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Re-Thinking Our Media Approach! Series - Why Support The Massage Alliance of America!

As massage therapists, our livelihood depends on clients or patients coming through the door. So I ran a poll and basically got the same answers that I got back in school. Business cards, buttons, shirts, do free chair massage, promote gift certificates, network were all answers and still business is down.

Now, I am no professional with all sorts of business degrees up on the wall, but I see a hole. We have four major publications inside the profession. Every one of them go to therapists and some of our vendors. Few to the general public. To me it is like preaching to the choir and so much info could be going to the general public to get them in our doors.

They are nice and it seems like they fall into two categories. One we say, "I'll get back and study that later," we put it with the other three that we haven't been able to get back to. It may/may not get reviewed or we take it to our place of business for our customers and again, they are already in your door. Once the magazines are a couple months old, they even get read less.

I look at magazine racks as I go around the country. I see little to nothing massage related. Go to your magazine rack, next time you are at the store and look real good. Then write me at mike@massagenews.org and tell me if there was any and the names of them. I am not saying the existing massage publications we do have in the profession should change the way they currently are doing things, that would be an internal decision. I just see a hole and think that there is room for so much more.

If you think there should be more done to get the general public into your business through media, support the forming of the Massage Therapy Alliance of America! It will be different.

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Mike ,

It is obvious to me as a therapist there is more to be done. I feel it is going to take the old NIKE saying "JUST DO IT", and more and more therapist get out and educate the public. I for one, feel like I have put it off long enough. I feel the need as a newbie to get out and put more info out there wether it is info from modilities to legal matters, the public needs more education. I feel this a large percentage of the hole.

Thank goodness there are more educated therapist out there to lead a path for me. However I do not see much public forums here in my town. Its time for us to do something, there will come a time that Im going to get it started. So I will not say anything else on that subject because actions speak louder than words. Right now if I go to local book store, I may be able to find 1 or 2 mag. and yes there should be more out there and maybe while in the planning stages of MTAA it will havea publication to help with public ed. I agree with you more needs to be done. I wonder how many MTs in this country get out in the community and physically share info in a formall enviroment. Id love to here the different ideas on how they are presented and what their thoughts are on how the MTAA can improve it.

 

Hold onto that energy! I will have a packet created to address this and other issues at Fest. It will be ideas the Alliance can adopt if they wish.

Thats great Mike ! I will, and hopefully soon there will be more response for more positive energy for a future we will all be happy with as Massage Therapist.



Trav, you'll never make all happy. You could give them free insurance, education and a car and some will still give you grief. That's the way it is. All you can do is answer their questions as best you can and then have the election. That's what we will do July 16 between 10 am and 4 pm. Travis Alligood said:

Thats great Mike ! I will, and hopefully soon there will be more response for more positive energy for a future we will all be happy with as Massage Therapist.

I think massage is so individual to the therapist regarding clientele that instead of having another magazine out there, it's best for therapists to create their individual eNewsletters. This not only allows a therapist to utilize research that is more pertaining to THEIR clientele, but it also saves on the footprint we leave upon our environment. And since massage works in harmony with nature, i would hate to see another publication created just for the sake of creating one.

 

Magazines by nature are meant to be more of a read, save and display on the coffee table. If you really want to impact your business with the general public through media, it should be done on an individual basis, and it should utilize what people are accessing media through...ie. cell phones, web sites, email, etc.

That's exactly the avenue we are headed to. Glad we agree. That's it - rethink our media approach. And we will give a concept from this to the new board to address.

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