Profile: Chris Johnson – How He Built a Fitness Community On and Offline

This is a special post featuring Chris Johnson, a personal trainer and aptly named Sports Scientist. Chris, who recently made an appearance giving marathon training advice on NECN, has found success using social media and online marketing to gain client leads and grow his budding career.

Iamoptimal.com is a social network where people can get together to share their interest in fitness. Visitors can become members by joining “Team Optimal” where they can make a profile, ask each other questions, upload video, chat live with an IM feature, and even get V.I.P. discounts on over 50 name brands.

I am Optimal was founded and designed by a recent Lasell college graduate and Sports Scientist named Chris Johnson, who came up with the idea after realizing it could be hard for people to find advice, events, and online content on their favorite fitness hobbies and sports from a real personal trainer. With that consumer need in place, he created an online community where people can share information with each other and personally interact with a fitness instructor.

“This community fills in the missing gap people get after high school and college sports. It makes them feel like a part of something again. The best part of all, it is a pro-health community. I am not supporting spending endless hours on the social network, but instead simply finding and sharing information and using it towards improving your fitness regimen or gaining results in the gym or on the playing field.”

Chris Johnson has managed to use his social network to build up his personal training and lifestyle consulting business in a way that has not been seen before. Aside from managing I am Optimal , Chris Johnson uses social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and email marketing to increase his online following of fitness enthusiasts.

“As a domain expert in sports science, I am able to answer many of the questions and post many of the topics myself, proving I have the knowledge and ability if the fitness field to help people reach their goals. I also added a feature called ‘Ask an Expert’ where I am the expert the members come to ask. This allows people to come and test my knowledge specifically.”

Chris Johnson is also the owner of Optimal Performance Personal Training and Lifestyle Consulting www.improvewithchris.com. He decided to keep the two websites separate. One is for business, and the other is for “changing the way the world views fitness.”

Bear Butte Running Camp (Extended Version)

Nike Running came out with Bear Butte Running Camp to promote the Nike Free with the idea of running “free”, or as they call it, Run Super Natural. Nike gets a little perverted in a funny way by poking fun at everyone being naked. The extended version commercial features elite runners like Lauren Fleshman who is the US 5000m Champion, Nick Symmonds who is the US 800m Champion and Kara Goucher who is a Cross Country Champion.