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.

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.

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.