life, I have so much respect for new writers.
Writing isn’t easy. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
So give yourself a pat on the back (or buy yourself that thing sitting your Amazon cart), and hit the “Publish” button.
Once your first post is live on your website, it’s time to promote it.
How to Promote Your Fitness Blog
Social media is an easy way to do this, but despite what you might have heard, you don’t need to be on every social media site on the planet.
Pick one or two social media sites that you feel most comfortable with and start promoting your posts.
I recommend picking the ones that your target audience is on.
Again, that means doing some research.
I recommend checking the sex, age range, and income levels for each social media platform and match it to the target audience you’re writing for.
You can also promote your blog posts through email marketing, PPC advertising, and even guest posting on other fitness blogs.
Does All This Sound Exhausting? Why Not Hire a Copywriter?
Yes, starting your own blog can be daunting. I’ve seen clients who are overwhelmed by the amount of work that went into it.
I don’t blame them!
If you want to bypass all this work, consider hiring a professional copywriter.
But not just any copywriter – You want someone who has first-hand experience in the fitness industry.
*waves*
Hey there! I have well over a decade of experience in the fitness industry as a certified personal trainer, performance enhancement specialist, fitness nutrition specialist, and fitness writer.
Let’s chat about your fitness business, and how I can take of your fitness blogs for you!
