Money, Marketing and Soul for Massagepreneurs
Social Networking
Free Blogging Teleseminar on February 23, 2011
Feb 21st
Are you interested in blogging but don’t know where to start or what to write about? Or maybe you are already blogging but don’t know how to get people to your blog or keep them coming back? Check out my free teleseminar this coming Wednesday. Irene Diamond of MassageSuccess will interview me on this very topic. Here’s some of what will be covered:
- The Top (5) Reasons every therapist needs to have a blog.
- Top 2 free blogging platforms and why free might not be the best option.
- The QUICKEST way to get started creating a blog your clients and prospects will want to read
- 3 strategies you can use to build interest and interaction within your audience
- 3 no-cost ways to get new readers to your blog
- 3 ways to WOW your audience and keep them coming back for more
- 3 key points to remember when choosing the right theme for your blog
- 4 SIMPLE ways to stand out from other massage therapist bloggers quickly and easilyHow to choose the Hot topics to blog about
- Strategy to manage your blog writing so it doesn’t overwhelm you or consume too much of your time and
So go ahead and register here. If you can’t make the call LIVE, register anyway. It will be recorded and Irene will send you the link for the replay.
How to Add Video to Your LinkedIn Profile
Sep 1st
LinkedIn is just one of the many ways to market yourself and your massage business on-line, but are you using it to its full potential?
In this short screencast video, you will learn how to add video to your LinkedIn Profile. Why add video?
1. Excellent way to get back links to your website.
2. Share your marketing message with your target audience.
3. Make your LinkedIn profile dynamic.
Anyway, here are some steps:
1. Login to LinkedIn
2. Add the Google Presentations application
3. Click the grey “Create Presentation” button. (Note: You must have a google docs account to do this. If you have a gmail address, you’re halfway there.)
4. From “Google Presentation” select Insert > Video from the main menu
5. Search for the video you want (Note: Obviously, your video needs to be uploaded to YouTube. I’m going to assume you have knowledge of how to do this for the sake of brevity, but if not, let me know and I’ll provide instruction.)
6. Click “Save & Close” in the upper right corner
7. Back in your LinkedIn window select the presentation and click “Post to Profile”
You’re Done!
or you can watch the screen cast video here.
Here’s what the video looks like on my profile.
Quite the ornament don’t you think? Make sure you click “view full profile” to see the real thing.
How to Differentiate Yourself from Your Competition
Aug 25th
Is business a little slow for you? Whether your business is slow due to the economy or any other factors, there are some things you can do to differentiate yourself from the competition.
There are a couple quick things you can do to your LinkedIn profile to optimize it for SEO. These tips will help make your LinkedIn profile more marketable against the competition, and to make your profile work for you by sending some SEO authority (think links here) to other pages on the web that you choose.
The video below explains it all and shows you exactly how to do it in about 5 minutes.
After you’ve customized your LinkedIn Profile, post on facebook your successes! Or you can also post your comments here :0)
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Kick Your Signature Block Up a Notch
Are you connected?
Aug 18th
It’s a mistake that I see all the time.
Colleagues, coaching clients and friends who are in other businesses tell me that they created a twitter profile, facebook group/profile/official page, etc but no one joined them there.
Let me tell you, “if you build it they will come” is not true for social media!
So you created a twitter account – does anyone know about it? How could they possibly find out? We already discussed the idea of linking to social media in your email signature. But what about your website?
For this tip, your mission should you decide to accept, is to add social media links to your website, a good place is probably your bio or “About” page. You can see an example of mine here. As you can see I kept it very simple, with links to the sites that I’m active on.
You can jazz it up by adding logos, but plain text links work just as well.
If you don’t update your website yourself, just send your webmaster links to your social media profiles and my site as an example. It should take less than an hour, and you’ll soon see more visitors to your social media profiles.
Don’t have a website? Isn’t it time to hop on board? For the month of August, you can enter to win a website designed by me (a $500 value) by purchasing my book “Creating a Prosperous Practice” from the CAPP website. If you already have a website you will receive a website review (a $99 value) should you be the lucky winner.
Don’t want to miss out? Go to Creating a Prosperous Practice now and order your copy today!
8 Fast Ways to Write Blog Articles
Aug 17th
Do you spend hours researching books, the internet, etc. to come up with great information for your clients? Or maybe you have always wanted to start a blog but haven’t found the time. Time actually is a huge factor of why people don’t start or often abandon their blogs. But doing a blog for your massage practice has its benefits
Personally, I’m in the first boat. I always want my articles to be perfect (for you) and spend hours writing and editing and editing my edits. So when I read this article 8 Ways to Write Quick Articles for Your Blog, I was so excited! And I had to share this information with you.
If you don’t have a blog, did it inspire you to do one? Do you will that this will make your blogging easier? If you do have a blog, what other tips have you found for creating quick articles for your blog. Please post your comments below. I would love to read your experiences.
To Blog or Not to Blog
Jun 22nd
Expert blogger Chris Brogan featured in the Wall Street Journal. Read the story here
7 Reasons to Start a Blog
Jun 11th
Before we get to the reasons to start a blog, let’s talk about what a blog is. A blog, short for web log, is a type of website with a user interface that makes it easy to update, or create “posts” for, without any knowledge of html or other programming languages. These posts are typically displayed in chronological order with most recent entries at the top.
1. To Express Your Thoughts and Opinions. As massage therapists, we have something to say about massage and wellness. Blogs provide a place to say it and be heard.
2. To Market or Promote Something. Blogging is a great way to help market or promote yourself or your massage business, a particular service, or a particular product.
3. To Establish Trust. By default, blogs let readers leave comments, which allows a conversation to begin and facilitates the formation of a community with you as the organizer who brought everyone together. Also, blogs have a grass roots beginning, and even though many have been commercialized, most are still updated by a single person. Folks often trust a blog more than a big business site.
4. To Help People. Many blogs are written to help people who may be going through similar situations that the blogger has experienced. What questions do you get repeated asked by your clients? Perhaps others in your area or around the world are experiencing this same situation and looking for answers. Although these people may never become your clients you will be rewarded. Remember you have to give to receive.
5. To Stay Active or Knowledgeable in a Field or Topic. Since successful blogging is partially dependent on posting frequency and providing updated, fresh information, it’s a perfect way to help a blogger stay abreast of the events in a specific field or topic.
6. To Establish Yourself as an Expert. Blogs are wonderful tools to help bloggers establish themselves as experts in a field or topic. Through your posts, readers get a feel for your expertise and your writer’s voice, even as they get a glimpse into your life. In short, blogs can humanize your business.
7. To Make Money. It’s important to point out that most bloggers don’t make a lot of money blogging, but the potential does exist to generate revenue from your blog with hard work and commitment. There are many bloggers who bring in big bucks. With patience and practice, you can make money through advertising and other income-generating activities on your blog.
Blogs can be set up in a variety of different ways (stand alone blogs or part of website), frequency (you will see posts ranging from daily, weekly, monthly), topics and platforms (self-hosted or one of the free versions on Blogger or WordPress). Look for more to come about these topics in future posts. Here are a couple of massage blogs to take a look at and get those ideas flowing.
http://heal-thyselfwellness.blogspot.com/
http://www.yunesa.blogspot.com/
http://www.starkeys.com/blog/
http://blog.diamondwellness.com/
http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/anima-wellness-your-reflexology-massage-retreat
What is Social Networking?
Jun 4th
Social networking, also referred to as social media, encompasses many Internet-based tools that make it easier for people to interact and collaborate with each other. Social networking platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, message boards, Wikipedia and countless others are catching on like wildfire.
People use social networking to share recipes, photos, ideas, to keep friends updated on our lives as well as to market our businesses. By its very nature, social networking is interactive. You can tell anyone (that you want to talk to, and that wants to listen to you) anything about your opinions and experiences—and vice versa–through blogs, Facebook pages, videos and even 140 character messages called tweets. You can also build communities based on common interests, causes and concerns.
While we don’t have room to discuss all of the social networking sites, here’s a sampler to help you get your head around today’s most popular social networking tools:
Blogs are sites that people set up to provide information and opinions about events, ideas or anything else they want to discuss. Blogs can include links to other related sites, photos, videos and sound as well as text. The number of bloggers is growing exponentially; eMarketer estimates that in 2007 there were almost 23 million U.S. bloggers and more than 94 million blog readers.
Twitter is a micro-blogging site. Twitter members post text messages called “tweets” of 140 characters or less, using either a computer or a cell phone. Other Twitter users can “follow” your posts, but you can decide if you want to let them follow you or not. Compete.com, a Web-traffic analysis service, says that Twitter had 6 million unique visits in February 2009.
Facebook is a social networking site where you can set up a profile, join different communities, and connect with friends. More than 200 million people currently use Facebook—and the fastest growing demographic is people over the age of 35.
LinkedIn is a social networking site with about 38 million members. While it shares a lot of the same features and capabilities you’ll find on Facebook, LinkedIn focuses specifically on helping people build career and business communities.
Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Articles provide links to related information. In 2008, Wikipedia had 684 million visitors, and 75,000 contributors working on more than 10 million articles.
YouTube is a site to share and watch videos. Anyone can record a video and then upload and share it via the YouTube site. Everyone can watch the videos on YouTube.
The world of blogs, tweets and wikis can be confusing for many people. Even if you are comfortable using Facebook, YouTube and other services in your personal life, you may be wondering if social networking can be a useful tool for your massage practice or spa. The answer is a resounding yes. Massage practices and spas can use social networking for many practical purposes. Thoughtful use of social networking services ca help you move beyond the conventional, one-way marketing, such as advertising and tap into a more interactive marketing approach. For instance, you use social networking tools to:
1. Research ideas, and learn more about what clients and prospects are saying about their needs.
2. Learn what clients are saying about your services or the competition’s services.
3. Gain new market and competitive insights to improve your services and products. I was just reading a post on one of the discussion boards about why there isn’t any massage/spa services for children with physical/mental challenges and this originator of this discussion what to know why.
4. Create and join conversations with clients, prospects, partners and other constituents about key issues and concerns.
5. Create positive word-of-mouth about your services.
6. Grow your company’s reputation as a leader.
7. Grow your reputation as an expert in your field.
8. To collaborate with others for a new project/service.
In future posts, we will be discussing individual social networking platforms and how they can help you grow your business.
1000 Hits
Apr 21st
I started this blog on January 1, 2009 as one of my goals for the year. My plan was to update the blog twice a week — one entry with a motivational quote and the other with a post related to the various aspects of starting a successful massage practice.
I didn’t know what to expect because I hadn’t done a blog before, but I am very excited to announce that I have had 1000 hits as of today, April 20, 2009 at 8:43 p.m. (E.S.T.) – that took me 3 month and 20 days. Whoohoo!
I’m sure that other blogs have received more hits in a shorter period of time, but I am very happy with my results so far. I want to thank all of my readers. I appreciate the comments made thus far and look forward to receiving more.
Linda
Now can I make it to 2000 hits in the next two months?
