See Why These Acupuncturists Get Together Every Monday

Did you know that there's a very dedicated army of acupuncturists regularly getting together on Twitter to promote acupuncture and TCM?

Every Monday at 1:30pm Central (US) and 7:30pm (UK) something magical happens on Twitter with the acupuncture community. A group of like minded individuals get together for a tweetfest called #AcupunctureHour.

If you've never participated in a tweetfest, it's where a bunch of people tweet using the same hashtag. The goal is to get the hashtag trending on Twitter to gain awareness for a cause or topic.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tweetfest

#AcupunctureHour was created as a way to promote acupuncture as well as connect acupuncturists from around the world! It's also a great breeding ground for practitioners to keep up with their field and to learn from forward thinking acupuncturists in their use of social media and new technology (like Periscope).

The Usual Suspects

Deb Connor - @deb_connor

#AcupunctureHour was started in 2013 by Deb Connor (@deb_connor) an acupuncturist out of St. Helens in the UK. Her Twitter handle is @deb_connor.

Sandra Bird - @AnShenTCM

On September 7, 2015, Sandra Bird started managing the @AcuHour Twitter account as Deb stepped down to take a break. Sandra is also an acupuncturist out of the UK and her Twitter handle is @AnShenTCM.

How To Participate

Fire up your Twitter app on Mondays at 1:30pm Central or 7:30pm UK.

Follow the Twitter handle @AcuHour

     https://twitter.com/acuhour

Search for the hashtag #AcupunctureHour

     https://twitter.com/hashtag/acupuncturehour

Tweet using the hashtag #AcupunctureHour

Join us for the fun! 

What To Expect!

Below are a few tweets of what you can expect if you join us for #AcupunctureHour!

Acceptance Ceremony as Dr. Shi Xue Min's Doctoral Student. What an honor! #China #PhD #TUTCM #acupuncturehour pic.twitter.com/vqOnd2GDri

— Kathleen Funk, L.Ac. (@AcuFunk) June 15, 2015

The Pope Used #Acupuncture! 😇 #AcupunctureHour pals @AcuHour this #video always makes me #smile https://t.co/elQdkTgDhZ

— Jennifer Dubowsky (@tcm007) October 5, 2015

#AcupunctureHour Great @TheBAcC conference party! @AnShenTCM @sueacupuncture @AcuHour @NickPahlBAcCCEO pic.twitter.com/itgQIgpARh

— Deb Connor (@deb_connor) September 28, 2015

I hope to see you at #AcupunctureHour!

Questions? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you. 

Minto Tsai
Founder

P.S. If this helped you, please Like, Share, email... all the social network love you can give!

The Golden Opportunity Your Acupuncture Practice Can't Miss

Don't you love it when someone hands you a freebie? And what if it came in the form of free resources to promote your practice?

BAM! Consider this an metaphorical  electronic dropping of free shit right in your lap!

(And when you're done reading this, let's see if you catch the head fake!)

Every year on October 24th, the NCCAOM, puts together a great list of free resources for you to promote your practice called AOM Day aka Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Day.

AOM Day is a day to celebrate and share as well as educate and promote our community and profession of acupuncture and TCM. Your practice can participate just by promoting yourself!

AND Did I say free?! So how do you get started?

Read the NCCAOM AOM Day 2015 Update

First, go to the NCCAOM AOM Day 2015 Update page and read about the event, the new features added to the AOM Day website and the resources available to you.

http://www.nccaom.org/aom-day-2015

Check out the AOM Day Website

The starting point is the front page of the AOM Day website, become familiar with the different parts of the site.

http://www.aomday.org

Come up with Your AOM Day Event

Think of the kind of event you would like to promote for AOM Day. Let your imagination run wild and make this your own. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Host an education session at your practice
• Discount patients' treatments on AOM Day
• Give a free gift to patients

For more ideas, check out the Programs & Events tab to see what other practices are doing.

http://www.aomday.org/programs.html

Register Your AOM Day Event

Once you've come up with your event, register it on the AOM Day site. (BONUS: Get SEO juice by doing this!)

http://www.aomday.org/submission.html

Download the Marketing Material

Get the free AOM Day marketing material which was prepared by the good folks at American Society of Acupuncturists and Acupuncture Media Works.

http://www.aomday.org/get.html

Write a Press Release

Using the press release template, write a press release about your practice and your AOM Day event. (This thing is fill in the blank. How much easier can it get?!)

http://www.aomday.org/get_samplepress.html

Promote AOM Day to Your Readers

Write a blog post on your website educating your readers about your AOM Day event. Don't forget to send this to your mailing list and all your social medias!

Contact Local Media

Reach out to the health writers of your local newspapers and magazines, and bloggers to inform them of your AOM Day event and interest them in writing about it or better yet, offer to write a story for them.

As an added bonus, invite them to your practice for a free session!

Also, many local newspapers, magazines, and blogs have an events section where you can post your AOM Day event for free. Do this!

Ask Patients for Testimonials

Encourage your patients to write testimonials about their great experience with you and your practice. Ask them to share the testimonial with you and the AOM Day website. (HINT: You can use these testimonials on your own website too!)

http://www.aomday.org/testimonial_submission.html

Did you catch the head fake?

I don't think the NCCAOM intended this, but in promoting your AOM Day activities, you got a free lesson in marketing! Take the concepts and ideas and constantly apply them to your practice. How cool is that!

Questions? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you.

Minto Tsai
Founder

P.S. If this helped you, please Like, Share, email... all the social network love you can give!

The Tool Every Acupuncture Website Needs

So you've spent days and weeks prettying up your website, making sure your logo is in the right place, the color is perfect, and the copy and wording screams... "take my money now!"

What else is there to do right?

Well, I'm going to tell you how to take your website to the next level and it's all free!

The tool is called SumoMe. (The name sounds like a weight gain program for skinny people, but trust me, it's great.)

What is SumoMe? SumoMe, as they say on their website, is a set of "Tools to Grow Your Website's Traffic." These tools are a bundle of all the tricks the great internet marketers have figured out!

For example, one of the tools is called "List Builder" (which we'll focus on today) and it helps you increase your email signups. How awesome is that?!

The way List Builder works is that it's an automatic newsletter signup popup for your website. The popup brings the signup front and center for your visitors and makes signing up a cinch for them.

We'll also connect List Builder to MailChimp so all your emails are in one place. If you haven't signed up for MailChimp, shame on you! Here's a link to the MailChimp tutorial:

MailChimp for Acupuncturists

Let's get started!

Signup for SumoMe

To signup for a SumoMe account, go over to SumoMe.com.

Install All the Codes

On the next screen, you'll be given the script to copy and paste into the <head> tag of your website's HTML. Easy peasy and they even have easy-install instructions for various website services!

Once you've installed the code, click the "Visit Site" button and you'll load your website with the SumoMe login!

Sumo Store

Like, I mentioned before, SumoMe is a collection of apps or tools. So, after logging in, click the green Sumo Store button to install the List Builder app.

Now, click the List Builder button under the Email subsection.

After that, click the Free button and then Open.

Customize the **** Out of It

The free version of List Builder allows some simple design and customizations. I won't go much into it since much of it is personal preference, so take a look!

Connect With MailChimp

Now let's connect List Builder to Mailchimp! Click on the Services tab and click MailChimp.

And click on the big, fact Connect button. OMG, it's so big, I'm not even going to draw an arrow to it.

You'll get a popup to provide your MailChimp credentials.

Next, use the Mailing List drop down to choose the list where email signups will go and click Save to finish!

Yippee. We're done!

Now your acupuncture website is ready to collect email addresses and grow your audience!

We'll go into some of the other SumoMe apps later. Feel free to explore before then and have some fun and grow your website traffic!

Questions? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you.

Minto Tsai

Founder

P.S. If this helped you, please Like, Share, email... all the social network love you can give!

Introducing: Electronic Patient Signatures

Life has a way of piling up on you... and as an acupuncturist, so do those patient forms! How many filing cabinets will you buy to store all your patients' signatures?

And let's be honest, how many times have you sat around on a Saturday night with nothing to do and said to yourself, "Let's look at all my patients' beautiful signatures!" ZERO.

Sure, some of your patients' signatures are beautiful, almost like an artist painting on canvas. But let's be honest, many (including my own) just look like chicken scratch.

The truth is, there are things in life and business that just need to be done (like signing the Informed Consent, Privacy Policy, and Cancellation Policy) and once they're done, you just leave it and forget it.

Well, now you can have your patients sign the Informed Consent, Privacy Policy, and Cancellation Policy forms online... BEFORE their appointments AND have them stored SAFELY and SECURELY and HIPAA Compliant-ly (<--- I don't think that's a real word. But all data in Jasmine is HIPAA Compliant!)

Your patients can even sign with their finger on their tablet! (What a time to be alive!)

Below is an example of a signed Informed Consent. The title and the text is customizable so you can reuse the wording from your existing forms.

After your patients sign the forms, an image of the form and signature is taken (and timestamped) and then, saved in Jasmine Practice Management with the patient's file. (In case there's a Saturday night you want to pop open a bottle of wine and admire their signatures.)

Say NO to paper!

I'm very excited about this new feature and seeing you move to a paperless office!

Questions? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you.

Minto Tsai

Founder

P.S. If this helped you, please Like, Share, email... all the social network love you can give!