Why Bother Creating a Fitness Press Release?  There are many reasons why you should be putting out press releases left and right the minute anything potentially newsworthy or interesting happens in your fitness business. As well as being a cost-effective (basically free) form of promotion, having news about your business appear in the media adds credibility to your venture, not to mention loads of potential traffic and personal training leads!

Here are just a few reasons why you need to be creating fitness press releases:

• Credibility/Social Proof: In your mind, which holds more weight -- a newspaper ad for a new product or a news story about the product? Which do you feel would have more pull with your potential clients -- a copy of your magazine ad in the gym, or a copy of a magazine interview with you (maybe even with your picture)?
• Media Exposure: If one local news agency picks your story up -- say on how you are helping a local charity raise money through a workout-a-thon or something similar -- the odds of other media outlets picking up the story increase dramatically. This can only be a good thing for you!
• Traffic/Leads: Here's the beauty of the world we now live in: You can post your fitness press releases online and also submit them through traditional means directly to editors and reporters. What this does it take advantage of the time and effort that you spent creating the press release by allowing your website to gain free backlinks and traffic exposure from the web, while also increasing the chances that other websites, blogs and local websites find your press release! You kill 3 birds with one stone, and help your main website rise in the search engine rankings!
• Content: This might be a little less obvious but goes along with the "Credibility/Social Proof" aspect. You can store all of your past press releases in a special "Media" section of your website and take advantage of basically creating free content for visitors to read when they visit your site, and giving search engines more keyword-focused content within your website to spider and track for overall search engine optimization for your fitness business! Not to mention the "cool" factor that you as a personal trainer or fitness business owner actually have a "media" page to begin with showing off all the cool things you've been up to!

Getting the Press to Pay Attention To Your Fitness Press Releases You can write a press release about anything -- your latest achievement (such as a business anniversary or winning an award), an event, a new product or service or adding a new personal trainer to your fitness team.

In fact, if it were up to me, I would have you writing a press release for all of these events all of the time for the very reasons that I talked about above. The trick is getting the media to pay attention to your news. Making sure your story is newsworthy is key. It's also important to make sure your press release fits the publication you are submitting it to and that your release makes it easy for reporters to do their jobs.

Here are a few guidelines to getting your press release read by the media:

• Make It Newsworthy: The most critical factor to consider before writing a fitness press release is determining if the story is newsworthy. Things that make a story worth publishing are:
  • Timeliness - did your news happen recently or is it connected to a current event? o Significance/prominence - are you training high-profile clients? Did you land a noteworthy corporate wellness contract?
  • Location - is your fitness product or personal training service accessible to the publication's readers?
  •  Relevance - does your story fit and makes sense in the publication?
  • Usefulness/impact - will your story educate someone or help them make a lifestyle change?
  • Interesting (human interest) - what is unique and interesting about your business, event, cause, etc.?

While all these things play a part in determining newsworthiness, the bottom line is to make sure your story will be interesting and useful to the publication's readers, and again not be overly promotional to the extent that it reads like spam or loses its legitimacy.

• Make it Fit

Another part of getting the media to pay attention to your news is to make sure it fits the publication. While news of your fitness boot camp might be newsworthy for both a web site catering to winter athletes and a women's lifestyle magazine, chances are, you would make minor changes in your press release to make it relevant to the very different audiences that read these publications. This can be as simple as changing your quotes or examples.

Here are a few examples:

-The Body Max Fitness Boot Camp can help extreme sports enthusiasts reach new heights in fitness and can make the trip down the mountain faster and safer.

-The Body Max Fitness Boot Camp can help women take off inches, tone thighs and bellies and improve overall health and stamina.

To make sure your message is tailored to the readership of each publication, it may be helpful to look over the publication (or their web site) before you write. In fact, when you submit a press release to a particular writer, blogger, reporter or editor, make sure you know a little bit about them first, their writing style, what they like to write about and the topics that they typically cover. Nothing makes you look more foolish or amateurish than sending a generic or poorly formatted press release or message to an editor that caters towards local women's health issues, while your release is about male bodybuilding! Ouch…good luck getting them to write anything about your personal training business when you didn't even take the time to find out what they do!

Quick Tip: As you go about your daily routine, make note of what kinds of stories you see in the publications around you.

Does your local newspaper run stories about new businesses? Does the senior-focus magazine in the waiting room have stories on fitness? What are your potential clients reading? What kinds of stories run in those publications?

•  Make it Easy: Another part of getting the media to run your personal trainer press release is to make it easy for them.

For example:

• Correctly formatting your press release
• Spelling counts: Since some media outlets may print your press release "as is," you need to make sure the story is well written and error-free.
• Including a photograph will help a press release get published. Make sure the photo is of good quality, interesting and relevant. Clearly identify the action and each person in the photo. Be sure to have permission on hand from each person pictured.

If sending a press release via email, make sure each image is less than 1 MB, and don't include more than 3 MB's of attachments. Print publications require high-resolution images (3000 dpi), so if your hi-rez image size exceeds one MB, send a low-rez version and make the hi-rez version available as a download from your web site.

Chris Fernandez, B.S., CPT, has been a cutting edge author, speaker and celebrity personal trainer for over 12 years, as well as a natural for life bodybuilder, athlete and cross-trainer devoted to helping other personal trainers achieve lasting financial independence through his fitness marketing blog, System 5 and other products. View his full BIO here.

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