A great fitness video is about more than reading a script on camera. It’s an opportunity for you to tell your story and show the human side of your business. Many people prefer videos because it’s an easy way to digest information that doesn’t require much work on their part. Since you’re a personal trainer, you probably have a killer personality that engages people, but if you can’t convey that in a video, you’re better off finding a friend, a spouse, or a client who can. You also don’t want every video to feature 20 minutes of “the talking head” – unless, of course, you were intending to bore people to tears! Needless to say, you want to access the best tools available to make your fitness video a success. Here are 10 tools we recommend for creating your next video…
Put your photos to music to get a professional-looking video. This would be ideal for showing stills from your fitness boot camp or classes, along with motivational music that makes people want to join in on the fun. You can also create a video testimonial of “before” and “after” shots of your clients – with their permission, of course!
Record on-screen activity to create a Screencast, Tutorial, or How-To. Boot camp owners often use this type of video to train their fitness instructors how to contribute to their blog. If you have a “members” section on your website, you can also use this tool to show customers how to login to their account and navigate the site.
Break down complex ideas into a simple animation, using paper cut-outs and a white board. This is a unique and engaging way to tell your story. You can go through the history of your business as an “About Us” video or you can talk about your personal credentials as a trainer. You may also want to use this format to explain how a new promotion or contest works.
This tool lets you create Family Guy type animations in minutes. Just pick a template, choose your characters, type or record your dialogue, and let the program work its magic for you! You can even login with Facebook to save your video. This is the ideal mediums if you have something funny to say or if you just want to grab people’s attention with something totally unique.
Do you have a long stretch of video you don’t feel like editing? Magisto takes your long clips, edits out the most exciting moments, and creates a stunning video that gets right to the point. Set your video to music and add titles. Fitness trainers can use this tool to highlight their class offerings.
It can be boring to film your whole video from the same position – a few feet directly in front of you. Use this tool to zoom, pan and fly around the screen for a more realistic, dynamic feel – as if you had your own videographer in the room. There is a bit of a learning curve here, but once you get it, you can create some really interesting presentations. Use it instead of the standard sit-and-speak video.
Well, okay… this isn’t a tool, per se, but it’s an invaluable resource for learning more about how to create and use video to propel your business forward. The “Online Video 101 For Small Businesses” is especially helpful for beginners who want to get started using video to promote their fitness businesses.
This tool is a standard video editing tool, which lets you upload video clips, trim them, add music to them, amplify dialogue, render, and do all the things a professional video editor would do. Yet, what makes this tool unique is that you can collaborate with users on other computers, so all your trainers can add to the project. We love this tool for piecing together highlights from a big event or conference, where everyone has taken different footage.
What if “The Sims” could tell your story? That’s just what you get with Xtranormal. You choose the characters, the backgrounds and type or record the dialogue. The business plans start from just $50 / month for an unlimited number of videos. This is great for discussing any blog-worthy topic, training employees in a way they’ll pay attention to, or making a short ad to promote a new service.
It’s hard to argue with “free.” YouTube will be hosting and streaming your video anyway, so why not just add your transcripts and annotations through the site directly? You are bound to reap SEO benefits when working with YouTube’s own tool.
