Take this for what you will, but I’m going to highlight it anyway.

Even if this isn’t true I thought there was some good insight in an article about a personal trainer finding success with blogging.

From Millionaire Personal Trainer Shares Fitness Marketing & Blogging Secrets:

“Blogging is the lifeblood of fitness marketing,” Sam declares. “Why? Because it helps you solidify retention strategies and get referrals with your existing clients, which is an essential path toward a six or seven figure income. Blogging will also help you reach out to other people in your market who are searching for the answers you’re providing. An added bonus is that blogging can help you appear more knowledgeable and credible in your community.”

That is really great. There are more nuggets in the article so be sure to check it out in full. It seems like the personal trainer and his marketing partner are doing some great things.

They bring up some great points on how blogging can benefit a business and I’d like to expand on a few of the points.

Blogging for Existing Clients

The point about writing for your existing clients is something I don’t always touch on here on the GBW Blog. It’s an important thing to remember. There are a few reasons why blogging with your current customers in mind can be beneficial.

Value Added Service

First, blogging is a value added proposition for your overall business. A few GBW clients are looking for ways to offer something more than their competitors. Since blogging can be difficult, but valuable, these companies know they can get a one up on their competitors by offering frequent blog posts.

A fictional example would be a bed and breakfast. I’ve stayed at a few over the years and they are great. The people are nice. The hosts are always friendly. But there are always multiple B&Bs in every town. A way to add value to the experience would be to offer a blog on the B&B website. The blog could write about activities happening in the town. People will visit a city or town and have a few general ideas of what they are going to do. But the B&B owners are really connected in the towns where they live. Blog posts about the best restaurants, the best place to sit and watch the world go by, the best parks to sit and read a book. A B&B owner has so much knowledge to offer both current and new clients. Current clients could even sit in their room in the morning over a cup of coffe and read the blog on the iPad. They could then go downstairs and discuss the day with the owner.

There are other examples of how a blog can offer additional value to current customers. A local restaurant could offer blog posts about recipes and new meals. They could setup a newsletter and have their regular customers sign up. The updates would keep the customer base engaged and familiar with new events and happenings at the restaurant. Customers could become interested in visiting again and might even share the news with their friends and family.

That brings us to the second item worthy of discussion in the blog discussion. As mentioned in the article above, blogging helps generate referrals.

Blogging for Referrals

For all businesses, referrals are key. Traditionally referrals have happened offline with people talking face to face or perhaps on the phone. Maybe they even shared thoughts via letters. These channels of communication still occur today and probably always will. But in the online world there are new ways to share referrals. A blog is a great way to create interesting content that people want to share. If you can create something worth sharing you can get into email inboxes, into Twitter feeds and onto Facebook pages.

The B&B owner is setup great for this. A follow up email after a customer leaves would be perfect to mention that reviews are welcome and to share the blog posts and website with friends and family. Maybe one of the restaurants where a couple ate was so good that the couple shares the blog post about the restaurant with friends of theirs.

It’s about adding value to existing customers and letting them bring in new business.

There are more benefits with blogging, but we’ll save those for another post.