Editorial Policy, How We Ensure Quality
At That Fit Friend, there have always been three major goals that we strive to hit with every single piece of content.
1. Deliver Honest Reviews
Friends don’t mislead friends.
With every piece of content, we lead with a consumer-first mindset. There is nothing stronger in this world than a referral from a friend and we keep this in mind when writing content.
Out Editor-In-Chief Jake Boly MS CSCS is a strength coach who’s built That Fit Friend to reflect how he approaches the landscape of review content and training. Everything has a grassroots approach built with honesty and integrity.
2. Community Comes First
We’re going to be real here — we’re sick of modern-day media and reviews. How often do you find yourself searching for a review only to find countless fluff pieces with stock images and no “real” evidence of said product being used?
You’re not alone if you regularly feel frustrated when searching for review content. This is where we believe community comes in. For example, it’s easy to publish glorified advert reviews when you don’t have a community behind you and that’s something Jake noticed 0thers doing when working at other editorial sites.
By taking a community first approach, we’re holding ourselves to a higher standard. Content no longer just about That Fit Friend and driving more views to the brand. Instead, it’s about the community we built because when you connect with other humans the last thing you want is to let them down by misleading or publishing shallow content just for the sake of making a little money.
3. We Have Skin In the Game
Since he was 6-months into creating That Fit Friend, Editor-In-Chief Jake Boly made a decision that would forever shift the landscape and growth of That Fit Friend. That decision was that he wanted to purchase every product reviewed on That Fit Friend’s website and YouTube channel.
If there’s a review, comparison, or round-up published, Jake wants to have skin in the game. By investing his OWN money on products for review for both himself and his team he ensures everyone remains more objective with their stances and content. Let’s be honest. We’re human and it’s tough to be objective when you’re friends with a company that’s sending you free gear.
Does this cut into profits? Absolutely. However, we’re not worried about maximizing profits at all times like most media companies. That Fit Friend is a grassroots small business review site and the Founder/Editor-In-Chief recognizes that not everything is about making as much as possible. This is part of the problem of why reviews these days are so messed up. By running the company leaner and realizing we don’t need that much to live a nice life we can keep the bigger picture in mind — community and honest content.
How We Measure Quality
In short, we measure quality with documentation of everything we’re doing to test gear. This means ensuring that EVERY single review has imagery and videos to help you see exactly what we’re doing and how we’re testing something.
It’s way too easy to just say, “Yeah, I used this 100 times.” Cool, how about you show us that then? Go on camera and explain what you’ve done to test what you’re writing about.
Actions speak louder than words.
This is the mindset we take when conceptualizing content quality. We are firm believers that if we show you what we’re doing then that will always beat written content and stock images — and our community vouches for this.
That Fit Friend reaches thousands of lifters and athletes every month who are trying to find the best gear for their needs.
We’re massive gear nerds and we like to think our readers are similar or that maybe they’re just getting into working out and they’ve never had the right gear so we’re helping them find what will actually work and be useful for them.
Topics Covered On That Fit Friend
On That Fit Friend, we do our best to stay in our lane and write about only topics we have a lot of background and knowledge in. We don’t “fake it to make it” here.
- Training Shoe Reviews
- Barefoot Shoe Reviews
- Weightlifting Shoe Reviews
- Running Shoe Reviews
- Shoe Comparisons
- Men’s Activewear Reviews
- Exercise Guides
- Exercise Comparisons
- Shoe News
As That Fit Friend grows, we may add more topics to this list, but for now — we try to stay niche in and in our lane to prevent adding more noise to an already crowded landscape and industry.
Types of Content On That Fit Friend
Every writer for That Fit Friend has a background in personal training and coaching. Our Founder is a firm believer that you need some personal training background to properly test performance-focused gear.
For example, if you can’t explain why and how a shoe’s heel-to-toe drop will influence squat mechanics for different athletes and lifters then you’re doing a disservice to the community consuming your content. Context matters.
- Individual Shoe Reviews: Training shoes, barefoot shoes, weightlifting shoes, and running shoes are all covered on this site.
- Shoe Comparisons: Shoes that rival each other are often compared on That Fit Friend and every comparison is written by someone who’s worn and tested each shoe to provide the proper nuance and context.
- Best Lists: We love lists, but we also recognize that most “best lists” kind of stink. To combat this every best list written on That Fit Friend features products that ALL have individual reviews to add depth and are written by authors who have tested every single product featured.
- Activewear Reviews: Our Founder Jake Boly constantly struggles to find good Activewear so he’s routinely building apparel reviews and comparisons to help other guys avoid wasting their money on lackluster products.
- Exercise Tutorials: Since every writer is also a coach and personal trainer, we also like to cover informational exercise content. This not only keeps us sharp with our coaching but it helps us educate our community and express other interests outside of gear.
What Separates That Fit Friend From Competitors?
To be honest with you, we try not to worry too much about our “competitors” when building content, but we’d be remiss not to acknowledge that the content landscape is very cutthroat and tough to exist in, especially as a small business.
That said, we have thought about the topic of, “What truly separates us?” on many occasions. There’s a culmination of three things that truly separates That Fit Friend from the tireless and endless review sites out there. There three things include:
- We’re consumers just like you. We aren’t a media company shoveling out reviews at volume just to make a buck. Everything published on our site is a product that we buy because of genuine interest and that product receives adequate tests before being published.
- We have media to back it up. Our YouTube videos and images of hand-testing gear are our biggest assets. It’s 2024, if you read a review with stock images — run. We’d put good money on the fact that that review is likely just a money play without an ounce of care on providing honest feedback.
- Community speaks louder than reach. We don’t care about your following. We don’t care about your traffic. We care about the community that we get to interact with and help. Jake spends HOURS every day answering DMs and YouTube comments about the gear he reviews. If you’re spending your fleeting time watching a review and the reviewer can’t take a few minutes to respond after you invested YOUR time then there’s something off with that equation.
Consistency and Constant Improvement
To ensure That Fit Friend is maintaining a high degree of quality we’ve built countless rating systems and means for quantifying gear. These systems are routinely updated — for context, we generally aim to circle back and update these systems every other quarter based on the more we learn and grow in this space — this helps us make sure every writer is on the same page.
What does a high degree of quality mean, though? Well over the last year alone we’ve been implementing things like adding more visuals to content, creating better and easier means of comparing a product’s performance, employing a small team of authors that have been vetted by our Founder, and building out an Expert Network of coaches and doctors to help verify content accuracy.
There is a lot that goes into the quality of content on That Fit Friend and every increase in quality has been from a hard lesson learned of owning and building a small business. We hope that as we grow you continue to find our content useful, but that you also always feel comfortable reaching out to let us know how we could do better. Community can be a huge asset for quality improvement and we hope you take us up on that offer.