In addition to FitnessMagazine.com and SparkPeople.com, your profile is now officially live on FitStudio.com!
FitStudio.com is a free health and fitness community for fitness enthusiasts brought to you by Sears, America's leading fitness retailer.
Check out IDEA FitnessConnect on FitStudio.com here: http://fitnessconnect.fitstudio.com/.
Make sure that your profile is 100% filled out so that consumers can easily find you when they search for fitness professionals in your zip code.
IDEA FitnessConnect Team
A select group of about 100 professionals got 25 super insider IDEA FitnessConnect tips at the IDEA World Fitness Convention this August.
FitnessConnect launched at World last year with 120,000 professional profiles, and 14 certification/training groups verifying credentials. There are now over 200,000 professional profiles and 50 certification/training groups verifying credentials. We expect to be working with 100 groups by the end of the year.
In the past year, FitnessConnect has connected hundreds of thousands of consumers with professionals, and helped increase client-engagement. The IDEA analytics guys looked at the data over the last 12 months, and found some trends I could share to help folks make the most of FitnessConnect.
You had to be there to get all 25, but I’m posting the top three here, based on audience response.
1. Make Your Profile Photo Great!
Studies show that our eyes are attracted to faces—especially on web pages. This
means that a potential client may not even consider your awesome qualifications
if the FitnessConnect search results don’t show your face. And, fair or not, our
first impression of someone is based on his face. So choose a photo that
matches the vision of who your prospective clients are looking for. Oh, corporate logos and cats
make for really bad profile photos.
2. Send a Monthly Newsletter (but make IDEA do all the work)
Every month, the editors of IDEA prepare a newsletter for you to send to your
clients and leads. All you need to do is set it up once: add a logo (if you want),
add an opening paragraph (if you want), and choose the clients and leads you
want it to go to. Your folks will automatically receive a newsletter each month
from you with great health and fitness information.(By the way, any clients and leads you add to
your profile—to get your newsletter, for example—belong to you. IDEA will never send them
anything.)
3. Complete Your Profile (to 100%)
Prospective clients make their decisions with as much information as
they can get. We’ve found that professionals with more information in their profiles get more clicks,
even when they have less impressive-appearing qualifications and are listed lower on the page.
Further, the level of completeness is one of the 26 elements that determine the order professionals
are listed in search results.
You asked for it, you got it!
At our 2011 IDEA World Fitness Convention a few weeks ago, we officially launched search capabilities in Canada on IDEA FitnessConnect. Now consumers can find fitness professionals, clubs, and classes in both Canada and the United States. So, if you live in Canada and would like a free way to acquire new clients, now is the time to fill out your profile so that others can find you.
Fill out your free profile here: http://www.ideafit.com/fitnessconnect/signup/pro
IDEA FitnessConnect Team
Exciting news! In the last few months we've added 19 new verification partners to IDEA FitnessConnect. While we started with 16 of the top certificaton groups, we now have 45 certification/training groups onboard and counting!
Our newest partners include:
- Agility Training Institute/ATN Associates (ATI)
- Balanced Body®
- Balletone (BT)
- BASI Pilates (BASI)
- BioMechanics
- Boxing Fitness Institute (BFI)
- Burn with Kearns
- canfitpro
- Family Safety and Self-Defense Institute
- GYROKINESIS®
- GYROTONIC®
- Kathy Corey Pilates
- Kickboxing Fitness Institute (KFI)
- Les Mills
- Nia
- Powder Blue Productions (PB11)
- ProPTA
- Revelation Wellness Instructor Training (Revelation Wellness)
- Schwinn Indoor Cycling (Schwinn)
Below is the complete list of verification partners:
- Agility Training Institute/ATN Associates (ATI)
- American Council on Exercise (ACE)
- American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM)
- Balanced Body®
- Balletone (BT)
- BASI Pilates (BASI)
- BioMechanics
- BodyBlade®
- Boxing Fitness Institute (BFI)
- Burn with Kearns
- canfitpro
- Family Safety and Self-Defense Institute (FSI)
- GYROKINESIS®
- GYROTONIC®
- International Fitness Professionals Association (IFPA)
- International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA)
- Kathy Corey Pilates
- Kickboxing Fitness Institute (KFI)
- Les Mills
- National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM)
- National Council for Certified Personal Trainers (NCCPT)
- National Council on Strength and Fitness (NCSF)
- National Exercise & Sports Trainers Association (NESTA)
- National Exercise Trainers Association (NETA)
- National Federation of Professional Trainers (NFPT)
- National Personal Training Institute (NPTI)
- National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA)
- Nia
- Peak Pilates
- Pilates Method Alliance (PMA)
- Powder Blue Productions (PB11)
- ProPTA
- PTA Global (PTA)
- Punk Rope
- Resist-A-Ball®
- Revelation Wellness Instructor Training (Revelation Wellness)
- Schwinn Indoor Cycling (Schwinn)
- Spinning®
- STOTT PILATES®
- Stroller Strides®
- The Cooper Institute (CI)
- Training and Wellness Certification Commission (TWCC)
- U.S. Career Institute (USCI)
- World Instructor Training Schools (WITS)
Start getting your certifications/trainings verified now!
IDEA FitnessConnect Team
Reviews are an important part of the search results ranking algorithm and a great way for you to stand out from the crowd. Because reviews are so valuable, we want to make it as easy as possible for you to use this aspect of your IDEA FitnessConnect profile. With the click of a button, the new "Review Request Tool" will send your contacts an e-mail asking them to leave a review for you.
Ask current and past clients/participants to write you a review by scrolling down to the bottom of your private profile and clicking the "request reviews" button. This button will take you to a screen showing an auto-populated message asking for reviews (you can edit this message if you'd like).
Below this message you will see a list of contacts that you've added to your clients & leads tab. Simply select which contacts you'd like to request reviews from and click the "add" button. If you have not added clients/leads to your profile in the past, you can enter client e-mail addresses one by one.
Once you click "Send Request", your contacts will receive an email with your message along with a link to your profile.
Enjoy!
IDEA FitnessConnect Team
Ideafit.com just got social! A few weeks ago we launched "IDEA Answers", a dynamic question-and-answer platform that allows fitness experts, professionals and enthusiasts to interact and get access to free advice on any health and fitness-related topic.
You can ask and answer questions from the following areas on ideafit.com:
- The main IDEA Answers page
- The bottom of all articles and videos
- Certification/training group profiles
In order to keep track of these questions and answers, we've created a feed on the main IDEA Answers page. When logged into your account, your feed will show new answers to questions you've asked, new answers to questions and topics you're following or have voted on, and suggested topics. You can also sort by the latest questions, most popular questions, and unanswered questions.
IDEA Answers has also been integrated into IDEA FitnessConnect. You will find a new tab called "Answers" on your IDEA FitnessConnect profile that will display answers that you have submitted (Note: You have the option of hiding any answer from your public profile).
So, what are you waiting for? Start asking and answering questions now: www.ideafit.com/answers
IDEA FitnessConnect Team
Editors note: The following is a guest post by Mike Bannan, Director of Business Development at IDEA Health & Fitness Assocation. In it, he gives a summary of his educational session "Growing Membership with Yelp, Google Places, and IDEA FitnessConnect" that he presented on March 16th, 2011 at IHRSA's International Convention & Trade Show.
20 percent of all searches are directly related to location. This fact can have a huge (positive or negative!) effect on fitness and training businesses.
People looking for a personal trainer or a gym don’t search for “personal trainer” or “gym”, they search for “personal trainer Cooper City” and “gym Cooper City.”
Whether they’re searching on Google, Yelp, or IDEA FitnessConnect, location matters.
I presented a session on this a couple weeks back at IHRSA in San Francisco. I shared a bunch of information IDEA had learned about how people search for local businesses (such as fitness facilities and personal trainers); and more importantly, the 16 things most successful businesses are doing to show up at the top of those searches.
Here are some of the high points:
Claim your profile. All three of these services display profiles for businesses. But many (most?) profiles have not been claimed by business owners. The most important thing your business can do to improve your search ranking and how you’re perceived is to claim and complete your profile.
Google cares what other sites say about you. Google Places profiles display a ton of information from other sites, like CitySearch, TripAdvisor, and Yahoo. Plus, Google bases a lot of your credibility and authority on links from other sites to your own.
IDEA FitnessConnect cares how qualified your staff are. One of the main reasons FitnessConnect exists is to provide transparency of professionals’ credentials. So FitnessConnect weights rankings heavily on the verified credentials of the facility’s professionals. Make sure your staff have completed their profiles, and that those profiles are associated with your facility.
Yelp cares what other people say about you. Encourage people who love you let other people know about it, especially in Yelp reviews. (Be cool, though—don’t beg for positive reviews.) And be sure to reply (publicly or privately) to negative reviews.
But before you can do anything with Google Places, Yelp, or IDEA FitnessConnect, you have to claim your profile! Really. Do it. Do it now!
When we launched IDEA FitnessConnect in August, we had 14 of the top certification agencies onboard as verification partners. Our team has been working hard to get more verification partners every day. Now we have 26 agencies verifying credentials for the 200,000 fitness professionals listed on IDEA FitnessConnect.
Our newest verification partners include:
- BodyBlade®
- National Personal Training Institute (NPTI)
- Pilates Method Alliance (PMA)
- Peak Pilates
- Punk Rope
- Resist-A-Ball®
- Spinning®
- STOTT PILATES®
- Stroller Strides®
- World Instructor Training Schools (WITS)
Below is the complete list of verification partners:
- Academy of Applied Personal Training Education (AAPTE)
- American Council on Exercise (ACE)
- American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM)
- BodyBlade®
- International Fitness Professionals Association (IFPA)
- International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA)
- National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM)
- National Council for Certified Personal Trainers (NCCPT)
- National Council on Strength and Fitness (NCSF)
- National Exercise & Sports Trainers Association (NESTA)
- National Exercise Trainers Association (NETA)
- National Federation of Professional Trainers (NFPT)
- National Personal Training Institute (NPTI)
- National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA)
- Peak Pilates
- Pilates Method Alliance (PMA)
- PTA Global (PTA)
- Punk Rope
- Resist-A-Ball®
- Spinning®
- STOTT PILATES®
- Stroller Strides®
- The Cooper Institute (CI)
- Training and Wellness Certification Commission (TWCC)
- U.S. Career Institute (USCI)
- World Instructor Training Schools (WITS)
If your certification/training agency isn't on the list, we encourage you to contact them and ask them to get involved.
IDEA FitnessConnect Team
Last month, we announced that your IDEA FitnessConnect profile can be seen on FitnessMagazine.com. This month, we have even more good news to share - Your profile is officially live on SparkPeople.com!
SparkPeople has an average of 13 million visits to its website a month. The company’s mission is to SPARK millions of PEOPLE to reach their goals and lead healthier lives, which it does by offering nutrition, health and fitness tools, support, and resources.
Take a look at IDEA FitnessConnect on SparkPeople.com here: http://www.sparkpeople.ideafit.com
Make sure to complete your profile so that consumers can easily find you and see what you have to offer: www.ideafit.com/fitnessconnect
Stay tuned for more partner annoucements in the coming months!
IDEA FitnessConnect Team
We are excited to share with you that your IDEA FitnessConnect profile is officially live on FitnessMagazine.com!
Check it out on Fitness Magazine here: http://fitnessconnect.fitnessmagazine.com
What does this mean?
- With over 7.2 million readers, Fitness Magazine helps women make little changes to achieve big success
- 1.4 million people visit FitnessMagazine.com each month
- And best of all, Fitness Magazine is going to promote you through their many media channels. Not only will IDEA FitnessConnect be mentioned a number of times in their print magazine, but it will also be profiled in two of their e-newsletters and have a spot on the FitnessMagazine.com home page
As you know, the goal of IDEA FitnessConnect is to put dedicated fitness professionals in front of millions of consumers so that you can be more successful. Our partnership with Fitness Magazine is the next step to reaching this goal, and your profile will appear on many more of the largest sites on the web in the coming months.
IDEA FitnessConnect Team
