• Cart
  • Contact Us

    Contact info

    Call Us

    Western Mass: 413-586-2555
    New York: 212-461-1753
    New Jersey: 973-327-7001
    Long Island: 516-300-1008
    Texas: 325-245-0141
    Arizona: 602-357-1514
    Virginia Beach: 757-644-5981
    Toll-free: 877-586-2555

    Calling any of our locations is like calling all of our locations. If you wish to make an appointment or register for a class at any location, request information, order a product, or anything else, you may contact us at the above location. Or find local contact information for any of our locations in our Locations directory.

    Stay

Guide to Web & Social Marketing

The Training Program does not formally endorse these sources, nor are these sources an exhaustive or comprehensive list. Seeking assistance with marketing can be very helpful (or even critical) in building your practice and business, and these are some examples of sources of expertise.

Introduction

Somatic Systems Institute offers its students and members a variety of marketing support opportunities, including events listings and advertising options, as well as some marketing materials such as brochures. Visit them at http://somatics.org/ for more information.

Basics

You absolutely need a website, even if it is only a simple online “brochure”. Most people now consider a website as obligatory as a phone number (and will consider no website the same as if you never answered the phone — that you may be out of business) if they are going to consider working with you. The way one layperson in her late-thirties put it recently, “If they business doesn’t have the courtesy to provide me with at least a basic page of information about their services, to allow me to learn about them or save me time, I don’t have any trust or interest in doing business with them or even contacting them.”

Websites are now so cheap and easy, you can literally get one started in less than 5 minutes, and then add more content as you feel so inspired. Free options abound, and the features and professionalism available in even free sites is astounding. There is absolutely no excuse anymore to not have a website, and you can set it up faster than it will take to write an email message to one customer.

Your Website

Fast-start websites like the ones described above each run on something called a Content Management System (CMS). These are online applications that store all of your pages in a database; you create all the pages, and administer all the settings (such as the design and color scheme, menus, etc.) via a web browser interface. CMS does a great job of separating out your site’s content from its design. This makes editing content fast and familiar — just like editing a text document on your local computer. Simultaneously, it makes design absolutely child’s play compared with conventional website design: Generally, you can click some check-boxes to choose from basic layout templates and color schemes; some CMS systems even provide a drag and drop interface for layout, so design can be as easy as moving construction paper around on a corkboard.

Fast-start website providers operate some brand of CMS, and provide you with an account on it to set up your own separate personal website. You may be able to use your own domain name for easy access to the site (this should be a minimum requirement when you chose a site provider), and you can choose from a variety of features and functionality, from a blog section and news feeds to social network connectors to photo galleries. Most site providers offer a free version, and then versions that come with periodic and/or one-time fees to provide additional features or capacity. Here are just some of the important things to keep in mind when choosing a site provider:

  • Features and power/capacity available with the free level of service.
  • Value and features of expansibility should you grow and want to upgrade to a paid level of service (so you don’t have to switch providers if not necessary).
  • Modern architecture — the provides easy to use interface, with connections and options for current and future marketing and publishing tools such as social networking, RSS, interactive features for your audience, etc.
  • Open or closed platform? Is the provider’s CMS something small and proprietary that is likely to disappear if they do?
  • Reliable provider? Is the provider likely to go out of business after you’ve spent some time putting up your site.
  • Support provided by site provider.

It also important to take note of the the technology used by the CMS provider: What type of web-serving "engine" does the provider use to drive the CMS site? Is it HTML5? Adobe Flash? Adobe Flash-based sites have been a popular offering from Fast-start website providers, as behind the scenes Flash works more like animated movies to deliver your site in its finished form, rather than gathering your content and formatting it as pages of HTML code. Either way — Flash or HTML — the output can look similar to web browsers. However, Flash is easer for the CMS provider selling you the site. The problem is Flash is a proprietary and rapidly disappearing technology: It is being phased out by standard practices and web browsers will only become less likely to display Flash content properly or even at all. For example, the iPhone is not even built to be able to display Flash sites anymore; and desktop computer browsers require installing a special plug-in to be able to display Flash sites. Some of these plug-ins are buggy and cause browser crashes and performance problems. On the other hand, browsers and all modern computers are built to handle HTML-based sites right out of the box; that is their "native tongue". HTML5 is the latest version of the HTML coding standard; it's not only fast and efficient, but it's also powerful and feature-laden: Among other things, HTML5 offers built-in embedding and playback of universally compatible video and other media feeds, as well as rich and sophisticated font formatting and other design features that allow a plain old web site to be as beautiful and appealing as a well-designed printed publication like an expensive magazine or coffee table book. At this point in time, we recommend people avoid new investment of their time and money in to building a Flash-based website; instead, if you are shopping for a web host or fast-start web host, chose one that uses standard HTML coding, and preferably one that offers HTML5 options.

Somatic Systems Institute Web Site Service

Somatic Systems institute now offers an affordable "fast-start" service for getting your own website up and running in only a few minutes, using an easy to manage CMS system, and one that is optimized and specialized for your Somatics practice — publicizing it and educating the public about your work, and managing your marketing efforts on the back-end as well. To support awareness of Somatics and support our students growing Somatics practices, we offer these websites at a reasonable price with easy templates to get up and running almost right away.

While other providers may have similar pricing and basic features, ours are designed to not only start fast, but to start fast with something specialized for presenting your Somatics practice. Additionally, it is built using the most popular, powerful, and well-respected CMS engine; it provides easy export options to move to any other provider; it's built for good search engine ranking and social marketing, it runs on fast, professionally managed servers with redundancies and backup; and it publishes modern HTML-based content, which can be flexibly and instantly redesigned with drop-in templates for free or even using templates you can can have custom-made to your needs for very reasonable rates. It also offers blogging built-in, for powerful and easy web marketing and public outreach, and a very unique and exciting feature — built-in event promotion (e.g., classes and workshops) that are not only promoted on your site, but on all of our websites as well.

In short, we heeded the best industry advice (some of which we have shared with you above) to chose and employ the best web hosting and publishing optimized the unique needs of Somatic Educators. Additionally, using this platform allows you to tie-in to additional, bigger, cooperative marketing ventures with the rest of your Somatics community.

Contact us if you would like more information about this, or click here to learn more about it.

Basic Social Strategy

You should at least have the following presences on social networking sites.

  • A LinkedIn account.
    This allows others to see you as a professional presence. If you choose to, it also allows you to connect with and network with other related business people. If you do this, you should join the group just for us; this is important to affiliate with your profession and status that restricted group can bring...
  • Somatics Professionals group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1650077
  • ...and the group to network with other lay people and professionals interested in Somatics; this group is important to connect with colleagues in other related professions:
    Somatics group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1650047

Advanced Social Strategy

Add some or all the following activities to the above basic strategies to increase your marketing success significantly:

  • A Twitter account.
    Reading up on the best ways to use Twitter for sincere and respectable marketing may produce very satisfying results in promoting your business and career.
  • A blog about your business and Somatics.
    These can be set up any number of ways, including on an independent blogging website (most are free; see below for a list of the biggies) such a Facebook, or on your own website (if it offers blogging features). There are tons of websites out there that will offer introductions and guidance on blogging and on the pros and cons of the options itemized here. Here is a list of the biggest, most popular blogging services:
    • Blogger.com (now owned by google, so you can use Google Friend Connect with it easily)
    • Wordpress.com (also used as a CMS; one of the most popular CMS choices alongside Drupal)
    • Tumblr.com (very focused on social networking)
    • Typepad.com (long-standing blogging engine that offers a lot of configuration choices)
    • If you decide to go with an independent blogging service like one of the ones listed above, you should definitely check out all of them before choosing one, as they all have different qualities to them, and you may find one is more appealing to you than others.