Heeeeey Steve Hochman here with a killer guest post from one of my high level coaching clients.

His name is John Kent and he's a local fitness celebrity who has over 300 boot camp clients.

The guy is absolutely dominating because of his fitness celebrity status (And because he's super cool with A TON of energy)

And so can YOU!

John's gonna tell you all about how.

So without futher ado, here is my coaching client John Kent with, "How to Celebritize yourself"

Do you want to explode your business, get more clients, charge higher rates, have better retention and have way more fun in your boot camp business?

Of course you do!

Well, you should not be overlooking the awesome power of PR.

You should CELEBRITIZE yourself!

There is no faster way to do this than through the mass media.

I know that it's very hard to get on Oprah, but where do your clients come from?

For 99% of you reading this, they all come from your local area.  So, that is where you want to become the "Star"!

Getting into your local media is much easier than landing a national spot.

Plus, it's much more targeted.

So grab the low hanging fruit.

Here's how:

1.  Craft an awesome "hook".

One of the best ways to get coverage by the local media is to craft an awesome "hook".

When your hook is awesome, you can get media coverage WITHOUT having to know anyone.

Sure, I know that some people will tell you that you have to build relationships with the media, but I know from my own personal experience that you DON'T HAVE TO.

If you have a good story that the media thinks will be relevant, helpful and/or entertaining for their audience, they will cover it!

Plain and simple!

Some of the best hooks can be derived from piggybacking off of current national or local trends.

Or you can provide commentary on different research or studies that have just been in the news or recently published.

You can also tie your story into different holidays, seasons, etc.

Perhaps the biggest point of this is that as a fitness professional, you are in the perfect industry for sending in news releases.

If you are creative, there are enough hooks out there that you could be sending in a news release every week if you wanted to.

2.  Write a kick-butt headline.

Your news release lives and dies by your headline and the first paragraph.

It must be interesting, newsworthy, different and not a blatant sales pitch.

Your headlines should make a bold exciting claim, be fun and entertaining, offer great tips or offer some type of consumer warning.

Here's an example that landed a local 3-4-minute TV spot that was played once per hour on my local news for almost 36 hours.

"Local Fitness Expert:  Moms and daughters bond at boot camp"

Do you know how much that would have cost me to have that much air time if I had bought commercials?

At $26 for a 30 second spot for this news station, you can easily see how that would add up to BIG time marketing dollars.

I've even had one news release generate a full-page newspaper article that produced 21 clients and $24,126 (and I still have active paying clients from it so that amount continues to go up every month.)

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to give you some over-the-top promise and tell you that you will get that kind of coverage with every release that you send out or that each time you have a story covered by the media you will generate that kind of income...

But I can tell you that it's entirely possible.

3.  Keep it short and sweet.

Don't tell the whole story in the form of a book or with a bunch of boring "who cares" crap.

Make it 1-2 pages MAX!  Give them enough to know that you know what you are talking about.

Beyond that, you want to wet their appetite so that they call you for more info so they can run your story.

If your story is professional and written really well, then they may even publish your news release exactly as it's written.

(But, I don't think you'd be upset if that happened would you?)

4.  Provide credible proof.

Within your release, you need to provide proof that you know what you are talking about or provide information that otherwise lends to the credibility of the story.

You can accomplish this with quotes from yourself or other experts regarding the topic of the news release.

Another great way to do this is to provide quotes from your clients.

But, BE COOL and make sure you have their permission to quote them!

5.  Write your press release with the right mindset.

As you're writing your release, think about who it's going to be sent to and remember that their goal is not to generate tons of free publicity for your business.

It's to provide value to their audience.

So above all, don't make it a blatant sales pitch.

Announcing a new location or the latest whiz bang piece of equipment can get media coverage, but if that's all you've got, you're going to run out of story ideas very quickly.

Just because you're not writing a sales page for your business in the release doesn't mean you shouldn't promote your business, but you'll do it in more of a "state-the-facts" sort of way and you'll want to make sure you provide your contact information...

(name, website, phone, email) inside of every release at the bottom.

Finally, if you've tried to send in press releases to the media before with no luck, the biggest piece of advice I can give you is to KEEP TRYING.

Be consistent.  Become known as the "go-to-fitness-expert" by your local media.

Believe it or not, the media needs you just as much as you need them, that is, IF you provide them with great content.

By providing them with great content, you are making their job much easier and who wouldn't want that?

Now it's your turn!  Sit down, write your release using the key points I outlined above, create your media contacts list, send it out and above all, keep trying!

John Kent is a local fitness celebrity and the creator of Celebrity Fitpro

He provides an "Automatic" push-button service to make you a local fitness celebrity too.

Learn more about how you can "automatically" become a local fitness celebrity.

This entry was posted on February 21, 2011 at 12:50 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Uncategorized by Steve Hochman | 3 Comments