How To Get Featured In Fitness Articles
Guest: Steve Washuta
Podcast Release Date: 4/2/2021
Welcome to Trulyfit the online fitness marketplace connecting pros and clients through unique fitness business software.
Steve Washuta: Welcome to the chili fit podcast. I’m your host, Steve Washuta, co-founder of Trulyfit and author of Fitness Business 101. On today’s podcast, I’m going to be doing this solo, and talking about some tips that you can use to get coverage of Media Relations. I’ve already done a podcast with Lynette Nietzsche, the owner of the public relations agency mentioned Hunico.
This is going to be maybe a bit more of a specifics into Media Relations. Just a few quick tips and tools to use so that you can get coverage in magazines, or on online websites, or maybe even in newspapers so that you can build your credibility. I want to build off of a conversation I’ve already had on a podcast with Lynette Puttoniche who is the PR agency owner of Mint and Hunico. And talk about ways in which you can use different tools that are considered, “public relations”, to talk to and reach out to the media, right, specifically Media Relations, and help your business grow.
So I think this is something that people don’t have a grasp on because they might believe that it’s either above their level of expertise, or they don’t even know it exists. So I’m going to break this down for you in a very easy manner. If you want to get coverage. If you want your business to be featured in fitness (a magazine), it’s not as difficult as you think there are a bunch of different ways in which you can go about doing this first way is to sign up for something called HARO. HARO stands for help a reporter out.
And essentially a bunch of reporters will put up subjects, they’re looking for experts to help them with. So for example, they might say, looking for a personal trainer, who specializes and postpartum training to help with, you know, moms who experience c sections or something to that extent. This is the easiest way to be featured in fitness articles.
So you click on the link, you answer the reporter’s question, you don’t try to pitch yourself or something else, you answer their question and say, you know, contact me at any time. If you need more information now, will they get back to you? Maybe not Will you do 100 of these things before one person gets back to you maybe. But if you have the time and the energy, this is how you get coverage, you reach out to these journalists, show them that you’re trying to help them, finalize their story, give them good, good information as the “expert” here.
And while they write back to you, they say, Oh, this is great. Can I call you for an interview? Or can you answer these 10 questions so that I can put you in my article, so they may be it’s, who knows, Shape Magazine? Then Shape magazine featured you in fitness articles on their site and links back to your website so that you can post it on your Instagram and your website and you have these backlinks which obviously help for search engine optimization, but it also helps to build credibility in your story?
Much like Lynette said, If you listen to that episode, PR is about building a story and building a brand. But not only you pitching that story for him brand having other credible entities agree that that’s your story and brand and prop your story and brand up. So having these credible sources, right, we call outlets, and the public relations industry is very important to interconnect with your brand to give you credibility. Another way to do this is just simply organic. If you see a blog that you really like maybe you follow somebody you really like, and they’re writing a story on something. Maybe you pitch them and say something to the extent of Hey, I really loved your blog on best spin classes. I think I might have some information to help you on a future piece that correlates to your spin class piece.
Maybe it is the best yoga classes or maybe it is the best upcoming spin bikes you’ve never heard of or something that you have a little insight and expertise into that you think would be good for them. Again, remind you you’re building relations here. Public Relations is building and connecting constituents or people to an agency or to yourself to your business through strategic two-way communication through honesty, right. So to continue to cultivate that growth, you have to make sure that you’re not only being honest, but you’re actually helping them, right, the goal isn’t to just get your name out there, you really need to help these journalists. Then they can, in turn, link back to you, and help you.
So again, you can do this organically, like I just said, or you can do this to help a reporter out, there are still other ways where you can pay for services if you deem it, you know, important, or if you have the funds to do so. So there are companies like Proudly, which you could spend $200 a month on, you can get up to 5000 emails. Now, what happens is you’re getting emails from editors and bloggers. And you can select a category.
So let’s go ahead and say you’re a nutrition coach or a prenatal yoga coach, you can seek out people who’ve, who are in that particular category, that area, those editors and bloggers who surround that area so that you’re not just sending something to a general exercise person. But you could also do that as well. And then you can write crafted pitches to each of them, you can look up their website, and you can craft a pitch. What a pitch is, is just specific 411, if you will, on a topic, that should not be sales-y.
That gives said journalist information on something you think they can use to either write an article that would be best suited for them and their style or answer a question that they may have on something they’re already looking to write. So, you know, these are ways in which you can use proudly, you can pitch, you know, you can get 5000 emails of people and pitch them all individually, that would be very time-consuming. Or you can write press releases. So you can write one sort of generalized pitch, wherein you send it out to everybody, and then hope to hear back now, it’s not always recommended, because obviously, it can look more like spam, but not all the time, right, you can craft it still in a way where it doesn’t look like spam.
So I don’t push that I still think you should leave it to the experts. Because as personal trainers and fitness professionals, we need to do what it is we do the best hire outside for people to do it. And we need to focus on being better for our clients. But if you are someone who has the time and you like doing this thing and you think you’re a good writer, or you’re good with the computer portion of this, it’s something that can really grow your business over time. Having that credibility builds relationships with journalists reaching out to these bloggers to cover certain things, mind you, they are looking for stories. It’s not like these bloggers or these journalists, these editors for these magazines have endless stories.
They’re looking for stories. Also, what you can do from time to time now is something like proudly does not have this a more expensive program like decisions media, which was talked about in Lynette’s podcast, you can find out the calendar in which they are covering items. So, outlets there, they’re short leads. And there are long lead short leads means the turnaround time is quick, they get information and they produce the article within a week or two. So that would typically be your online or your newspapers, then there are long leads, which are like magazines. So a magazine at the start of the year might say, Okay, I know this is January, but we need to map out what we’re going to do. And in our May issue, we are going to be covering the best hit classes or the best online fitness business software.
So you can get out in front of it. You can find out what their challenges are, you can kind of do your due diligence and sometimes go to a website of these magazines and still find their calendars anyway. or reach out to a journalist and simply ask them who works for them and say, Hey, can you send me your calendar of coverage so that I know what you’re going to be covering.
And then you can pitch them in advance, giving them this information, knowing that they’re going to be covering that down the road. So there are different ways to use PR to help grow your fitness business. But I want to kind of wrap this all up. So you have a better idea than really all of this PR stuff. It’s not that esoteric. It’s really just you building relationships with people who cover fitness so that your credit can become higher in the industry.
And sometimes that’s just a matter of you taking your time. And it’s what I call the strategy of attrition. Sometimes this is how people get their wives or girlfriends. Sometimes this is how people get a job. You just have to keep at it, wear them down. The more emails you send provided they’re nice to one journalist or to multiple journalists. It’s a numbers game.
Eventually, you will wear them down eventually you will get that one hit, and every time you get featured in fitness outlets that starts a snowball effect where you’re more likely to get featured again. When I was featured in fitness articles in the Savannah Morning News, and then I was featured in fitness articles on Healthline and then I was featured in fitness articles on Livestrong’s website and all these other things, right? So after I was a contributor to some of these articles, it started to look like I had more credibility now, right? So I put those features on my website.
And then when I pitch journalists, I then send them my website, so that they look at the website and go, Oh, you know what, this guy’s already been a contributor to a bunch of these other things, he must be credible. And I believe I am credible. But I believe you guys are credible to write credibly just because you’re, you’re knowledgeable and you’re trying hard. There’s not much to it here. So I know that you guys can do this. If anyone has questions specifically, on maybe how exactly, you best craft a pitch, feel free to reach out to me.
But I think, you know, it just it needs to be honest, it needs to be short, you need to get short, you need to get to the point and you need to show how you are helping the journalist out in them writing stories and features rather than just helping yourself out. From time to time I’m going to do these short podcasts alone, where I go over something that is, I believe, very important, and not talked about in the industry. Being featured in fitness articles and how to do that is something I wanted to pass on.
You know, I’ve done one on intellectual curiosity, why it’s important to learn from other people and in areas. I’ve obviously done this one now how there are different ways you can use PR, and the general concepts of PR to help grow your business. And I think, you know, giving you guys tools, and insights into all the areas that touch our health and fitness businesses and different ways that you can grow is important. So I will see you on the next Trulyfit podcast.
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