September Update - Reworking Blog Posts, Fitness Archive Preparation
Hello all.
I realized recently that currently, there’s not really a good way to communicate ongoing changes and upgrades to the site, in any meaningful way.
I’ve been keeping subscribers on the mailing list updated with periodic updates via email, but this is obviously a relatively ineffective way of keeping everyone up to date on what’s going on with the site, when many people will not read all the emails and will thus miss out.
In the past, I typically included things like updates, sales, etc. in the main blog feed. However, mixing these kinds of articles within the main blog food doesn’t really have the intended effect - they quickly get pushed down in the list by new articles as they’re released each week, and findability for these articles would generally be little to nothing after the original posting, since people generally don’t go searching for news posts directly.
So, I realized it probably makes a lot more sense, just to make another blog feed for these kinds of articles specifically. So, this blog feed will be separate, and primarily for news, personal updates, training updates, business updates, special offers/sales, and so on.
The Fitness Archive.
Earlier this year, I quietly and secretly launched a free, 2 week group coaching offering, intended to help new exercisers get their first taste of proper exercise knowledge. This is still mostly secret, as we’re not actively running new groups right now, but we saw some modest success with that format.
The followup to this format, was the plan to work on a paid group coaching offering which builds on this format, and takes exercisers to their first 16 weeks of exercise and beyond. This would include group support, weekly conference calls, workout templates for a variety of exercise goals, levels of experience, and levels of ability, and a video course which grows over time, with new videos regularly added in response to user feedback/needs.
This project is now called the Fitness Archive, and the unfortunate reality is that this project has been delayed quite a bit. I originally had the plan to have this done around June or so, but it is now September and it likely won’t be fully complete until October or so.
A lot happened - I got busy taking on a larger-than-prior client load, I got burnt out for a few months, Summer meant travel disruptions, the kid was home from school, and other distractions. As a result, I’ve not been able to focus or put in the level of work I wanted, and the project has been delayed a lot more than I hoped.
Running out of ideas.
I wouldn’t really say I’ve been running out of ideas for articles, but things have definitely been slower to come to fruition. The combination of focusing on writing one article and filming one video every single week, meant that I found that often it’s a lot easier to do video in many situations. I found that often I was copying article ideas for videos and vice versa, which is fine - generally this means reaching different audiences - but meant redoing work that felt like a slog. I often found myself writing an article only to realize that I had forgotten that I had written something substantially similar a couple of years back.
The reality is that now I have over 250+ articles on this site, many of which are very old (and some of very poor quality relative to my current standards), so it’s getting harder to find something to meaningfully say, that hasn’t already been said somewhere. For a long time, my focus was on quantity over quality, and getting articles out quickly as opposed to making them more detailed.
This made me realize that my focus should be somewhat shifting - instead of continuing to try to write more, I should be trying to improve the existing knowledge base. For some time I’ve wanted to have a reason to go back and rework those older articles.
To that extent, part of the current focus of the weekly articles, has been rewriting and updating older articles - updating them for how my opinions and knowledge has changed, expanding them to be more comprehensive, bringing them up to date with the current article standards, and so on.
Of the existing 250+ articles, I’d say there are about 100 of them in need of serious quality updates, and if I’m doing this at a rate of 1 a week, this means it would take a couple of years to fully update all of them.
This doesn’t mean that I’ll stop writing new articles entirely - just that this will be a bigger focus of my writing in the next few years to come, as I overhaul and update those older articles in dire need of it.
Bigger and better free content.
The next thing I want to dig into, once that’s done, is to focus on writing bigger “guide” level pieces of content. These would be bigger, more complete guides that give you a strong, comprehensive look at a particular topic.
In the past, some of my articles have bordered on “guide” level, especially the very long and involved ones, like my intermittent fasting article. But this has generally not been the goal of the articles, which are usually not intended to be super comprehensive, and usually dig into specific smaller arguments or topics.
But given that as above, I’m starting to hit the limit on “smaller arguments” that I can cover, I think the next big thing is to focus on bigger, longer, more comprehensive pieces that will be broadly useful.
Some examples of guides that I think will be a good fit for this format:
How to build muscle
How to build strength
How to get lean
How to maximize your health
How to get enough protein in your diet
And so on.
These guides would have their own blog section, and would have a bigger emphasis on being broadly useful. I’d also probably make them long enough, that it’s worth packaging them as ebooks/digital downloads as well.
I’d also like to overhaul the mailing list, and the free products for download there. The current free downloads offered as a part of the mailing list do reasonably well, but the GAINS program is a bit dated and in need of an update. I’d like to offer more updated programs there in a way that provides more usefulness to users.
More paid content.
Likewise, I want to be able to offer more digital products. The original GAINS books were a solid offering at the time of their release, but they’re a relatively complicated and high-concept product that doesn’t resonate with readers as much as I’d originally hoped.
The idea going forward, is to offer more, smaller, paid offerings - workout program templates, more potential ebooks, and so on, in addition to of course the Fitness Archive from above. There’s also the potential for more video courses, if the Fitness Archive does well and proves the format.
More social media.
At the end of the day, I’ve always taken a very haphazard approach to social media, and this has definitely harmed me in some ways in the long run. Admittedly I need to shudder get into short form video, and post more on instagram and elsewhere about fitness. My hope is that when I’m able to get over some of the major projects I’m working on, I can do so more consistently.
Personal Updates
And lastly, I’d like to be able to provide more personal updates. I’ve been blogging since 2012 (12 years at the time of writing this article) and at many times I’ve felt that it’s hard to really get my feelings out, or write about things that are going on in my life. This is largely because, as someone running a fitness blog, there’s a great pressure to continue to produce articles that are about fitness, specifically so that the site can grow and reach more readers, and ultimately find more clients/help more people. Every post that I could write about what’s going on in my life, is a missed chance to have written an article about supersets or creatine or whatever.
The end result is that when I do end up writing something personal, much like the issue with news posts, they get quickly lost in the main feed in the same way, and don’t have the impact they should have with their own dedicated section. I’d like to be able to occasionally write a bit more about how it’s going over here, and really have a place to journal and get my thoughts out in a more consistent way.
Closing
That’s all for now! Expect more to come.
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached thousands of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
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