An Invitation to Join the Body Soul & Spirit Online Community
Why should you be in our Online Community? The Body Soul & Spirit´s new online community may well be your best option of sharing your products and services, and reaching new contacts, clients and customers in the holistic community.

- 74% of all internet uses are going online to find your products and services! Can they find you?

The Internet is quickly becoming the number one place for the public to learn more about the holistic options available in creating a happier, healthier and conscious lifestyle. A recent survey* of more than 1,000 North American adults found that 74 percent of all those online have looked on the Internet for health, wellness, and personal growth information, with more indicating that they were looking "more often" and fewer indicating they look "sometimes" than indicated in surveys from the past two years. (*Conducted by Harris Interactive, April 13, 2004)

With far more people now turning to the internet as their primary source of information on your type of product or services, it is now more important than ever to have a dynamic and interactive presence on the web that sets your business, products and services apart.

The unique interactive and dynamic features we provide allow you to reach and communicate directly with this growing audience, and allow you to provide more information to help them make their decisions than any other promotional media at just a fraction of the cost.

The Body Soul & Spirit Online Community is not just another directory site, but a unique interactive community! Compare the features and option we offer to the traditional online directory, which typically only provides your companies marketing message and contact information.

Upon closer examination you will find that our interactive community format provides more features and options to allow those who search the web to obtain the information they need to decide if your product or service is right for them, as well as providing you with the tools you need to establish a direct relationship with them, thus improving your results.

The key to success in our on-line community is the level of interactivity it provides, allowing you to establish relationships by answering questions from general members, educating potential clients by posting articles, and notifying members of your events, seminars, or classes in our online calendar.

The information you contribute is also used as the source of content for much of our professionally formatted newsletter, which is now sent out to our list of over 12,000 opt-in subscribers (which is currently growing by several hundred per month) keeps them updated with new articles, news and events, and keeping them coming back month after month.

Whether you currently have a web presence or not, our unique online community provides you with a web presences that drives additional traffic to your existing site as well as your pages on our site. We help you reach new prospects that may have never found you otherwise.


How the Community Got Started…

Over the past decade the Body Soul & Spirit Expo has hosted a number of remarkable businesses, organizations, and individuals at our annual events. To better support its exhibitors and presenters as well as those who attended our event, a companion website was created for these events, which contained the start of a holistic directory, and some of the features now offered in the currently online community.

The website continued to grow with each event, and an increasing number of visitors began using us as a resource to find many of the products, practitioners, business, schools, and workshops affiliated with our events.

Remarkably, these visitors included not only those who were familiar with the Body Soul & Spirit Expo, but a large group of visitors from across North America who turning to the internet to find information on the many subjects, products and services offered on our site.

After speaking to many of our exhibitors and clients, we began to formulate a vision of creating an online holistic community that would meet this need.

As we began to expand the Body Soul & Spirit Expo Web site into a year-round holistic directory and online community for our exhibitors, news began to spread about the tremendous results that our exhibitors experienced from the exposure they received on the shows website.

Soon past exhibitors, as well as many other holistic businesses and organizations form across Canada, the United States and beyond were contacting us asking how they could be part of our site. As a result, it was decided that the site should be further developed, and a new vision of creating an online community that would offer the same benefits to the holistic community as a whole was born.

The first part of this online community was launched in August of 2005 and was funded by many of our colleagues that we have worked with over the years. As we continue to grow, we would like to invite you to participate. We are confident that as we all work together, we can create something truly wonderful!

This year we are more focused then ever on putting together a great directory, representing every facet of the holistic community and providing a truly comprehensive resource that will provide value to the participants and attendees of the Body Soul & Spirit Expo, as well as the many who now visit our site from around the world.

As we continue to expand, with more members joining every few days, we found that the number of visitors to our site continue to increase in direct relation to the added value offered to each new professional member. It has become apparent that as our membership grows, so does the reach and value of the site. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that our site traffic has increased (stats reported by Alexa.com, and independent traffic rating service) by over 38% in the last two months alone.

We are now confident that in the next year the Body Soul & Spirit Online community will become a major portal for those looking for holistic business, practitioners, services and organizations.

As well as helping us accomplish this by joining as a member, please share this information with others that may be interested. We sure as a member of this community you have a lot colleagues that would welcome the opportunity to be a part of our online community.

Both the quality and quantity of members are a key factor in building a strong online community! We would appreciate it if you passed on the information, even if only to one or two people, as every bit helps us reach the people we need to cover the many categories of in our online community. You efforts will go a long way in creating a wonderful and valuable resource for the many visitors that visit us online every day, and improve the results for all of our members.


The Vision

Our vision is to create a truly interactive online community, with both "general members" (non-commercial free memberships), and “professional members” (product and service providers, organizations etc.) Simply explained, general memberships are provided for free to those who visit our site in search of the products, services and offerings provided by our professional members.

We supply these general members with a membership login, which gives them access to a set of member utilities, tools, forums, and interactive features that will allow those interested in your services, products, educational programs or organization to interact with you and learn more of what you offer.

As a professional member, or a directory member, you also receive a membership login, and access to an extended set of member utilities allowing you to ….
· Update your profile
· Create, update and modify your professional page(s)
· Post events, classes and workshops, and articles
· Upload your products or services to the online store
· Provide discounts and incentives to encourage new clients
· Track your results on your stats page
· Ad banners that are rotated through the entire site to get even more attention
· Interact with general members, answering their questions, process their orders, and providing them with more information

Note: features available depend on your type of membership, and options selected.



What is included? How does it work!


The Body Soul & Spirit Online Community was designed to not only provide you with exposure on our website, but also drive traffic to your pages, articles and events by virtue of the automatic dynamic search engine registration features created by our web development and promotion experts. Here is a bit more of what is included and how it works:

A Professional Membership Page, your highest profile option...$99.00 CDN.

A professional membership gives you your own place on our website, with several dynamic and interactive features that are sure to get you noticed. Your professional membership page helps you to cultivate a relationship with potential clients, and reach those interested in what you offer.

Features include....

· Your own Professional Member Page
· Inclusion in the online holistic directory
· Posting your events, seminars, or classes to the online calendar
· Posting articles to the online knowledge base
· The “Ask an Expert” Forums

Note: All of the content you post to other areas of the site are automatically formatted and included as part of the content on your professional page.

Your page grows with you, and as you participate, and you will also be found on all the other searches and pages on our site that apply to what you offer. For example if you offer Cranial Sacral Therapy, or post an article on Cranial Sacral Therapy, it will appear on the pages and searches pertaining to Cranial Sacral Therapy, and will likely appear in a top position in many other major search engines.

This means that not only are you building your own part of the site but contributing to the online community as a whole. As you provide valuable information to the online community, you also raise your own profile on the site.

Directory Membership - An economical option for members $40.00 CDN.

For those looking a less involved option to our Professional Membership, or Directory Membership offers many of the same features of a professional membership, with the exception of the professional page. With this membership, your information will come up in our directory under your selected category, you will be able to participate (if accepted) as a moderator in the Ask an Expert forums, share your knowledge by contributing to the member articles, and much more.

Features include....

· Inclusion in the online holistic directory
· Posting your events, seminars, or classes to the online calendar
· Posting articles to the online knowledge base
· The “Ask an Expert” Forums

General Profile Membership - A Basic Text Listing $25.00 CDN.

The General Profile Membership is the ideal "starter" membership for those who want access to many of the features of the site.

Features include....

· A basic text listing in the directory
· Posting articles to the online knowledge base
· The “Ask an Expert” Forums

Our Online Community is design to grow and expand along with its Membership.

General Membership (free) - Non-Commercial Membership
This is our non-commerical membership, and allows all those in our community to join, interact, and learn more about the many other products, services, and resources offered by our membership. A General Membership gives you a voice in our community, and allows for the feedback and interaction we need to continue building an online community that services all members.

As our online community continues to grow, and new members join from different locations, the unique dynamic nature of the site automatically begins to create and include content for members pertinent to their particular City, Country or Province / State. In other words, if you are from a new city, province / state or country, the site extends its features to include your specific location and becomes a resource for people in your area.

In addition, the directory is also design to expand, including new categories (based on administrative approval) to accommodate new members. Or in other words if you offer a product or service that is currently not in our directory, it can easily be included to accommodate your needs.

This ability for the site to grow with its membership is a key factor in attracting new site visitors and members. As each member joins from a new location, or offers a product or service under a new category, the site automatically re-writes it´s search code to assure that it will be found by those searching the internet of those same products and locations.

This is accomplished by the sites ability to automatically updates it "meta tags", and the site code. While not seen by the regular site visitors these tags and codes are seen by the major search engine "spiders" allowing it to be registered as a resource by many major search engines such as Google.

Currently about 80% of our site visitors and members from Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario, however, an increasing amount of members and subscribers are joining from across Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdoms.

It is not uncommon for members to submit their information, and then perform as search a day or so later for their name, or other content that they have provided, and find themselves at a top position on the major search engines.

We recommend that you test this out by looking up some of our existing professional members; you will often find that their professional pages, calendar postings, and articles on our site are found on the first search pages or in one of the top position on many search engines. This is the direct result of the web marketing and development experts that we employed in the creation of the site.

We are dedicated to expanding and improving the site with new features by listening to our members´ feedback and suggestions for ways of providing even more features to improve your results.

To this end we have now include a fully functional e-commerce store for vendor members, allowing you to upload your own catalogue of products and services. Currently being offered to a select number of trial members, we anticipate this feature will be available for all our members in the next few months after the payment distribution system has been finalized.

Several additional features -- such as online seminar and workshops registration, a paging system that will allow you to interact with other members online in real time, online video classes, and much more -- are being considered for future development.

In addition, we are currently developing a completely interactive affiliate program that will allow you to track your efforts in sharing the membership opportunities others who may be interested, and will reward your participation in building our online community.

Your Membership Fees go directly to Development and Promotion

Funds raised through membership fees are used for the site´s administration and development, assuring that your contribution goes directly to improving the site´s features and functions to better serve its members.

As 100% of this project is funded by member participation, your involvement is key to assuring its further growth and development! At a limited time special price of $40.00 - $99.00 a year (Canadian Dollars), it is truly a great value.

Getting started....

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us for further details. You will find our information on our contact pages, but, here´s how you can get involved NOW!

STEP ONE:
Visit our member sign up page, located at https://bodysoulspiritexpo.com/signup.php3?do=url
and select your type of membership in the first form field (choice from directory / professional / vendor memberships The General Membership (free) is only for non-commercial use.

STEP TWO:
After completing the membership sign up, simply use the username and password you selected during the sign-up process to log in as a member, at
http://bodysoulspiritexpo.com/emembers/
and start setting up the features you wish to use, including your profile, profession page (professional membership), posting your events, articles, and much more.

STEP THREE:
Follow up, post new events, and keep a current presence on the web, then watch your personal network, client list and contacts grow.

Looking forward to seeing you in our online community.

Copyright © 2003-2004, Body Soul & Spirit Expo.


Contact Member:
The Body Soul & Spirit Expo

Calgary, Alberta T3E 6K9
Canada
Credits: