I am often talking about marketing your massage business on the internet as the way for massage therapists to gain that competitive edge. And I still believe this, but that does not mean that chair massage marketing should be left out, in your marketing efforts.

I was very fortunate that the massage school that I went to gave us a rebate upon graduating for $1200 which I used to buy a massage table and chair. I actually had to pay a little extra because I got both the massage chair and table. The massage chair was well worth it.

Marketing my massage services through the use of a massage chair has been essential for me, especially when I was first starting out. Chair massage allows for you to “get out in the field” and share your massage education to anyone who is willing to spend 5 -15 minutes in a chair. Bringing massage to the customer instead of the customer having to come to you, is a power marketing move.

Roman Paradigm Massage uses a massage chair

Even now with our brick and mortar massage business, Rpm Therapy still brings a massage chair and massage table when doing events at health fairs, Art and Wine festival and sporting events. It is simply the single most effective means for getting that potential massage client to experience your touch.

Out in field you will have an easier time fighting negative perspectives surrounding massage, when you use a massage chair for your marketing. Potential client attitudes towards massage is quickly dissolved when someone who has never received a massage, can get one without spending allot of money, they don’t have to look for you in the “yellow pages” and is done fully clothed.

Here are some of chair massage marketing strategies that I have implemented in the past.

1. Have a professional look- a nice massage chair, professional business cards (with a call to action) and shirts with your company name on it. I cannot tell you how many times I have gone out in the field and saw massage therapists with ugly tri-color massage chairs that were unmaintained, had no business cards or were cheaply made with beat up tennis shoes on. This is not the look of a professional.

Use the law of attraction here if you want upscale clients who are professionals then you need to attract that individual with professional attire and presentation.

2. Have a sign-up sheet- requiring everyone to sign in before receiving their massage is important so that you can follow up with them later. Be sure to get name phone number and email address; make sure that their information is legible. And if you are going to include them in your monthly newsletter, please be sure to let them know this before hand, or another alternative you can do is call or email them after the event, let them know where you met them and then “ask” them if it would be alright to include them in your monthly massage newsletter.

3. Offer a free drawing- You can offer a free 1 hour massage drawing when participates drop their business cards. Another way of getting a great response is to have a local nail shop or restaurant donate a gift certificate that you can give away; this is a win-win situation for both you and for the business, as they will be getting free advertisement from your chair marketing efforts. Again, you can follow up with potential clients after the event and request permission to put their email address in your monthly newsletter.

4. Have Professional Brochures- Have professional brochures with you that explain in descriptive detail what your massage services are all about. Be sure to use a lot of “you” statements here, do not use “us” or “we”, when talking about your massage services. Be sure not to forget your contact information, address, phone and website.

5. Have good hygiene- Remember to bring hands wipes, disposable face-covers, drinking water and breath mints.

6. Wireless credit card machine- Chair massage events are for the most part, all marketing, getting your services out to the public. But that does not mean that you should not have a few special event offers, in the form of massage gift certificates on you, just in case you can make some sales. Don’t give your massage customer any excuse why they cannot make a purchase with you, take cash, checks and credit cards.

Accepting credit cards will also make your company look more professional. Think about it, if you accept credit cards but your competitor doesn’t, who do you think will look more trustworthy and professional as a business? Most people understand that to accept credit cards you need to have a merchant bank account.

7. Arrive early- Give everyone who is working a booth a free 5 or 10 minute massage, if you do well on them they will continuously talk about that great massage you gave them. And also find out who is working the microphone for the event and tell him to announce your presence and if he has time offer him a free 5 to 10 minute massage from you as well, he or she may even paraphrase and talk about your massage business more upon making announcements throughout the day, do a great job on this person.

8. Get a manicure- I know that as a male massage therapist, I will probably catch some slack on this. But my hands are my money makers, so I take care of my hands as what they really are, your assets. As a male massage therapist, I did find this very uncomfortable at first but I quickly got over it.

Tip: This is mostly for the guys as females will probably get their nails polished, find a nail shop that will “buff” your nails out. This will give your nails a natural shinning look without a polish or a top coat being used on your nails, which will chip off after a couple of days and make your nails look ugly.

9. Learn trigger point therapy- Learning Trigger Point Therapy will boost your conversions (potential clients becoming clients); because you are working on potential clients fully clothed, you will primarily be using trigger point therapy for your massage technique. Shiatsu massage is also very powerful here, explain to your potential clients that this is only a shortened version of your massage work and that you can ONLY do trigger point therapy on them now. If you hit the points good enough, your client will be thinking damn, “if he is this good through clothes, I can only imagine what a full session will be like”, and that is EXACTLY what you want your massage chair customers to think.

Chair massage marketing is the ultimate lead generator, I often told myself, “all I need to do is touch them and that’s it; they will become a massage client”. Also during the summer months when the weather is nice, working art and wine crafts fairs was almost too good of an experience to be true.

Sun, wine, and great food, what more can you ask for? Offer the first 5 minutes for free if you are not busy, to get someone on your chair. From my experiences, when others see you massaging, this will attract others as they see that person you are working on get a massage, they will want one too. Try this and look at the people walking by, looking at you, almost like clock here you see them move their shoulders or their bodies in a way that says they could use a good massage right now.

Corporate health fairs and sporting events, also great targets to hit, I never passed up an opportunity to share my gift of massage and creating a ton of fans. You gotta love working on people or a massage profession is not you.

I would to hear your marketing tips, please respond with your favorite strategy if I missed one.

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Massage marketing lessons learned 101

My partner and I have over 20 years of combined massage marketing experience with our massage business, RPM Therapy, and she would be the first to tell you that we have made allot of mistakes during that time. But I am not here to bother you with our failures, as we are sure that you have your own long list of failures.

Your massage business will directly be affected, by how successful your marketing campaigns are. In addition to that, how well you treat your clients. Remember no marketing campaign in the world, will save your massage business from bad or poor quality service or a lack of professionalism within your business.

So with said, this list, that I am providing here for you, is my experiences being a massage therapist, I have over 11 years of trial and error, successes and failures, that you can take from and learn. It is my hope that this will save you much time, energy and money on the things, that will not work in your massage practice. Most of the items that I listed here will be easy to complete, some of it will require a little work and research on your part.

Do the things below and I guarantee you that you will be successful in your massage business whether you work for yourself or for a spa, it does not matter. Marketing yourself is constant.

My top 10 ways to market your massage business is…

1. Always provide 5 star quality massage service. Even if means to lose money. If you have an client that was unhappy with their massage session for whatever reason, the pressure was not deep enough, you forgot to turn off your cell phone and it went off during the session, whatever the reason if they were not happy with your massage service, do not charge them for that session. Give it to them for free or discount the session.

Providing a 5 star service, also means going out beyond the call of duty, give your clients the energy they deserve, do not just go through the motions during your massage, if you cannot do this for your clients you should not be working on them. All personal matters go away before you lay your hands on that client. Give them an extra 10 minutes, but be sure to “ask them” for their permission before doing so, just in case they have an appointment to keep right after. But chances are you will just be hinting to them about the “extra” attention they are receiving from you, at “no charge”.

2. Your massage clients are paying you for an “experience” not your service. The massage customer has many massage therapists to choose from, what makes them come back is how you made your client felt, emotionally from your work. Not because you have a special offer or some discounted service that you have or how many years you have been a massage therapist. Provide an “experience” for your clients and watch your business grow.

3. Get testimonials. What others say about your massage business or service is more powerful than what you can say about your massage business. So get testimonials, plenty of them, what I recommend here is for you to put testimonials on all your marketing pieces and your website. Opening up a yelp.com acct. and getting your top massage clients to say something about your services is highly recommended. Last month alone we had 30 new clients from yelp.

4. Come up with 20 to 30 keywords and keyword phrases for your massage business. This where you will do a little research, I listed www.goodkeywords.com and www.tools.seobook.com and https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal as good resources to start with. You want to look for keywords and keyword phrases that relate to your massage business and target clients that you want to work with. These powerful tools will also give you search volume as well as how competitive these words are. Once you have your keywords, these keywords will form the basis for all your marketing literature, articles writing and your market segment that you choose to target your massage services to, start a blog.

5. Start a blog, blogging allows for you to talk about your massage business to your current massage clients and to share with potential clients what you have to offer. And it will position you as an “expert” in your area of expertise whether you specialize in. Whether it be a Reiki massage, a sports massage, a deep tissue massage or reflexology. Use your keywords from step 4 to guide you on your blog writing. Blogger is the easiest way to get up and running with a blog but I recommend that you go with www.wordpress.org. It’s free and wordpress.org has many free upgrades and modifications that search engines like Google and Yahoo love.

*This will require you do some research as well but well worth the trouble if you are not technically savvy with html and coding, hire someone and let them do it for you. You can outsource the blog writing if you are not a writer but I would suggest for you to get out of your comfort zone and start writing about your massage work and experiences as being a bodyworker.

6. Open up a Merchantcircle.com account, I would do this whether you have a website or not. The reason being, first of all it is free, it can serve as a website (if you don’t have one) and it has a blogging platform as well, that is so easy to use. But most important it has great web traffic presence (high alexa rating), Google and Yahoo visits Merchantcircle.com often. Plus it targets local demographics, which you want, many times when I post a blog with my main keywords in the title and in the body content, I usually see my posting on the first or second page within a few days, this is powerful.

7. Bookmark your content and articles, wordpress.org blogs have many free plugins that you can add to your blog that will allow you to bookmark your content. Get your clients, friends and family members to bookmark your content and articles as well. Bookmarking your articles is something that you will have to learn but such websites like, www.squidoo.com, www.dig.com, www.mixx.com and www.stumbleupon.com are just some of the ones you can take a look at. MerchantCircle recently added bookmarking to their blogging platform; this is a very powerful way for getting a web presence and traffic.

8. Write articles and submit them to article directories. Article marketing is a very powerful free way to market your massage business. Use the keywords from step 4, you can write the articles yourself and submit them to directories like ezinearticles.com, searchwarp.com and goarticles.com. Article writing has many great benefits, it is great for positioning yourself as someone who knows their stuff and it can generate backlinks to your blog or website that will send a significant amount of web traffic to you. Traffic that has an interest in what you are writing about. But the content must be good and original, if you are not a writer outsource your article writing. Your article also can be used for your blog post and vice versa.

*Searchwarp.com is an excellent platform for your articles, you get a blog in your name that will host all your articles and it has bookmarking options for each article, this is also very powerful. If you find it in your heart to bookmark my articles, I would really appreciate it very much, thank you.

9. Get a professional website. Do not use a free template. Pay the extra money to get a professional design, this can also be applied to your blog, again there are many free blog templates but a professional designed one will serve you better. If you cannot afford to get a professionally designed one wait until you can then upgrade. Make sure that your website is done by a professional. You want someone who is knowledgeable about keywords, title tags, layout and design and search engine requirements. Outsourcing your website and blogging designs is so much easier with websites like www.elance.com and www.guru.com and it is fairly easy to find affordable options.

Also be sure to include an optin box on your website for list building. Giveaway a free report on the benefits of massage, have a monthly newsletter or offer an additional 15 minutes to be added to their next massage when they optin (give you their email address). This will help you to build a list of customers and people interested in receiving emails and updates from you. In your emails you can provide useful massage information, upcoming massage events that you are participating in and special promotional massage offers.

10. Purchase an email marketing service. We use constantcontact.com but they are many to choose from. If you decide to try constant contact be sure to let them know that I referred you, we will both get a $30 dollar credit towards your bill as well as mine. Statistics say that it usually takes someone 7 times to see your message before they will respond, having an email marketing system in place is powerful and makes for emailing your list very easy and highly responsive. Before you send your emails to your list, you must have permission to email them. Do not include email addresses to your list just because someone gave you their business card. Get permission from that individual before you add them to your email list. if you don’t have permission to email that person, it is spam and spam is not tolerated or legal.

*Bonus tip: Have an online scheduling system on your website or blog. This has been a big key for us, for having a successful marketing campaign. Not only will it schedule your clients for you 24/7. But it will also collect their physical address, email address (oh btw, if you have an online massage scheduler for your business then you do not need a optin box for your website, this system collects it for you), phone number and date of birth. We love this feature as we use it to email or send a card, to our clients celebrating a birthday, including a special offer for them on their next massage session with us.

What I love about the online scheduling system are the reports that you can generate from it. You cannot improve what you can’t measure or track. Tracking information is crucial to knowing if your marketing efforts are effective and also for tracking massage appointments. We are able to generate reports on how our clients heard about us, how many clients have come in for a given month, how often our clients come back to us etc, etc.

Well there it is, again, I sure hope that this information has been useful, if you have some of your own successful marketing strategies that I have not included here, please share them with us. And if you are local to San Jose, Ca. visit our massage website Rpm Therapy.

I remember when I first heard about Massage Envy on the internet, I was really excited, than I was mad and became frustrated.

Massage Envy was founded by John Leonesio in Scottsdale in 2002, Massage Envy is a membership-based and single-visit provider of massages and other body-oriented services. Currently Massage Envy operates 420 franchises in 36 states with another 350 under-development, pretty impressive in just 6 years.

Friend or Foe?

I came across Massage Envy right about the time I started working on my own idea’s of building a massage business franchise. As a massage therapist at that time for nearly 9 years, I knew right away what Massage Envy success meant for me as a small massage business owner. You see my time as a male massage therapist was constantly being questioned, why did I want to do massage, what kind of massage was I going to be doing, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. I also knew from experience how difficult it would be to get the approval from the city regulators and licensing officials. Massage Envy is literally helping to change all that for future massage businesses.

Massage Envy’s success is everyone’s success, if you have plans on opening up a massage facility of your own. They are literally deregulating (or I should say getting pre-approvals) from all the cities and counties licensing officials, cutting through all the red tape for anyone coming in behind them. Massage Envy is pre-approving other massage establishments that want to take up space around or near other Massage Envy businesses.

• Massage Envy is using their time and money for getting local cities and regulators approval for their license to open a massage business.

• Massage Envy is logging in hundreds of hours in various court rooms, fighting for city permits and licensing approvals, when they are being challenged. Massage Envy is paying good money in attorney fees to fight these challenges, less you have to pay.

• Massage Envy is doing all the test marketing for different regions and demographics across the United States that they occupy, which you won’t have to. All you would need to do is see what Massage Envy businesses are well and which are not doing so well it is easy as that.

• Massage Envy aggressive expansion is bringing more individuals to massage, who may not have gotten one before because of price and negative perceptions.

• Massage Envy is the experiment, from which you can look to and learn from.

With all this said, Massage Envy is Friend. But, for all that they are friend for, they are also my foe. Not only to me but to all professional massage therapists and bodyworkers out there.

• They pay less than industry standards, the average massage therapist makes about $15 - $18 per 50 minute massage. Exploiting massage therapists straight out of school and subjecting them to less than admirable working conditions and pay.

• Massage Envy’s aggressive expansion plans will decrease the value of getting a massage, not increase it. Massage customers will continue to expect to pay less not more for their massages and future competition will only see more drops in pricing structure. Unless you change that business model.

• Massage Envy’s failure to recognize, their unique opportunity. Massage Envy can introduce many first time massage goers and individuals who seek “spa massages” to a better quality massage that is more therapeutic in nature. I believe that this could raise our level of professionalism within the massage industry to higher standard, not less.

• No in-house training program for massage therapists to increase their knowledge base.

So I ask you, “Is Massage Envy Friend or Foe?”

One day when you decide to open up a massage business for yourself, make sure that it serves the massage therapists (your employee’s) as well as your clients.

Maybe with their latest buy out by Veria, things will get better at Massage Envy. But I don’t think so, Veria only bought them out so that would have a platform to market their own health related products to a already captured-ready-made audience.

Zubio located in downtown San Francisco inside a mall, it just raised a second round of funding, according to VentureWire.

Dubbed as the potential “Starbucks of chair massage” The size of the new funding was not disclosed, but chief executive Sam Keller told VentureWire it was “not far off from” the $2 million to $5 million that he was targeting earlier. It comes from individual investors including Philip Schlein of U.S. Venture Partners, former Yoga Works co-chief executive Rob Wrubel, Gary Grace of Supercuts and Rob Wilson, president of Tiburon Research Group. Keller plans to go out for more funding to finish the round in June, and to open at least one more studio by the end of this year.

As someone who owns a massage therapy business as well, I am excited that companies like Zubio are not only succeeding but also attracting funding. Most might think that this kind of success from a competitor can’t help us as small business owners but it does, Zubio’s business model is different than what we have at RPM Therapy, so there is really no competition.

Plus Zubio’s primary business model is chair massage; this emphasis on doing chair massage helps our massage therapy industry as a whole, more than we think. You see chair massage as we all know, is one of the best ways to market your massage services, With this in mind, Zubio’s business model is reaching and marketing massages, to a group of individuals who might not have ever had a massage before. A massage chair and its convenience is enticing, especially if you had never had one before, being in in a public well-lighted atmosphere takes away why most individuals won’t get one. Mall goers need not to worry about getting un-dressed, having messy oils rubbed all over them or being too time consuming, as a regular table massage ranging 60 to 90 minutes, chair massage session on the other hand typically last only 10 -20 minutes in length.

Businesses like MassageEnvy (which btw I don’t agree with) and Zubio are paving the way for future massage businesses like RPM Therapy and yours to break into markets that ordinarily would be very time consuming and expensive. As they are already doing most of the leg work for us to follow in right behind them. They are getting pre-approvals and working out all the city licensing issues and requirements, not to mention all the marketing testing that these massage businesses are providing us. We should be applauding them, so that they can keep exposing more to people to massage, it is great for us a industry, even if they do a poor job at it (Massage Envy).

When Massage businesses like (massage envy) do not hold their own, in the market place, there will be room for another massage company with improvements and innovative services, to come in and take market share from Massage Envy. As Zig Ziglar quotes, “see you at the top”.

Giving your mom flowers on Mother’s Day is a such a beautiful idea, but what happens after 2 weeks? They die!

Candy on Mother’s Day is always such a sweet gift but what happens with all that sugar? If you want to know, here is some information on it, Leaky Gut Syndrome.

What about a massage gift certificate? A healthy idea!!

As a massage therapist, promoting massage gift certificates should be in your marketing plan this year, Mother’s day gift certificate sales, is second only to Valentine’s Day. According to Constant Contact’s Annual Mother’s Day Outlook survey, the majority of U.S. small business owners expect customers to spend $25 - $75 on a Mother’s Day gifts, making it fit squarely in the massage and bodywork category. And a spa or salon service is the second most popular gift for Mother’s Day, just after flowers.

“Consumers see Mother’s Day as a way to show the women in their lives how important they are,” said Tracy Mullin, President and CEO of the National Retail Federation. “While the types of gifts may vary, the intentions remain the same — to honor the special women who impact our lives all year long.”

“Impact Our Lives” As a massage therapist we know the answer to, “what better way to show that special someone who impacts our lives, than with a massage session?”. We know that there in no better way, so every massage therapist and bodyworker should be out there spreading the word on massage gift certificates and the healthy, stress relieving benefits that massage offers.

Flowers and greeting cards remain holiday favorites, with more than half of consumers polled planning to buy flowers (50.7%) and nearly three-fourths (73.6%) of them purchasing a Mother’s Day card. Moms will also be receiving more gift certificates this year, as more than a quarter (25.5%) of consumers plan to give gift certificates, up almost 10 percent from last year. I am challenging all massage therapists and bodyworkers to increase their marketing efforts this Mother’s Day Holiday. Spreading the awareness to individuals who yet do not know the benefits of massage therapy or reminding them of the healthy benefits that massage brings to our body’s.

Lets, change these statistics and make massage/spa gift certificates #1for Mother’s Day for next year. In my next blog post, I will outline some of our marketing methods that we use at RPM-Therapy for our clientele. But if you have any idea’s please share them with us and lets see how many ways we can come up with.

Buy Massage Gift Certificates Online Here

I am a massage therapist who also owns a small massage business in San Jose, Ca. I started my blog 6 months ago, and I can honestly say that, I am very please with my results so far, especially not knowing a damn thing before I became a blogger. But I can honestly say that it has been very hard and at times very stressful. I started this blogging thing with no money to invest so I was forced to learn through trial and error, and as part of that trial and error I am looking to try something new for my massage blog.

My Premium Wordpress blog recently hit a small milestone, my Think Diagonal Massage Blog achieved a Google PageRank of 3 and Alexa rating of 288,283. And the amazing thing for me is, it achieved this GoogleRank and Alexa rating while my blog has seen a decrease in activity. I do not want to lose momentum here and I am having a hard time currently finding the time to write, due to my other massage projects that I am working on and managing a small massage business. I have decide that I need some help writing massage related material for my blog.

So I am looking for guest writers to write blog post for my blog, if you are massage therapist or bodyworker who would like to get a couple massage links pointing to your website or blog, I would be interested in talking with you. Here is what I am looking for…

• Massage related material between 300 and 550 words in length
• Massage topics will be of your choice ( but I may after reviewing you article ask you to make some minor changes, if necessary)
• Articles may not be about your massage business or service BUT can be about a massage product that you offer. But I will point the links back to you website or blog. You may include a short bio about yourself.
• Massage articles need to provide interesting, well written material relating to our massage industry, current events or massage techniques.

What you get….

1. Two anchor text (your keywords) links pointing back to your website or blog within the article.
2. A link in my blogroll for a period of 30 days.
3. Each article submitted by you will get another 30 days on my blogroll and two more anchor text links pointing to your website or blog
4. Incoming link juice from my blog to your website or blog ( this will help you achieve higher Google pagerank) and get more web traffic.

I would like to see this be a start to a group of massage therapists and bodyworkers banding together to establishing a community of us linking to each other and guest writing on each others blogs. This is important, as more of us get involved, we will be able to help each other out, by positioning our websites and blogs for more web traffic and Google Ranking. I don’t want to get into the details on how this works, to our favor, but maybe someone out there can comment on it here. If you would be so kind, a link back to my blog would also be appreciated, I am open to link exchanges as well, just ask.

Please contact me by either leaving a comment here letting me know that you are interested, and at that time, I will send you more details, thank you fellow massage therapists and bodyworkers.

“Our Online Massage Appointment Scheduler, Has Been a Time and Stress Saver”

Our massage business has seen a dramatic increase in our massage services, which is great, but I could not help to think, “wow, what if we did not have our online scheduler? Would we be able to keep up with the massage appointments?” And I know that answer is, “no we could not.” I recently wrote a blog post about the 7 essential things a massage therapist needs in their massage business. I briefly mentioned the online massage scheduler within it.

Before my partner and I signed up with Appointment-Plus offer of a free 30 day trial, we were making all our massage appointments by phone and re-booking after each session. This was driving us crazy as you may imagine. When you don’t have a receptionist, you cannot answer the phone when you are working on clients. So in between massage clients we went to our phones to check messages, return calls, schedule existing clients, canceling massage appointments and rescheduling them, as well as getting new clients on our massage schedule. This will also eliminate phone tag. If that sounds like allot of work and time, you’re right. Time that could have been spent taking an extra client; time spent that could have been used for resting up for our next massage client; time being spent that could have been used to grab a bite to eat, stretch or emotionally disconnect from your last client.

If you are a massage therapist and/or bodyworker and taking on all that responsibility after each massage session you cannot, nor will not, give your body the proper downtime that it needs emotionally or physically. You will wear yourself out prematurely. Also what about all those missed calls? How many of them do you think were missed potential massage appointments?

Appointment-Plus (30 day free trial)

Click Here To Sign-Up

Appointment plus has been such a time saver for us. It has allowed us to book our existing massage clients online as well as book new clients without us having to answer the phone. The other great thing for us is that Appointment-Plus also requires new clients to sign in with their information (pre-screens clients for you):

• Name

• Address

• Phone Number

• Email address (great for building your list to send future promotions and specials)

• Date of birth (great for sending out birthday cards)

• How they heard about us (great for tracking marketing efforts)

Appointment-Plus more than pays for itself, it saves paperwork. Like mentioned above, it does the pre-screening process for you. Clients with wrong intentions will NOT go through the registration process. This also means less paperwork for your clients to fill out when they come in for their massage appointments. It sends out appointment reminders. It will notify your clients that have not been in for some time to come back and book another massage appointment with you. You can keep notes on each client as well as each massage session to track their progress and when your massage clients booked their massage they could inform you via the bookings of any “issues” which gives you time to prepare yourself accordingly or refresh your knowledge of that “issue”.

Click Here To Sign-Up

I am a massage therapist who co-owns a small massage (brick and mortar) business, and I am an entrepreneur, who is studying internet marketing strategies. Not only for positioning my massage business online but also as way for creating a supplemental revenue stream that will support my business whether I am working or not.

I had recently connected with a massage client named Corinne Phipps; who also owns a small business called Urban Darling, and I know that this is not proper, but during our massage session we started to talk about our businesses ( I hope that she didn’t mind ). During our talk, I mentioned to her that I am a blogger studying internet marketing strategies for my massage business. I suggested ways for her to use her blog to gain more interest in what her purpose of the business was and those simple pointers, she recognized to be valid points. Anyways not to get off topic too much, she emailed me a list of “Free Internet Marketing” sites that were given to her by a friend, in which she can join to increase her SEO ranking and she wanted my opinion on them.

As I looked over the list I knew of all of them in one form or fashion. There was the Google’s and the Yahoo’s, MSN’s and even InfoUSA, but there was one in which I had heard of before but did not pay attention to it until now. It’s Merchant Circle.

Merchant Circle is one that I personally believe to be the best choice out there for someone like a massage therapist or any small brick and mortar business who does not have the resources to get a $500 or more website built and/or have the knowledge to get that website positioned on the internet. And let’s face it that just getting your business on the internet will not help you if you do not target your local traffic. Local traffic is the most important thing for a small business owner, especially in the service sector as we do not have products or services that we can sell to the online community. Our revenues come through from actually providing a service to our potential clients. You can check out the ad/website that I created on Merchant Circle here.

I will not get into all the details of why I think that Merchant Circle is the best choice out there but I will say that creating a free ad that is more like a website was very easy. Here is a small list of the free benefits which Merchant Circle offers…

• Your title tags keywords are specific to your local community

• You can offer coupons to potential customers

• You can upload a company logo, and your website address

• You can blog directly from their website without installing any software or paying for hosting services fees

• They have a great Alexa rating (this measures overall web traffic to a website or blog)

• You can tag your website with keywords that are relevant to your website.

I was actually really surprised to see all the free offerings. They also have paid options as well, that will not only give you more resources but clicks for even more web traffic exposure. Merchant Circle is not paying me for this; I am only sharing this with you for your benefit as well as Corinne Phipps. They have allot more features and video tutorials that you can take a look at. I would be interested in hearing from you as well should you have another great resource or comments. If you are already using Merchant Circle and have some strategies that you can share please do, thank you.

I also have here a podcast with owner & founder of Merchant Circle below.

P.S. Please if you have some time create a free acct. it only take a couple of minutes and if you look below you will see a place to stumble, del.icio.us and add us to mixx we would appreciate it if you choose 1 or 2 of them and bookmark us, thank you.

I am in favor of massage therapist blogging, the more I learn about marketing on the internet, it becomes even more clear to me that the longer you wait only hurts you.

Recently, I posted on a few massage forums the question, “Are you using a blog for you massage business?” I was quite surprise but then, I am not that surprise of the replies that I received and I will share with you why. Here are a few of the comments…

• I don’t like the idea of a blog, as I personally think it adds to a more personal feel than a business feel

• I wish I could give you some profound reason as to why I don’t, but I don’t have any off the top of my head. I have found that referrals (from existing clients) are the single most effective way to gather new clients. If I feel the need to update or educate my existing list I send out a typewritten newsletter.

• I also agree with pueppi (if I think I understand what she was saying) that writing an authenic blog might be too personal for me to want to use for marketing purposes. I think having a blog can be fun…but I’d rather not use mine for my marketing.

• I don’t blog because it’s too far removed from the core face-to-face aspects of my work

What I am finding here in the massage industry is that most massage therapist are not internet/tech savvy if anything they are more anti-technology than pro-technology. And it is for these reasons why they do not see the benefits of blogging or implementing tech into their massage business models. Tradition is a factor here as well, traditionally the massage industry is and was built on a one-to-one personal interaction, lets face it massage is a hands on business model we make new clients and money by the art of touching.

We are in a service industry and in a service industry building relationships should be the corner stone of your massage business in order to be successful here. People in general refer and talk about other people, that they know and like. What I am suggesting here is that a blog is a great tool for building that relationship, staying connected to your clients well after their massage session. What can be wrong with sharing your personal experiences within your massage business to your clients and potential clients?

Also another key note here before I sign off, a blog for your massage business gives you a platform for sharing, teaching and educating your clients and potential clients about the type of bodywork that you do, a well informed client can now more accurately talk about your services and give them a greater awareness of the benefits that your massage business/work provides them.

I would suggest for the majority of massage therapist to consider a blog, while I do know it is not for everyone but if you are passionate about the work that you do and love how your work affects change for your clients, share this with all your clients and potential clients. Think about it, that is why we got into this business, to help others right?

I wrote this blog post mostly because of a great resource that came across my laptop recently, it is from a highly successful blogging consultant name Chris Garrett, he has put together 12 FREE resources that will help you in your blogging endeavors, many of these free resources I am seeing for the first time, check em out!

• 10 free guides to building a better blog
• 2 more free blog boosting resources

Thanks Chris G.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day to everyone!

I hope that most of you had the day off today, Martin Luther King Jr. is definitely a man to be celebrated for his work. Even the online community got involved to honor Martin Luther King. Now that we know who will be in the Super Bowl is there anyone excited about it? Other than the 2 cities that are involved. For myself, nah. I think that the NY Giants are going to get spanked against the Patriots, I don’t even think it will be a good game.

Real quick I just wanted to let everyone know that Shonn Piersol the founder of MassageSpace.net is on digg.com. You are probably asking yourself why am I telling you this? Ok you got me, there is a small favor that I wanted to ask of everyone who sees my blog, please go there and if you are not a member of digg.com, sign up, its free and digg it for me.

As many of you know already I am involved with Shonn and his online massage community website, I think it is a great idea and if you are not sign up for Massagespace.net you should be. All massage therapist, bodyworkers and other holistic providers should be a member, it has so many features, I am calling it the MySpace, Facebook and Youtube for massage therapist.

Here is a sample list of some of the features MassageSpace.net offers…

1. Chat rooms (private and public)
2. Article submission
3. Upload Videos
4. Upload images
5. Online forum
6. Special groups for like minded individuals
7. A directory to post your business
8. A marketplace for advertising your products or services
9. A blog
10. A links page
11. An events calender
12. An online scheduling system
13. A guest book

Do you see what I mean, it is just loaded with all the things that most social networking websites have and then some. Eventually, what I see for this website in the near future is a chance for you to make some residual income promoting products and services that you have created or that someone else’s. Imagine, getting paid on products and services that you did not even have to spend 1 ounce of your time or money to make.

Ok well here is the link the digg.com article. Please digg it.