For Fitness Influencers, It Pays To Be Authentic
Creators who stay true to their core messaging and personalities tend to achieve stronger growth and engagement than those who chase trends or prioritize production value, a new study found
What sets one fitness content creator apart from another?
In a saturated market of instructors, coaches, personal trainers and influencers, it can be challenging to build and maintain a robust audience — but a new report highlights a key factor in being successful: authenticity.
While it’s tempting to create content according to the biggest trends, fitness and wellness-focused app development company Sudor found that creators who stayed true to their core messaging, personalities and specific missions are seeing the most growth.
The company gathered data across multiple areas, tracking one year’s worth of performance data across Sudor-developed apps, surveys and deep-dive interviews from over 50 creators and industry perspectives from experts at YouTube, top creator agencies and brand-strategy teams.
How Authenticity Drives Success
One of the first patterns the Sudor team identified was that creators who defined a specific struggle point or unmet need, and then constructed their app around solving it, had stronger growth at launch and sustained engagement over time.
The top-performing apps spotlighted the creator’s personality and teaching philosophy, with programs, communication and experience built around their authentic voice outperforming those who valued production and scale.
Danielle Pascente, who offered a case study in the report, positioned her app as a tool for accountability over simply another workout, with challenges that provide structure and guidance, which helped her build a committed audience.
“I don’t have a playbook for this,” Pascente said. “It just comes out of my soul. It’s the humor, the reality, the music, the rally towels. It’s who I am.”
Among the surveyed creators, 70% identified personal brand as their key differentiator. Internal app analytics also revealed that creators who emphasized their authentic tone and style achieved a 20% boost in engagement on average.
The report also highlighted that audiences connected most deeply with creators who were honest about their imperfect journeys, rather than presenting a polished version of themselves.
Being Real Is More Important Than Looking Good, Data Suggests
That Sudor study aligns with recent research, which found that hyper-attractive fitness creators actually see lower engagement than those who are simply fit.
Followers tend to see those influencers as less relatable, making them less likely to engage or follow them.
However, those hyper-attractive creators who wrote more modest captions — emphasizing effort over talent, for example — were able to come across as more relatable, according to the study.
That humble authenticity also translated into the content itself, the Sudor report found, with creators who posted unscripted, lower-production content achieving 17% higher average engagement.
Around 75% of the surveyed creators also reported that their audiences had more positive responses to home-filmed or real-time content over highly produced footage.
“I’d rather film in my laundry room than in a studio, my audience relates to real, not polished,” said content creator Kate Rowe Ham. “Start modestly. You can always come back and improve.”