Week 8 Blog Post #2:

Visual media most definitely works for the type of business I have started, which is a in the fitness industry. Visual media is quite frankly the source of all the income that people make from the fitness industry. Every video or picture combined with products and accessories worn by fitness professionals to help promote their sponsorship's. The 4 businesses or fitness professionals I have picked today include Bodybuilding.com, Christian Guzman, Fitness Blender, and ATHLEAN-X.

Starting with Bodybuilding.com, their visual media is very effective for them with all of their related supplements and gear are on displayed and can be purchased on their website. They are using almost all social media with the most activity on Instagram. They have over 2.9m followers but surprisingly only receive anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 likes. The type of content that gets the most response is their workout videos or videos regarding nutrition. The hashtags that they use depend on the post but they repeat these hashtags which are fitness, workouts, bodybuilding, gym, and motivation. Their last post was 11 hours ago and they post everyday if not every other day. I can take a lot from inspecting this Instagram, starting with the number of posts and content that they have is insane. I need to be able to create enough content to post as often as they do even though they don't receive as many likes I think that because they post so much no matter what people will eventually see the post if it really is that enticing or important.

Christian Guzman has 1.2M followers and receives anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 likes on average. The type of content he has on his Instagram is completely different from bodybuilding.com with the most significant difference being the overall quality of the content displayed. In other words Christian prides himself in providing a very aesthetically pleasing video to display his workouts with him explaining the content or video being posted. The 2nd important factor is the modern touch to his Instagram and his pictures giving it more attention from the younger fitness driven generation. This is something important I'd like to learn and add to my Instagram page in order to help create an overall aesthetic, modern, and sleek Instagram page. The hashtags that Christian uses are pretty much the same repeated ones in all fitness Instagram pages, but the difference is half of the time he doesn't use any! I can actually learn that although hashtags may seem important, in order for an organic following to happen you want people to come to your Instagram page rather than search and happen to come across it. The posts that receive the most likes and comments are the most aesthetically pleasing videos or pictures which just goes to show I need to create great quality videos.

Fitness Blender is something I came across earlier this year and really appreciate what they did. They provide free workouts which can help everyone in the fitness industry when they plateau and want to try some new exercises. They only have 277k followers on Instagram and average 1,000-5,000 likes on their posts. The ones that get the most likes aren't the ones with recipes or related to food, but actually a new exercise people haven't seen but try and end up enjoying a lot. It seems as if most of their attention comes from other people seeing a video and sending it to their friend, creating a domino affect. They post everyday but tend to steer away from the repetitive hashtags that most fitness Instagram accounts follow and instead depending on the content of the post use a few hashtags relating to the picture of food or video of an exercise. The most important thing I would take away from Fitness Blender is the amount of free and useful information they give out. I would like to do that using my Instagram just because I feel as if for showing someone how to do an exercise you shouldn't charge money if they want to try it for themselves at home.

Lastly the business that has gotten the most YouTube attention, ATHLEAN-X. Although most of their followers came from YouTube, this company thrives just as much on Instagram. They have 1.7m followers and receive anywhere from 50,000-75,000 likes on pictures. The videos that are posted almost every day on this Instagram receive anywhere from 400,000 to 600,000 view. They have been known to go viral for some of his exercises which is what I'm trying to learn the most from. The type of posts that receive the most likes and comments are new exercises, specifically ones that target your arms and abs. I noticed this because most people in the comments were asking about exercises to chisel out their biceps and abdominal muscles. Although his videos are good quality, they don't compare to the aesthetically pleasing Christian Guzman posts and this makes me realize maybe I can take a few things from each of these Instagram pages and create a nice balance of aesthetic posts that make people stay, look, and learn.