Absolutely!
As technology continues to shape the world around us, trends like artificial intelligence (AI) are revolutionizing all kinds of tasks or industries in ways we never thought possible.
In this blog, we’ll explore how AI can be a game-changer for your business, and why you should think of it as a powerful assistant. The best part? You don’t need to be a tech expert to get AI working for you; it’s super-easy to get useful results and can be accessed for free.
So, let’s take a closer look at how AI can help your fitness business thrive in today’s competitive market.
What Sort of AI Can Help?
There are now many different types of AI system, and several of them will be able to help out your business in some way. But the type that most interests us in this article (and that is getting many of the headlines right now) is called a natural language processing model, an example of which is the ChatGPT system you’ve probably heard lots about already.
Think of ChatGPT as a kind of servant that you can ask about any topic whatsoever, or give requests to (for written content). It is similar to a search engine or a voice assistant in many ways, but much smarter and more interactive with better comprehension, a memory of the conversation’s thread, and reasoning abilities. Much more like a human assistant basically!
Sounds Great, But How Can It Help?
Language systems like ChatGPT can use many different writing styles and they of course have flawless spelling and grammar, so at the very least they can help you out whenever you need some quality text creating for you. But more than that, they really do understand whatever topic you’re asking about, and will surprise you with the extra details and knowledge they can work into their responses.
For example, let’s say you want to write a class description for members to see when browsing your class calendar on their mobile device.
Your question to the AI can be as brief as this:
Here’s the first answer (not bad for such a short prompt):
You might not quite like the first response you get, or maybe you need it to include or exclude other bits of information. Easy! Just be more specific with your prompt (include this or exclude that etc.), or simply ask the same question again – the responses are always slightly different, so there’s bound to be one you like:
And the beauty of these AI systems is their speed; the responses above came back within seconds, and so you can very quickly get the result you need, even if it takes two or three retries or a slight tweak to the question.
So, from a copy-writing point of view, tools like ChatGPT can give you a real leg-up with all kinds of text:
- Class and workout descriptions
- Staff/PT bios
- Package descriptions
- Team challenges and event descriptions
- Member communications eg email, pathways, SMS etc.
- Social media posts (you can even specify LinkedIn, Facebook or TikTok or whatever and it will change the language and tone of its writing to suit!)
- Form-filling and applications
- General sales or marketing copy
A Better Type of Search
Just helping you to write text is only one of the many benefits of an AI system. You can use them in a similar way to a search engine, but one that gives more reasoned answers. And because many systems like ChatGPT are web-enabled too, they are able to use the power of the Internet to acquire the latest research data, trends, wisdom, specifications or whatever it is that your question requires. (Some systems aren’t Web-enabled and only ‘know’ things up to the date when they were ‘trained’).
This trivial example, next, shows how a very short question can lead to useful suggestions. As a fitness professional you won’t be surprised by the answers, but it does demonstrate how well the AI understands the question:
(Note too the various follow-up buttons below the answer – these are just handy suggestions, and you are free to ask any different follow-up questions of your own.):
Of course, you can ask much more complex or much more specific questions, this is just to quickly illustrate the level of comprehension these new AI systems have.
You might ask questions about:
- Analysing metrics of various types (you can upload the contents of CSVs or spreadsheets)
- Marketing strategies
- Improving retention
- Latest gym trends
- Integrating with various fitness technologies
- Legal or regulatory guidance
- Best practices
So How Do I Get Started?
It couldn’t be easier; many of the most powerful conversational AI systems, such as ChatGPT, need no setup or installation. You can simply access them via a web browser.
The examples in this article all came from Bing via Microsoft’s Edge browser, which now has integrated ChatGPT available to all for free.
(Heading to Bing.com via Safari or Chrome is not enough, you need to be in the Edge browser)
To access the AI, simply open up the Edge browser, navigate to bing.com and head for the Chat tab – it’s that easy!
There are several other ways to access ChatGPT if you don’t use Edge. From any browser for example, just head to chat.openai.com to be taken to its main log in page – you’ll need to sign up (which is free) for access.
Next Steps
These few examples just scratch the surface and you’ll no doubt find many other ways that these conversational AI systems can benefit your specific needs.
It’s free to use so experiment to see how it might help you – If you’re looking to take your fitness business to new heights, using AI can give you a helping hand or even a competitive advantage!
Steve Beverley 👋
DIGITAL CONTENT CREATOR
An avid gamer and VR fan with over 25 years of game industry and graphic design experience, Steve loves all things technical or visual, and is a keen maker too. With a versatile skillset and can-do attitude, he can be relied on to get stuck-in, and to do the job well. In his spare time, and when not 3D printing or tinkering in his man-lab, he can often be found on the UK coast somewhere looking for a chippy!
