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?

Although this post is aimed a bit more at those who are newer to the game of getting media attention and what to do with it once you get it, we suspect a few old-timers could also use some brush-up on their interview skills as well.  Only the questions might change.

OK, you’ve been doing your homework.

You have been sending your local news releases out regularly when suddenly one day the front desk calls and tells you a local TV news person you’ve been wooing (who noticed you originally because you sent them a VIP card and a great news release) is on the line.  Wow!  … flurry of excitement.  You hurry to your office, take a deep breath, and pick up the phone.

You discover they are interested in the news release you sent out about your upcoming local charitable event.  Woo-Hoo!  Lightning strikes …. a ‘magic moment’ opportunity.

Are You Ready for it?

Being prepared to ‘make the sale’ to someone in the media means you need to be comfortable and conversant talking about two things right at that moment.

Number 1 – Your Recent News Release

Your caller assumes you are the subject matter expert (SME).  That’s why they called you.  If your name is on the release, on first contact people grant you that authority.

How well-versed and conversant you are on your topic, and how you come across answering their questions is important.  Having background knowledge on your cause, thus your passion about it, and knowing what you wrote in your own news release goes a long way to preserving that credibility.  Too many, “I don’t know” or, “I’m not sure” answers eats away at your credibility and may diminish interest.

Number 2 – You!

Your passion and personality, your ability to share who you are, what you believe in, and what you are doing in an easy-to-follow, simple explanation is important.  This takes pre-call, pre-interview rehearsal time practicing your answers to some of the fairly standard questions you might expect to be asked.  You need to ‘get your lines down’ as actors say.

You know the media likes ‘brief’.  They appreciate the quick-communicating ‘sound bite’.  These ‘bites’ are the most likely phrases to get ‘quoted’ in print, or edited into TV interview moments during segments.  Having a few ‘sound bites’ at your fingertips is good.

Preparing to Share You

There are some fairly standard questions you might expect an interviewer to ask.  Having a few pre-considered answers with those ‘sound bites’ at your fingertips, improves your chances of coming off as a fun interview during a magic moment.  Here’s a short list of questions designed to stimulate your thinking down that track.  How would you answer these?

• Tell me a little about yourself.
• Why did you choose to become a salon professional?
• What is really special and unique about your salon?
• What are your thoughts on what we’re seeing in hair fashion this season?  Where do you see it going next season?  Beyond?  Why?
• What is it you offer your clients that’s unusual and not easily found at other salons?
• Tell me about the community/cause-related activities you and your salon are involved with.
• As a professional, what products do you think are absolute ‘must-haves’ for your clients?
• Are there any simple regimens you can recommend your clients to do every day that will make a significant difference to how they look during the day?

Get Practice, and Have Some Fun Too.

Remember when you played ‘pretend’ as a kid.  A friend ‘pretended’ to be someone else, and you ‘pretended’ you were someone else, and the two of you pretended together.  It’s what actors do every day they are working … they play pretend, rehearsing to become natural ‘pretending’.  Playing pretend works … and it’s fun. J So here’s our suggestion:

• Find a friend you trust that you can ‘play’ with.
• Both of you sit down and develop good answers to the above questions.
• Stick a video camera down and turn it on. (gasp)
• Have your friend pretend to be the TV interviewer interviewing you.
• Now switch roles.
• Do that over several times.

Did you laugh a lot?

How horrified were you? 

Did you both get any better after a few repeats and answer rewrites?

We’ll bet with practice you get really good at this … when it doesn’t count … while you’re playing.  You’re also going to feel so much better going into your next ’magic moment’

Share Some of Your Fun with this Exercise. Comments? Experiences?

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Those of you that chose the career of ‘cosmetology’ can hold your heads up even higher these days.  We know you have often had to endure annoying public opinion, comment, and yes … even sarcasm about having chosen to be a hairdresser. Well, now there’s some solid career data to make a strong case for just how ‘smart’ a decision you made to those who would have preferred you became a doctor, a lawyer, or a teacher. Someone has taken a highly credible approach to analyzing careers that you can place on the table that makes you look pretty darn clever.

Now you can announce to disapproving family members, friends, or others in ‘other industries’ that being a cosmetologist today actually ranks higher than becoming an attorney, an architect, or even a newscaster!  In fact, when we first reviewed the analysis, we noticed that our job, ‘public relations executive’ ranked a notch below ‘cosmetologist’!  We have often joked that we should have gone to beauty school.  With what we know and the skills of a good stylist, we’d be rich .

All of this is according to the latest ranking of jobs, from best to worst, by the respected job search portal CareerCast.com, whose 2010 Jobs Rated Section offers a comprehensive analysis of 200 jobs – from Actuary (#1)  to Roustabout (#200) – giving each a unique ranking based on the hard data of today.  The methodology of the research lends great credibility to the data so you should familiarize yourself with it.  You can find that here.

The Top Jobs study also ran in the Wall Street Journal recently, here and here.  Take a look. It’s fascinating … and reveals what many jobs are ‘really’ like.  So hold your heads up high – and tell the naysayers in your life to (ahem) … check it out.

Photo Credit: joeinfulleffect

What Should You Do With This Information?

1. Do Something ‘Local’ for Yourself

This is newsworthy information and local press likes national news pickup as it relates to a local business.  How to tie it in to you and your salon?  With such credible national media as the Wall Street Journal reporting on this latest ‘Best and Worst’ 2010 job survey, it makes perfect PR sense to share this perception of your work.  You might want to check out our blog post “Good PR in a Bad Economy – Catch the Wave“.

Here are a couple of lifestyle story ideas you could pitch to a local lifestyle editor:

• A Good Time to Be a Salon Pro – The thrust of your pitch is that a down economy is a great time to be in the beauty industry because beauty is relatively recession-resistant.  Your salon (if you can show your business is doing OK) can be a great illustration for that fact; especially if you are looking to hire stylists when other industries are letting employees go. Don’t worry that the writer may want to interview other salons in the area for their take … you and your business are in the story … you pitched it and you tell a good story.
• A Career for Any Economy – The thrust of your pitch is how you (and your salon business) have weathered several economic up and down turns because of your choice of career. You can share your experience with what beauty services clients are cutting out, cutting down and what services you have been providing that go the extra mile to bring clients back for me by meeting a consumer need.  Focus of this story is sharing what consumer trend is and how good salons and beauty pros are bringing even greater value to consumers.

2. Use the Information on your Facebook Fan Page, Website, and Blog.

What did the survey reveal?  Discuss misconceptions.  Use it to share your own stories of beauty school and how it wasn’t as easy as people might think.  Use it as a launching place to discuss how your salon has prospered by developing extra-value to the client services (not a discount story).  Have fun with looking at over-rated and under-rated jobs.

3. Create Fun Promotional Items for Your Staff

An example would be promotional tee shirts or buttons for your staff (and as client give-aways that says, “You Should Have Gone to Beauty School” or “Hair Designer: A Better Career Choice than Doctor, Lawyer or Newscaster – Wall Street Journal”

4. Dump Any Old “I’m Just a Hairdresser” Mentality”

If you’re one of those who ever answered the question “What do you do?” with an answer something like, “I’m just a hairdresser” … grab a copy of Vivienne’s “I’m Not Just a Hairdresser“.  Get inspired, proud and reminded of the passions that brought you to the career that you are in.  Your friends, clients and the media will certainly notice.

Oops – We forgot to mention in the first run out that this post was drawn from the conversation we had (and our regular column drawn from it) with Vivienne Mackinder in the latest issue of MOD magazine. If you don’t read MOD, you’re out of it. Her TV shows are also killer! … and fun.

What Other Things Can You Think of?

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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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Those of us in the PR game a decade ago remember when internet press release distribution was a paid service offered mostly by PR industry dominant media services.  Bacon’s & Burelle’s  (renamed Cision and Burelles Luce respectively).  These industry biggies offer PR professionals and companies full-service  media research, lists, & clipping & monitoring for blogs, print and TV.  In the past couple of years, excellent upstart Vocus joined the battle for our hearts and minds.

These major media services all have annual subscription fees that although not inexpensive (read thousands), to their credit and favor, have all designed affordable packages for small businesses that are serious about their PR.  They’re worth your time to learn about.

Dominant Internet-Only Distribution Services

Like Cision and Burelle’s above, PRNewswire and PR Web were pioneers of the internet press release.  They offer a variety of enhanced services that assist less experienced news release writers in creating and distributing news releases as well as additional packages of distribution you probably wouldn’t be able to access otherwise.  Again, well worth the value until you get to know more about optimizing your news releases.  Their cost varies from $80-$400 per release.  At last check, PRNewswire had an annual membership fee.  PR Web had no membership fee.

Two Benefits of Internet Distributed News Releases

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Search engines ‘like’ optimized press releases.  Well written, they are good subject matter and, well designed, have the right SEO ingredients to become ‘backlinks’ to your website.  You’ve experienced the result when you do a web search and find multiple links (from the same domains) with your search term in the title.  If it’s a good headline (Title) and ‘Description’ (first paragraph) , searchers click through to have a peek and you end up with a website visitor.
2. Journalists doing story research use the web extensively looking for research information, subject matter experts and fact checking. For the same reasons as in #1, they might grab your news.  Here’s where your content really becomes critical.  Fluffy copy, puffery and overly descriptive adjectives need not apply.  You can find good press release writing tips at Bill Stoller’s website.  Smart Guy Bill.

A Plethora of Free

In the Supernova of internet access in the last decade, literally hundreds of free press release distribution services have surfaced (maybe thousands?).  Which ones to use?

Here’s a little help.  We’ve gathered the following sites that should meet your needs nicely.  Invariably we’ve missed some ‘newer-gooder’ ones, so drop a comment below and we’ll update this list.

Free Press Release Websites

We’re not plowing new turf gathering this kind of information so here’s some good homework with a top 50 list assembled by Avangate who has Google Page Rank ordered them.

Our Own Current List:

• PR.com
• PRLog.org
• Free-Press-Release.com
• PressReleasePoint.com
• OpenPR.com
• I-Newswire.com
• ClickPress.com
• 1888PressRelease.com

Pitchengine.com – A Suggestion

With a tsunami of social media washing over the world, it wasn’t surprising to find an enterprising young person (Jason Kintzler) creating a website to help both bloggers and press release writers gather their related material (photos,  videos, print material and other media, into one convenient resource and link(s) offering helpful, organized and ‘enforced’ SEO guidance. That’s pitchengine.

You get to post your ‘stuff’ for 30 days for free or you can pay $35 a month to keep an unlimited amount of your material for as long as you continue your subscription.  We recommend it.  Our Pitchengine links always pop to the top of the charts.

Writing a Good SEO Optimized News Release

Whoa!  A subject for another day.  We’ll start in working on that one for you this weekend and link it to this post when finished.  We think you’ve got enough to keep you busy for days.

Share Your Information

If you discover valuable new resources everyone should know about, comment below and we’ll update our list for everyone’s benefit.

What Results Have You Had From Your On-Line News Submissions?

Photo credit: trevarthan

Public relations helps to shape and cultivate how others perceive you.  But before you can focus your ‘public relations’ on others you need to shape and cultivate your story for yourself and be able to tell it effectively.  That means you need to envision ‘yourself’ clearly. Then, and only then, can you place it before others.

Since public relations shapes ‘perception’ (which covers a lot of ground — way beyond writing the better press release) — we have several suggestions on how to start building your own best perception of yourself.  Later come the press releases and media interviews.

To help your journey towards being more effective at your public relations, we’ve prepared this list of Ten Deadly Sins of Positive PR Projection (what we see too many out there doing that are less than helpful).  These things stand in your way of getting noticed – or they get you noticed, but in a less than positive way.  In the end, they are a turn-off to all … media included.

1. The ‘little voice’ stylist … They are shy and speak in a ‘small’ and un-authoritative voice.  They don’t project.  They often don’t smile enough.  They’re wonderful people and you like them a lot, but it’s not likely you’re going to follow them anywhere.  (The cure?  Look into Toastmasters or the many other organizations that help make you more effective in front of a group.  You need to practice making an impression.  It is a learned skill and very few come to it naturally.)
2. The ‘critical’ stylist … You know them well.  They are often publicly critical of others who are successful or in positions of authority.  They would rather tear someone or something down than find the positives and focus on those.  (Cure: Start complimenting others and their successes.  Be supportive of their achievements publicly.  And while you are at it, start copying what they are doing right).
3. The ‘all about me’ stylist … They’re the ones who don’t know how to ask questions of their conversation-mates.  If they do ask a question, it’s really only to open the door for them to tell you their answer to that same question.  If you tested them on what you said first, they’d fail.  (Cure:  Get out of talking about yourself and get into setting the stage for others to talk.  Pretend you are a media interviewer conducting an interview to learn more about the person you are interviewing.  You’ll be amazed at the results)
4. The ‘all talk’ stylist … They talk about what they are going to do and never do it.  The photo shoot they never schedule, the class they never take, the places they never go.  A real credibility loser.  The result: you speak and people mentally say to themselves … ‘yeah, right.  (Cure: Easy. Don’t do that.  Do what you say you are going to do – duh!)
5. The ‘overnight success’ stylist … Given new-found PR success or notoriety and they develop a false sense of importance and expectation.  They start believing their own press.  (Cure: Stand in the shoes of the industry’s ‘real’ greats.  Do just one, or some of the things they’ve done.  All of us in the industry would rather work with someone without attitude.  Lose the attitude).
6. The ‘stay-at-home’ stylist … You can’t be interesting to your clients or editors if you never go somewhere different and do something unusual.  People like to listen to the experiences of, and knowledge gained by, those who have been places they have not.  (Cure: Get out of the neighborhood!  Go to the collections in Europe or New York.  Go to industry events in faraway places.  Take classes with industry ‘greats’.  Learn new stuff.   You’ll have a heck of a lot more to talk about.
7. The ‘lost in the sauce’ stylist … They blend in, work quietly, and don’t have much to say.  They come and go without making a ripple.  (Cure: See all of the cures above).
8. The ‘Oh, I forgot my cards’ stylist … There’s nothing more important than networking to your PR progress and your pocketbook.  Lightening often strikes when you least expect it.  Your business cards are your link to someone being able to follow-up with you?  Scrawled names and numbers on scrap paper don’t cut it.  (Cure: DON’T LEAVE HOME WITH YOUR BUSINESS CARDS!)
9. The ‘clueless to social media’ stylist … Social media is not just fun, it is serious communication.  It is a way to reach and connect with your clients and your industry friends.  Learn how to use it.  It will grow your network, bring your clients closer to you, and put money in your pocket.  (Cure: Start by digging around this blog for some of the helpful posts of the past.  Follow the posts of these blogs: Problogger, Seth Godin, Skillfoo, Twitip (Twitter).
10. The ‘let George do it’ stylist … One sure-fire way to gain more recognition in the industry and in your own neighborhood/community is by getting involved in something greater than yourself.  It’s called volunteerism.  (Cure: Get involved in charitable volunteer work. It’s great for PR but even better for you and your friends and fellow staffers.  Make it more than the usual ‘ho-hum, humdrum’  one-time cut-a-thon.  Find out what’s important to your clients; ask your staff what’s important to them.)

Well, there you have it.  What not to do.

What Other Deadly Sins Did We Miss?

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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