Whether it’s email, blogs, or social media posts, the number of content ideas you need is endless. Before I go further, I will say that having a strategy around your content is crucial for it to be successful.

For social media posts? You don’t have to and don’t need original content in each of these places.

Your original content should live at your site. That’s where your content ideas are going to work for you most. The posts you do on social are the next step. If you’re a coach or trainer with longevity, substance, and here for the long haul, those here now gone tomorrow posts are not what you want to invest your time and energy in.

Spend time studying your customer. Know the experience you want them to have. Fifteen seconds on social is not the starting point. It’s the result of knowing what to say to bring them to the next step already waiting, complete, and logical based on what they think, feel, and do now.

But we all go dry or get distracted by life sometimes and it’s nice to have a vault to go to. So, I’m giving you one here. Create a place – maybe for you it’s a spreadsheet or Google doc where you and a team contribute with ideas. My hope is that these become the inspiration for a whole set of ideas for you.

00:00

Twelve Ways I Get Content Ideas

06:37 Listen to podcasts – outside of our industry and niche

            What kind of treatment did they give the content? Pay attention to that. Is there a point, a story, an example? What’s the rhythm and how did they organize it?

07:25 10 Most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

            What burns the most calories?

07:41 10 Questions You Wish They’d Ask (SAQs)

            How do I exercise to lose fat based on how I feel right now?

08:02 Use AMA Post Round Up

            Use the posts in Instagram, or create your own on any social media account.

08:47 Go Back to Old Blogs, Articles, podcasts, videos and create an “update” (or just get ideas)

09:55 Go Big with a list of tips, reasons, sources

            These are usually lists. Things that support weight loss that aren’t exercise: sleep, drinking water, eating the right foods, etc.

            Compile your small lists into this big list (then link to it)

11:16 Go Deep with one of the big items

            Take one thing from that list and explain it in depth. When there are 5 or 10 or 20 things, give them one and go deep and explore it.

            e.g. Why drinking water is so important. List 10 things it does for you or the obstacle it is when you don’t. Those are two posts.

13:10 Use what’s already news and create a comment or reaction

            NYTimes articles are a great source of information. Recently Today compared nutrition status of white potato to sweet potatoes. What is your reaction to it? Set up alerts so you are first to know when new research is shared on your topic.

15:52 Create Top 10 lists or Listicles  

            Top 10 exercises for _________ (correcting a problem)

            Top 10 reasons ________ (you’re tired, you’re gaining fat)

The Ultimate FREEBIE Guide for Health & Fitness Pros

18:24 Create complimentary content necessary for making the fitness work

What else do they need in order for exercise to be most beneficial? Create content ideas about that. One content idea is sleep. Another is protein. Another is alkalinity.

18:52 Talk About an Elephant in the Room in your niche or our industry

The barrier to entry. Recently it’s been in the news that there’s a shortage of trainers and coaches in the fitness industry. What’s that mean to the quality of trainers and what do you think of it?

19:25 Round up interview of unique experts that you reach out to

Biggest post-pandemic problems for your niche, or the recommendations they give on a certain topic, e.g. bone density: supplements, foods to eat and to avoid.

In an upcoming episode, I’m going to talk about how to stay focused, organized, and follow through on these great ideas, because let’s face it… a lot of us are “quick starts” or we’re so analytical that we don’t go into action.

Other Episodes You May Like: 

Every Day Business Priorities: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/business-priorities/

How to Reverse Engineer a Funnel that Converts: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/fitness-funnel/

Marketing health is no small task. It’s the biggest part of running a business. Often, a year (or less) into deciding they want to be a health or fitness pro, some of the best pros realize that the training, coaching, and movement they love doesn’t matter or take up the majority of their time. It’s the marketing that does.

Marketing Health Better with Better Priorities

Everyday business priorities are probably the hardest part of running your own business. With a multitude of to-dos, between the marketing, advertising, creating programs and products, determining price point, writing emails, there’s the incoming emails from customers, people marketing to you, from prospects. Then there’s the sense of urgency you have about posting on social media and keeping up with that, at the same time wondering if keeping up with that is worth it or what that secret is that you don’t know everyone else seems to know!

There is a lot. So, this episode is dedicated to helping you sort out the skeleton of what you need to do, and first though, to removing the things that are getting in your way.

What’s Blocking Your Business Priorities?

In a very sneaky way, what I’m about to say is procrastination. If you’re doing any of these it’s easy to fool ourselves and pretend some of these are part of business, and necessary.

I would argue that if you don’t have a master plan, they can sidetrack you and hijack the time you have … some of the best time for focusing. 

You’ve got a business priorities challenge if any of these describe you:

• The first thing you do is pick up your phone… find a way not to.
• You create posts to social media before you do anything… you’re like a boat just drifting without an anchor.
• You look at your social media numbers and they make you giddy … or deflated and baffled… before you look at your CRM and subscriber numbers… you’re counting your deposit slips instead of counting cash. 

What is important?

In the sea of things to do and possibilities that YOU alone decide, it’s important to know how you determine the most important thing.

One highly successful business owner said it during dinner with he and his wife.

At the end of the day, did I make more money than I spent?

Simple, right? And to build a business with cash flow – unless you have investors who fund your business and you’re okay losing money to start up in order to make predictable gains later – you to sell before you spend.

With an in person one-woman shop or an online fitness business, that’s very easily done. We operate as far from build it and they will come as possible. Instead, we attract them, sell them things they want and the create them.

But that’s not always going to happen every day. Some days especially at the early stages of your business, (and that can last for a long period of time if you’re not 100% focused on it daily), you’re going to need to create the content and marketing that will create an audience to sell to first.

Unless you have a big budget, and a proven advertising strategy, and funnel that converts, investing in paid advertising too early is risky.

When You Need Traction

Two questions to ask so you can determine your business priorities:

Is there a promise that the way you invest your time will provide ROI?

What are good non-revenue ways to spend your time? Here are two.

Create a product:

What it looks like: a course or framework for it and the marketing copy for opt in pages, the emails the sales page, planning the assets you need to create or outsource

Business Plan:

Plan your next 6 months of 1) promotions, 2) launches, and 3) marketing.

What it looks like: First, what it’s not- creating all the pieces. Instead, it means to plan what you do need so that you can plan what then goes on your calendar. Marketing health will take a significant amount of your time until… until you’re confident you know your audience better than anyone else, until you’re able to hire someone who can do it better than you, and you know exactly what numbers to ask for and measure.

Promotions

You start with what you’re promoting. What program or what package are you featuring?

Plot that on a calendar and think about your time investment to run the program you sell. How often will you offer the program? Is there another program after that for people? Write out the plan based on the things you want to sell, your customer journey, and when programs will start and end.

Launches

This is something so many skip it’s ridiculous and that’s perfect for you since you won’t miss it! A launch includes pre-launch – the time leading up to the cart open

Cart open – when you are on the daily talking about testimonials, overcoming objections, providing information about why this, why now, and why you

Program start – when you’ll pour into your new clients

[Content] Marketing

You may decide you’re posting a blog or creating a new full-length video 2 or 4 times a month during your pre-launch. Once you determine the frequency you can commit to, you decide what each of those posts need to do. Are they top of funnel kinds of marketing?

Are they middle of funnel kinds of marketing?

Are they bottom of funnel marketing?

Do you already have content you can use? They may need a review and additions or updates to serve your next launch. Note that you need to review them, but don’t DO it now.

Do you need to create new posts? Will you or someone else do the research, outline, and writing? Make a few notes about what topics or slants but not if it gets you stuck.

Will you do the actual post creation and grab images, handle the SEO? Write down the flow of tasks for the launch, step-by-step. Or if you’re at the point you’re going to hire this done, assign yourself the task of creating that SOP (standard operating procedure)... but don’t DO it now.

Those are the things you might do in say a 3-hour block on a Thursday. You’re making decisions more than writing the posts. It’s the meta view, or overview, but not getting in the weeds. Not today.

Warning here: this is like cleaning the house. In my experience it is so easy to go down a rabbit hole while you’re doing this. So, you want something to keep you on track. Have a system of organizing ready when you find articles or videos that you can use and will be tempted to jump in and edit them or watch every detail. Put them somewhere and grab that link or folder location and put that in the plan you’re creating, or you’ll find that your 3 hours is up, and all you did was edit a couple posts and you don’t have a plan for how to use them or boost your sales and help more people – so you’ve still wasted your time!

Social media and marketing health

When does that happen? AFTER you know WHY you’re using it! When you know what you’re promoting. And you know what someone needs to know or think or feel before they buy. You have nailed the content piece you have that gets them there. Then you can post on social media with confidence your gift is good.

So, yes. After all the framework is done, you can pick up the phone and post.

Helpful?

I would so appreciate you sharing this podcast with a fellow fitness professional. Share the post on your social media story and let other pros know this is what you listen to. Even though you post for the benefit of your customers, other fitness pros are watching too! You and I both want to help our educated, heart-centered colleagues do well in this post-pandemic era.

Marketing Health is Big Business Now

… but little business owners pivot faster!

Leave a comment below if this episode was helpful.

AND… if a live workshop would be beneficial. In it, we would not only

• lead you with materials to plan your promotions calendar, and
• discuss pre-launch strategies and
• social media techniques that work,
• we’ll provide you with “white space”
• followed by Q and A for each section so that…
• you can absolutely complete a framework for your business and add realistic to-dos to your calendar to keep you moving forward.

Just respond to us… you’re not obligated just indicating interest in learning more. If you struggle with procrastination about this piece. If you’ve never actually created a business plan for the next year the fall before it starts, or if that plan has not helped you one iota to feel calmer, confident and solid you know what’s next… this is probably for you!

Why the psychology for health & fitness professionals today? You love exercise and you crave it… and most of your clients don’t. We’re often so far from clueless or from understanding what that feels like to be awkward, uncomfortable, and feel out of place we can’t relate. 

We’ve got to earn and learn our empathy. 

Why I hate exercise, my summer report. It’s the truth for too many of us. Since my beginning in fitness 38 years ago, the statistics have not improved. There are still too few of us exercising enough to improve our health (let alone our fitness). This interview episode dives into that psychology for health & fitness professionals.

Change 

Behavior change is hard. And if you know that all too well, say you’ve seen your detailed exercise prescription fall by the wayside and clients fall off the bandwagon, you’ll find a great deal of support inside the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist course you have access to expert interviews like Dr. Joan Rosenberg, Mindy Gorman-Plutzer, Dr Sandi Scheinbaum - and more.

They discuss the art and the science of coaching change, within scope of practice, and as issues like disordered eating, self-sabotage, and past failures, haunt your clients. These complimentary Expert Interviews are a professional development extra for the certification course, and a priceless resource for improving the coaching skills you use daily. 

Learn more about the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist here. 

My Guest: 

Mike Kelly says he has some contrarian views related to health and fitness developed over 40 years in fitness. 

He has been a personal trainer, university varsity level S&C coach; expert legal fitness witness;and a master TRAINER for other fitness professionals. Despite knowing the body extremely well from an anatomical perspective, he went back to school five years ago to become Queen's University's oldest Psychology grad in the spring of 2020 – knowledge he says has allowed him to expand his understanding of the connection between psychology and the physiology, or as we know it, mind-body connection. 

He adopted the moniker “The Cynical Trainer” which he uses on social media and we’ll find out what that’s about. 

Questions we answer in this episode: 

• Before we discuss now, let’s talk about why you’re here, what got you into providing health and fitness as a career? 
• Why the moniker, "The Cynical Trainer"?
• What do you feel are contrarian views to exercise (and who do you mean you’re contrarian to)?
• What are your thoughts on the current obesity levels?
• As an older adult, how do you personally exercise and what are your goals and motivation?

Connect with Mike:

https://wemeanfitness.com

Mike on Social: 

Instagram: @cynicaltrainer

Twitter: @cynicaltrainer

Facebook: canfitpro Ottawa

Other Episodes You might Enjoy: 

Getting the Inactive to Exercise: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/getting-overweight-large-size-person-start/

From Anti-aging to Anti-ageism: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/from-antiaging-to-anti-ageism/

Psychology for Health & Fitness Pros book: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/psychology-for-health-fitness-professionals_james-gavin/1335646/#edition=4559028&idiq=5714385