Last updated on October 7th, 2022
Today, people have become a lot conscious of keeping their bodies healthy. The mushrooming of fitness clubs, gyms, and fitness merchandise stores is evident to this awakening. But, the competition to sell fitness merch and driving customers’ attention to gyms has become tougher as well. Therefore, marketers are turning to fitness influencers to sell fitness clothing and other products. Being a fitness influencer can be your golden chance to make money and have fame. In this post, we have shared who can be a fitness influencer and how to become a fitness influencer. Have a look!
Influencers are everywhere in modern societies, thanks to social media. They are the select bunch of people who enjoy a mass following on different social media channels. Today, they are very much a part of the marketing strategies of big and small brands.
A word from these celebrities in their fields can influence the buying decisions of the target audience. If you run a fitness merchandise store, online or offline, you should think of projecting yourself as a fitness expert.
Who is a fitness influencer?
A fitness influencer is the celebrity fitness enthusiast and expert who has many thousands of followers on different social media platforms. If you are interested in knowing how the influencers look and what they do, then here we give you a list of the top 20 fitness influencers.
A quick look at their Instagram pages will give you clues about the massive number of followers they have. You will also learn from these celebrities about how to promote yourself on social media.
Due to the strong and loyal base of thousands of followers, a post from the fitness influencers can spread a word for your fitness brand quickly.
Why should you become a fitness influencer?
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Promote Your Own Fitness Brand
If you have a solid number of followers on Instagram and other social media channels, it helps in promoting your own fitness brand. You build your brand as you post content, including a picture of your fitness clubs, custom clothing, etc. on social channels.
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Drive Customers To Your Gym
One of the advantages of being a fitness influencer is that this status is your tool to drive people’s attention to your gym. They will naturally flock to your club or gym since you project yourself as a fitness expert.
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Earn Money
Another big reason for being a fitness influencer is that you will earn a decent income even with a mild follower-base. As a micro-influencer, you command a fee to sponsor fitness clothing and other products such as custom tank tops, sweatshirts and sweatpants . As your number of followers grows, your price to promote brands also increases multi-fold.
What is fitness merch?
Fitness merch is any fitness merchandise related to keeping physical health at an optimum level. So, all types of sportswear or activewear are categorized as fitness merch.
These products includes custom T-shirts, sweatshirts, sweatpants, hoodies, polo shirts, tracksuits, shorts, footwear for physical exercise, and sports.
How to become a fitness influencer?
01. Pick Your Niche
The first aspect of becoming a fitness influencer is to pick a specific market you want to target. This is also known as a niche. The fitness market is vast, with all sorts of physical exercises and sports activities included in it.
Addressing all of them generally is not a wise move. People usually have a specific interest, and they want an expert from that field to address their problems. Therefore, decide on the niche first.
You can choose a niche, depending on your expertise and experience in the fitness field. For instance, you can pick yoga if you are a yoga trainer. Similarly, marathon running, bodybuilding, weight lifting, etc. are the other interests of people in this field.
One of the biggest advantages of choosing a niche is that it will help you in projecting yourself as an expert in that particular market.
As you consistently post content, including pictures, and give useful tips to solve their fitness-related issues, they start trusting your name. This helps in building your credibility.
02. Tell Them About Your Fitness Journey
People like to hear and read stories, which you can use to establish a close relationship with them. When you are on social media, tell the audience about your journey to becoming a fitness coach or seller of brand merchandise.
They will be on your storyboard all the time if you have something interesting to tell. People will respond to whatever you do is because they can relate to your story.
When telling the story, be open and let them peek into your life so that they can connect well with your brand. They want to ensure that the storyteller influencer is the real human.
Do not forget that by sharing your story, you are trying to promote your brand amongst the target audience. Therefore, show them your fitness videos, pictures as part of the storytelling to share your life experience.
03. Choose The Type Of Influencer You Want To Be
Influencers can be broadly categorized as those who engage and those who have a massive number of followers. Big influencers such as Kardashians have millions of followers, but their engagement rate is lower. But, there are influencers with fewer followers usually have a greater rate of engagement.
So, if you have fewer followers, do not worry about it as it will still help you engage with your audience. With a higher engagement rate, you can easily make business relationships with your target customers. This helps in the growth of business in the initial stage.
04. Contact Other Influencers
One of the effective ways of becoming a fitness influencer is to contact other influencers of your niche. To win their confidence and trust, you should share their content on your blogs and social media accounts. Also, contact them personally or on the phone and other means to build a rapport.
If those established influencers say a word of praise about your fitness services, it helps a lot in growing your follower base.
05. Use The Power Of Social Media
You should explore social media to your advantage to promote yourself as a fitness expert and enthusiast. To ensure that, post content regularly on your different social media accounts. Regular posting of content will make you visible on the web, and people will trust you even more.
However, your content strategy for social media should be effective and result-oriented. You should consider a proven formula in this regard. Consider a rule of thumb, followed by most social media content strategists.
It says that out of 10 posts, 5 should be curated content that is relative to your fitness niche and audience. 3 posts should be the content that you create to solve the related issues of your audience.
Then, create the rest of the 2 posts about yourself to humanize your brand for your audience.
The beginners can share valuable content posted by others so that your followers benefit from it. As you share highly valuable posts of other influencers in your fitness niche such as custom branded merchandise, it, in turn, makes you credible amongst your audience.
06. Start Blogging
Another important step to take toward making yourself a fitness influencer is to grow your follower base. You can do this in many ways. One of the proven ways to build a solid base of followers is blogging.
Create a blogging site of your own that is solely dedicated to solving the problems faced by fitness enthusiasts. They need practical tips from your experience.
Give them useful tips to keep regarding all aspects of staying fit. You can even discuss the types of fitness merch they should use.
Do not forget to include social media buttons in your blog posts so that followers can share the post with their peers. Blogging will also help you connect with key influencers in your community.
Think of creating guest posts as well to grow followers. Contact some reputed people in your fitness niche and ask for their permission to write a guest post for them.
You can write about fitness merch ideas if that is your niche. By writing a guest post, you can take advantage of the vast follower base of the big influencers.
07. Respond To Your Followers
Growing a follower base is one thing, and engaging them with your fitness brand ideas is another aspect. One of the ways to win the trust of followers and engage them is to respond to their questions.
They comment on your posts. But if you respond to their comments, they will connect with your brand even more enthusiastically. When you respond to their comments, they feel like you value them. This will help in building a closer relationship with them.
08. Be Consistent
Make sure that your efforts to promote yourself as an influencer are consistent. Note also that there are many budding fitness influencers in your fitness merch.
They also are trying their best to grab the attention of prospective customers and followers. Therefore, be consistent in whatever you do to project yourself as an influencer.
For instance, if you create fitness merchandise, then post the related content regularly. If you are absent from your social media for many days, it will result in mistrust of followers in your brand.
You should consistently be with your followers by engaging them with your content. Continue to engage them with your fitness live videos, replying to them on their comments, and inviting them to give their opinion through your polls on social media.
So, these are the major points to think about when you intend to project yourself as an upcoming fitness influencer.
But have patience as your efforts will bear fruits in the long run. It may take even some years before people finally take you as someone whose recommendations regarding fitness should be taken seriously.
If you run a fitness club that needs to sell fitness merchandise such as T-shirts as part of projecting yourself as an influencer, then PrintShop is the right place to start.
At this site, which is owned by Designhill, the leading creative marketplace, you can open an online fitness merch store. Then, start creating your merch design ideas and order the site to print them on merchandise such as fitness clothing and accessories at affordable prices.
Wrapping Up
As a budding fitness influencer, you should be prepared to put more effort into projecting yourself as an expert. Make sure that you pick the right fitness niche which interests you and is competitive, Then, tell people about your fitness journey and business. You should contact other influencers and write guest blogs on their sites. Start your social media campaign and post relevant content regularly. Be consistent in engaging your followers with your brand.