Have you been struggling growing your personal training or online training business? What strategies have you been using to attract new clients? What have you been doing to set yourself and your business apart from all the other millions of trainers out their offering the same things as yourself?

This weeks blog post is going to touch base on the art of practicing what you preach and how putting yourself out there can help expand your online business without even trying.

One of the most difficult parts of training clients from all over the world and not face to face is creating a trainer-client relationship with them. The closer your clients feel to you and the more they buy into your training theories and beliefs, the more likely they will be successful in your program and stick around as long term clients.

3 Ways to Help Increase Online Training Client Sign-Ups and Current Client Retention:

1. Use Social Media as yourself – don’t use robots!

Many larger fitness businesses hire others to tweet for them and post on their Facebook pages etc. If you want to form a personal connection with your clients, they want to hear directly from their trainer. What does their trainer eat on a daily basis? Did their trainer feel tired today but still do their workout anyway? Did their trainer go out and enjoy a cheat meal on the weekend?? etc…. This changes the relationship from a random person training them behind the computer, to a person who is a trainer but that also has bad days, eats cheat meals, and occasionally doesn’t feel like working out. If your clients know you are a real person they are more likely to feel closer to you and feel like they can break through their own obstacles to be successful in reaching their fitness goals. One comment I get from a lot of my clients (in-person and online) is: “wow you are a REAL person and I love that!”

2. Post Videos of Your Own Workouts to Challenge & Motivate your Current Clients

By having your online clients follow you on social media such as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook you can connect with them on a daily basis in many different ways. You can post videos of yourself working out, post pictures of foods you are eating each day, and also send out challenge videos of new exercises they can try or new recipes they can add to their nutrition plans. Not only will this further the “practice what you preach” model for growing your business and increase your “following” on social media, but it will also help build your personal brand. As a trainer, your personal brand means a lot in building your business and the success of your business. Yes, posting things like this on social media takes time, but if you create a schedule of what things you are going to post each week, it doesn’t have to take much time and I would say this is a very important part of marketing your business. These personalized posts will help you to retain new clients and keep your current clients motivated.

3. Display & Discuss your Own Weakness

No one is perfect and no trainer is perfect. As much as you need to display your physical ability or nutrition habits, it is also important to display to your clients things that you are not good at and might be working on perfecting. For example, as much as you should strive for an image of perfection when it comes to fitness and healthy eating, it is also important to demonstrate to clients that you are working towards personal goals too and that you fall down sometimes. For example, the other day I was trying out this new exercise doing crunches with my legs wrapped around a punch bag just to challenge myself. Luckily I had the camera rolling and after a few reps I bailed HARD on the ground!. Now after I peeled myself off the gym floor, I was stoked that I had this on camera and posted this on my social media channels. Not only did this give all my clients a good afternoon laugh, but they expressed their joy in knowing that I too wasn’t perfect.

These are just some ideas on how you can connect a little bit more with your online personal training clients as well as attract new clients.