We’re announcing the winners Were you in our “Make Your Clients Raving Facebook Fans” classes at the ABCH ‘Energizing Summit’ on June 12th? If so, you got the secret password to enter our June 19th drawing for a complimentary Day of ‘Ultimate Imaging’ for you and your business.  That’s a full and fabulous $7,500-value day you’ll share with national PR consultants Sharon and Alex (Esche & Alexander PR / BeautyPRpro) PLUS doing a hair fashion shoot with industry-renowned photographer Gary Lyons.

As promised there is a winner from each class. And the two winners are …

• AM class – Judi Troutman – Raleigh, North Carolina
• PM Class – Rosey Ibarra – Downey, California

If you two would call us at 760-414-3370, we can get started.  Yippee-Kazoo!!

Congratulations!

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Salon Bogar in Londonderry, New Hampshire, http://www.salonbogar.com and http://www.facebook.com/salonbogar is a ‘brilliant’ example of how a salon owner with commitment and determination can:

• Re-image their salon without going broke.
• Make the internet and social media work harder.
• Motivate their staff.
• Expand and grow their connections with their clients.
• Get closer to their local press.
• Diversify product offerings to match their clientele’s wishes.

It all happened gradually and manageably over the past couple of years, in a tough economy, and (if you’ve visited their website already), the results speak for themselves. Larger than life?  Spectacular looking?  You be the judge.

Seems like Only Yesterday

Two to three years ago, Amy and Alfredo Lamparelli looked ahead at the future, their staff, their Aveda Concept Salon and tried to imagine it … better yet.

They had been an excellent, profitable, and client-retentive Aveda Concept salon for over 20 years.  They did great work.  Their clients loved them.  But, the winds of change (technology and the economy) were afoot and were blowing through every aspect of their salon.

Website, client attraction and retention programs, promotion, advertising, PR and newsworthiness, staff training & motivation, cost-cutting, retail sales, physical plant improvements … only Amy and Alfredo know all the areas they spent time, money and effort on every day.

We Helped … Just a Little

The morphing of the look and image of Salon Bogar into the new decade, new economy, new industry image, was an amazing journey for their salon … and a satisfying one for Sharon and I.  So much more than a website make-over, photo shoot, local imaging, industry activism … their journey perfectly illustrates the process salons (and individual stylists) in smaller communities need to think about as they look ahead and decide if they want to be on the map in 10 years … or not.

We are looking forward to sharing what we know about Salon Bogar’s story over the past couple of years. Amy has agreed to write posts in a series over the months ahead and contribute as the true subject matter experts they are. So, stick around. Subscribe to the blog.  Don’t miss a post.  It’s FREE of course.  We know you’ll learn a lot about what you need to do for yourself.

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If you found this article useful, get a free subscription to BeautyPRpro. You’ll receive a FREE copy of our ebook, “Life-Changing PR for Salon & Spa Owners” and receive each article post minutes after it hits the blog.

Feel free to click on the ‘Share This’ icon below to send this post to a friend or mark it at your favorite social bookmarking site.

Why not?  It’s easy to set up, and although most mobile check-in services are primarily populated by younger, web-savvy techies (only 1- 4% of the on-line adult population according has used the leading on-line check-in service), location-based marketing is still the hot ‘comer’ and early adopters will profit from the small effort it takes to set it up.  Also, many of your clients/customers may well include these younger mobile-heads.

Also, don’t forget Google gets fed the ‘Local Business’ listings from Facebook.

First, You Decide

Important … You’ve already (hopefully) read our recent Facebook post on making sure your personal profile is protected from ‘friends’ randomly tagging you using Facebook ‘Places’.

On to getting your business ‘on the map’ and tied into your Facebook page.

How to set up your ‘Place’ on Facebook

You can only access ‘Places’ from a mobile interface.  We suggest you use Facebook Touch access on your desktop for this part, it’s more convenient than the Facebook mobile interface on your phone (I hate little keyboards).

• Select ‘Places’.
• Search for your business name – Unless someone else has put their version of your business name there, you won’t find it.
• If it doesn’t exist, add it.  – Type in the name you want your business to have.  Another reason to do this now is to ensure your business name gets listed as you wish it to be, not as someone else adding your business name decided it for you (although you can make changes when you claim your business.)
• Put your business description info in at this point.  – I still haven’t figured out how to go back and add or edit the description field so now is the time to do this.  (If anyone reading does, please post your comment)
• Lastly, claim Your ‘Place’ on Facebook.  – Log into Facebook on your computer.  Search for the name of your business you entered in ‘Places’.  Click on the Places selection.  At the bottom of the screen, click on the question, “Is this your business?”.
• This part may surprise you.  Apparently, if FB doesn’t find your listed phone number you have to send them an official doc for your business.  The choices ar:
  • Articles of Certificate of Incorporation (for a corporation)
  • Certificate of Formation (for a partnership)
  • Local Business License (issued by your city, county, or state)
  • Better Business Bureau (BBB) Accreditation

For starters, Gowalla, Foursquare, Booyah (MyTown, Nightclub City), and Yelp will integrate with ‘Places’.

For more help on the topic, Facebook has its own help on Facebook, or you can download a PDF from them here.

Share Your Comments and Questions here.

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 … a media interview.

Are You Ready for Your Media Interview?

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” during your media interview 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 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