How to start a fitness blog for your gym

Want to find out how you can start a fitness blog for your gym or fitness club business? You’re in the right place! In this how-to guide, we’ll help you create a fitness blog that your members and prospects will want to read.

A fitness blog can help your business build brand authority; help you attract new prospects and members; give your website a search engine rankings boost; and even help your members get more from their membership.

Good news! Blogging is a low cost gym marketing option. Although it’s pretty simple to get started, we’re here to help. 

Read on to learn more about the benefits of blogging for your business. Find out how to start a fitness blog in 9 steps. And get fitness blog examples from other gyms.

Let’s get stuck in!

What is a fitness blog?

A fitness blog is a place where you can share health, fitness, and other content with your prospects and members in articles. For most gyms, a blog will be a part of your website and acts as a marketing channel where you can promote your business.

Posts are articles on your blog. These can be published by your business, yourself, your team members, your partners, or a mix of all these. It’s up to you! Posts on your gym blog should aim to educate, entertain, and influence readers. 

Different fitness blogs, and even posts within one blog, can have different purposes and audiences. Blogging will help you promote and position your business as a leader in the market.

Is it worth starting a fitness blog?

Short answer – yes! It’s worth starting a fitness blog for your gym or fitness club business. That said, you will see better results from your blog when you post regularly. So, if you want to start a blog, work out if this is achievable.

Starting a blog for your business is an investment. And with the right approach, it’s one that can keep delivering results long into the future.

So, why is it worth starting a fitness blog for your gym business? Let’s take a look:

Builds brand authority

For many clubs, this will be the biggest benefit of blogging. The best fitness blogs answer common questions about health and fitness.

Use your blog to provide valuable info. And you’ll show the knowledge and expertise within your gym business. Research has found that over 70% of consumers prefer to learn about brands through content rather than ads.

So, blogging can help you build brand authority that creates trust. And this makes it easier to attract new members, keep existing ones, and sell new products and services.

Drives relevant traffic to your website

Create blog posts that resonate with your target readers. And cover popular topics searched for online. As a result, you’ll drive relevant traffic to your website. That can help you win more new signups and sales.

Run a gym chain? Offer online fitness services? Then blogging can help you reach your target audience as they are looking for info. How? By publishing blog posts that are optimised for search engines like Google. 

Each time you write and publish a blog post, it’s a new page on your website. And that’s another chance to show up on the search engine results page (SERP) and drive traffic to your site. It shows Google and other search engines that your site is active.

Blogs and social media sites

FACT

Blogs and social media sites account for 23% of time spent online

Source

Gives you content to repurpose for social

Every time you publish a new blog post, you’re creating content that can be shared on social media. Think Facebook, X and even WhatsApp. And so, this can help you reach new members and take advantage of word of mouth gym marketing too.

It also gives you a regular source of content that you can share across the social media accounts you’ve set up for your fitness business. And in doing so, you’ll drive traffic to your website.

And gives you content for your newsletter

Does your gym business have a fitness newsletter? Just like a blog, a newsletter can help you build brand loyalty, grow your business and increase retention. And starting a fitness blog can make managing your newsletter easier.

Regularly create and publish a variety of blog posts. And you’ll have content that you can include in your email newsletter. Plus, you’ll be able to link out to your blog posts, sending traffic to your website. And keeping your newsletters short and sweet!

Helps convert traffic to leads and sign ups

With traffic coming to your website via your blog, you’ve got the chance to convert that traffic into leads and even new members. How? By adding a call-to-action (CTA) encouraging them to take a next step.

Sometimes it’ll be appropriate to encourage readers to join your fitness club. And at other times, you’ll want to include a lighter CTA. Options include:

Does blogging produce leads?

FACT

On average, companies who blog produce +67% more leads a month than those who don’t

Source

Provides health and fitness education

You (and your team) are experts when it comes to health and fitness. And you provide valuable education and guidance to members visiting you in person. A health and fitness blog can help you extend your reach.

Create and publish blog posts that cover popular topics and answer common questions. And you’ll help more members (and prospects) on their fitness journey. You can keep directing members to these posts. Plus, you can even include them in the emails that make up your gym member onboarding process.

Allows you to share news

A gym blog is also a great place to share the latest news about your fitness business. So, you keep members up to speed with what’s going on.

Promote fitness events you’re running. Encourage members to sign up to your gym challenges. Introduce new team members. Showcase new group fitness classes that you’re adding to your timetable. Share member success stories. The list goes on!

Powers long-term results

Your fitness blog posts can deliver results long after you publish them. Especially when they’re optimised for search engine distribution.

Posts can rank for days, weeks, months, and even years to come. And that means you’ll keep getting traffic from posts with high SERP rankings. 

So, when you add CTAs to these blog posts you can keep using them to bring in leads, increase sales, and win new members. Write well targeted, evergreen blog posts and you’ll power long-term results.

Creates an opportunity to add a new revenue stream

Often starting a fitness blog for your gym is about better serving prospects and members. Yet, it can also create an opportunity to add a new source of revenue for your gym business.

How? By embracing affiliate marketing. So you can generate an income from your blogs by referring readers to relevant products and services. This can be a way of diversifying income for your business.

How to start a fitness blog in 9 steps

As you can see, there are many benefits of blogging for your gym business. How do you start a fitness blog? Let’s take a look!

Step 1: Decide what you want to achieve

Blogging is an investment, you’ll be spending time and possibly money to write and publish your posts. So, it’s important to know what you’re trying to achieve with your blog. 

In other words, you should set a goal or goals for your new fitness blog. Making time for goal setting at this stage will make it easier to work out what to write about and more.

Common goals when starting a fitness blog include:

Step 2: Work out what to write about

With your goals set, it’s time to choose the topics that you’re going to focus on within your blog. 

Is your fitness business already established? Then the topics you cover should match up to what your brand is all about. For example, if you run a club specialising in women’s health and fitness then your posts should be relevant for this audience.

Finding a niche to focus on can help you grow your blog faster than posting about health and fitness in general. You’ll become known for that topic and build authority in that area. 

Does your gym or fitness club business have a broad target audience? Then a general fitness blog may be the right route to go down. 

So you know what to focus on, consider the types of topics you want to cover. As you start a blog, you’ll want to choose 1-3 types of posts to focus on. 

Fitness blog post ideas include:

Step 3: Get the technical set up right

Next up, it’s time to make sure you have the right technical set up for your blog. Often that starts with choosing a blog name. For most gym and fitness clubs simply calling it the ‘Brand name’ blog is most effective.

You’ll need to choose a platform for your fitness blog. That could be as simple as ticking a box in your website content management system to say you’d like to add a blog section.

If you don’t have a website yet or you can’t easily add a blog, you’ll need to look at choosing a domain, platform, and hosting.

Domains

A domain is a unique, memorable address used to access your website (e.g., ours is xplorgym.co.nz). 

Generally for a blog, and especially if you’re targeting SEO distribution, choose a subfolder of your domain rather than a subdomain. For example, xplorgym.co.nz/blog is better than blog.xplorgym.co.nz.

Platforms & hosting

While your domain is the address used to reach your website and blog, hosting is where your content is stored. There are two hosting options available – self-hosting or hosted.

Generally, self-hosting is recommended using a blogging platform, like WordPress.  And paying a hosting company, like SiteGround. 

WordPress is often recommended as it’s cost effective, easy to use, and has loads of customisation options. It also tends to perform well with search engines.

Self-hosting like this gives you complete ownership over your content. So, you decide how it’s used and distributed.

With a hosted blogging or website, you’ll get access to an all-in-one platform like Wix. 

Ease of use is the biggest benefit of an all-in-one hosted platform. But, you’ll generally have fewer options to customise your blog, less control over advertising, and you’ll need to keep to certain rules.

Step 4: Create a blogging strategy and plan

Having the right strategy and a clear plan in place will help you work towards your blog goals with a consistent approach. 

Post frequency

Start by thinking about how often you’ll be able to write and publish blogs. Be realistic about this, consistency will help you achieve better results. For many gym and fitness club businesses, once a week is ideal. 

But, depending on how you’ll write your posts, time available, and other priorities, aim for an achievable frequency. Think fortnightly or monthly.

Content calendar

Now you know how often you intend to publish posts, it’s time to plan your fitness content. Think strategically to choose topics that are right for your audience. Go for a mix of evergreen and timely topics.

Brainstorm blog topic ideas. Start by thinking about questions that prospects and members commonly ask. And about tips you frequently give. Often these can be split out into many posts.

Tools like Google Trends can provide topic inspiration. It’s a free tool that shows popular searches by time, season, and location. You can review by category or search for specific terms. For example, search ‘squats’ and see top search topics and queries:

Aim to create a calendar of topics that will last you for 3 to 6 months. And remember, you can always adjust your calendar to cover topics that become relevant.

Writer’s block is REAL!

Tip

Keep a list of blog post topic ideas and add to it regularly. That way you’ll always have a list to work from and combat writer’s block.

Step 5: Produce your blog content

Now you have a strategy and plan in place, it’s time to get stuck into producing your blog content.

Decide who will produce your content

Running a gym is time-consuming, so you won’t necessarily have the free time to write all your blog posts. And you don’t have to, as outsourcing can be an effective alternative.

For a modest budget, you can use platforms like Airtasker, Freelancer, or Fiverr to find talented freelancers to support your fitness blog. 

Copywriting. SEO. Graphic design. And even promotion. It can be a great way to take advantage of blogging without needing to do it all yourself.

Always review outsourced blog content

Tip

Make sure you or someone in your team with expert knowledge on the topic reviews the accuracy of outsourced blog posts before publishing. This is especially important if you are targeting search engine rankings.

Apply your branding

As well as making sure the look and feel of your blog is aligned with your gym branding, make sure you hit the right notes when it comes to tone of voice. 

Each post should have the same tone of voice. Matching your branding and speaking to your target audience.

Incorporate imagery and even videos

Blogging isn’t always about your words! Add photos, videos, and graphics to bring the words to life and add interest. 

Follow these best practices

As well as adding images and videos, there are other ways you make your posts easier for readers to follow:

Step 6: Optimise for search engines

Is one of your goals to reach your target audience and grow traffic to your website from search engines like Google? Yes? Then you need to look at search engine optimisation (SEO).

What is SEO?

Tip

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of making your blog posts visible to search engines like Google or Bing.

Arguably this step can come before or after step 5. The best approach will depend on how bigger a focus SEO is for your business. If it’s the primary or even secondary goal of your fitness blog, we recommend starting to look at SEO ahead of step 5. 

Start with keyword research

Your content should be produced with specific keywords in mind. And that means spending a little time on keyword research to identify search terms you’re likely to be able to rank highly for. 

There are a selection of free and paid for tools that can help you identify relevant keywords for the topic(s) you want to cover. 

Google Keyword Planner is a free option that will recommend keywords and show search volumes. Whereas, paid tools, like Ahrefs, can give you more detailed information. For example, how easy it might be to rank for a term and details of the current website ranking for it.

Identify a primary keyword to rank for and a selection of related secondary keywords that you’d also like to rank for.

Take the right approach

Once you’ve done your keyword research, make sure you take the right approach to your blog. That means following the lead from the sites you’ll be competing against. Here are some pointers for you:

Look at the types of posts that rank highly

For example, most are ‘top X’ listicle articles then follow that style.

Set a target word count

Exactly how long blog posts should be is a highly debated topic in the SEO world. Generally 1,500 to 2,000 words works best as a minimum. 

However, the best approach is to look at the articles that currently rank on the first page of results. Aim for a higher word count (or if that’s not achievable without compromising quality, go for the average word count).

Use correctly formatted headings

Headings make it easy for your target audience and search engines to scan through your posts. 

Within your blog platform you’ll be able to choose levels of heading. These matter for SEO. Your blog title should always be H1. Create sections using H2 and sub-sections using H3.

Include external and internal links

Linking to external sources of info shows your post is well researched and authoritative. 

Internal links help your audience find other relevant content on your site and are helpful for search engines too. They show how your content is organised and connected.

Use keywords strategically throughout your post

Naturally, include your primary and secondary keywords in the body and headings of your post. 

Also make your primary keyword the URL – e.g. if you are targeting ‘squatting technique’, your URL could be ‘yourgym.com.au/blog/squatting-technique’.

Check your writing style

When it comes to writing posts that rank in top position, writing style matters. Generally, you’re looking to create short sentences. And use connecting words (like we just did!) to make it easy to follow your article. 

Plus, you should avoid complicated language, choosing plain English wherever possible. Using tools like Hemingway Editor can help – aim for grade 6 or lower readability! 

Those are some of the ways you can optimise your blog posts for search engines. Follow these and you’ll be well on track to search success!

Step 7: Set up and publish your posts

So, your content is ready and waiting for you to publish it! Congrats! At this stage, we recommend you give it one final proofread for typos and errors. 

Proofing your own writing can be tough!

Tip

Find someone else to read it over for you. Not an option? Set your post aside overnight and come back to it refreshed. Plus, tools like Microsoft Word have in-built review tools. Including the option to read your document aloud – making it easier to spot errors.

Once you’re happy with your post copy and you have all your images ready, it’s time to set up your post in your website platform. Make sure you pay attention to these key elements:

Finally, before you hit publish (or schedule your post for publication at a later time or date) do this… Test to see what your post looks like on different devices (desktop, mobile, tablet). 

And that’s it! You’re ready to publish your fitness blog post!

Step 8: Promote your fitness blog posts

Wait, there’s more! For each blog post you publish, think about how you’re going to make sure your prospects and members read it.

For most posts, you’ll want to promote and distribute across many channels. Here are some promo ideas for your newly published fitness blog post:

Plus, if you’re targeting search engine distribution for your new blog post, that’s another form of promotion.

Using a tool like Google Analytics will help you to track the success of your fitness blog. Traffic is just one indicator of success. For example, looking at average engagement time shows whether your posts are actually being read.

Step 9: Monetise your blog

Once you’ve started your fitness blog, you may want to consider using it to create a new revenue stream for your gym business.

Keep in mind that you’re likely to see the best performance from your blog when you focus on delivering valuable info to your prospects and members. That means looking beyond promoting memberships, services, and products that you already offer. For gym and fitness clubs, monetising blogs is usually a ‘nice-to’ goal.

Here are some ideas for monetising your blog:

Fitness blog examples

Now you’ve seen how to start a fitness blog! Let’s look at how other gym and fitness clubs are blogging. So, you can see what’s working and decide how to set your business apart.

Snap Fitness

Snap Fitness is a 24/7 gym chain with around 60 locations across New Zealand. They have an established blog with a wide range of useful topics covered.

Readers can select from 6 categories to help drill down into specific topics.

The blogs are brief and engaging and filled with practical tips and advice. From health and wellness advice to recipes and workout suggestions, there’s something for everyone.

Arena Fitness & Boxing

Located in Henderson, Arena Fitness & Boxing caters to a range of fitness needs including gym facilities, classes and boxing.

Their blogs cover a wide variety of topics including body transformation diaries, tips and advice, recipes and general wellbeing information.

PureGym

Sometimes great inspiration can be found around the world. Affordable gym operator PureGym runs hundreds of gyms across the UK. As you might expect from such a big player, the PureGym blog is extensive!

It covers many different topics and has numerous categories. There’s really something for everyone! As you arrive on the blog, you’re greeted with a spotlighted post, 4 popular posts, and then the latest posts.

Blog posts make use of personal trainer expertise. For example, this one ‘Gym machine workout routine for beginners’ features insights from PT Suzy Quinn. A clearly structured article, it makes it easy for new gymgoers to get started with machines and even gives two workouts to follow.

PureGym also builds trust and authority by making it clear who has contributed to posts. This is helpful both for the reader and for search engines. The gym chain even features articles from high-profile athletes like this one from Olympian Sir Chris Hoy.

The wrap up…

So, there you have it! Follow the 9 steps on how to start a fitness blog from this article and you’ll be well on your way to realising the perks of blogging for your gym business.

Starting a fitness blog and regularly publishing posts can help you to:

Happy blogging!

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