This will be the first of many posts on using social media to market your massage practice.

Have you thought about using Facebook to build your massage business? Now sure where to start?

Follow along with this series of tutorials that will show you how to get the most out of social media. Join the BodyworkBiz Group Page on Facebook for a great series of videos that illustrate some of the information below. And be sure to sign up for my Social Media Marketing webinar happening September 15th at 8pm EST (New York time). This is sponsored by the ABMP and registration is very limited, so sign up for FREE right now as my guest.

Your Facebook Profile Page

To start with you need to create a Facebook profile page. Go to www.facebook.com now to sign up for a free account. The process is quite simple and Facebook will lead you through the steps. If you already have an account, then open it up now and follow along.

Facebook’s Terms of Use require that you open up your account in your own name. That’s exactly what you should do. Don’t open up a profile with your business name. There are other ways to promote your business on Facebook beyond your profile and you don’t want to develop and promote your business on Facebook only to find your profile shut down for a violation of the Facebook terms.

Some people never want to share their Facebook profile with anyone but friends and family. I’d suggest using it for both personal connections and business connections. The potential of this medium is too huge to pass up. There are ways to adjust your privacy settings so that you have full control over who sees the various bits of content you post to Facebook.

Editing Your Profile

The first thing you need to do is edit your profile. Once you’re logged in notice that in the top right of the page there are three primary links: Home, Profile and Account.

Click the Home Page link and you’ll see a navigation bar in the left column with a list of links to various functions.

In the middle of the page you’ll see your News Feed. This is where you’ll see updates from your friends’ postings. This Home page is the page you see by default when you log into your account.

Click the Profile link and you’ll see that the page looks different. This is the page that your friends see when they land on your profile. You’ll see that the left hand column contains your picture and various bits of information about you. The middle of the page is the Wall where you post news about yourself. People can also write notes to you on your Wall. So it’s sort of like a public bulletin board that’s all about you.

Make sure you are on the Home page and go to the top left corner of the page (see illustration). Click the “Edit Profile” link and you’ll get a menu that looks like this:
This is how you edit your profile information. Go through each of those links and update the information as you see fit. Be sure to click the blue “Save Changes” button after you are finished editing each section. Bear in mind that you can restrict the display of this information to certain visitors only. This does not have to be on public display for the entire Facebook community. I’ll show you easy ways to manage access to visitors in my next post.

Here are some suggestions for editing each of the sections:

Basic Information: For security reasons select the “Show only month & day in my profile” from the drop down menu. Be sure to fill in the Bio section.

Profile Picture: Ideally, you want to have a clear headshot so that people can clearly identify you. Make sure it’s a recent shot. Yes, you probably looked better at 20, but you’re likely not recognizable. Keep your photo current. No dour faces and for the guys, no shirtless pics. Use a photo where you look relaxed and friendly.

Relationships: This is a personal preference. You can always restrict access to this info to friends only.

Likes and Interests: This is an interesting section. When you enter interests in here, Facebook will automatically connect you to pages and groups that share those interests. Others may find you based on those interests as well. So if you specialize in fibromyalgia for example, type that into the “Interests” box as a way of networking with people who are suffering from fibromyalgia and who could use your services.

Contact info: Be sure to enter your business website. If you don’t have a business website, get one. Here’s how you can create a website for free. If you are using Facebook for business contacts as well as personal contacts, be sure to put your business contact information here. Your close friends and family already know how to contact you.

A Few More Important Tweaks

Now that you have your profile edited, let’s go to your Profile Page and make a few more small edits to help people find out more about you and your business.

You’ll see a small box below your profile picture. This is for a mini-bio. Click the little pencil icon in the top corner of the box to edit. Tell people a little bit about yourself. Because you’ll be using the profile page to let people know about your massage services, mention your services briefly, mention your work location or even invite people to drop you a note to arrange a massage appointment.

Just under the bio box, you’ll see a section labelled “Information”. Click the little pencil icon to edit that section. Be sure to click the website box so that an active link to your site will display here. You may also want to put your hometown here so that people who stumble upon your profile will know that you do massage in their area.

In our next post, we’ll look at creating your “Friends Lists”. This will help you control who sees what content in your account, determine who sees you in chat and helps you filter your “News Feed” posts. This is very important, so be sure to come back again and check it out. In future posts you’ll learn about setting your privacy levels, growing your network, creating business-specific pages and how to transform Facebook friends into paying clients.

Until then,

1) Join the BodyworkBiz Facebook Group

2) Sign up for the ABMP’s free Social Media Marketing webinar being held September 15th. There are only 1,000 seats available on their webinar platform and it will likely sell out. Reserve your spot for the webinar now.