The fitness industry continues to grow. For decades, people have been looking for ways to become more fit and healthy. They look at diet as one way, but they also want to see if there is more they can do physically to improve.
There are a number of products and services available for purchase in the industry. And with the growth in ecommerce, these items have seen tremendous growth online as well.
Since the beginning of the Internet, fitness content has been popular. I remember reading forums where people would share their tips and stories for working out. It was a great way to gather information from all over the world instead of only at your local gym and maybe on a TV show.
In recent years, fitness video has become very common. And that makes sense. If you’re looking to learn a new exercise, for example, it makes sense to watch a video whether it’s on YouTube or social media.
Does it still make sense for written content, like a blog, in the fitness industry?
Here are a few thoughts…
1. Certain People Prefer To Read
For at least a few decades, people have had different levels of interest in all three forms of media: audio, video and text. For awhile it was pretty much only reading that you could do on your own. Then came radio and audio. Then video. Each had its moment of being the dominant one and now it’s kind of leveled off with people having their own preferences.
Video works well for fitness right now and that will probably always be the case. But there are still people that prefer to read. For many years there were fitness magazines that did very well. There still are today. And the same is true with blogs. There are a large number of fitness blogs that do well.
2. Certain People Prefer To Write
This might be the most important consideration for this topic. If you prefer to write, versus creating video or audio, then blogging is probably the best course for you because you’re more likely to create content if you prefer it and are better at doing it.
You can certainly learn to create video or audio and maybe that is good to continue to do, but lean into the medium you prefer the most and that you can improve upon. If that’s writing text for you then do it.
3. Photos & Graphics Can Help
One area to consider adding help if you can’t do it on your own is photos and graphics. You can do a lot with a tool like Canva to help visually express your information on a blog. Graphics, inforgraphics, photos and more can be great for industries such as the fitness industry.
Fitness magazines often had visuals to help communicate the information. It’s not a requirement, but they do help get your points across especially if you’re trying to show somebody how to do something.
4. Text Is Something You Own
One thing I like about text is that you own it. There are ways to own video and audio, but almost every time you’re posting them on someone else’s platform, such as YouTube or social media. Then you’re at the mercy of their rules and changes.
And that can be fine. Those platforms have a lot of people and you want to be there.
But with text and blogging, you’re putting content on your own website. A website is something you own in most cases. You’re buying the domain. You’re buying the hosting. Text doesn’t require a special player or anything like that. Text is easy to back up to your own computer or cloud storage in case you change something.
A blog is something you own and have more control over.
Conclusion
There are a lot of topics in the fitness industry that you can cover that are great for text. You can answer lots of questions such as, what is the best exercise for a busy mom, and things like that. You can also tell stories with text and communicate to and connect with readers.
It’s intimidating if you’re in the fitness industry and see the success of all the videos on YouTube and social media. I would suggest investing time into those channels, but if you find that you’re drawn more to text, then invest time in blogging. It’s still very relevant to a lot of people in the industry and it can work very well.