Blogging To Build Your Personal Training Business: Part 4

Today we have come to the final part of our blogging to build your personal training business series and we are going to get under the bonnet of how to successfully network your blog posts so that you and your Mum are not the only ones loving your work.

I also have a cool announcement to make but before we get into that, let’s look back at what we have covered so far in the series. To start off, we covered why blogging is important in building your PT business and how to structure a blog that converts. Then last week we got right into how to write great content that you clients will love, respond to and want to share.

Before we begin part 4, a quick announcement:

To celebrate the blogging series, I am ripping 100 bucks off the top of my “Blogging To Build Your PT Business” 8 week coaching program. In this program we work together to establish (or grow) your blog, smash your search engine optimization and build a killer social media strategy. So if you need some help and think $547 is an amazing price to have your all your blogging, SEO and social media needs sorted then click here.

Now onto the four best ways to network your blog so that you can expose yourself to the world (without getting arrested).

1) Facebook

Love it or hate it, Facebook is one hell of networking tool. THE biggest and most used website in the world and Australia has one of the highest rate’s of usage in the world. So if you are ignoring Facebook, you are doing so at your own peril. This is how a massive segment of the community currently communicate so it pays to have your Facebook feet and ensure that you have a presence and a strategy.

So lets pretend that you have spent the time and effort to build up your personal profile or even better your business fan page (or maybe even both if you are keen). Networking your content onto Facebook is amazingly simply by using either of these methods:

1. If you have added social media sharing options to your blog, you will simply be able click onto the FB tab and a link to your wall will appear. You get to type in a little description of your post and you are away.
2. Or you can cut and paste the link (URL) of the post and add the link to a new wall post on your fan page. Like the first option, you then get to edit your wall comment to go with the link.

The great thing about Facebook is that it is soooo easy and quick to use and with a regular consistent effort, your stuff will be seen by more and more people (and they will be coming back to your site to hang out).

Ninja Tip: Just recently Facebook have made the “like” button available for bloggers to put on individual posts so that readers have the opportunity to “like” them. This is not only great social proof  (seeing others like something you like) but it also provides the opportunity to spread your post around to networks beyond your reach by the “like” being posted on peoples walls. Here is the link to install it onto your site if you “like” the like button.

2) Blog Subscriptions

Getting people to subscribe to your blog is also a really important aspect of networking your blog posts and I rate even higher than Facebook because it goes out to people that have made the conscious choice to want your stuff sent to them. Blog subscriptions normally either take the shape of a RSS feed (an automated email of your post sent to the person and you don’t know who they are) or email subscriptions (where people join your email subscription list and you send them your posts when you make them live).

Both options have the pros and cons – RSS sucked because you weren’t build any type of list that you could write to and emails sucked because you had to manually do it all yourself.

BUT, A-Weber (email marketing software company) in their infinite wisdom have managed to smash together a product called a blog broadcast which is essentially a RSS feed (posts are automatically sent when they go live) and an email list (so you can promote with additional emails to them as you build trust and rapport) combined.

So I would definitely recommend getting on board A-Weber’s Blog Broadcast to make blog subscriptions easy and effective.

Ninja Tip: As well as having an opt-in box for your subscription, create a hidden page in your site (like I have here) so you can send people to it from the blog, Facebook and email marketing efforts as well as having them join on your normal page.

3) Twitter

The international phenomenon that I first found to be extremely annoying, then after a little while longer I still found it extremely annoying. On a serious note, Twitter is one of those things that you get out what you put in. If you are prepared to “tweet” regularly and interact with alot of your followers then your Twitter following will grow quite quickly and you will have lots of followers reading your stuff.

BUT – two problems.

One: that the concept of tweeting all the time may freak you out and you are busy enough already right?

Two: how do you focus your marketing message on the international world Twitter if you are a location based business?

Ok, I will let you in on exactly how I use Twitter because I fit into the “”I’m too busy to spend my life tweeting when I could just be out living my life” box. So there are some easy steps that can make Twitter an nice, AUTOMATED way for you to spread your message:

1. Make sure you have a “follow me on twitter” icon on your email signature, website and business card.
2. Link up you Twitter and your Facebook accounts -  you can find out how to do that here so when you promote your blog post on FB it automatically goes up as tweet as well.
3. Get onto www.socialoomph.com (it’s free) and sign up for a free automated direct message when someone follows you. I use this to send people to my FB fan page because I spend way more time over there.
4. List yourself on some Twitter directories like wefollow.com so that others know that you are out there.

Ninja Tip: On Twitter, inter-action is king so try not to just hit people with your blog posts as every tweet. Give a little of yourself (or the self you want for public consumption) and interact with others – you will increase your click through’s and re-tweets.

4. SEO Your Blog Posts So They Rank In Google

The first three methods generally have a direct response when you use them to put your blog posts out there. Structuring your blog posts to rank well in Google is a longer term proposition but definitely not something to be sneezed at as they can bring in a enormous amount of traffic for you over time. So here are four basic things that you need to do to get your blog posts ranking well:

1. Establish what keywords you are going to focus on for that post. For example for this series my keyword focus has been “blogging” and “personal training business”.
2. Make sure that your keywords make up at least 3-4% of the on page copy.
3. Make sure that your keywords are in the title tag of the page (and that it is is less than 78 characters as this is the total amount that Google recognize in a search).
4. Make sure that your keywords are in the the first line of your meta-description and that your description doesn’t go over 168 characters for the same reason.

With those four basic things in place you are now telling Google what your page is about and when someone does a search for that topic they will think of you.

Ninja Tip: The more active links (live links that take you somewhere else) that have your keywords in them, the more Google will love and trust you. Even better is if other sites are sending those links back towards your site with your keywords in them (keyword back-links).

So that wraps up my 4 part series on blogging to build your personal training business. I hope that you have enjoyed the series and are now ready to go out create some amazing business opportunities (and have some fun)  through your blog. If you have any questions just post them up in the comments section.

Don’t forget that if you want to have your own smokin’ blog, lots of web traffic and a great social media presence in eight weeks from now, click here to be a part of my “blogging to build your PT business” 8 week coaching program and save yourself $100 in the process.

Don’t forget to post any questions you have and I will see you next week,

Cheers

Rick :-)

About the author: Rick Watson is the surfing, swearing personal training business guy who tells it like it is. He blogs, coaches, writes books, runs an online community and holds live workshops for personal trainers but most of all he is a father and husband (with a healthy respect for road trips). If you like what you read, subscribe to blog here and get your weekly dose of goodness delivered straight to your Inbox.

Tagged as: Blogging, RSS Subscriptions, Search Enigine Optimization, Social Media