Money, Marketing and Soul for Massagepreneurs
Archive for March, 2012
Customize LinkedIn
Mar 28th
When we think of marketing, we often think of the headlines, the advertising, the offers – the Big Campaigns. But marketing isn’t always about the Big Campaign but all the little opportunities to promote your massage practice and share your message.
One marketing opportunity you’ve likely overlooked is your LinkedIn website listings. Most people leave them as “My Website” or “My Blog”. By customizing them, you can give a quick overview of what your website(s) have to offer every time someone views your LinkedIn profile.
I made you a five-minute video explaining how to customize your LinkedIn websites, add your Twitter handle and customize your Linkedin profile, watch it here.
Tweet for Business
Mar 21st
This week I wanted to talk to you about a simple yet effective way to spread your promotional messages to thousands of new prospects…Twitter!
In case you havenʼt heard about Twitter or donʼt know much about it yet, Twitter is a microblogging site that allows you to send short messages of 140 characters to less out to everyone who follows you.
On Twitter, you follow people of interest to you and they follow you. If you are going to use Twitter to gain business, I suggest you follow people in your area — start with clients but then move on from there to other local businesses.
Think of Twitter as a party. You donʼt show up at a party and only talk about yourself or your business, right? No, you engage in conversation. Ask leading questions to find out what people are doing. You also give information – a book your read or are reading, an article, a blog post your wrote or read, etc. that can help the person you are talking to with their problem. Same thing with Twitter.
Then mixed in with that line of conversation, you promote your business: post last minute cancelations, promotions/specials, blog posts, classes, etc.
Just to give you an example on how I have used Twitter — one week, I had several openings, so on Monday morning I posted this: “Openings this week: Tues at 5, Wed at 2 & Thurs at 10, need a massage call 703-851-6922, email or DM me.” I did all that in 103 characters and I was completely booked by the end of Monday.
So get tweetinʼ! If you havenʼt started a Twitter account yet, this video walks you through the steps.
Create a YouTube Channel
Mar 14th
The first step in creating video is having a place to put it – and the king remains YouTube. Even if you don’t have your own videos to upload yet, it’s nice to have a YouTube account that you can use to comment on, favorite, or otherwise interact with videos.
Your first step is to go to http://www.youtube.com and click “Create Account” in the top right corner. Remember that you’ll be stuck with your username and it will be visible to everyone – so make it some variation of your name or your business name. Next, YouTube will ask you to create or link to an existing Google account. (This is a change since Google purchased YouTube.)
After you’ve finished creating your account, start playing around with your settings. I often get asked the difference between a regular account and a channel – every account has a channel built right in. You can modify yours by going to “Account” in the drop-down that appears under your username in the top right corner, then “edit channel”. That’s it for now, we’ll be improving upon your videos soon!
Add Your Business to Yelp.com
Mar 7th
Last week we talking about going local by getting a Google Places. This week we want to continue our on-line presence by adding your business to Yelp.com
Almost everyone is heading online to solve their problems these days, whether they need a massage therapist or a florist! Making your business stand out in local search results can have an instant impact on your bottom line, especially if your competitors are not reading this blog post! 
One popular website for business reviews is yelp.com. Adding your business (or updating an existing listing) to yelp is easy and free. Just go to https://biz.yelp.com/support/unlocking and follow their step-by-step process to get started. The more information you can add about your business the better!
After your business is listed its time to get reviews – contact a few happy clients who you have a great personal relationship with and ask if they might consider writing you a review. One review is often enough to get the ball rolling and lead to many more.
You might want to take proactive approach about this one and add your business. Anyone can add any business and write a review on them. You will want to monitor it too for comments especially if they are not positive.
