As a fitness professional, have you ever worried about losing all of your Facebook fans or Instagram followers?

What would happen if all of a sudden, you woke up one morning and all of it was gone?

Well, this just happened to two young women in Australia who accumulated 520,000 followers for their Health and Fitness brand on Instagram. They woke up over the weekend, their account had been hacked and they lost access to over half a million followers.

You’d feel a little bit sick right?

All of that hard work… Gone.

It’s not just the followers you’ve lost. It’s all of the photos that were taken, ‘liked’ and commented on…

…all of that just disappears.

This can be absolutely devastating for any fitness business. Heck ANY person who’s put in that much time, energy and effort into something would be shattered.

Luckily enough for them… Instagram restored their account. For some people and businesses they aren’t all that lucky and everything is gone forever.

Problem is… I see this kind of thing happening to Fitness Professionals ALL the time.

Not just because their account has been hacked (this doesn’t happen ALL that often) – but the same thing is happening when Facebook or Instagram change the rules on you as well.

All of a sudden you can’t reach half of the people you used to be able to reach… It might not happen overnight, but it’s definitely happened, happening and will continue to happen in the future….

…And I totally get it, it sucks when they change the rules. You’ve worked really hard and at one point in time you were able to reach so many people, but the truth of the matter is, whether you’re hacked or not – your Facebook page or your Instagram account can disappear and there is nothing you can do about it.

Truth is, a lot of businesses have built a following of hundreds of thousands of people – yet, they have no idea how to monetise it because they don’t own the platform that all of these people are on…

Did these girls have a contingency plan, or did they have all their eggs in one basket?

I don’t know for sure, but I have a feeling they didn’t really have a backup plan. From what I can see they weren’t focused on moving people away from social media and building up their own platform (website and email database) which is the KEY to building a thriving fitness business online. Don’t forget.. you own your website and you own your email database. A social media platform can’t take those away from you.

Now, more importantly… Are you making this same mistake?

If you can learn one thing from their experience DO NOT be dependent on ANY social media platforms.

Yes, they were lucky they had their account reinstated… but it doesn’t matter if it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Periscope or the “next big thing”…

…the one thing that always remains true – is that you MUST be building up your own online platform so that you’re in control. Otherwise your business can disappear overnight.

I talk to my clients and my members about this every. single. day.

Social media is good for branding, positioning and communicating with people on a platform that they’re already hanging out on, so it certainly has it’s benefits… but it’s not ideal for putting money in the bank if you don’t have a solid strategy behind you.

Don’t leave yourself wide open by being dependent on social media platforms.

Watch this free training video so you can make sure your fitness business is protected…

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Incase you prefer reading… Here’s the video transcript

Hey, Jaimee Maree here from the fitness entourage.com and in this video I’m going to cover a pretty foreign concept to a lot of fitness professionals, but it’s one that can either make or break your business. I see so many people failing to do this that I want to ensure you don’t make the same mistake. The central idea is actually pretty simple, and a lot of people might actually dismiss it without thinking it through, but trust me when I tell you that the implications of not doing this are far too broad to ignore.

Are you too reliant on platforms that you don’t own?

So, what it really comes down to, is this. If your Facebook, Instagram or Youtube account was shut down tomorrow, would your business survive? What if you google rankings were to drop and you stopped getting traffic from the search engines. I want you to think about any of the platforms where you connect with your audience online or anywhere else you get exposure.

Now, with that in mind, is a high percentage of that interaction on a platform that you don’t own?
I see a lot of fitness professionals dominating on Facebook and there’s so many people who have accumulated thousands and tens of thousands of followers on Instagram, yet when I try to find out more about them, they don’t have a solid foundation outside of social media or platforms like youtube. Either they don’t have a website, or if they do, it’s not working for them. Either they haven’t put time into developing it or they don’t publish content on it regularly.

This means they’re not in control and this is a very dangerous position to be in. Is this something you can relate to? If so, I implore you to put more time into building something that you own and control. Like your website or your blog.

You Must Own The Platform You’re Building Your Business On

One of the most important things about having a website is that a website is something that you own. 

“You must own the platform that you build your business on and you must make sure you’re not completely reliant on outside sources for communicating with your audience.”

This puts you in control and not at the whim of other people and other businesses. For example. Where you’re ranking in Google can change overnight, You don’t own your Facebook page, you don’t own your Instagram following, they can shut down your account or change the rules at any time and there’s nothing you can do about it. I cannot stress this enough.

I highly encourage you to build relationships with people through social networking, in fact I teach people every day how to do it. However, the one thing you must consistently do, is move those people from social media, over to your website and build up your reputation both on social media and on a platform that you own.

This will enable you to build a lifetime audience, you can publish content whenever you like and people can freely find it online. The stronger your website and blog is, the more successful you’ll be online. You can have all the fans and followers in the world, but if you don’t have a place for them to go to learn more about you, then you’re leaving yourself wide open and you’ll really struggle to grow over time.

How to be in control of your own marketing

So, how do you make that happen? Build a website.

If you don’t have one, we can teach you how to do it inside our members area. If you’ve got one, then work on building up your content and your blog and share that on social media, so you can move them from there, onto your platform. Create videos and publish them on your website instead of sending people to youtube. Create valuable information for your audience so they seek you out and want to visit your website regularly. All of these things are easy to do, if you lay out a plan and put it into action.

This is what I help my clients and my members do each and every day. If you need help with marketing your website, creating videos or doing anything online then I’d love you to join our membership area. It’s full of training designed to help you build up your profile and be successful online. I’m there every step of the way in our private members only group so you can ask questions, and get feedback from me on w hatever it is that you’re working on. Just remember, build your business. Not someone else’s. It takes time, energy and effort but it’s so fundamentally important and it’s definitely worth it. If you want help to make this happen then click the link below and join me in the membership area, I look forward to seeing you in there.

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