Opportunities for PR happen not only because you are a talented salon professional and send out interesting news and photo releases. They happen because you are a part of people’s lives doing things that distinguish you from others in the crowd. You are a respected member of the community … a player .. you do things ‘differently’.  That’s ‘unique’.

I’ll disagree with my guest poster’s contention that you don’t see mentors in the news. Actually, we do every day. People like Beth Minardi, Brad Graham, Vivienne Mackinder, (uh) Don Bewley , and hundreds more on  the list. These individuals parlayed their love of the industry and their focus on support for the next generation as an ‘element’ of their overall industry reputation and recognition.

It’s true that thousands of others haven’t paid attention to the value of  a PR strategy for themselves and haven’t been recognized in the media, but that’s by their own doing … or lack of doing.  Mentoring is something that, coupled with good PR habits, does serve to get earn ‘stripes’, thus more people take notice.

PR is a very POOR motivation for mentoring, but the fringe benefit of being a caring and supportive industry professional certainly serves to enhance someone’s image in the eyes of others.

I thoroughly enjoyed what Don Bewley had to say about mentoring. It is truly the very foundational ingredient that has elevated the professional salon industry to what it is today. Read it … then don’t just sit there … get out and mentor someone.

Where Have All The Mentors Gone?

By Don Bewley, Eufora Intl.,  Co-founder – Reprinted with permission of Stylist Newspapers

When interviewing and hiring staff and educators at Eufora I always ask: who is your mentor? If the potential hire does not have one, I do not consider them for a position.

Why is this important? People who seek out and find mentorship are people who are committed to being successful.

There are many great mentors out there who truly care about the salon professional industry and nurturing the future generation. I have met many of them during my travels throughout North America. Sadly, these mentors often go unrecognized because they are rarely seen gracing the pages of our industry magazines, but they are definitely out there ready to share their expertise, provide guidance and serve as a sounding board.

So what is the definition of a mentor? A mentor is someone who has achieved a great level of success and sustained that success over time. They choose to share their expertise and success strategies and they do it based on their love of the hairdressing industry.

They are giving, humble leaders who are not afraid of someone becoming better than them, in fact they actually want their protégés to surpass their own level of success.

I have had three key mentors throughout my 30-year hairdressing career. It is difficult for one mentor to give you everything you need. Mentor Number One was an amazing hairdresser who understood the correlation between hair and fashion and the power of great technical cutting systems.

Mentor Number Two was a businessman who understood and excelled at the financial side of the business and taught me about profitability and how to drive points to my bottom line. And Mentor Number Three taught me how to be accountable for the goals that you set for yourself. All are important skills in becoming a success in the industry and are skills that continuously need nurturing and improvement.

It’s important to seek out your mentor and do not wait for them to find you. So where do you find these successful people willing to share their secrets to success?

Stylists should start with their salon owner. Salon owners obviously want you to make money, be your best and be happy, so it’s only natural that they would want to help you. However, if you’re not finding a mentor in your salon, it may be time to look elsewhere.

Industry networking groups are a great way to connect to successful salon professionals. We’re a tight knit community that can be very generous and loving; the entire salon industry wins if we help one another by acting as mentors because we elevate it as a whole. A great example of this is the Eufora Salon Owners Network. Salon owners, who are all competing in the same market, come together to discuss their common challenges and share solutions based on their own experiences. They are helping themselves while helping others.

Great mentors can also be found through premier industry business and creative educators. These professionals have dedicated a part of their career to helping other succeed either through haircutting and styling or business solutions. Most importantly, expose yourself to successful industry professionals through attending education. You‘ll discover talented and caring people more than willing to help you go to the next level

Everyone has something to offer and we shouldn’t be afraid to share our knowledge. Maybe reading this you realize that you are the successful professional that can reach out to help others. Since day one, Eufora has been dedicated to helping cultivate mentors through our education program. It starts with a desire to help others, a commitment to be the best. From this, success is nurtured. Educators are constantly in training themselves to better learn how to help fellow salon professionals achieve their goals and dreams.

If we all participated in the mentoring process by seeking the guidance of others, being mentors ourselves and helping develop mentors, the salon professional industry would be unstoppable. Just think of all the many opportunities it would yield for everyone of us to be prosperous and fulfilled.

Who is Your Mentor? Are You Mentoring?

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Part 2 of a 3 part series

Followers & Following

In Part 1, Twitter ─ your ‘Aha’ Moment we looked at how to Twitter with a salon industry focus.  This part 2 is about who to follow and how to find the people you want to follow on Twitter.

Who Do You Follow?

Who you follow (and who you want to follow you) depends on why you are on Twitter in the first place.  Let’s begin by making sure we all understand the definitions of ‘following’ and ‘followers’.

What is Following?

Following someone on Twitter means getting their updates in your personal timeline.  If you follow someone, you’ll get their updates on your homepage when you log in.  You can see who gets your updates by looking on your followers page. You can make changes to who you follow on your following page.

What are Followers?

Followers are people who elect to receive other peoples’ Twitter updates. When you post an update to your Twitter account, your followers will get it on their home page and/or phone.  You don’t have to follow everyone who follows you, and unless an account is private, you can follow and un-follow whoever you want without them following back.  Mutual followers can send each other private messages (DMs), and you can choose to get notified by email when someone new follows you or sends you a private message.  Your follower/following stats are listed on your profile page.

Know Your Reasons for Twittering?

There are only three reasons I can think of to twitter:

• Business

  • Make other salon professionals and beauty industry businesses aware of you/your business.
  • Speak directly to consumers/client prospects for personal or company branding.
  • Develop new client/customer outreach channel (service, promotion).

• Recreation

  • Learn new things.
  • Have fun?
  • Learn more about social media.

• Get Lots of Followers.

  • Not a lot of good reasons here.  Gathering thousands of followers is not that hard.  There are lots of people out there that care about that.  To do that will overwhelm you with tweets and you’ll be one of those people with the most marketing & social media ‘mavens’, IT people, and media/journalism/PR experts’ on the block.  That is the largest population of active Twitter users on the planet. The social media mavens are dying for you to follow them.  My advice? Don’t follow every Tom, Dick or Harry.  Remember your goals.  Volume doesn’t count, especially when you are targeting specific audiences.  For me it’s about quality.

Deciding your priorities determines your strategy for following.  You might even choose to have more than one Twitter identity.  (More on that later).

Building Salon Industry Followers

I’m assuming you want to find other salon industry people and businesses on Twitter and connect with them as you do on Facebook or LinkedIn.  Twitter is a great place to ‘fish around’ to meet other salon industry people and businesses you haven’t met yet.  You do that by being interesting & personal, with the goal of bringing people closer to you and giving you and your business a personality … your personality.  Your goal is to be who you are.  Hopefully, that is someone people enjoy hearing from .

I say ‘ fish around’ because Twitter is where you can pique people’s curiousity (get a nibble) and be interesting enough for people to want to learn more about you (i.e. ‘landing’ them on to your website or other place of your choosing).

Twitter is not a great place for traditional marketing thinking.  It’s not about ads and selling and promoting your products and services in the usual ways.  People turn you off like a TV commercial.  They either stop following or stop reading your tweets.  You turn them on by being interesting & helpful, by engaging in conversation, and communicating on topics of interest to your followers.  It’s a very different form of outreach for most business and people to get used to.

Rule of thumb:  Spend 90-95% of your Twitter dialog on topics of interest to your followers.  You can use the other 5-10% for creative self-promotion.

Where do you find the followers you want?

• You hunt for them one at a time.
• You ‘search’ for them on Twitter.
• Yes, it is time-consuming.
• Yes, it is worth it.

How to Hunt on Twitter

Geographically, salon and spa pros are all over the world so you probably want to cast a wide net.  Here is a process you can use:

1. Search for someone (or a business) in the biz on Twitter.  If you already know someone you like and respect, start with them and jump ahead to step #3.
2. Here are a few suggestions for searching:
   • Twitter Search – Finds keywords in all twitter names and tweets (e.g. keywords ‘salon’, ‘spa’, etc.)
   • Twibs – Finds keywords in ‘businesses’ on Twitter.  (e.g. ‘beauty’, ‘beauty pr’ [ahem], etc.)
   • Twellow – Finds categorized Twitter accounts
   • Twellowhood – Finds Twitter Accounts geographically (You have to be registered with Twellow to use it.)
3. Click on the photos/avatars of their follows and followers one at a time and learn about them.
   • Read their tweets and bio information.
   • If there’s a link to their website, check it out.
4. If you decide they look like someone you are interested in, click to follow them.
5. They will be notified (by email) you are following them and probably will ‘check you out’ just as you just did  to decide if they want to follow you back.

Get Followers Using Traditional Marketing Tools

This part is much easier for traditionalists.  Let everyone in the industry around you, including your customers, know you are on Twitter and ask them to follow you:

• Put “Follow me on Twitter” reminders on all your marketing material (website, emails, ads, flyers, signage, biz cards, etc).  Motivate them to do so. Here are some good Twitter graphics.
• Email your contact list(s) a link to follow you on Twitter.  (Here’s the email service we use).
• Include your Twitter URL in your email signature.
• You know the rest.

Tweet for Your Salon Industry Business

The nature of your salon industry business determines your Twitter follow strategy.  Three options here:

• You are a salon (spa) owner or independent contractor looking to grow your client roster.
• You are a distributor looking to reach your customer’s clients to help pull your manufacturer’s products through and support your salon industry customers.
• You are a salon industry manufacturer looking to brand your company and bring your products to the attention of the consumer.

The Primary Search Difference?  Geography.

• Salon owners and independents seeking to grow their client base are going to be interested in finding followers within a defined geographic area.  The tools to locate ‘Tweeple’ (See the Twitter dictionary) geographically are listed above under ‘Hunting on Twitter’.
• Distributors will be interested in a geographic area that matches their territory. That will include their industry customers (salon professionals).  They may also be interested in reaching consumers in their territory.  Here is where the two identities I mentioned might come in.  You can have a Twitter identity (e.g. AcmeBeautyPro) that serves the needs of your customers (for branding, customer service, and value awareness) and another (AcmeBeauty) for outreach to your customer’s customers to help promote your product lines to consumers (your salon customers will like that).
• Manufacturers want to reach everyone at every level of the distribution chain.  Their customers (distributors and beauty stores); Their customer’s customers (salon owners and independent contractors); Their customer’s customer’s customer (consumers);  All with branding, promotional support for pull-through, and customer service Twitter activity.

No matter which category you fall into, the tools mentioned above in “Hunting on Twitter” will serve you in locating people on Twitter.  In many of the links in this post you will find myriad other Twitter tools to search with as well.

For all of you, you now have the magic formula (90/10) for being a good Twitizen.  Now, here’s some last minute advice in a recent post on Twitip.com on the proper way to pitch on Twitter.

Twitter For Recreation

Beyond its business applications, Twitter is simply a lot of fun.  It’s a great way to learn, get the hottest news, find interesting places to go on the web, discover things you would never think of yourself, meet new friends, and much more.  There’s no shortage of writings on the internet on the topic of Twitter so have fun playing, learning and growing.

Twitter Etiquette

You’ll definitely want to learn more about the etiquette of Twitter. That is easily done here, here and here.

Two Bits of Last Minute Advice

Don’t over follow – Only select 10-30 (at most) people at a time to follow.  Let a day go by while you watch many of them follow you back.  Continue to tweet things of interest to your prospective followers.

Don’t follow every Tom, Dick or Harry.  Remember your goals.  Volume doesn’t count. Quality matters.  You simply won’t believe how many people will want you to follow them once you start tweeting.

Excellent Twitter Resources

How to Attract and Influence People on Twitter

How to Get More Followers on Twitter

Mashable Twitter Guide Book

Twitter’s Own Guide

That’s it for Part 2

• Part 1 – Getting Started on Twitter
• Part 2 – Followers & Following
• Part 3 – Twitter Tools Make Life with Twitter Easier (future post)

What Good Advice Do You Have for a Twitter Newbie?  Leave a  Comment.

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