Content is what makes everything come together. Think of content as the way you build relationships online. Your content is what makes people feel comfortable and makes them trust you. Search engines love content. Remember, they are in the business of finding the best content to meet the searchers needs. Content needs to over-deliver! Content will bring the search engines which means it will bring people to your site who are looking for something. People are already searching for something so they are great potential clients! You give them what they want with content.
Content is everything you create – written pages/posts, images, videos, podcasts – everything.
People are more open to making an appointment when they find your site through searching, compared to someone who sees an ad for your business. You are seen as the expert! You become the one they trust…all because of content.
Start with putting yourself in a reader/potential clients shoes. Actually go out and look for a massage therapist in your area just by searching…. What do you find? Think about what you see in the listings. What is it that makes you click on one listing over the other? Think about how you feel the first few seconds after clicking on a site. I also like to assume that they know nothing about how massage works or why it works. When you do that, it will help you write more at their level rather than using big anatomy, physiology and pathology words you learned in massage school. A good general rule is write as you would for seventh graders. That is because most people skim and jump around so they still need to get the information that they are looking for. Make it easy to read and follow.
Think about what kind of clients you want – your ideal client. Who are they? An ideal client is someone who already understands what massage does and values getting massage. They don’t have to be sold on it. They may be looking for their first massage but they already have an inkling that massage could help them. What would your ideal client like to see in a site? What would they have to know before they click on the link to make an appointment?
Fear of creating content
One of the challenges in providing great content is getting over our fears of writing. Many will want to just set up a calling card type of website and call it good. People want to know more about you so they can make an informed decision. They want information that will help them solve a problem which is usually some sort of stress and/or pain. It is also getting over the fear of possibly doing it all wrong. Writing is a learning process like anything else. It will get better the more you do it. Hopefully it will get easier to make yourself sit down and just start writing. Don’t worry if you have some of those days where you don’t feel like doing anything!
The basic formula for writing a page is something like this:
- Start with a general overview of the topic. Why are you writing about this?
- Do a little research on the topic. Read a few good articles.
- Start putting your thoughts together about what you read.
- State the obvious. Keep it simple. Get back to what you didn’t know before you went to massage school.
- Let your voice come through. Just be yourself! Just write the way you would if you were talking to someone right in front of you!
- Start with a good headline that pulls the visitor in. Sometimes I write the article first and go back and write the headline.
- Divide your article into small paragraphs to make it readable and easier to understand.
- Write a few paragraphs to make your point.
- Write a summary of your article and add a call to action. What do you want them to do or to know at the end of the article?
- Go over it again and edit as needed.
- Check for typos and grammar. Read it out loud. Print it and read it.
- Don’t worry about the grammar police or the content police. There will always be someone who has issues with something. Don’t let people get to you. If something needs to be changed- change it.
- Add photos and videos to further emphasize content!
In addition to written content, Google wants pictures and videos! I mention photos a few times throughout this book, but videos are really a whole book in itself. You can venture out and start learning about how to create videos. Some ideas would be short videos on what is Swedish massage, deep tissue massage or some other type of massage that you do. Be aware of copyright issues when using photos!
See also: List of Ideas for Massage Website content