Train In Blocks started in 2021 as an affordable, easy to use online and mobile start up App for Personal Trainers. In a very crowded and competitive market, Train In Blocks (‘TIB’) championed themselves on providing a cost effective service, allowing users to optimize their workflow with a simple fitness plan structure.
I was approached in early 2022 with co-founders Mikey and Joe looking for a professional standard copywriter for four blog posts a month. Joe had spoken to Mikey and together they decided I was their man.
Being a bit of a fitness buff myself, I was looking forward to combining my knowledge and interest of the fitness world with my copywriting skills and blogging ability. I knew a bit about fitness and the Personal Training industry but this had never crossed over into my work.
There were four of us on the team: Mikey and Joe to do the coding and run the website, app and subscriptions, Hannah to take control of the marketing, social media and advertising, and myself to be in charge of keeping the blog updated.
We had monthly Discord meetings where we would decide a plan for each week, including blog content and deadlines. One of the main things I learned throughout the process was the importance of SEO. I had done this a little at university but this was a steep learning curve when applied to the industry. As already mentioned, with there being so many fitness apps and Personal Training software already in the market, it was particularly important to make sure Train In Blocks stood out. We had to be bigger and better than our competitors.
We used Yoast to improve SEO on each blog post and came up with a list of keywords and hashtags to improve readability and our prominence in search engines.
I produced 28 blog posts in total for TIB over a six month period, starting in January 2022 (in fact almost a year ago to the day) up until we unfortunately closed down in July 2022.
Our content was very varied: we produced blog posts for specific days such as Pancake Day, World Refill Day and Mother’s Day but also came up with industry-specific copy geared towards fitness ideas and tips for PTs. We also decided to have a table of contents on selected blog posts so readers could skip ahead to a specific area of interest if need be.
You can see a list of our blog posts here.
My personal favourite was the interview we did with Sean Wilson. I went to university with Sean but when a career in Sport Journalism did not work out, he became a personal trainer, working out of his garage when the UK was plunged into lockdown.
Sean was more than happy to speak to us – not only did it give us the chance to gain an insight from a knowledgeable and passionate industry expert, but it also gave him the chance to promote his service and his burgeoning career as a PT. It was mutually beneficial and went down a storm with the rest of our team. Joe picked out the best soundbites and dotted them around in quotation boxes throughout the piece to add to the copy’s aesthetically pleasing appearance.
Sean offered some ‘golden nuggets’ for his fellow pros and gave us a brilliant interview which we recorded on Zoom to use for our social media content. It was a large project but one which was very well received. It really gave us credibility and provided information we never would have thought of otherwise.
Hot on the heels of that interview, we did another with our esteemed co-founder Mikey. Mikey used to work as a coach but then became a coder, going on to set up TIB. You can read Mikey’s thoughts here:
Mikey gave us a very different perspective from Sean as he talked about the journey to set up Train In Blocks, how to become a better PT, the future and the intricacies of running a business.
Other posts included a Wimbledon-themed set (no pun intended) of workouts and five ways to incorporate mindfulness into your fitness regime when Britain baked under a heatwave at the height of last summer.
Sadly, Train In Blocks is no longer in being. The website remains up as a testament to our journey and what we achieved, but the business is no longer active having closed down in August 2022. Mikey didn’t have the time to continue running it and the competitive nature of the industry certainly didn’t help matters.
I really enjoyed my time working for the company, I learned loads and picked up many transferrable skills I will carry with me to my next project.