We live in an online world. We search for information online, we find services online, we spend money online. The internet has assumed such a central position in our lives that as a business owner, you can’t get around it. The current situation has enhanced this use of technology.
Nowadays if you are not online, it’s like you don’t exist.
The fitness world changes all the time. With so many advances, it might be difficult for you to stay up to date. Don’t worry, you have us to help you!
How to Increase Your Online Visibility
Visibility should be one of your main focuses, more during these difficult times. With the amount of competition that there is in the market. Therefore, you should focus on setting a goal, building a website, preparing a strategy, and choosing the best tools to achieve that visibility you are searching for.
Set your goals
People need to be able to find you on the internet, though that isn’t the only thing. Going online just because the competition is doing it, is a common mistake.
It’s much more important to determine why you want to be found and what your goals are. For example, there are opportunities to:
- 1 Establish yourself as an authority in your field
- 2 Considerably improve your business’ brand recognition
- 3 Increase your reach in terms of prospective clients
Besides that, it’s important to link performance indicators to your goals. Make sure that your activities lead to more visits to your website, people spending longer amounts of time on your pages, more applications for trial classes, etc.
But first, how do I create a gym website?
In order to boost your online presence, you have to create a website to show your clients who you are and what is your offering.
The foundation of your online visibility strategy is always your website. This is where people gather the most information about your business. Make sure the website has a professional and contemporary look and feel. You can only make a first impression once, so make it count.
In order to build a gym website, you have to come up with a domain (a name for your website) and a website building platform that you can fully customize. There are a lot of other gyms, studios, and PTs out there: so, be unique !
Start preparing a strategy
After deciding on your objectives and the reason why you are increasing your online presence, you have to start working on a strategy.
What tools will you use to reach your goals? What’s the timeline concerning the implementation of said tools? Should these tools amplify each other across various media channels, and if so, how?
As far as online marketing tools are concerned, the options are nigh-infinite. It’s up to you to research which tools you think would work best to reach the goals for your business.
5 Essential Tools to Choose From
Once you have completed the previous steps and have a solid website to back you up, the goal of your online visibility efforts should be to employ as many relevant tools as possible to generate additional traffic to your website. A couple of tools are particularly useful for this.
A quick tip if you’re a small (or one-man) business: use a company-related email address ( name@company.com ) instead of a Hotmail or Gmail account.
1. Social Media
The importance of social media hasn’t stopped increasing during the past years. Situations such as a pandemic, have helped this tool on becoming one of the most used media of communication.
Star getting the visibility you’re looking for through your social media, the sooner the better!
Choose the right channels
Focus your efforts on the social media channels where your (potential) clients are actually active. This can be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, etc. Take your time researching, before you spend a lot of effort on a channel where no potential clients are active.
The effects of social media
By being active on the right social media networks, you can achieve more than just additional traffic to your website. Social media is the perfect place to build a community around your business, to turn people into fans, to stimulate interaction, and (eventually) create a sense of commitment with and between your ‘fans’.
Only when your clients become a fan of what you do, the subject of ‘social sharing’ becomes relevant. Online mouth-to-mouth advertising is a very powerful tool.
2. SEO
SEO is Search Engine Optimization. People who aren’t familiar with your business or industry will often use Google to look for information. Therefore, it’s essential that you can easily be found via search engines and through the relevant keywords.
The first step is to determine through which keywords you want to be found and develop your strategy from there. If you want more tips on ranking high in Google, read about these free tools you can use
Approach
- Make sure your website structure is technically sound and get as many references as possible from clients and/or partners in the form of a link to your own website.
- Besides the technical side, there’s the content side. Google values fresh and relevant content, which shows your website is alive and kicking. For that reason, you should publish regular articles about a subject in your professional field and make it easy for people to share these articles. The more pages organically link to your website, the more your website’s authority will grow in Google’s rankings.
Keywords
When writing content, it’s important to respond to trends and current events, because these are often heavily searched for. Publish articles about relevant events before and after they happen.
Every article you write increases your online visibility. Make sure you write about things you want to be found on, so Google can link your website between various subjects.
3. SEA
SEA is short for Search Engine Advertising and makes sure you can advertise in Google (and other search engines) to temporarily increase your visibility.
This can be particularly useful if you have a temporary offer or event and you need to generate more traffic during this period. A tool that makes this possible is Google Adwords.
4. Youtube Channel
A very powerful media channel is Youtube. People follow various channels, use Youtube to gather information, and are easily persuaded to share videos if the content is indeed ‘likable’. If you want to actively use Youtube, again it’s important to start with a clear strategy, based on clear goals.
Of course, you can distribute these videos through your website, blogs, and other social media channels for extra effect. Particularly Instagram (because of the hashtags) and Facebook are suited for this purpose.
5. Analytics
When all tools have been implemented it’s extremely important to keep track of how your chosen tools are performing and how they can be optimized.
Google Analytics is the go-to tool for this purpose because you can easily set up performance indicators per tool and immediately see if expectations are met.
