By Subhasree Nag
Lately, the fitness world has seen some remarkable transformation along with the rise of influencers. They have introduced a new way of marketing. Even if you are a fan or not, there are niches in every digital platform with numerous followers looking at fitness influencers for recommendations, motivation, and advice.
Fitness is a dream that many people have, but very less can achieve it. The desire to have a protruded chest, chiseled abs, well-toned calves, and big biceps and muscular thighs entices fitness freaks.
People who become fitness influencers have huge patience and are extremely dedicated to their craft.
Fitness Influencers: Definition, Role & Types
Fitness influencers are opinion leaders in this particular niche, and with the help of their personal experience and routines, they guide others to achieve their fitness goals.
This is the combination of courage, morals, determination, grit, and ethics of the person. And the motive is to gain a free lifestyle. Cardio, gym, exercises, and running help people elevate their lifestyle both physically and mentally.
Fitness influencers motivate people in challenging situations with their followers and guide them with these activities to maintain a healthy routine and achieve a good physique. Fitness influencers have gained popularity because of their diet plans, exercise routines, and best practices.
Types of Fitness Instagrammers
Well, under the broad category of fitness Instagrammers, certain niches have chosen for themselves. Let’s take a look at that.
Personal trainer
Every person has their own fitness objective, and a personal trainer prepares a routine accordingly and helps people achieve their goals. With their personal lessons and video content, they support the person involved.
Gym trainers/fitness trainers
Fitness equipment is one of the basic tools that help in achieving the fitness goal. Gym influencers help people by suggesting the correct equipment that would help them achieve their goals, like gaining muscle strength or getting their muscles toned.
Weight loss guides
One of the reducing factors in global health is higher body mass. To get that in control and get fit, influencers try to help their followers with a textbook approach or their personal experience.
Yoga trainers
Yoga is a lifestyle and is known for its mental and physical benefits. It fights various ill elements like ill physical health, deteriorating mental health, enhancing focus, improving consciousness, etc.
Key social media platforms for fitness influencers
The best social media marketing platform for fitness influencers is the one where you will be able to create content easily and reach out to people as well. Here are 4 main platforms that work best for fitness influencers.
This is one of the best social media platforms for fitness brands and fitness influencers to target potential customers and engage with fitness enthusiasts. Build a community over Facebook with fitness enthusiasts.
Facebook creates a supportive community with its features, and Instagram is mainly for visual content, where influencers can help their followers achieve their goals over virtual training and suggestions that might help them in the long run.
YouTube
YouTube is one of the popular search engines and is the top social media platform for videos. And this is what the fitness influencers can leverage. Starting with regular sessions, to short content, they can post anything and reach out to their potential followers.
TikTok
This platform is funky, punchy, and snappy. TikTok works as a collection of moments that come together to make an impact. If you are a gym influencer or want to create some fun content that gets attention, then this platform is one of the best choices.
Top Fitness Influencers to Follow in 2024
Discover some of the best fitness influencers there are in 2024 who are making a huge impact on transforming the fitness world. They have made a mark with their innovative approaches to motivational content, cardio, workout routines, and fitness advice.
Kayla Itsines
Kayla Itsines is one of the top female fitness influencers on Instagram, with a follower of 15 million. She is an Australian personal trainer, entrepreneur, and author with a Greek heritage.
Kayla is the UGC creator of a fitness ebook series named, Bikini Body Guides. She is also the owner of a workout and meal-planning app, Sweat with Kayla. This app generated revenue, which was more than any other fitness app in 2016.
Joe Wicks (The Body Coach)
He is another famous influencer with more than 4 million followers on Instagram. Joe is popular as The Body Coach and is an author, social media personality, TV presenter, and online fitness coach. He uses high-intensity interval training workouts.
Jen Selter
With a follower count of more than 14 million on Instagram, she is one of the most popular fitness influencers. Jennifer Leign “Jen” Selter is a female fitness model and also an American Internet Celebrity. She got a lot of attention because of her at a very young age.
Michelle Lewin
She has more than 15 million followers on Instagram with a Venezuelan background. She is a YouTube star, fitness coach, and model. He gained popularity because of her hourglass figure, and she never fails to flaunt it.
Simeon Panda
With more than 5 million followers on Instagram, he is a famous fitness influencer. He became immensely popular, not because of his physique, but because of his character and how he represents the sports fitness industry maintaining high standards.
Cassey Ho (Blogilates)
She is not just a fitness influencer but a CEO/Founder, entrepreneur, and head designer of Blogilates and @popflex_active. With an American background and a follower count of 2 million on Instagram, she took her skills to another level. She has a YouTube channel and a website that sells fitness apparel.
Adriene Mishler
She is a yoga instructor and also the founder of Yoga with Adriene and has a flower count of 1.3 million. Adriene is also an actress and entrepreneur with a professional theatre background. She even has 3.5 million subscribers on YouTube.
How to become a fitness influencer?
Well, there are certain steps that you have to take to become a successful fitness influencer. Here are the steps mentioned.
Choose a niche: Think about where you fit in the social media space, and you can stand out.
Create helpful content: Focus on creating helpful and practical content that will cater to the needs of your audience.
Form a community: Engage with the audience and form a community.
Collaborate with other influencers: Join hands with another fitness influencer and reach out to a larger set of audience with your content.
Use hashtags: Use relevant hashtags and make the content accessible while increasing awareness.
Engage with the audience: always reply to direct messages and comments and promote the content with the existing network.
Experiment with different formats: Experiment with different content formats and find out which one works best.
Set your goals: Before you start, do your research well and set your goals.
How much can you make as a fitness influencer?
Fitness influencers earn in different amounts, and that ranges from a few hundred to million dollars per month.
Nano influencers: Nano Influencers are those who have 1000-10,000 followers. They can earn from $150-$600 for every sponsored post.
Mid-tier influencers: They are influencers with 50,000-500,000 followers and have the potential to earn $500-$5,000 per post.
Macro influencers: These are influencers with 500,000 to 1 million followers. They can earn from $5,000-$10,000 per post.
Mega influencers: Mega influencers have more than 1 million followers and they have the potential to $10,000 -$1 million per post.
Also, there are some influencers who earn millions of dollars every year. For instance, Simeon Panda is known to earn $17.5 million annually.
Common challenges of following a fitness influencer
There are a few common challenges that following fitness influencers can cause. Let’s find out what those are:
Impacts mental health negatively: Fitness influencers show that they are ideally fit and set unrealistic body images for their followers, which can cause depressive symptoms, an increased sense of body dissatisfaction, obsession with diet, and compulsive exercise.
Misleading content: Not all influencers are authentic. Some can be misleading as well.
Audience distribution: Influencers should know who their target audience is, and sometimes, it reaches certain people who are not a part of the target and causes hindrance. This can even include gender distribution.
The Impact of Fitness Influencers on Society
Fitness influencers mainly motivate young people to exercise vigorously and have a healthy meal. However, it also hampers mental health. Research shows that people who follow fitness influencers often suffer from anxiety and depression rather than those who do not follow them.
The unrealistic body image they set for people often makes them feel bad about themselves and impacts their mental health. It is not for the weak hearts. This is also related to poor adolescent well-being and results in poor mental health and body image.
The future of fitness Influencers
Fitness influencers can share their life with their followers beyond their meal prep and workouts and form a community of like-minded enthusiasts. Creating content that inspires others and builds communities is always helpful.
However, new technology is going to take over the fitness world. Augmented reality and virtual workouts will continue to make waves in the upcoming year, and more people will look out for fitness experiences.
AI fitness influencers will have various opportunities and can also raise challenges that need to be addressed. There could be misinterpretation of data because of some underlying algorithms, and this could be dangerous for people who have some medical condition.
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