Welcome to the January 2010 naturalhealthcare.ca Business Newsletter

In this newsletter:

• new NHC website • upcoming features • how's your social media strategy? •
• call for feedback: learning sessions? • events •

Gisela's notes: A new decade, a whole new NHC

It's winter, though here in Toronto, it feels like an extended autumn. This time of year is often a lull in many business sectors, and normally, it is for us as well.

This year we opted to do a complete overhaul for NaturalHealthcare.ca, with a target completion date of February 1, 2010. When I say "complete overhaul" I mean from the bones on up - which in this case would be the architecture or navigational structure of the website. Surprisingly, we're ahead of target by a full week!

Have you seen the new NaturalHealthcare.ca yet? You can't miss the difference. I'd like to take a moment to thank Mark for a new and invigorating design that still keeps the basic familiarity of the old site. He'd like me to mention that he is still fine-tuning things, perfectionist that he is.

We've also brought the listings up to date - what with it being 2010 and all. We thought, "Why is everyone treating online directories the same as paper ones?" - maybe with a live link and photo in addition to the basic text.

That's not how people are using the Internet. A new Nielsen report showed that video usage online is up by 10.3% (more unique viewers) and people are spending 82% more time on social networking sites. I like to think that part of the reason that NaturalHealthcare.ca is as successful as it is (last year we had 2,425,844 visitors to the site using 83,076 keywords and phrases to get here) is that we actually stay on top of these things and let the site evolve as the users dictate.

And this is why the new Enhanced Listings let you embed audio and video, as well as having up to five slides (photo and text) on your one-page extended profile! You can see a sample Enhanced Listing here at the new http://Coaching.NaturalHealthcare.ca sub-domain. And the Basic Listing now includes a link to your website.

Special: Until February 1, the Basic Listing + Link is $60 for the year - which works out to only $5 a month! Even more spectacularly, the Enhanced Listing is available at the 2009 rate of $199 for the year, including all the 2010 features. Those prices end next Monday, though, when 2010 pricing kicks in - and the new site officiallly launches. (Find full pricing info at: http://naturalhealthcare.ca/pricing.phtml )

Upcoming site features:

There are a few items at varying stages of readiness including:
· new sub-domains (for Natural Allergy Therapies, Spas, and Beauty);
· the Practitioner Services Exchange (thank you for your feedback on that - it should be live by Feb 15);
· the Virtual Tradeshow;
· and the Discussion Forums (or "fora" if - like me - the word "forums" makes you twitch).

And we are asking for feedback below on a few other ideas we have so that we can determine interest level. Plus, if you have ideas that would make your online marketing easier, let us know and we will see what we can do to help.

How's Your Social Media Strategy?

I've been doing a lot of writing lately on the subject of social media - last week my blog post on this subject was featured content on The Women's Post; prior to that I wrote a couple of articles elsewhere for business owners looking to integrate social media tools into their marketing strategy.

If you have been following the past newsletters, you will know that one of the basic tenets that we operate on here at NaturalHealthcare.ca is that practitioners and health business owners need to work together to open the market wider rather than competing over the existing market. Chalk it up to my "abundance mentality" (I was running the Toronto Law of Attraction Meetup group before other commitments took priority over planning those events).

Anyway, what ties those two paragraphs together is the fact that we can help you use social media tools more effectively for business. For example: on Twitter we've been developing a rather extensive set of lists of health researchers and media which you can use to have a ready supply of information to retweet to your followers. And, when you are holding a workshop or event, flag us (@NHCNews) when you tweet and we will retweet it. You'll notice that our Twitter feed turns up on almost every single page of NHC - so you'll be getting maximum exposure to a targeted group of people even if they don't know what Twitter is.

Not sure what I am talking about? I have a couple of articles online on the topic already (here: [link] and here: [link])

Call For Feedback: Learning Opportunities

I have also been contemplating writing one at a very basic level with screen-shots so you can actually follow along. Drop me a line (gisela-at-naturalhealthcare-dot-ca) and if there is enough demand, I will write a Basics of Twitter page. These take 2-3 hours each and really, if there isn't enough interest, I can spend that time doing something else.

On a related note, would there be enough demand to do a series of webinars around marketing your health care business? I could easily leverage my contacts to put together a series of extremely reasonably-priced sessions and we are a technology company, so we could handle the back-end development - but only if you are interested. We're doing a spring workshop in our Toronto office with Business and Life Coach Joshua Zuchter (date to be picked depending on his availability; he has an upcoming tele-class listed below) which we may web-cast as a pilot. Email me if you would be interested in participating or speaking.

Health & Business Events

The public newsletter goes out next week. If you are holding workshops or seminars that you would like to be included, please ensure that we know about them by the end of this week. You can add them to the CanadaEventsCalendar.ca listings (it feeds the NHC calendar from which we pull the events) and make sure they are classified as either "natural healthcare" or "mind/body/spirit" events. (It's free.)

Sunday, January 31 - Alexander Technique Atlantic Workshop Halifax
Better Posture, Greater Poise, Improved Health.
Cost $120 3:00-6:00 pm.
Call 346-2065 or enquiries@alexandertechniqueatlantic.ca

Saturday, February 20 - Tele-seminar:
Renowned and Successful Business Owners Share Success Strategies and Tips
Joshua Zuchter Interviews Karen Brunger, BHEc, AICI CIP
Saturday February 20th from 10:00 - 11:30 am EST
Register at the website: http://tr.im/LBln

Wednesday, February 24 - Networking Toronto, ON:
You may not be aware that we've moved, and our new space allows us to bring the Toronto Helping, Healing, and Holistic Business Networking evenings in-house.
Our first one of 2010 is on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 upstairs at 200 Spadina Avenue, in Green Instead. It's a great way to reconnect and see what else we are doing in the green living lifestyle centre space.
Tickets are only $10 and are limited to the first 40 people.

Information on this website is for informational purposes only.
Please consult a qualified health practitioner before taking any course of action.