How To Become A Successful Online Personal Trainer

Why you should consider online training as a career

How to become an online personal trainer

• Figure out who you want to cater for

  Before you start anything, think about where your strengths lie and who you want to work with. You might want to work with a specific population group or health concern.

  For example, if you want to specialise in weight loss, you might want to work with teenagers to reduce body fat. You can take this even further and look at a particular market, such as female basketball players or stroke patients in recovery. Anything that may seem like an untapped market is worth exploring.

• Use the technology available to you

  Establish how you’ll communicate with your clients. Will it be Skype? E-mail? Social media? You also have to consider what tools to include in your training, and how you’ll conduct check-ins in real-time. Many online personal trainers create a video library for demonstration reasons. Whether you make your own or use clips off of Youtube, ensure that it’s about 20 seconds long with at least two full repetitions. There’s also online personal training software, such as Trainerize, that you can use if you’d like. It provides you with training plans which you can tweak for each client, allows you and your client to give feedback, stores your essential documents and gives you a way to follow your client’s progress. If you’re having trouble wrapping your head around any of this tech, there’s plenty of online training.

• Create a website

  Now that you’ve figured out what you’re going to do, the next step is to make your own website. This step is pretty straightforward: provide a short description of what you offer, who you are and what you specialise in. It’s your personality that will distinguish you from the others. Talk about your story. How did you get into fitness, and why?

• Market your new business

  Marketing isn’t as simple as making a post on social media. There are a couple of steps you need to take to successfully market your business. Once you figured out who your client base is, research key terms to include in your marketing post and your website. For example, if you specialise in fat loss, include words like cardio, diet, body fat, etc. Go on multiple social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to run ads and run blog posts on your website to gain traction. A short course in Social Media Marketing will prepare you to use it effectively.

• Create a questionnaire for your potential clients

  Since you won’t be meeting your clients face to face, you’ll have to create a form to get all the necessary details. If you’re unsure where to start, Google forms is a good place. It’s best to divide it up into sections: for example, the first section, you should ask for the name, contact details, then move on to any sort of health issues that they may have and their training history. You can even ask them about their interests to establish some common ground. Remember that there are plenty of other online personal trainers out there. Make an effort to get to know your client, and it will surely pay off.

Becoming an online personal trainer can be a smart career move, especially for those looking to scale up their business or get a more flexible career.