Fitness entrepreneurs can be a wealth of knowledge to a variety of other groups and outlets. Think other just-starting-out personal trainers, publications looking for fitness experts, corporate wellness or other business newsletters, and more. In the fitness industry, business owners often have health and wellness expertise as well as the skills and experience tied to the failures and successes associated with being an entrepreneur. In addition, the entrepreneurs that invest in their own education (e.g., fitness, sales, business, marketing, leadership) provide substantial value to others who are trying to navigate their next steps as fitness business owners. Likewise, fitness is a hot topic and there are so many publication outlets looking for trusted knowledge. You don’t have to be a great writer, they have editors for that! Lastly, other businesses are also looking to improve the health and wellness of their employees through physical activity. Offering your knowledge to them in the form of newsletters or other sorts can serve this need.
Business leaders typically develop their personal training team and share the appropriate skills and expertise to help each employee (and the business) grow. But business owners and members of the management team can share their expertise, expand their reach, and get paid for it. More than anything, know that your biggest hangup will be your confidence. And, the great news here, is that it’s a mindset you can change. We’ll help you!
If you own a gym or fitness business and are looking for another way to use your knowledge and skills to make money, keep reading. We explore a unique path you can use to create an additional income stream for your business.
Fitness Business Writers
Sharing your health and fitness or business expertise in written form is a great way to make extra money, create more variety in your career, and have a greater impact on more people. And, in most cases, you have the opportunity to share more about yourself and your brand, which can be a powerful marketing tool for your fitness business. When your site has external links directed to you, it increases your authority ranking in search engines, thereby improvising your search results. Therefore, putting your knowledge to the keyboard (or pen to paper) is a great way to increase your revenue and promote brand awareness.
Fitness business writers are well versed in specific health and fitness topics and have a variety of experiences associated with entrepreneurship. The topics a fitness studio owner might write about are endless (e.g., running, muscle growth, nutrition, weight loss, personal training, high-intensity interval training, rest, and exercise technique). As an entrepreneur, you can also write about things like sales, launching a business, securing funding, marketing, growing a business, and hiring the right staff. As you get more comfortable with sharing your knowledge in written form, you can contribute to:
- Blogs
- Articles for fitness or business magazines
- Journals
- Manuscripts
- eBooks
- Course content
- Newsletters
- Textbooks
- Product descriptions
- Podcast content
A writer often plays a large role in the outline, execution, and refinement of the writing content. But, keep in mind that the list above isn’t inclusive of every fitness or business writing opportunity.
Bonus Pathway: Reviewer/Editor
If writing isn’t necessarily your strong suit, it’s important to note that you can still share your expertise in written form by becoming a reviewer or editor of content for any of the above projects. This means someone else does the bulk of the outline and writing, but you would use your expertise to review and edit the material for things like accuracy and content.
Key Components of Fitness Writing
In addition to their health and fitness-related knowledge and business acumen, a gym owner must also have the skills to articulate their business expertise in the format the document requires. The following list outlines some of the additional skills and disciplines an individual must have in order to be a successful writer.
1. Do the research
Research is a critical element of writing. This doesn’t mean you have to pour over scientific journals and literature reviews (it could help, but it’s not expected). A writer should research competitive articles or documents, but they should also ensure they’re supporting any claims with peer-reviewed scholarly journals. This is easily done with Google Scholar and PubMed. Both of these outlets are free, and you can quickly review an abstract to support a claim.
2. Become an avid reader
This isn’t specific to just writers—reading is a powerful tool for professionals in any field. However, it’s particularly important for writers. Reading is helpful for expanding a writer’s vocabulary, sparking inspiration, and understanding how words and different styles of writing affect the reader. Similar to doing the research, this doesn’t mean reading boring textbooks or literature greats. It means being invested in continuing to expand your knowledge, not only in fitness but also in how knowledge is translated.
3. Stick to your expertise
It’s important for fitness business writers to have some level of expertise in the topic they’re writing about. Focusing on their niche in the fitness industry helps them determine what research they might need to look for, appropriate terminology, and credible resources regarding the content.
Sticking to an area of expertise doesn’t necessarily mean a writer can’t branch out, learn about additional topics, and write about other things. They can and should. However, sticking to a niche is vital when starting out as a fitness business writer.
Writing Details
A small fitness business owner could have all the knowledge in the world, but if they’re unable to compile that information into a form that the audience can read and understand, they likely won’t get very far as a writer.
Here are a few skills you’ll want to develop and refine to prepare for writing opportunities:
Spelling
Errors in spelling are incredibly problematic whether you’re writing content for yourself or for another business. Although we are all human and errors happen, there are various tools available that can and should be used to assist with spell-checking. Spelling errors are a poor representation of a company and can, in some cases, be damaging to a brand. There are plenty of free tools (like spell-check in your word document software) that you can use as a quick scan. Technology does all the work for you.
Punctuation
In tandem with spelling errors, eliminating punctuation errors is also critical but an easy check and fix. Writers should educate themselves on punctuation basics. Understanding the use of commas, quotation marks, parentheses, ellipses, and other types of punctuation is critical in not only how the audience reads the content but it is also a representation of the brand.
Understand your audience
Knowing the reader is vital in the development and articulation of written content. The audience should help dictate the content outline, the reading level (i.e., the complexity of the content), and the supportive material or details used in the document.
For example, if you’re writing about fitness-related content and your audience is the general public, it’s not ideal to use complex terminology that makes sense to you but the average person is unlikely to understand (e.g., adduction at the acetabulofemoral joint, lactate threshold, hypertrophy). However, if the primary audience is well-educated professionals in the field, complex terms are not only okay to use, they are preferred.
Tone of voice
Generally speaking, the tone of voice for written material is the personality of the document. A writer needs to understand their audience and the company’s brand to identify the correct tone of voice. Examples of the tone of voice are formal, informative, humorous, conversational, or assertive. In addition, the tone of voice not only dictates what is written but also how it’s written.
For example, an article that is conversational is typically more informal and includes several short sentences that sound like you’re having a conversation with the reader. In contrast, a formal tone of voice is commonly more professional or academic in its presentation. A formal tone of voice is non-biased, informative, and direct.
Steer clear of “filler words”
Removing meaningless words from your writing material is another crucial component of your success. The following list provides a few examples of “filler words” you will want to remove from your content:
- Very
- Like
- Really
- Just
- Maybe
- Basically
These words provide very little (if any) value to the content and take up space. However, it’s important to note there could be exceptions to this rule if the audience and tone of voice require it.
As you embark on fitness writing to grow your personal training business, you’ll see this skill expands to your content marketing efforts, personal training communication skills, and more.
Think you don’t have time for fitness writing? Then you may not be using tech tools to make your life easier and business stronger. Naamly’spersonal training CRM provides you with a plug-and-play system to open hours in your day, retain more fitness clients, and develop a personal training staff. Want to see how it works? Check out our free software trial today!