We get many questions from practitioners and from consumers looking for information. Here are some of the most commonly asked questions. If you don't find your anwer here, please just email us - we love questions and we've gotten pretty darn good at providing or finding the answers :)
I am looking for a particular type of practitioner and don't see anyone on your site in my local area - can you help me?
Yes - just email us and we can post the type of practitioner you are looking for and your location and help you find the right person!
Why Can’t I Post Reviews for Myself?
The purpose of reviews is to provide potential consumers with third party comments on your services. However, you can instead write "Testimonials", which we've defined as reviews that you're posting on behalf of a client.
I added an Article but it didn’t show up on in the ‘Selected Recent Articles’ on the front page. What happened?
We do not put all articles that are posted to VitalityLink on the frontpage. We have a few automated checks to determine if an article should end up on the frontpage. For example, very short articles are often excluded.
Why can't I advertise a product on my profile?
The goal of VitalityLink.com is to increase global awareness of holistic therapies and health options. We encourage you to help us increase awareness of these options for any conditions that they heal.
Down the line we will be providing space on VItalityLink for natural and health enhancing products, however at this time we are only promoting healing modalities and not products. There is a fine line to walk in terms of providing information about healing modalities without plugging a product and we can and will remove any information which appears to be a product plug or infomercial.
My Profile doesn’t show up on the ‘Most Recent Practitioners’ – what happened?
Your profile needs to be complete to show up on the front page. That includes a picture, a location (even if virtual), a modality (or modalities) and some information in your ‘About Me’ and ‘Professional Training’ sections. If the profile is not complete, you will still show up in search results, but lower down than those practitioners who have provided enough information for potential customers to make an informed decision about contacting them. If you have any questions about how to fill in any of your profile, contact us at communitysupport@vitalitylink.com and we will be happy to help you.
Will I have to pay down the road for my listing?
No! We may at some point introduce premium listings or more advanced services that you can choose to take advantage of but the basic listings will not be fee based. That would detract from our goal of providing a way for consumers and practitioners to find one another effectively online.
Why are you doing this? How do you make money?
We started VitalityLink.com because we ourselves were having a hard time finding relevant practitioners and events/courses in the modalities we were interested in. When we started digging into what was available online (remember some of us are hard core technical folk!) we found that the information was very dispersed and hard to find and often not updated. We also found that many practitioners had a hard time explaining what they did in a way that connected effectively with their potential clients, and that a lot of practitioners were paying large amounts of money for online services and websites that weren't effective in helping them connect with possible clients, and that were very expensive and hard to use. We decided to create a solution. VitalityLink.com does not currently make money and is supported by our parent company (Open Box Integration), but down the road we will have some win-win revenue sources (i.e. revenue sources that benefit everyone) - for now, it's our gift to the holistic world!
Can I post a Press Release on VitalityLink.com?
As long as it contains some information about your modality or service that will be useful to potential customers, please do! People like to know about what practitioners are doing and the successes they have had.
I’m having trouble figuring out what to write articles about – can you help?
Yes, absolutely. People like to learn about your modality. You can write stories about how your modality has been beneficial to one or more individuals; you can write about the science / history of your modality, you can write about your personal experiences with your modality. People also love simple effective things they can do to improve their general health and wellness (i.e. ‘drink a cup of water before you drink coffee’, ‘avoid this food when you are already tired’, ‘take a moment and reflect on your day before you jump in’, ‘read this article about how to increase wellness’) – many people are so busy and they can feel a bit overwhelmed about the whole question of how to increase their health and wellness and often they know they need to improve their diet or exercise, but it all feels hard. So simple easy things they can do that will still have a positive impact are very popular. People also love lists (‘The top 5 reasons to see a Reiki Practitioner’, ‘Three important questions to ask a Naturopathic Doctor’, ‘5 easy steps to increase your fitness now’, ’10 secrets to good nutrition’, ‘3 little known facts about yoga’, etc).
I’m not a great Writer but I want to add Articles – do you have any suggestions that can help me?
Yes! Often Practitioners have a lot of valuable content that they don’t think about. You may have articles on your website you want to share, you may have blogged at some point (either on your own blog or on some other site or in forums) and have content you can use. Maybe you’ve sent emails to clients about your treatment or choices they can make that you can use to repurpose content (removing any confidential or identifying details, of course!). Maybe you have a welcome email you send out to new clients that can make a good article about your services. Maybe you have written training materials or have hard copies of content that can make good articles. Maybe you are very good at answering questions and tend to create content verbally – if so, just ask someone to sit down with you & ask you questions – you can record the session and then get lots of great article content from what you have said verbally. Maybe you give lectures about your modality or train other people in how to do it. All of these can be fabulous sources of content – the most important thing is not whether the article is perfectly written, but whether it contains information that is valuable and useful to your potential customers and to other practitioners who are interested in your modality. And we have some great articles in the Practice Building session to help you with structuring your article. We’re even happy to review articles if you’re unsure about them – just email communitysupport@vitalitylink.com and ask.
Can I Create a Profile for My Organization (school, clinic, wellness centre, retreat centre, etc)?
Absolutely! In fact, we recommend creating one profile for the organization and another for each of the practitioners/staff/teachers who work there. Then let us know the names of the organizational profile and the individuals and we will hook them all up for you! (just email communitysupport@vitalitylink.com). When you are creating your organizational profile, just check the box that says ‘This profile represents an organization, school or studio instead of an individual practitioner’. Later we will have slightly different features for organizations (i.e. a list of all the practitioners who are part of them), so it’s a good idea to check this box. It also helps us create more effective profile reviews for you (on request).
You have a listing for my modality, and it should be Trademarked or marked as Registered - what do I do?
Just email us with the modality and the information about trademarking or registration - we absolutely want to add the appropriate marks, but sometimes they differ from country to country. Let us know and we will update the modality description to include that information. Also, if you have recommendations about how to improve the description of any modality, we welcome all input. Our team practices some of the modalities, but there are so many out there that we certainly don't know all of them inside out!
There are lots of sites where I can list myself - why should I sign up with VitalityLink.com?
There are indeed a large number of sites where practitioners can list themselves and/or their schools and we think that's great - we're in favour of everything that helps make the options more accessible! We started VitalityLink.com because we ourselves as practitioners and consumers found it extremely hard to find online resources and courses and classes that we might be interested in - there didn't seem to be any easy way to search for upcoming events in the various modalities we ourselves are interested in, or to find practitioners other than by word of mouth. In terms of the benefit you can expect to get, we are using a large number of technical search engine techniques to drive traffic to the site & particularly to the practitioner profiles. We are also happy to work with practitioners to help them optimize their marketing messages and content so that they attract potential customers (you may have seen that your welcome email included an invitation to a profile review - those include lots of ideas for how to optimize the profile to better communicate what you do and offer). Over time, we have also been (and continue) building up a huge body of resources related to all aspects of holistic medicine & practice to help people looking for these services navigate their way through the sometimes confusing variety of choices. VitalityLink.com is providing a listing service where you can easily update your profile anytime, but we're also providing large amounts of information across the spectrum of modalities and conditions that those modalities can help, plus we're working with practitioners to help them communicate what they do more effectively. Soon people will also be able to sign up to receive email notifications on events and articles in their local area that match their interests. It's all about making holistic medicine more accessible to the mainstream, and we would love to have you come along on the journey!
I would like to show people on my website that I am featured on VitalityLink.com - how do I do that? Many practitioners have asked us how they can show off their VitalityLink.com contributions and presence on their own website. We have created some simple code that you can put into your website to showcase your contributions. We call it a 'badge'. To get your customized badge, just log in and go to your profile. Look for the link in the top right that says 'Get VitalityLink Badge'. 
Click on it & select the size you want. Then copy and paste the html code and put it into your website to see a nice badge with your picture and a link to your profile. 