Content Marketing for Personal Trainers: 3 Steps to Success

CONTENT MARKETING FOR PERSONAL TRAINERS

Content Marketing for Personal Trainers:

3 Steps to Success

Learn how to create your first 3 pieces of online content to generate word of mouth, increase exposure, and get online clients with nothing more than your smartphone and expertise.

Every personal trainer should be creating content for their online following to maximize their earning potential. Content creation can be used to grow your business and create a loyal customer base. 

There are many benefits of creating online content:

 
 

• Establish yourself as an authority

• Help tons of people with their fitness problems 

• Generate new clients

• Create an online source of income

• Increase your professional footprint

• Connect with new people

• Create new career opportunities 

• Your current clients will be proud to share your content to their friends 

• Get more clients without spending money on advertising

 

Here’s how to create the most amount of top quality content with the least amount of effort.

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How to Create Your First 3 Pieces of Online Content

1

Think of a solution to one client’s pain point.

Start by thinking about a singular problem that one of your clients have. Think about if this problem is unique to them or if it’s something that you think other people also struggle with.

2

Write a blog article

Write an article solely focused on fixing this problem for that specific client. It doesn’t have to be long either, try to cover 3 main points in 700- 1,500 words (for reference: this article is about 1200 words). Your 3 points should be as follows:

**Intro:** state the problem that your client is facing and give some background information that makes the readers feel connected with them. Feel free to use a made up name if your client likes to be private.

**Innovative solution:** talk about how they overcame this hurdle and how you helped them do so. Relay this information in a way that makes it clear how the reader can apply this information to their own life

**Conclusion:** Highlight the 3 biggest takeaways from your message and give them ONE actionable thing they can do to get started. This part should paint the resolution after the problem is fixed, show the reader how good it feels to fix that pain point that they’re currently struggling with. Show them how the grass is greener.

After providing a well written solution to the problem, post this on your blog. If you don’t have a website you can create a highly functional and beautiful site with WordPress for an inexpensive cost, I’d recommend that option for anyone starting their online personal training journey.

3

Create a short video

Now that you have a completed script about your topic you need to create a video about this same topic because most people would rather watch someone enthusiastically explaining how they can improve their quality of life rather than reading about it. Plus the same people who read and liked your article will be more inclined to share your video now that they trust your information which helps them and others put a face to the name. This is vital in becoming known, liked, and trusted. In order to become a successful personal trainer you will need to complete the K, L, T triad and this is one of the quickest ways to accomplish this.

All you need is an iPhone that shoots in a quality of at least 720p (most shoot in 1080 or higher) and a stand for your phone. Amazon has smartphone tripods for as low as $10. You don’t need any fancy cameras or studio equipment to shoot a simple landscape (turn your phone sideways) view video from your chest to slightly above your head. Experts call this the “talking head” frame and it’s about as personable as it gets; the focus here is simply your face (know), your personality (like), and your knowledge (trust).

Here was one of my very first videos:

Keep this video short and sweet, use jump cuts to edit out the rambling, only keep the best sentences. It may seem weird at first to watch yourself jump from sentence to sentence but it actually makes it easier to watch for the viewer and reduces any down periods in your video. Keep it between 1-4 minutes because these days people have very short attention spans and if it’s too long people will scroll past anything that seems too time consuming.

Here is what my videos with jump cuts look like now.

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Video editing software: I use iMovie just because it’s simple and I can usually edit 10 minutes of raw footage into a solid 3-4 minute video within about 30 minutes. You can also use FilmoraGo and Splice (both free and available on your smartphone).

4

Condense to make it easily consumable

Next thing you need to do is condense your blog article/video to an easily consumable Facebook post, tweet headline, and Instagram caption. You can do this by copying and pasting the 3 main points of your blog post/video into a separate word document (I just use the notes app on my iPhone) and then editing it to flow well together. This should be between 100-400 words max and it should be captivating enough to make readers want to head to your blog post or watch your video to learn more.

To shorten your videos you can go into your video editor to cut your video down to 1 minute so it fits Instagram’s time restriction or just post different sections of the video for multiple posts per video.

Remember to clearly explain how they can access your other content. You can even include the link to the video or article in this same post or in your bio on Instagram and Twitter.

5

Schedule and repeat

Once you do this one time you will understand the cycle of repurposing content to maximize your impact for your content creation efforts. After a couple times you will be able to see what form of content resonates best with your audience. Don’t forget to pay attention to the times you are posting throughout the day.

Always pay attention to the schedule of your target demographic: I tend to post my written articles at 12pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays and my videos around 4pm on Mondays and Wednesdays. I do this because most of my potential clients are at work from 8-4pm so they can’t listen to the audio on a video while they are at their desk, but they tend to be able to read an article after their lunch break or during slow periods throughout the day. 

So now you have your first blog for your website, a post for Facebook, Instagram, and twitter, and your first YouTube video! I’ve given you a strategy to squeeze the most amount of content for all of your content creation efforts to ensure that you stay motivated and encouraged while getting the results that you want. Hopefully this helps you get your first few online clients within the first month like it did for me!

Hope this helps,

Ethan Halfhide 

ACSM Certified Exercise Physiologist 
Owner of www.panaceafit.com

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How to Create a Lead Magnet to Grow Your Online Fitness Business

How to Create a Lead Magnet to Grow Your Online Fitness Business

How to Create a Lead Magnet to Grow Your Online Fitness Business

Ever wonder how to get people to your website and on your email list to land your first client and grow your online fitness business?


Search the depths of the Internet for answers, and you’ll probably dig up a million different ways to do this. But there’s a key feature to include on your website that can help you bring in leads, build authority as an online personal trainer, and grow your fitness business.

Turn prospects into clients with a lead magnet

Know what it is? A lead magnet is a marketing term for a document designed to generate interest, engage prospects, and start a conversation that can turn information seekers into paying clients.

Even if you haven’t created a lead magnet before, chances are pretty good that you’ve signed up and downloaded your fair share. Check out the online fitness business gurus and personal trainers who have been in the game a little longer, and you’ll see what I mean.

How to Create a Lead Magnet to Grow Your Online Fitness Business

For example, transformation specialist and online personal trainer Ryan Spiteri created the Fat Loss Cheat Sheet as a lead magnet to connect with prospects. When someone signs up, they download this free PDF via email, get added to his email list, and receive weekly messages that provide useful information about things like working out, dieting, and fitness goals. And mixed in with those emails are opportunities to purchase a training program.

Create your own lead magnet for your fitness business

Now that you know what a lead magnet is and how it works to help build your online fitness business, you can create your own. But I’m not a writer, or designer? Don’t worry. It’s not as hard to create a lead magnet as you might think.

By following a few simple steps, you can create a lead magnet for your fitness business to connect with the type of clients you want to work with.

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1

Identify your niche

There was a time when the average personal trainer was in high-demand, had a solid book of business, and trained everybody from athlete to new mom, overweight or obese adults, and senior citizens. But online personal training has changed the game. It’s a lot harder to be successful as a general personal trainer when you’re running an online fitness business.

Here’s the reason. When people decide they want to get in shape, lose weight, train for a race, or even enter a bodybuilding competition, the Internet is typically one of the first places they look to find answers. Specializing in a specific area or niche, greatly increases your chances of being found when someone searches for, “weight loss coach,” for example.

Specializing is how online personal trainer Dave Smith found his niche helping new moms and women with weight loss, dieting, and fitness goals.

lead magnets for personal trainers

2

Do your research

Take the time to figure your target audience or niche, and you’re one step closer to creating a lead magnet that converts. Once you know your niche, you can dig a little deeper to find out more about their goals, interests and concerns, and what your niche audience is looking for help with online.

Here are some questions to think about to help you develop a topic idea for your lead magnet.

  • Where do your ideal clients hang out online? (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.)
  • What are their concerns, issues, pain points about health and fitness?
  • What problems are they talking about in Facebook groups, niche specific websites, and online forums that your online fitness business can solve?

Find out what people are really searching for online. Here are a couple more ways to help you research your niche to develop a lead magnet.

  • Use Google Keyword Planner. This free tool allows you to see the search volume and trends for key phrases people are using to search for information online. For example, while writing this post, we found that only about 100 people search for “online fitness business” a month. But “fitness business” gets about 1,000 searches a month.
  • Type in search terms you think your target audience is using to help you find a key phrase to help shape your lead magnet.

3

Developing your lead magnet idea

With a well-defined niche and solid research, you can start developing an idea for your lead magnet. If you’re freaking out about this step, it’s pretty normal. Don’t overcomplicate it.

At this point, you know your niche. You’ve got the credentials to be a personal trainer and run an online fitness business. And you probably already have real-world experience training clients or working out yourself.

The biggest mistake people make at this point is thinking that the lead magnet needs to be a massive resource of information, an ebook hundreds of pages long, or a week-long mini course. Yes. You could spend the time to create these types of lead magnets. But you don’t have to.

Make it as simple as possible. For example:

These examples should give you some ideas to develop your own lead magnet. Obviously, you’ll need to spend some time writing or recording the content. It makes sense for most fitness business owners to try and control costs when starting out, but you could hire someone to create the content for your lead magnet.

You could also repurpose existing content (like a podcast episode, blog post, case study, series of emails, resources page, etc.) and turn it into a lead magnet

4

Designing your lead magnet

You’re a personal trainer and fitness business owner, not a graphic designer. How are you going to get your lead magnet designed (cover, page design, video/audio intro, etc.)?

Option #1. Be willing to learn something new. For example, you can use sites like Canva for free to design a lead magnet cover. And YouTube has its own video editing software and tutorials. You’ll have to spend some time learning how to use these tools, but they’re relatively user-friendly, and most are free.

Option #2. Pay someone to design your lead magnet. If you don’t already have a steady stream of personal training clients and income, you probably want to keep costs down when starting your online fitness business. But to get leads coming in, it might be worth it to pay someone to help you design your lead magnet. Fiverr.com is an affordable option, where you can find talented graphic designers with rates as low as $5 per project.

5

Go live, and start collecting leads

Once you’re done with your lead magnet, you’ll want to connect it to your website with an opt-in form to capture email addresses. You can find free WordPress plugins to do this, or pay to use lead generation tools like Lead Pages. Basically, these tools (free or paid) help automate the process. When someone submits their email address, they’ll receive your free lead magnet, and be added to your email list.

But you’ll need to do more than just post your lead magnet on your website. If you don’t have a massive email list or social media following, you need to help people find out about it. Here are some effective, and inexpensive ways to do this:

  • Send out an email. Even if you don’t have a big email list, you probably have a few contacts. Send an email and invite them to check out your lead magnet.
  • Reach out to bloggers/websites that already have a followingOffer to write a guest post about a health/fitness topic. Include a link to your lead magnet. (see tip #1 for specifics on this approach)
  • Be a guest on a podcast. About 57 million people a month listen to podcasts in the U.S. alone. And a lot of those podcasts cover health and fitness topics. Contact podcast hosts via email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Provide a brief bio that mentions you’re a personal trainer, and ask if they’d consider interviewing you. You’ll probably get a chance to plug your lead magnet and point people to your site in the show notes.
  • Answer questions on Quora. Create an account, and start answering questions about health and fitness. Include a link to your website in your bio.
  • Post a video on YouTube. It doesn’t have to be long. 1 to 3 minutes is fine. You can even record a decent video with your phone. Introduce yourself. Talk briefly about common health and fitness challenges people have, and how you can help. Or instead of a talking-head video, demonstrate an exercise, or how to cook a healthy dish. Encourage people to visit your site for more information.
  • If you do have a budget, consider spending a little money to run a Facebook ad campaign, for example, to promote your lead magnet. Or use social media to host a contest to get people to sign up for your lead magnet with a drawing for something of value like a gift card, fitness tracking device, or free coaching.

It might take a little time to develop an effective lead magnet and get it all set up on your site. But it’s a smart strategy that will help you grow your fitness business.

Have questions about creating a lead magnet for your fitness business? Let’s discuss. Leave a comment in the notes.

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Personal Training Website Ideas

Personal Training Website Ideas

Personal Training Website Ideas

If you really want to progress your career in personal training – either as a trainer or a fitness guru – there’s no better place to get exposure than your website.

A personal trainer’s website can be the place where they attract clients, share their expertise about fitness and wellness, reach a global audience, and promote their personal brand.

But I’m not going to lie, the health and fitness industry is saturated with 100s, if not 1,000s, of websites all vowing for a piece of the market, making it all the more difficult to make your site stand out.

Below we will take a look at some various personal trainer website ideas that will give you an edge on the competition and help you to progress your personal training career and personal brand to heights you never thought possible.

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Effective Website Marketing from Other Popular Personal Trainers

A good place to start for personal trainer website ideas is to look at what some other successful trainers have done with their sites. Here are some examples of marketing strategies and designs that help them convert website visitors into clients.

Email Lead Capture

Did you know that 91 percent of consumers check their email daily, 74 percent prefer to receive communications via email, and 66 percent have a made a purchase as a result of an email marketing message?

These are just a few of the amazing statistics behind email marketing that make it so important to your success. When a potential lead visits your site, odds are they won’t just pick up the phone and schedule a meeting with you.

However, if you can capture their email you can continue to stay in front of them with your blog or other interesting workout-related content and eventually build their trust.

Here are a few examples of email lead capture from other personal xenical in usa trainers that are a good idea to implement into your personal training website:

Examples of Email Lead Capture

Right when you get to the http://tonygentilcore.com/ website one of the first things you see is your opportunity to get “fresh content.” A blog subscription is one of the ways Tony is getting leads who, over time, will learn to trust Tony while he stays top-of-mind each time they get an email with great content from him.

tonygentilcore.com

Another example of effective email lead capture is from the http://www.ericcressey.com/ website. Right when you get to the homepage this popup comes up with a free offer incentivizing something valuable – a free deadlift tutorial – in exchange for your email.

email popup lead capture for personal trainers

Podcast Lead Capture

If blog writing or the creation of video tutorials is not your thing, consider doing what http://www.jcdfitness.com/ did and create a podcast. You’ll be able to speak your mind and do things like JC where you field questions from your audience.

Plus you can post podcasts on iTunes and get even more exposure from searches there. Learn more about starting a podcast and marketing it here.

personal trainer website ideas podcast

Use Social Proof

Although most new sites or trainers won’t have the kind of media exposure as John Romaniello of Roman Fitness Systems, any indications of your credibility as a personal trainer will help earn the trust of potential clients visiting your site.

This site, and many others, use the “As seen in” section in a place that is visible on their homepage to build instant credibility.

personal trainer social proof example as seen in

Social proof is not just limited to media exposure however, nearly any personal trainer can take advantage of the type of social proof that personal trainer Neghar Fonooni establishes on her http://www.negharfonooni.com/ site.

She uses testimonials to showcase what real people have said about her and backs up her results with actual before and after pictures of clients. This way her results can speak for themselves.

personal trainer social proof example

The Call-to-Action (CTA)

The CTA of a website is one of the most important components. It has been said that the average person now has the attention span of about 2.5 seconds, less than that of a goldfish.

When someone lands on your website you need to do two things, fast:

  1. Let them know what your site’s all about (in under 3 seconds)
  2. Tell them what to do next

Let’s look at some examples of sites that have strong CTAs.

The site http://jasonferruggia.com/ has a really simple, yet genius homepage that helps Jason do a few things:

  1. The “Why You’re Not Making Any Gains” appeals to people who can relate to that and lets them know what the site is all about – helping clients get gains.
  2. The huge “Get Exclusive Content” button tells you exactly what you will be getting if you subscribe to the blog.
  3. By subscribing, Jason is also gathering lead information.
  4. Below the lead capture section we also see the often used social proof element of “As featured in…” that adds credibility.

Good job Jason!

personal trainer call to action example

Again we look at the Roman Fitness Systems site, one of my favorites in terms of leading the customer down a path. For personal trainers who are just starting out or are not selling specific workout materials or products online, this is a good site to emulate.

In terms of the CTA, there are two:

  1. “Start Here”: It’s so simple yet efficient at helping guide people through the site. If you are a trainer and want to let people know where to find out more information about you, use your own “start here” button to lead them down your sales path.
  2. Two options: Also very simply done is the option to either get hot or get huge. This too is a CTA that helps lead people down a very specific sales path.
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One thing you may have noticed from the above examples is that some personal trainers monetize their sites in different ways. That is something you’ll also have to consider when building your website.

Deciding on the Type of Site You Want

to Promote

Just like there are different types of personal trainers there can be different types of personal training websites. Obviously there can be some overlap between different areas of health and fitness but it’s usually easier to start narrow and deep rather than go broad and shallow.

Here are the three main types of personal trainer sites that you’ll want to consider and an explanation of their purpose:

  1. Client-centric and local: this is the type of site you’ll want to build if your goal is to get new personal training clients in your local area.
  2. Topic-specific: these sites focus on specific topics – like strength training, weight loss or bodybuilding – and usually have some type of monetization strategy that doesn’t involve one-on-one or group personal training.
  3. Brand-specific: the other type of personal training site is the brand-specific site. As the name implies, these are for brands with multiple trainers and/or facilities.

Client-centric and Local Personal Trainer Websites

With this type of website your main goal is to have people who are searching for personal trainers to find you or to have a place to collect leads. Here are some tips to have success with this type of website:

  • Get a professionally-designed personal training website: your website is a reflection of your brand and is also a reflection of the type of work you provide. If you have a badass website with cool pictures, lots of information on your process and other trust-building signals, you’ll look as if you have a successful personal training business even if you’re just starting out.
  • Don’t just build a site, build your personal brand: when building your client-facing site, you’ll have to consider how you’ll sell your fitness theory. This means having your website describe the following items so that clients know what to expect from you and can get excited about working with you:
    • What health means to you
    • What your daily routine is to promote health
    • What you eat and why
    • Your strategies to create a new habit or behavior
    • What exercises you use to get in the best shape
  • Marketing your website (SEO): the easy way to market your website is through your personal interactions, with business cards and through word-of-mouth referrals. But the long-term and personal-training-website-marketing-that-should-be-on-your-radar will come in the form of what’s called search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO, a form of marketing that sees your website will be found by people who are searching for personal trainers on search engines, is like personal training for websites. It helps them get strong, get attention, and become sexy in the eyes of Google. SEO will be one of your greatest assets if you are trying to get new clients on a continual basis.

For an example of a client-centric personal training website check out http://www.eddielester.com/, the website of Fitness Mentors founder Eddie Lester. Eddie’s site does a few things right: first, it is clear that it was designed by professionals and not by amateurs. Second, Eddie’s website focuses on images to tell the picture of what he is selling.

Eddie Lester website responsive mockup

Thirdly, Eddie has a robust About page that talks about his background and as well as his certifications.

personal trainer about page example

Fourth, Eddie makes good use of the services page and speaks about the services that are unique to his business. He also mentions his price points, something that most potential clients will want to know right off the bat.

personal trainer services page example

Finally, Eddie adds social proof with an up-to-date testimonial page. His contact information is also clearly displayed so that people can get in touch with him via phone, email or through social media.

personal trainer website example header

Topic-specific Personal Training Websites

personal trainer website ideas

One of the other, and perhaps most competitive, of personal training websites are the ones that cover specific topics. You know these sites well because the popular ones come up again and again when you do fitness-related searches.

These types of sites include, for example, Bodybuilding.com, MuscleandFitness.com, Shape.com and the more individualized versions of these sites like RomanFitnessSystems.com or JillianMicheals.com.

The difference between these websites and client-centric sites is that they create revenues in a different way than individual or group personal training sessions. In other words you can’t actually hire the trainers on these sites, they exist to sell you on something else.

What do these topic-specific sites sell? Let’s take a closer look at the examples of the sites to see if any of these relate to what you’d like to achieve:

  • com: Sells supplements from is online store.
  • com: Sells advertisements and magazine subscriptions as well as supplements.
  • com: Sells advertisements and magazine subscriptions.
  • com: Sells online coaching, books and gadgets.
  • com: Sells diet and exercise plans and ads.

While many of these sites feature personal trainers, the end goal of the sites is not to help the visitor’s book sessions with them. The personal trainers are mainly responsible for the content on the site or have a reputation that they use to sell products they put their names on.

If you are not yet a big name personal trainer but want to create a website that is monetized some other way, here are some website ideas that will get you on your way:

  • Amazing personal training websites start and end with great content: with the exception of Jillian Michaels site, all of the abovementioned sites all got to where they were by creating amazing content. Take Bodybuilding.com for example, do a Google search for almost any topic on workouts and you’ll find them in the first or second spot. This is because their content is superior to almost anything else on the web. This doesn’t only apply to written form, they also have loads of videos, pictures, graphs and illustrations to make their content even more appealing. Furthermore, the writers on their site are true authorities in the health and fitness field which only leads to their credibility.

If you are going to create a website with the goal of selling products or ads, you can follow Bodybuilding.com’s model of putting the content on your shoulders and moving ahead from there.

  • Outreach is just as important as content creation: after you begin to create really great content for your website you’ll want to start the outreach portion. Unlike in Field of Dreams, the “if you build it they will come” idea doesn’t work on websites. One way to start is to spread the word on social media but where you’ll really have success is by forming relationships with other personal trainers who have bigger networks. Asking them to share your content on their social networks is one way to get more eyeballs on your content and to expand the reach of your content.

Traffic is the Most Important Thing for Monetizing Topic-specific Personal Training Websites

The amount of visitors you get to any website is important but this is especially true for these topical sites. This is because the amount of ads you sell, or the amount of meal plans you sell, or the amount of books you sell, etc. will depend on your ability to drive big numbers of visitors to your site.

For comparison sake, the personal trainer who gets 1,000 people to visit their site will probably gain the interest of about 10%, or 100 of those people. Then, only about 10% of those 100, or 10 people might actually reach out to that personal trainer. If he or she is a good closer, they can expect to turn 10% of those 10, or 1, into a client.

But one new client a month for a personal trainer is probably something that could sustain a business that already had a decent number of clients (but not an entirely new business).

With a topic-specific personal training site you’ll need to have a lot more traffic to keep the money coming in which is why these types of sites are amongst the most challenging. As a rule of thumb, you’ll probably need to get your topic-specific personal training website into the 100,000 visitors per month range before you really start monetizing it.

For comparisons sake, Bodybuilding.com gets about 26 million hits per month and RomanFitnessSystems.com about 200,000 based on traffic estimates from https://www.websiteiq.com/.

In this case, you’ll probably also want to invest in search engine optimization marketing if you are looking to monetize your site.

Brand-specific Personal Training Websites

CrossFit Trifecta

These are the types of websites that are for multi-trainer personal training companies or for the personal trainer who has aspirations of growing their business beyond themselves.

Like the client-centric sites, these tend to market to clients in the local area but can grow to farther reaching chains not unlike a CrossFit or similar gym. These sites can also venture into group training or other trendy workout movements like yoga, Pilates or even sport-specific training.

Because the focus of these types of businesses tends to be narrow and deep, these websites should focus on the following approach:

  • A full explanation of the benefits: when people look for a specific type of training they are either a) very interested in that type of training and need to be persuaded why they will try it for the first time with you, or b) already love this type of training but need a reason to visit your facility/gym/experience to convince them it may be better than what they have done before.
  • Lots of pictures: going along with the above, making the change to your business is going to take some visuals of your operations to help seal the deal. Your website should be highly visual with professional-grade photographs of your equipment, people doing exercises and perhaps most importantly, the trainers who dedicate their lives to helping others.

You’ll Want Online Exposure Here Too

Yup, it’s that word again, SEO, the one you knew was coming. If you want more exposure than what you’re going to get from word-of-mouth you’ll want to take advantage of search engine optimization.

SEO will help you to rank for your specific services so that people who want them and don’t know about your brand will find you, call you and contribute to your continued success.

Personal Training Website Ideas Recap

Now you have learned a few things about personal trainer websites. You should be able to take this knowledge and decide the type of lead capture, marketing tools or call-to-actions you want to use.

You should also know the type of personal trainer website you want: local, topic-specific or brand-specific.

With these fundamentals you’ll be able to build a better website and a better career. Don’t forget, you can get a professionally-made website from a name you can trust – Fitness Mentors.

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