Your Online Listing with altMD.com

Image via CrunchBase

You may be checking in here for the first time because you read about AltMD.com in the Spring issue of InTouch. If you missed the article, you can read it by clicking here.

I've been listed on altMD.com since February, and I'm excited about the potential. Have a look around the site: http://www.altMD.com

You can have a look at an example (yes, it's my listing) at this link:
http://www.altmd.com/specialists/The-Feldenkrais-Center-of-Houston

And you can take a short video tour of the website by following this link:
http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stU0lXRkBIR1pYQFtZWVlaU15Q

If you're an FGNA member, you'll receive information soon about how to access and activate your site. If you're not an FGNA member, this might be a great excuse to join! You can still have a listing on altMD.com, but you'll have to do a lot of the work from scratch.

There's not really any action to take at the moment, if you're a Guild Member. However, have a look at the example, and imagine what you'd like to have on YOUR pages. What I have listed there is what works for me, and it might not be your style. When your site is activated, it's as easy as typing an email to edit your site and make any changes you would like.

Come back here often for additional practice-building support, and future tutorials on making the most of your altMD listing!

Promoting Your Classes

One of the most significant benefits we receive as Guild members is our listing in the FGNA practitioner directory. It's not just something for us to use: it's also available online so that the general public can find YOU. I get at least one phone call per month from someone who found me via the FGNA website, www.feldenkrais.com.

I hadn't checked in recently with the Members' area on the website, and am pleased to see that once again, it is possible to list ATM schedules, workshops, and public events online. The requirement is to copy and paste the form provided into an email, and send it off. (In other words, follow the directions.) I'm ashamed to say I don't have my classes listed there, so it might not be a big logical leap to imagine that yours aren't either. My goal: submit my classes for publication on the website, TODAY. If you want to do it, too, here's the link: http://www.feldenkrais.com/events/promote

It's true: submitting your listings will take time. However, I remember reading in Miriam Levinson's book (You Can Make A Living As A Feldenkrais Practitioner) that you should plan for marketing activities to take up about 30% of your time. I've found that this is a totally realitic figure, even though it shocked me initially. This means that if your work week is 36 hours, you are spending 12 hours a week on developing future business. Marketing activities certainly include submissions to online directories, printing fliers for your next workshop (oh, I need to do some of that today, too), following up with students, or having coffee with someone to talk about business. When I don't invest time regularly in developing new business, my client load gets a lot thinner for awhile. It then takes 2 solid weeks of work to get things up and running again. When I DO invest the time in these activities, I am booked as tightly as I want to be. For me, that's 15-20 clients a week, steady.

Any website is valuable, or not, because of one thing: CONTENT. There has to be stuff up there, and new stuff on a regular basis, to draw visitors to it. When you post your classes on the Guild website, you make the site more valuable for the public, for all of us, and for YOU.

Your comments are welcome! What else do you do to promote your classes?

Promote your classes and events on the Guild website here:
http://www.feldenkrais.com/events/promote