I had the pleasure of attending the AMTA National Convention in Minneapolis last week. I really look forward to this event every year and seeing so many familiar friends was a wonderful experience.

As usual, I paid close attention how marketing and technology was utilized during the convention. Here are some observations.

AMTA National Website

First off, the new AMTA website looks really good. It was launched a few weeks ago and aesthetically, it is light years ahead of the old website. I am particularly pleased with the softer tone of the design and the more modern branding.

However, the structure of the website is still not very search-engine friendly. The deep links into the content are not very keyword-rich and a lot of opportunity for SEO juice is being lost in its current state. A simple update to the Content Management System that creates the page links could fix it.

I was also disappointed in some of the navigation choices on the website, such as the “Contact Us” item being placed all the way at the bottom of the website. Form fields are also placed in staggered format rather than stacked, which makes them harder to use for some users.

I was happy to see the massage locator service placed prominently on the home page but I was a little unclear about how it was supposed to be used. As someone who knows massage, I understand that I could type in “trigger point” or “craniosacral” into the “Find” box. However, as a consumer, it seems that it would be a little confusing. I think adding a little bit of additional text or perhaps a pop-up box with some examples could help make it easier to use.

Overall, the new AMTA National website it is a great improvement but there is still some work than can be done from a structural level.

Social Media Session at Chapter Leadership Training

Next, I attended Chapter Leadership training on Wednesday. I chose to check out the Social Media session taught by Maj-Lis Nash. I was curious to see what sort of information on social media was being taught to chapter volunteers. Maj-Lis was a good presenter, clear speaker, and a nice person. However, I had some disagreements with what she presented.

First off, the session title was “Social Media” (actually it was called “Social Networking” but that’s old school) but the session was 100% on Facebook. I felt that was a bit misleading.

Next, Maj-Lis recommended that chapters create a policy that requires board members to acquire written permission from the President or 1st VP before posting anything on the chapter’s page/group. In my opinion, this is a sure way to stifle activity. Part of her suggested social media policy for chapters also prohibited board members from engaging on confrontational discussions online. Though I see how these types of conversations can go terribly wrong when mis-managed, sometimes a confrontational discussion can be respectful and useful. I would favor responsible transparency over a policy that keeps all uncomfortable conversations behind closed doors.

Next, she recommended that chapters set up a group rather than a fan page. I disagree with this since fan pages have a number of advantages over groups and are more appropriate for associations and chapters.

Additionally, Maj-Lis spent some time bashing email marketing and saying that people don’t really read emails. Again… I disagree completely. When done effectively, email is one of the most powerful ways to communicate with members. It’s true that spammy emails don’t get opened but it’s irresponsible to make a grand generalization that people don’t read emails.

Some deeper tactics were also left out, such as blogging, linking social activity to websites with automated tools, etc. However, since we only had 45 minutes, I can understand not having too much time to cover it all. I just wish the session title was more accurate. I would have called it “Basics of Facebook” or something like that. Maj-Lis was a good presenter but I would love to respectfully discuss our points of disagreement in more detail sometime.

Exhibit Hall

I took a quick tour through the exhibit hall and was a little disappointed this year. It was smaller than it has been at past conventions and did not offer as much variety. I did see some familiar faces and introduced myself to some Facebook friends that I had not yet met in person.

I did notice that a lot of the people working at their booths were sitting down and not engaging with the crowd. If you’re paying for booth space and your goal is to sell product and acquire new customers, then at least one person needs to be standing up and greeting passers-by at all times. I saw a lot of booth workers sitting down, talking to each other in closed conversations, and working on their laptops. This sort of activity discourages prospective customers from talking to you.

I did have a great time meeting Ryan Hoyme of Massage Nerd fame at the exhibit hall. Ryan is a video specialist and he shot a quick video of me promoting the RISE campaign for the Massage Therapy Foundation. Thanks, Ryan!

Convention Updates for Attendees

On a general note, I was disappointed to see that AMTA was printing out daily (full-page glossy color) info sheets throughout the week and made this the primary method of distributing schedule information. I checked the AMTA website and did not see any sort of detailed information, however. Here are some ideas for AMTA that could be very useful for next year’s convention:

• A daily email sent to convention attendees with the day’s schedule information and updates on it. This would have been really convenient to pull up on an iPhone or Blackberry (of which there were many).
• Post a detailed, updated schedule on the AMTA website with times, locations, maps, and any other useful information. Unless I missed it, the schedule of events online online did not contain room numbers.
• Use AMTA’s Twitter account for daily schedule information. It would have been really easy to schedule it all out in advance with HootSuite. In all fairness, AMTA was using the Twitter account throughout the convention but I think it could have gone a bit deeper.
• An option to sign up for daily text alerts with event details and scheduling. Tatango offers a great, affordable way to do this.
• Offer an AMTA iPhone app with convention info on it. During the rest of the year, an app could also be used to integrate with the Massage Locator service. What a great way this would be to build AMTA’s brand and strengthen consumer loyalty to AMTA therapists. About 80% of the people I talked to at convention had an iPhone. Hint hint…
• Create a more convention-specific Twitter hashtag before the event to build buzz. The only hashtag in use when I arrived was #AMTA so I created #AMTAConv and it caught on quickly. Thanks to AMTA for using it, as well! This helped me (and others) group convention-specific tweets in one place. If AMTA were to start using this hashtag a few weeks before the convention (and advertising on the AMTA website), it would help market the event, as well.

Let me stress that I was happy to see AMTA making some use of technology during convention and there were some good things happening. However, I would love to see the tips above implemented next year and perhaps save some of the members’ money by not printing as much.

Connections and Friendships

As always, the highlight of the convention was connecting with fellow members… some old friends, some new. I loved hanging out with my Indiana board, as well as all the other chapters I’ve had the pleasure of working with and socializing with. I also finally got to meet one of my favorite massage marketing bloggers, Allissa Haines. Her stuff is really good and any therapist who is not subscribing to her blog is missing some great business and marketing advice. Seriously, go subscribe now. Yes, right now.

AMTA is making progress when it comes to the use of marketing and technology but I think there are still some simple things that can be done to improve the effectiveness of how the leadership communicates with members and stakeholders. I look forward to seeing how things go in Portland next year. I can’t wait to see everyone there again for another great AMTA National convention.

What were your observations? Please post them below!