5 Tips for Starting a Home Fitness Blog
Starting a home fitness blog is a great idea for many reasons. It keeps you accountable to others, not just yourself, by putting your activities out into the world. It creates a desire to improve your understanding and achievements and it inspires others to improve themselves.
The more you blog the greater your investment in your fitness becomes and the less likely you are to quit or slack. Now, it makes more sense than ever to start a fitness blog, because it can help you achieve your fitness goals, inspire others and it has become so easy to do it yourself with internet hosting services. Here are some tips to help you get started.
Focus on Your Passion
Fitness enthusiasts are often multifaceted. They like to ski and run. Lift and bike. Do yoga and compete in marathons. Swim and jog. This is fine, but if you want to build your brand through your blog, simple is better when getting started. This is especially true if you are the only contributor to your blog. Don’t try to be the crossfit expert/yoga master/endurance sports trainer/powerlifting hulk blog; don’t try to be as multifaceted as the enthusiasts. If you take on too much, you will overwhelm yourself, because it can become too much work. Focus one or two aspects of staying in shape that interest you and write about them. As long as you have good, well-written content, people will read your blog. And don’t try to be the writer/ photographer/designer all in one. Ask friends to help you out, use stock fitness photos, and open your blog up to outside contributors.
If you expand by adding contributors, many categories are good and can broaden your audience, but don’t try to be all things to all people, especially by yourself. This allows you to go deeper into subjects and really show off your enthusiasm as well as your expertise. Try to find people willing to contribute content that you have little knowledge of but you know your readership would be interested in reading about. Let your contributors fill in the gaps that your expertise and your time cannot.
Become the Explainer
A common problem people who pursue fitness experience encounter is that they work hard, deprive themselves, and still see limited results. Explaining why this is becomes very valuable and welcome material. Understanding that overworking your body can be counterproductive or how a technique might be causing problems are exactly the types of insights people reading fitness blogs crave.
Details are often misunderstood, and people want desperately for their hard work to pay off. This is different than merely providing tips. Tips are helpful but explaining the details can really separate your blog from others. And not just explaining the details as to why the problem exists, but give additional insight on how to counteract those problems. Just because a technique may not be the best doesn’t mean it still couldn’t be useful.
Post Often
Having fresh content matters in the world of blogging and for several reasons. First of all, people need a reason to return to your blog. If your content doesn’t change, then they will not come back. Also, if you post frequently, your blog posts help people find your blog via search engines because they scatter keywords across the internet. This also helps you improve your social media presence because you can share every new post. Friends or people who have liked you on Facebook may not be the same as those who follow you on Twitter; spread links to your blog so that everyone can see how hard you are working to stay fit.
Having fresh content shouldn’t be that hard, either. You can post tips to help people improve their workouts. You can write in depth pieces on techniques, industry developments, equipment, events, foods, and encouragement. It is also helpful to post pictures. Each picture can help illustrate what you write about and people enjoy posts with pictures more than mere words.
Stay Up to Date on Knowledge
It seems like the most cutting-edge information is always evolving. Most people are not able to stay up on all that is new and improved. That is where your expertise comes in. Help people understand the latest and greatest. This can be training techniques, apps, technology, nutrition or how they all work together.
For example, you might do a review of the various wearable fitness devices, like a Fitbit and review them. While doing this, you can explain why you, as an expert, chose your device. This can open the doors to potential advertising opportunities as well as help your readers stay informed.
SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it is how you get noticed when people use search engines like Google and Bing to learn about a subject. Do you ever wonder how the sites that show up when you search show up? The answer to this is complicated, but it is housed within the industry of SEO. If you want your blog to be found, find out some of the basics of how SEO works and apply these techniques. Some will be natural and obvious, like producing fresh content and more of it.
Using keywords, which is a major SEO technique, that reflect your site and its mission help your site get recognized by keywords. Perhaps you want to consult or hire and SEO expert or firm to improve your ranking on search engines. Ultimately, it is critical that your site can be found when people look for your type of site.
Starting a home fitness blog is a great idea with many possibilities. It is a great way to keep yourself accountable and to share your expertise with the world. It is a way to help others and possibly even make some extra money. Hopefully, the above tips can help you get your blog started and off to a running start.
