Thursday, June 4, 2009

Time for a website redesign? Don't forget social media...

Your next website is going to look different than your last. And not just because it's going to include the little Twitter birdie and the exhortation "Follow Me!" on your home page, or the Facebook icon, leading them to your spa's Fan Page or Group.

Your customer conversation is truly going online. Why let your spa lie there and take the pummeling of Yelpers in silence? You can be part of the dialogue. You MUST be part of the dialogue.

Social media experts agree, this is not a one-night stand. As with all effective marketing campaigns, social media campaigns are for the long haul, not just for "crying wolf" as one expert calls it. They take time and nurturing. And golly, no one has quite explained how they're going to make money yet. But the collective wisdom is, we all need to get on the train, even if we're not sure it will take us to Profitville.

"I don't have the time!" protest small businesses. But I think we all agree that we have time to talk to our customers. If a customer calls you on the phone, you answer it. If ten customers did, you'd answer those ten calls. And maybe hire someone to help you. Even spas are finding social media geeks within their teams and turning over much of this dialogue to them. We know that talking to customers is Good. And talking to customers generally leads to selling things to customers.


So when it's time to re-imagine your website, your Newsroom page is going to be a lot more dynamic, not a mouldering graveyard of old media placement pdfs, as most of ours currrently are. We're as guilty as the next, for the moment.

No, our website's new newsroom is going to look a lot like this souped-up baby, The Social Media Newsroom, a copyright free template from the nice folks at PR Squared

I'd love to hear from spas who are getting results from social media. What are you doing?