What is Social media and what can it do for you?
December 16th, 2008 • Posted by Spa Kat • Permalink
Social media is… a cacophony of different online tools designed to help people communicate and interact with each other. These tools can be used to:
- Promote your spa business.
- Create a forum for you and/or your business to interact with customers.
- Provide valuable feedback from target customers that can then be integrated into business practices.
- Create new product/service promotions to drive traffic to your spa.
That said, the vast assortment of social media outlets can be loud, overwhelming and distracting to a busy spa owner. So jump in but bring along a life preserver of basic insight into this sea of online communication.
There are great articles on the Internet that can give you a foothold in understanding how people are interacting and how other businesses are using social media as an effective marketing tool. A fantastic advertising resource, www.adage.com, collaborates with advertising experts to bring readers information on cutting-edge and traditional advertising news and information.
Read the full article here.
Start out slow, create a blog with Google's Blogger, and search for similar blogs out there and start giving your feedback. You will learn more about the social media opportunities there are for your spa. The possibilities are limitless.
In addition, start managing your online reputation by checking out review websites. Customers are already using city guides and review websites like Yelp, Epinions, Citysearch, TripAdvisor, etc. See what they are saying and look for ways to improve your business based on the feedback you receive.
A great city guide, Yelp, allows people to post reviews of spas. Yelp allows businesses to be alerted each time someone posts a review of your business. The majority of reviews are positive, word-of-mouth validation that you can’t get using traditional advertising tactics.
Check out the websites below and see if you can use them to connect with and improve your spa’s reputation with existing and potential customers:
• Trackback • Posted in Blogroll, General, Spa Marketing
Thanks for the helpful list. Checking oout these sites will be a great way for me to spend my time productively. No matter what is going on out there, if I am doing something positive to move my business forward, I feel good. Happy holidays to all the SpaBoomers out there. Everyone stay strong!
Thanks for the article, "social media on the web". I too thought it would be a great help for boosting my sales and spa reputation. It did work, but I ultimately got off all of those "social web sites" because of the "hacking and fake stuff" on those sites. I may try it again, but I think spa owners should be aware of the possible negative things that can happpen on Facebook, etc.