If you’re here, then I’m guessing you have a passion for health and fitness and you’d like to share that with the world. Luckily for you that’s exactly what this blog post is about.
With the new year upon us, it’s the perfect time to launch your blog, as people are looking for help to improve their fitness more than ever.
There are hundreds of blogs started every single day, so it’s important you do a lot more than just start a blog without a plan of attack. As a lover of health and fitness you’re probably extremely familiar with plans of all kinds. So, our blog launch plan below shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
Below we outline the steps you need to follow if you’d like to start your very own fitness blog.
1. Understand Your Niche
As much as you’d like it to be true, not every person in the world is going to read, or even enjoy, your blog. Your blog should be focused on a very specific group of people. This might seem limiting, but the internet has truly made even the smallest niches extremely profitable.
Plus, the smaller your niche in the beginning the easier it’ll be for you to build authority, which then stays with you as you expand out into other areas of the fitness landscape. For example, do you create fitness routines for women who’ve just had their first child? Or maybe you specialize in bodyweight fitness for those sick of the gym?
For example, take a look at the successful Fit Found Me blog run by HostGator customer Stephanie Miller. She creates motivational content for women over 40.
Remember, the niche you start in doesn’t always have to be the niche you finish in either. Your blog will evolve over time, just like you do.
2. Choose Your Domain and Platform
When choosing your domain name it can be helpful to think of something brandable. However, you want to make sure the domain name you choose isn’t incredibly trendy, or could become outdated rather quickly.
Some fitness professionals choose to use their own names and build a brand around that. While, others choose a brandable domain that speaks to their target market, such as Nerd Fitness.
After you’ve settled on your domain name it’s time to decide what platform you’ll rely on to build your blog. There are literally dozens of choices, but one of the best platforms available for blogging is WordPress.
It’s free and there are hundreds of fitness-related themes you’ll be able to use that you can customize to your liking.
3. Plan Your Launch
It’s important not to over-plan. Often, pulling the trigger is more important that spending too much time planning out your blog and never launching it. You know what they say… started is half done. You learn more in the day-to-day trenches of blogging than you do just sitting back and thinking about it.
To plan your launch effectively we recommend setting a date a month into the future. That’ll give you enough time to create a catalog of blog posts, so you can deliver a steady stream of content while you focus on other aspects of your launch.
Remember, your website doesn’t have to be perfect in the beginning either. Often, the simplest websites convert and perform the best. Pick a theme that you love, customize to your liking, and forget about it.
HostGator customer Ashley Pitt is the fitness blogger behind A Lady Goes West. Her website combines a simple and clean design with a pop of color to give it a bit of personality.
4. Launch With a Bang
Your launch is your chance to let the world know you exist. You only have one chance to launch, so you might as well give it your all. If you’re starting completely from scratch one of the best ways to build an audience is to tap into existing audiences that already overlap with your own.
Chances are there are a ton of existing fitness blogs that will love what you’re writing about. All you have to do is find them and pitch them a guest post with a call-to-action back to your website. Combine this with the existing content already being published on your blog and you can bet that some of those readers will become fans of your work.
It’s important to queue these guest posts up in advance, so they can all go live around the same time as your launch. This will make it appear as if you’re everywhere online and give off the aura of authority.
5. Focus on Your Content Strengths
As you grow your platform one thing you’ll want to focus on is traffic. After all, what’s the point of blogging if no one is going to read what you’re writing?
We focused on guest blogging above as a great way to build initial relationships with readers in your niche. But, there are still multiple ways for you to reach your ideal market.
For instance, if you’ve discovered that guest blogging and writing isn’t quite your thing, you could try video blogging instead. Or take pictures and create tutorials for the various workouts you’ve created. Share these on Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.
Decide what you like best and where your strengths lie. Then create content that’s in alignment with that.
We hope the steps above will be enough to help you get your fitness blog started on the right path.
Any questions about getting your fitness blog started? Feel free to reach out in the comments below.
Kevin Wood writes about technology and human potential. You can find him at his virtual homes Wooden Writing and Counter Culturist.
This article is a great help. I am actuqlly planning to launch my fitness blog pretty soon, its all set and ready I just have to launch it 🚀 The plan is to launch it in the next two weeks. Thank you guys for the help.