I know, it’s such a daunting task to update your website. You already update it at the beginning of the week with a new group fitness schedule — or you probably should. Heaven forbid you have to adjust it midweek. What if you had to generate a blog each week to convey some thought to your members? Can you imagine how daunting that might be?
Well, you’re in luck, if you don’t want to inform your members and act as their “go-to expert” there are probably thousands of other nutrition and fitness blogs that will give them advice and tips that you don’t. However, what if one of those blogs is a competitor? What then?
There are a lot of things that can be perceived as a daunting task. I imagine when you first opened your club(s) you could have listed off an extravagant list of daunting tasks. But, if you hadn’t accomplished at least most of the list, your club wouldn’t be operating today.
The same thing applies to your website. Sure, there are a multitude of blog sites discussing fitness and nutrition, but they aren’t from your club. Additionally, you could always take the easy road and simply link them to your favorite exercise blog, but they would eventually just stop coming to your site altogether.
If you own your own club, or manage a club, it’s on you to make sure members come to your site, return to your site and perceive your site as a resource. You may even employ an IT person, but that doesn’t mean that they will manage, or generate, content for your website. It’s on you to bring your staff together and develop a contribution schedule.
Once you develop a content schedule for your staff, use it as an excuse to have another club-wide meeting to discuss concerns and issues they may have been encountered. As your employees begin to write for your website they will be more in tune to what’s happening inside the facility. This will help you discover who on your team is striving for greatness, but will also help you sniff out problems, hopefully before a member.
In creating a schedule, make sure that it works for everyone. Don’t try and add too much writing on your staff, or they will begin to despise the writing process, and the updates will slowly fall off completely. Additionally, once you create monthly schedules for writing assignments, put someone in charge of collecting and sending out reminders. If you put yourself in this position you will only be adding headache to your already busy day. Find an employee that is willing to take on the responsibility. Provide them with the resources they may need to be successful — i.e. a computer, internal e-mail address, access to the website.
If your website was developed properly, the person you put in charge should be able to meet with IT and learn how to perform the simple updates. If the issue arises that it’s too difficult for someone without web experience to make a simple update, it might be a good idea to reevaluate your website design or system.
It’s vital to your business that you stay plugged in with your members. It’s one thing to have a great sales staff and personal training department, but it’s a whole different opportunity to become the “go-to resource” for all things health, fitness and wellness to your members and community.
Tyler Montgomery is the editor of Club Solutions Magazine. Contact him at tyler@clubsolutionsmagazine.com or Tweet @clubsolutionsma.
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Rachel Zabonick-Chonko is the editor-in-chief of Club Solutions Magazine. She can be reached at rachel@peakemedia.com.
