Personal Fitness Professional - January/February 2009 - (Page 33)

Positioning yourself as a community ﬁtness leader also oﬀers up the opportunity for you and your business to create new programs, such as a community foundation. Giving your ideas to the community can reap beneﬁts beyond business proﬁts. In our industry, we often gather ideas and suggestions from the public to further satisfy their needs to increase business and client retention. If you’ve created a community program, the voices and opinions of people you would have otherwise never met will be within earshot. Our industry has the advantage of providing something that everyone needs, and the ideas that you can gather from the community can help you in ﬁnding ways to satisfy each of them. The next trend in ﬁtness is literally waiting to be heard and put into action. community? What are their likely needs and wants? Develop a lecture based on your target audience and their goals. Also, keep your surroundings in mind. If you are presenting at a YMCA, chances are likely that you will be speaking to a lot of kids and their families. If you are in a medical setting, you are most likely to be presenting to a population with many chronic health problems, such as high blood pressure, obesity and musculoskeletal injuries. Have these limitations in mind when designing your lecture. Steps to Becoming a Community Fitness Leader • Network or aﬃliate yourself with prominent ﬁgures (individuals or companies) in your community: ¸ Chamber of commerce — Joining your local chamber of commerce is a great investment. At an average annual cost around $250, you can leverage opportunities through the chamber to promote your programs, contests, recognitions, awards, success stories from clients or community-related work as well as submit relevant ﬁtness/exercise-related articles that you have written. Not to mention, the chamber of commerce oﬀers a great opportunity to build relationships with other inﬂuential business leaders. • Create a local contest regarding ﬁtness/ exercise, and make sure that you contact ¸ City council members — Council members strive to improve the lives and well-being of the people within their community. Isn’t that what we do, too? Council members appreciate your local newspaper or chamber of commerce to let them know what you are doing for the community. Contests for the community are most attractive when they are free and easy to enter. Some examples might include a “First to 500,000 Steps” treadmill contest at your facility or a “one month free” give away for people that haven’t exercised in years. Your main objective is to publicize your event. Oﬀer generous prizes and free articles to everyone that enters the contest. • Oﬀer presentations or classes throughout the community, especially at medical facilities. Your credibility as both a community ﬁgure and ﬁtness professional increases with each medical facility that you can present at. With each new presentation, make progress towards the more prominent medical facilities in your community. Always mention your current involvement with the other medical facilities and your desire to give more. Re member that with each clinic comes endless opportunity to establish your facility as the local expert on ﬁtness. Becoming a community ﬁtness leader is as easy as deciding to do so. As a trainer, you most likely already possess the skills to inﬂuence. As a community leader, you must take those skills to a wider audience. Michael Y. Seril is the founder/president of Michael Seril Fitnessz Inc. (www.michaelserilﬁtness. com) and the Excellence Through Exercise Foundation. For more information, visit www.mikeseril.com, email him at michael@michaelserilﬁtness.com or call 562.902.0100. ● JAN-FEB2009 · WWW.FIT-PRO.COM your intention and provide you with a great source of marketing and advertising opportunities. Send them a letter with your proﬁle, and attach a ﬁtness/article to go along with it. ¸ Local newspaper — Begin submitting ﬁtness/exercise-related articles to the local health and ﬁtness editor of the newspaper. Make sure that each article has a community hook as well as national importance. Topics like “childhood obesity,” “Quick helpful hints when investing in a treadmill” or “Five tips on how to start an exercise program” will usually get their attention. ¸ Local medical community — Building relationships with those in the medical community not only enhances the service you provide clients, it also builds your credibility beyond the ﬁtness industry and can oﬀer the inﬂuence you need to direct a lot of attention toward your community programs. Contact the education department director of hospitals or large medical facilities and give them a press kit that highlights your background, programs oﬀered and articles that you have written. Present it in a professional folder. Gather an email list. Don’t just gather the primary email addresses of your clients; involve their family and loved ones as well as your own. You might be seeing just one person at your facility, but you have an eﬀect on many more. Daily computer use is constantly on the rise, and with this list you can be seen frequently and become an online community ﬁgure. Write ﬁtness/exercise-related articles and pass them out to your clients and friends. Part of your goal as a community ﬁtness leader is to provide the public with health and ﬁtness tips. Provide exercise-speciﬁc advice for the diﬀerent seasons of the year, for diﬀerent health conditions and for people of all ﬁtness levels. Better yet, create a survey for your clients asking what questions they and their loved ones would like answered. This is where gathering those emails comes into play. Distribute your articles to the masses, and call your readers to action by having them forward the articles to everyone that might be interested. Create an online or hard copy newsletter to provide to your clients and friends. Even in our age of laptops, palm pilots and iPods, sometimes people prefer news that they can fold up and take with them. Each printed newsletter is like a ﬂyer for your services and a source of beneﬁcial information for anyone that comes across it. Once again, this all comes back to the concept of giving your knowledge to the public and putting your expertise on display. Create an education class or lecture at a local facility, medical building, YMCA or in your facility. First you must think of whom you are reaching out to. What are the needs of your • • • • 33 http://www.michaelserilfitness.com http://www.michaelserilfitness.com http://www.mikeseril.com http://WWW.FIT-PRO.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Personal Fitness Professional - January/February 2009

Personal Fitness Professional - January/February 2009 Contents Letter from the Editor, Writers Ready to Rock the Podium What It Takes to Change Fitness Marketing Makeover Be Better Top Club Building a Base of Special Populations The Balancing Act Take Action! Nutrition Solutions Datebook Journey to Success New on the Market The Four P's Exercising Your Influence No More Pain in the Back!

Personal Fitness Professional - January/February 2009

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