How to grow your share of the spa market

Spa social networking starts from the basis where spa goers form opinion groups online, inside communities such as MySpace, Digg, Del.ici.us, Yahoo Tags, Eurekster. By sharing their own thoughts, experiences and insights on a thermal facility or a spa, they bring to the group their views on the matter. Therefore favourable or negative, quite a possible scenario, currents may come up from this king of virtual interaction. And a particular spa may find itself in an ideal position where spa goers talk in positive terms on the facility, on the services etc or, on the contrary, the current generated in terms of that spa social networking may be negative, turning a spa's image into something that will detract customers from asking for their services in the future.

So, Infospa recommends to all their spa members to take seriously into account this new web marketing tool that has been developping for a while now on the www universe. Don't allow your competitors to sweep off your customers just because they have already discovered that Internet is an environment where, actually, real economy and therefore real money happen. Here at our centrer we have been dealing with this web marketing models from quite some time now and we assure you that spa social networking marks the difference.

And remember, no matter how good your spa centre is, how efficient and great your beauty and wellness treatment your spa has to offer, if people don't know about them, then your business has no point.

Infospa is not your spa competitor!

Hello everyone, recently some spas have sent to me emails with the worry that linking to Infospa would mean linking to their competitor. This is completely WRONG.

Infospa is not a spa centre that will eventually rob you of your spa guests, but a platform, an environment where a great number of thermal facilities unite and display as much information as possible related to their own facilities and services.

Being listed in Infospa means:

1. Having better chances to appear in many Internet spa-related environments.
2. Dispose of your own exclusively dedicated web page where you can publish not only one or two things like in a Yellow Pages, but you can actually inform your potential spa guests on list of services, prices, description of your spa facilities, video, pictures of your centre...
3. There is a good deal of possibility the Infospa page fully dedicated to your spa is better programmed, optimized and managed to have greater Internet visibility than your own page.
4. Your spa centres gets to have the support of one of world's spa platform leaders and you don't have to pay anything.

I hope my answer satisfies all of you who have expressed their fear of something to do with competititon and we are looking forward to have you on board.

Enhance spa presentation on the Internet

Hello to everyone at Infospa.org

This chapter of our blog is to teach all of you, whether you are small spas, thermal bath facilities or a big wellness centres how to deal with your image on the Internet. It isn't easy to grab a piece of this new cake called e-economy and that is why at Infospa.org we are comitted to support all our members to stay up front and have a great online presence. A part from our pride that you are a part of this great family we've created, we realize the importance of our members being well-positioned in Google, Yahoo and other search engines and directories. Because if you succeed to implement what you learn here, rest assured that you will gain benefits for your spa online presence in the long run. While some of you are familiarized to issued such as SEO, SEM, web marketing, SERPs, many of you have no idea what I'm talking about here and therefore, when you hired your IT company to build you your website you didn't know what your website should be like in terms of a better Internet presence.

In my conversations with some of you I've realized this lack and while I know it si rather difficult for you to begin all over again and rebuild your spa facility's website, there are some things you are in time to do even if your website hasn't been properly optimized from the beginning.

For instance, the presentation or description of your website is fundamental to be found by visitors performing online search. While texts like: We are proud to be a spa that is located ... and offers quality services and a great team of professional..., pure literature that do not interests search engines algorithms who will ultimaltely list your website at the bottom of the search results, try something like:

"Name+spa is a thermal facility offering -you must mention some of the services your spa has to offer-, then don't forget to speak about your town associated to some of the following formulas:

spa

thermal bath

thalassotherapy (if your centre has such services)

thermal

and so on".

Then, make sure your website has at least title, description and keywords meta tag in the code area of your website. This is simple. You can access your browser "View" option in the upper bar and from there you select the function named "Source". You have to do this while you have already opened your spa website in your browser Internet Explorer, Firefox, Avant, Opera etc. Don't panic when you see that endless programming code in front of you. Just press Ctrl+F and write in the window that opens the following texts:

1. 
   
   To visualize the function related to your website title write: "title" and see where it leads you. This text published along the word title is as your website name appears to Google Yahoo etc.


2. 
   
   To visualize the function related to your website description write: "description" and see where it leads you. This text published along the word description is as your website presentation or description as it appears to Google Yahoo etc.


3. 
   
   
   To visualize the function related to your website keywords write: "keywords" and see where it leads you. This words or expressions published along the word keywords represent your website defining keywords as it appears to Google Yahoo etc.

If your could not find all these functions then you have two options if your really want to make the most of it from your Internet presence:

a) Re-buid your website!

b) Use your page at Info Spa to promote your spa facility.

I'll get back to you on this chapter as there are more things you need to learn.

Infospa etiquette

For all our spa members at Info Spa, I'd like to state a few basic rules they should take into account when getting in touch with our team in order to process as fast as possible their requiries:

*Always state the name of your spa and your town in the title of your message. This will allow our staff to easily and quickly determine who you are and begin processing your request.

*Bear in mind that Infospa is a free spa-dedicated portal and therefore your spa centre may ask for assistance on a limited level due to a better optimisation of our efforts to provide our visitors with the best and most updated information on thermal facilities worldwide. Should you require a more extensive attention paid to your spa page in this spa directory, you will have to be prepaired to pay for it. For instance, if you want a link leading directly to your reservation form, this would be a paid option. But if you just want to add more treatments and prices to your page, this would be a free of charge option.

*Always use a respectful language when adressing to Info Spa personnel, remember they are here to assist your thermal centre but also spa guests in search for an option to relax. Info Spa together with Spa Finder and Spa Index are the main international channels to present your services to customers all over the world.

*When you fill in the application form to become a member of INFO SPA publish as much details as possible on your spa centre, give an extensive and correct description of your spa facilities and provide up to three representatives images of your spa.

*A good thing when applying for a dedicated page inside Infospa is to publish a list of your treatments and their prices.

*Avoid short descriptions of one or two lines like: Our spa is great. (without explaining what your spa has to offer and speaking a little on the services and facilities)

*When submitting a description to Info Spa, do not use the first person: our spa, we are etc. It is best to talk about the spa in third person.

*Always use at least one time the complete name of your spa throughout the description. It is highly relevant that Infospa users catch your spa name this improving you the chance to get noticed by them.

*Study the possibility of posting personalized advertising campaigns on your city page in Infospa as our prices are very competitive and our traffic is exclusively spa-oriented, thus with the best relevance ever to your commercial interests.

These are the main guidelines any spa should tak into account when becoming a member of INFO SPA. So it is important to remember them and in order to to that, make a bookmark of this page in your favorites: http://infospa.blogspot.com/

Video file, recommended web marketing tool for all spas

Internet has evolved into a much more complex business environment than anyone could ever imagine some years ago. So every spa should learn to take advantage of this whole new universe of marketing possibilities to atract more spa guests to their facilities. A powerful tool can be the video file that any spa centre can create with the help of a digital recording camera or even one of those digital photo camera which have video option.

Usually, here at Infospa.org we recommend our spa members to provide us a video file showing their thermal facilities as well as their specialized spa therapists and other staff taking into account the followings:

1. Video file format that work well on Internet and don't delay the uploading time, which is essential both for the technical team doing the upload as well as for the final viewer and potential spa guest:

AVI
ASF
MPEG
QuickTime
Windows Media

Don't be afraid while reading this techy terminology, I mention it in order for you to know where to search in your instructions manual before creating your video file for those spa centres that prefer to make their in-house video file. Usually most video camera support these formats so there should be no problem.

2. Once you have shot the video you will have to download it on a computer to turn it into a compressed file so it shouldn't ocuppy too much while sending it via e-mail. So when you transfer your spa video on the computer, make sure that the extension of the file comprises one of these codes:

.avi
.asf
.mov
.wmv
.mpg
.mpeg
.mp4
.ra
.ram
.mod are.

3. Avoid Flash files. I know they look nice for your visitor's eye but remember Flash is very tricky when it comes to improve your spa website Internet visibility and in the end that's all that matters. More exposed your website is, better chances a higher number of visitors find it and some of them will be your target as a potential spa guest for your thermal facilities.

4. Most important: comprise the video file into a .rar or .zip and send it to Infospa so we can add it to your spa page in our portal but you can also use it to ad it on other online communities that might be directly oriented to spas and other thermal topics.

How to improve your spa's visibility

From Infospa.org we have noticed that many website's of spa salons, spa centres and even spa resorts are using flash. While it certainly looks good on your website, we advice you try and limit that as much as possible. If you are a flash fan, avoid by all means to start your home page with it. If your website on thermal facilities has incorporated this program, make sure to let us know by writing to us so we can skip the part which displays the flash and post on your page with Info Spa another web page of your website.

Search engines are encountering difficulties when it comes to read and interpret well the flash and therefore your website presenting your spa services may not be so well read by their algorithms. It is fundamental that your site is as open as possible in order to atract as much traffic as possible, thus new clients. Your page is not just a simple business card but it is the main counter in the virtual world. Start considering it as such and know this: every day more people are turning to Internet to solve their daily routine. And some of them might be looking for a spa where to relax so why shouldn't it be yourse? Info Spa can assist you and teach you how to better take advantage of this new economical environment.