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?