We recently shared some knowledge with our class at the American Board of Certified Haircolorists (ABCH) Educational ‘Summit’.  For us it was a snapshot of 40 education-hungry colorists and what they knew about using social media to help them promote their business.  Only a few understood it much at all.

Of course everyone was on Facebook, but few people knew beyond the photos/videos tabs, the wall, and how to send messages.  Only one person had a plan and strategy for being there and was using it to attract more clients to their salon.

Back to Beauty School – Social Media Beauty School.

You know you can’t create a ‘look’ for your client without knowing the ‘techniques’ of how to get hair to do what you want it to do, right?  You have to know how to use a comb, scissors, razor, brush, dryer, iron, and chemicals before you can even begin to craft a look.  Each ‘look’ uses slightly different techniques and some tools more than others.

It’s no different for social media.  You have to understand the tools and what they can do for you before you can use them collectively to cultivate your own ‘look’ using your PR (and your marketing in general).

Bottom line: Go back to school. Use the same mindset you used when you knew you wanted to get started in the beauty industry.  Break out the books and mannequin heads (just kidding about the mannequin heads), and start reading, learning about your tools, and practicing basic skills.

Make the Investment

You aren’t going to learn about, or get good at social media strategy or technique in a couple of sittings, or with someone’s ‘get-rich-in-friends-quick’ book.  Think about it.  It took you over a thousand hours to learn just the basics of cosmetology in beauty school, didn’t it?

What makes you think you don’t need to approach social media with just a little bit of the same dedication you put into learning your beauty skills?  OK, not 1,000 hours, but still … take it seriously.  Start with the basics … read, and practice.

Resources

There are zillions of resources for information and technical expertise in each of the social media disciplines out there.  There’s certainly no shortage of internet marketing and social media gurus (most have become experts in the last year or so) vying for your dollar.

Who do you trust?  Where do you find them?  It takes a time and searching to find the good guys.

Save your money.  Read for free, you’ll learn whose stuff you really want to buy along the way.  Most everything you need to know is already out there and costs nothing.  You just need to find it and that’s what the download link is all about.

Here it is … and Yes, It’s Free

We’ve saved you a lot of time and searching by assembling a starter list of ‘trusted’ resources for Facebook, Twitter, LInkedIn, and Blogging knowledge.  These are tried and true experts who are really experts.  These are the people we learned from.  They’ve been at it the longest and have risen to the top of the heap.  We prepared it for our class at ABCH and it’s filled with great people and information to get you moving ahead.

Some First Ideas for you to Consider

• Subscribe to BeautyPRpro and join our fan page on Facebook.  (Had to get a plug in for our blog ).
• Make the commitment to spend one hour a day reading and practicing.
• Start with Facebook.  Read up on how the individual pieces and parts of Facebook work. You’ll find much of that information in the writings of the experts in the download PDF below.
  • Settings (account, privacy, application) and their impact on all the other parts of Facebook.
  • News feeds (top news, most recent),
  • Friend filters
  • Events
  • Messaging
  • Groups
  • Profiles (personal and Fan pages)
• Browse and read the articles and posts in the download PDF about how other companies and people are using Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging, and Twitter to grow their fans and build their businesses.
• Subscribe to some of the blogs of the experts you will be reading and follow in their footsteps.  They’ve been there and freely share how it all works.
• Questions?  I sure hope so.  Drop by BeautyPRpro on Facebook and our blog.  Ask the new found experts whose articles you’ll be reading from the download list by leaving comments/questions on their blogs and websites.  All of us that blog love to hear from you and know that what we are giving away is being appreciated and doing what it is supposed to do.

Do you have a strategy you’d care to share?

This guest post is by Bruce Rigney, owner of Rigney Graphics, a full-service marketing communication design and branding firm, established in 1982, and located in Old Pasadena, California. Sharon and I have had several occasions to work together with them on behalf of our clients. Rigney Graphics’ portfolio and more information about the company may be viewed on their website at www.rigneygraphics.com

Part 1 of this series is here.
 

Beyond Your Homepage – Which Way Did They Go?

After viewing your website’s homepage, your visitor has to decide where to go next. Given you’ve captured their interest, they now want to know more about you, your product, or your service. Your website design must guide them to:

• Contact you.
• Make an appointment.
• Buy your product(s).
• Give you their contact information.

If your homepage navigation is well designed, your visitor should easily find their next area of interest and click on it. That interest is definitely influenced by your website’s design and structure. The use of ‘clickable’ features to bring them directly to special offers or benefit helps your visitor swiftly find their way to your contact or purchase pages.

The homepage for www.lanadil.com has a “See the Magic” clickable feature

on the right along with several clickable features along the bottom of the page

Short and to the Point

A web page is not a blog … term paper … or an essay, graded on how many words you can string together to make a short story long. You drive away visitors and stifle interest with long-winded company missions, credentials, product descriptions, and lengthy news stories about the company or product.

Too many websites look like strange hybrids of information source, advertisement, and brochure all wrapped up in a video game. Your visitor wants information, and they want it ‘NOW’. When you write for a web page, think “short attention span.” As with any advertising medium, you have 1/4 second to get their attention.

As an example, magazine articles are most often ‘scanned’ … viewed rapidly by the reader as they glance at a headline, a photo, read a caption or sub-head, and perhaps an enlarged “pull quote” before speeding on to the next article or ad. Your web page should afford the same ‘instant’ messaging to its visitors.

Photo by redactie ikvader.nl

What They Read … Is What They Get

When your visitor arrives at a page of your website and is confronted with a large gray mass of text, you have lost them. Break up blocks of text to help your visitors immediately locate their area of interest on the page.

• Subheads: These are usually in a different color from the text and help to define the text below them. The visitor can use the subhead as a guide to locate that part of the text that is of interest and will not be put off by thinking that all the text on the page will have to be read to get the information needed.

• Bulleted Items: A paragraph which contains a list (of benefits, uses, services offered, credentials, clients, etc.) should be broken apart into bulleted listings which enable the visitor to immediately locate relevant items. No longer a blur of text, information will ‘pop off the page’ for the visitor.

• Secondary Navigation: When you have a list of services or types of products, you can employ a secondary navigation element to the page, often on the side of the page. This allows the visitor to narrow his or her search quickly and get right to what they are looking for. As an example, on a services page for a beauty salon, rather than display a long page with a continuous listing of services, the services page could have a general statement about the services of the salon. Then, on the side of the page, a boxed area or sidebar can list each of the individual services where the visitor can click on a listed item to link directly to data about the specific service.

Our site design for www.clearcorrect.com displays secondary

navigation links on the right side of many of its pages.

Eliminate the Negative – Reverse Type

Avoid blocks of copy in reversed type. White on black or on any other color, is almost impossible to read in quantity on a website. A statement, headline or sub-headline is fine, but be brief, and of sufficient size to be immediately recognizable. If you want to hide or obscure your message, reverse the text.

Visitor Drop-Off – Lines Too Long

Two-thirds of the way across the line of type your visitor ‘drops off’ and loses track of what they are reading. Reader drop-off rate is relative to the length of the line of text and the size of the type. If you must run text the full width of the page, you must increase the type size to balance the length of the line.

Drop-off is a significant design factor for the new wider website standard for the larger monitors now in general use. Designers must artfully balance artwork, sidebars, navigation columns and the use of shorter columns to avoid a layout that requires the reader to scan a full length wider web page.

Call to Action

Your website should contain “calls to action”. Places where you ask your visitor to contact you, or purchase a product. These can be placed on the homepage, or on any pages where it is probable that the visitor might be receptive to being guided toward that action. These calls to action are usually presented as prominently displayed links which direct the visitor to “Buy Now” or “Call Today” or “Contact Us.”

Remember, your site was not only built to inspire confidence in your products or services, but as a lead-generating or income-generating tool to grow your business. Here’s a good example:

This page from www.lilash.com has five calls to action: A “Purchase Lilash” navigation bar

on the left, a “Shop Online” bar at the top right, and text links at the end of three of the paragraphs.

Who is Your Visitor? – Capture Their Contact Info.

Many salon/spa sites are not set up for online sales. The main goal is to generate enough interest to get a visitor to make an appointment or respond to an offer. If they’ve gotten to your website, they are already a ‘warm’ lead and you want to capture their contact information to re-contact them if you miss them this time around.

Ideally, what you want is your visitor’s name, address, phone number and email address, but most of us are reluctant to divulge all that on our first contact. Since our goal is to be able to continue to communicate to them, obtaining an email address only is a victory.

Once their contact info has been captured in any form, you are able to continue to stimulate their interest via email. Such items as:

• News stories about your business
• Customer successes or endorsements
• New product and/or service offerings

All of these encourage a potential client to try your product or service and eventually become part of your ever-expanding clientele.

Get Help

If your website is not measuring up to expectations and generating solid leads to new clients, you need help from a professional design group with proven success in upgrading website effectiveness.

Part 3 of this series (coming up) addresses what to look for in the selection of a website design firm.

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Twitter – Your ‘Aha!’ moment?

OK gang. Many of you have confessed to being Twitter ‘challenged’.  In our travels (and in the research) we’ve seen many who begin to twitter, then stop … their twitter names lying fallow with no tweets for months.  No surprise. Twitter itself has not been that helpful to newbies and most people many don’t have the motivation or time to scrounge for Twitter knowledge.  Yet, despite its own shortcomings of Spartan web interface and less than helpful user info, Twitter has exploded.  Both individuals and businesses are making good use of it.

I hear, “I really don’t ‘get’ Twitter”, “How do you follow all the messages from all those people?”, and “Who should I follow?” … “How do I ensure I don’t miss tweets sent to me in that huge pile of tweets?” … the list goes on and on.  You would think something so Spartan and arcane wouldn’t catch on like it has, but it certainly has, and by the millions.  But, don’t take my word for it.

Bite-Sized Twitter Help

We’re going to break down the topic of Twitter into a series several writings over the next few weeks. If you are a stylist or colorist, esthetician, nail technician, salon owner or independent contractor, distributor or manufacturer, hopefully, this series will help you ‘get’ Twitter, and begin putting it to work for you … and your business.

If you dig in just a bit here in part 1, you’ll have your ‘Aha!’ moment.  You’ll also be collecting valuable resources you can to use to get out there and use Twitter for the power it has to reach the people you want to reach, and you’ll know where to go to get answers and help to continue your journey.

Don’t miss the entire series. If you’re not subscribed here yet, please do so now.  I’ll wait

Give a Man a Fish …

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today.

Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime “.

Along the way we will be linking you to the writings of many individuals. But, there are two individuals who have led the way for us to becoming  more knowledgeable about social media in general, and specifically in blogging and Twittering.

• Darren Rouse (@problogger  www.problogger.com and www.twitip.com).
• Chris Garrett (@chrisgarrett www.chrisg.com).

You couldn’t do better than a free subscription to those three blogs (No $ affiliation here).

There is a wealth of information clearly written by many other good minds and I don’t plan on paraphrasing anyone’s writings, but will link you directly to them.  Our job is to deal primarily with beauty industry specific information and recommendations.  If you have questions, feel free to ask them in the comments section of this post, or call us.

What is Twitter?

Wikipedia defines it thus, “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service enabling users to send and read messages known as tweets.  Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.  Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website or external applications.”

In short, Twitter handles three basic types of messages:

• A ‘public’ message typed into the “What are you doing?” box at the top will be seen by all your ‘followers’.  (e.g. “Reading: Weird Frog Facts http://bit.ly/x13Kj“)
• A ‘public reply or message’ to a specific follower (@twittername). Using the ‘@twittername’ at the beginning of your tweet ensures your tweet will most likely not be missed by the recipient.  (e.g. “@sharonandalex I’ll meet you in the hotel lobby – Tuesday at 11am”). Your reply message will also be seen by all your followers.
• A ‘private reply’ or private message (‘DM twittername’ or ‘D twittername’), is seen only by the follower you have sent it to.  (e.g. “DM twittername  My checking account number 777-4444-22″)

That’s what Twitter does …  I knew you could handle it. 

Setting up your Twitter account

OK.  You’re ready.  Here are two tutorial posts for the mechanics of setting yourself up.

1. From Twitip.com
2. From AgentGenius.com

I’ll wait here till you get back.

Pretty straightforward.   But here are a few things to keep in mind while you’re setting up.

About Your Profile

Your ‘profile’ is an important ingredient of how people perceive you on Twitter. People want to know something about you to help them decide if they want to follow you or not.  What you put into your profile settings helps us discover you, and why you are on Twitter.

For the record, before I decide to follow someone I do two things:

1. I scan their last 20 + tweets.  Are they interesting and/or helpful or are they time-wasters?  (“Enjoying a hamburger watching American Idol” or “Want 1,000 of followers in 10 days? Link here” – uh, thanks, I’ll pass)  (“Reading about NAHA winners: http://www.probeauty.org/naha/finalists/” – that’s more like it).
2. Next I click their web reference link (here’s ours).  What is their motivation for being on Twitter?  What does it tell me about them?  Given those two pieces, I elect to either follow them or ignore them by not following them in return.  95% of the time they’ll stop following you in a day or two when you don’t follow back. More later on followers and following later.

When I get my email notification from Twitter that I have a new follower, follow the link and see their profile has: no photo, no bio info, is full of self-serving or silly tweets, or nothing but sales messages …  goodbye.   Many are automated social media guru follower ‘hunters’ chasing down potential prospects.  Good for them?  Not good for me.  I want people following (and who I follow) who are real. I want people who bring value to me (and I to them) and with whom I can have a ‘conversation’.

Your Profile Details

Your Twitter ‘User Name’

This is what people use to direct a message to you.  Your ‘handle’ is very important.  What does your Twitter name convey about you?  Keep in mind that Twitter is about people and companies.  Names are always a safest, clearest, and best bet.  You will be judged by the handle you choose.

• ‘@getrichquick’ – You tell me
• ‘@sharonandalex’ – Gee, they sound like nice guys.
• ‘@yourbizname’ – I know exactly who they are.

Important Note: Choose your name wisely.  Once selected, that’s it.  You are locked in.  Change the name?  Lose your followers.

Your Photo (Avatar)

The power of the avatar is large.  How do you want people to see you?  Are you friendly-looking?  What image of you does your picture convey?  Family man/woman?  Smiling wamth?  Silly sense of humor?  Goofball?  Unlike your name, you can always change your photo/avatar.

Your ‘One Line Bio’

A very short (160 characters) summary of who you are and what you are all about.  (Check out a few examples: @pozasalon, @beautyscientist, @BecciRenfro).

Your ‘More Info URL’ (web location)

A link to a website, Google Profile or someplace on the web where people can learn more about you.

Your location

This is info that helps people know where you are geographically.

Protect Your Tweets?

I understand caution on the web, but protecting your tweets is a roadblock where people cannot follow you until you have approved them.  Personally, I most often bypass folks who protect their tweets.  Too much extra effort and too little time.  I’d rather have folks follow me easily.  I always evaluate them before following them back anyway so why block possible opportunities.  I can always unfollow and/or block.  It’s always my option … always your choice.

Creating your own Twitter Background  (Not mandatory.)

This is a ‘nice to have’, not a must do. When you get to our Twitter page you see our own background creation, not one of the standard pages provided by Twitter. Like I said, not mandatory, but an opportunity for you to share even more about who you are and what you do with your Twitter visitor. If you have time to spare and want to create your own, try these web resources..

• Mashable’s good info
• FreeTwitterDesigner
• Newbtech’s helpful page
• Create a background with PowerPoint

Who Should I Follow?

Our next post in this Twitter series will delve into this topic at greater length, but let’s start you out with some ‘quality’ follows right now.  Here is a ‘starter’ list of some interesting people & businesses, a few generic , and an assortment of beauty industry related ‘tweeple’ who are good examples of good Twitter citizens.

Note: For the moment, don’t bother following every Tom, Dick, or Harry social media ‘expert’ just to build followers, unless all you care about is having lots of followers.  You won’t believe how many ‘experts’ wants your eyeballs and your money. When you’re through these first couple of posts and have spent time poking around Twitter on your own, you’ll know who’s who.

Non-Beauty Industry Follow Suggestions

• @chrisbrogan  (Good social media info and more).
• @problogger (Good social media info [Also has the best Twitter blog I know at www.twitip.com).
• @copyblogger (Good writing info).
• @microgeist (Interesting stuff, sorta techy, but not too).

Beauty Industry Follow Suggestions

• @beautyjunkies
• @beautyscientist
• @BecciRenfro.
• @becomegorgeous
• @BSDiva
• @dwightmiller
• @everydayhair
• @haironthebrain
• @HairsHowMag
• @hairstyle_tweet
• @HelloBeauty
• @imagosalon
• @misssalon_usa
• @modernsalon
• @newbeauty
• @pozasalon
• @rebekah_king
• @RobinGribbin
• @salontoday,
• @sharonandalex
• @thebeautybrains

Tweetdeck Alert

Even though Twitter tools is part 3 in the series, I can't. leave you now without suggesting that you download and begin to use Tweetdeck to help manage your Twitter time. For me, it is one of the easiest way to work with Twitter. There are many other options to come later. You will need to download and install Adobe Air first though. Just follow the instructions on the Tweetdeck website. Well worth the effort.

Update to Post:Excellent Video from Darren Rouse

• Twitter Tips for Beginners [VIDEO]
• Timing  Your tweets (A short read)

It’s 40 minutes and quite complete. Grab a drink and relax. Worth it.

That’s it for Part 1.

• Part 2 – Followers & Following
• Part 3 – Twitter Tools Make Life with Twitter Easier (future post)

How Are You Using Twitter?  Share with Us in a Comment.

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We’ve written a number of blog posts on staying aware of your on-line legacy when participating in the social media  community (e.g. What Not to Do in Public Places and The World Wide Web is a Very Sticky Place).  The thrust of the posts was primarily to make you aware of the potential consequences of what you write in Facebook and on Twitter.

But there is a whole other element of awareness about social media that needs mention .… the element of ‘authenticity’.  We are, after all, human beings as well as professionals … and have in common many feelings and problems we don’t share in public because they are … well …  ’private’.

Someone being ‘authentic’, (sharing who they really are, what they really think, or what is really happening to them) always gets my full attention … and quite often … identification.  What they say resonates. I am drawn to them.  I listen on a whole different level.  They become ‘more important’ to me, beyond my first level of interest.

I suspect it has to do with the basic stuff of relationships … risk and trust.  Their words and feelings touch me, resonate, and ripple outwards (thus this post).  All of us who read the message or experience are affected and want to share it with others.  Another recent example of a visceral reaction to a personal experience was the unbelievably dramatic response to Susan Boyle on the ‘Britains Have Talent’ show.

A day or so ago, scanning my Google Reader for interesting blog posts, I ran across the post below from Mari Smith, one of the good guy (gal) Facebook and social media consultants.  Suddenly, I am paying even closer attention to Mari and her writings.  I realize she lives not far from Sharon and me here in the San Diego area.

I’ve followed her blog for a while now and learned many good things from her.  Now I want to meet her, speak with her, and perhaps find out how we might work together to our client’s benefit.  I am drawn to her on a whole different level.

Off-Topic?

What motivated me to get off my butt and consider taking action to contact her?  Answer … Her blog post, “Choosing To Share My Private Journey – A Transparent Update“.  It’s personal and off-topic for her area of expertise.  But I guess it wasn’t off-topic at all.  It made her real to me.  It made me want to meet this interesting person who is also a professional Facebook and social media coach … someone real and authentic.  For companies and individuals involved and using social media, isn’t that one of our goals?  To shake people up and get them involved enough to take action.  Hmmmm … I guess her post accomplished a lot.  I guess it wasn’t off-topic .

Glad to meet you Mari.  I look forward to learning more about you and your work in the near future.

How Do You Feel About Sharing Your Personal Experiences In Public Places?

How Much of You Do you Share With Your Clients?  How Do You Deal With This?

Title photo by Yolise

You may not have noticed, but we added a couple of features to BeautyPRpro to make your visit to BeautyPRpro more convenient and for those of you with a blog, more Google productive for your own blog or web page.

1. We added the Snapshot WordPress Plug-in. When you hover over any link anywhere on the blog site, you get a quick ‘snapshot’ of what that web page looks like in a mini-pop-up window. We like sites that use Snapshot because we can preview that link’s destination and quickly decide if we want to go there or not. In addition, we get some reassurance that it is a quality link and can tell what kind of link it is (video, pdf, jpg, html, etc).
2. Bloggers, and those with websites especially take note – We also added the CommentLUV plug-in. Very good for those of you with your own blog. When you make a comment on a post in BeautyPRPro, the plug-in automatically grabs the latest blog post headline from your blog and adds it with a link to your post on to the end of your comment. Here are the benefits:
   • You end up with 2 links to your site, not one, so it’s more likely that at least one will be clicked. (plus the Google double link back benefit). For those that don’t know, Google counts the number of inbound links pointing to your webpage as it calculates your site’s ‘value’ … thus rank. From now on, every time you add a comment on BeautyPRPro, two links point to your own page/blog.
   • The new link is your post title, which says much more about your site than just your name does. The post title is far more likely to grab a reader’s eye and get them to click for a visit.
   • Readers see posts from people interested in the same blog post they were. There is a good chance some of these links will appeal to them and they will visit your blog.
   • You are much less susceptible to spam. Both links have NoFollow, so the pure-SEO spammers won’t bother to waste your time.

We’d appreciate your comments. Do you find snapshot helpful or annoying?

Candy Bars Aren’t Really Good for You

There’s a reason buildings start with a foundation.  Only once you have one can you lay bricks and mortar and begin to dress it up.  Public relations is about the foundation. Publicity is the ‘dress it up’ part.  That’s not to say you can’t get publicity without public relations, you can, but without foundation, it’s inconsistent. It’s like eating candy bars instead of good meals for energy.  After a short-term energy blast, you’re left energy-less and crashing.

Confucious said, “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”  That’s what we are doing here with this blog.  Sure we hand out ‘candy bars’ occasionally like these two … Snickers and  Oh Henry!, but we try never take our eye off the bigger ball. We’ll remind you, to stay focused on your story and how you tell it … to everyone in the world.

Do Not Neglect Your ‘Foundational PR’.

Ever read any writings by Seth Godin?  You are about to. He has a most worthy blog. Wish we could hang out for a day. Thoughtful man. Who is he? We suggest you discover for yourself. He’s written a bunch of books, the most recent, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us and a favorite … All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World .  He wrote the following post recently and it resonated so powerfully with us because it reassured us that what we do is important.

The difference between PR and publicity

Most PR firms do publicity, not PR.

Publicity is the act of getting ink.  Publicity is getting unpaid media to pay attention, write you up, point to you, run a picture, make a commotion.  Sometimes publicity is helpful, and good publicity is always good for your ego.

But it’s not PR.

PR is the strategic crafting of your story.  It’s the focused examination of your interactions and tactics and products and pricing that, when combined, determine what and how people talk about you.

Regis McKenna was great at PR.  Yes, he got Steve Jobs and the Mac on the cover of more than 30 magazines in the year it launched.  That was just publicity. The real insight was crafting the story of the Mac (and yes, the story of Steve Jobs).

If you send out a boring press release, your publicity effort will probably fail, but your PR already has.

A publicity firm will tell you stories of how they got a client ink.  A PR firm will talk about storytelling and being remarkable and spreading the word.  They might even suggest you don’t bother getting ink or issuing press releases.

In my experience, a few people have a publicity problem, but almost everyone has a PR problem. You need to solve that one first.  And you probably won’t accomplish that if you hire a publicity firm and don’t even give them the freedom and access they need to work with you on your story.

Thank you Seth.

OK READERS … WHAT’S YOUR STORY?  STRATEGIC PUBLIC RELATIONS OR CHASING PUBLICITY? CARE TO SHARE?

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Question mark photo by DoBeRaGi – Flickr Creative Common