Are You Using Social Media?
If you haven’t already started to dabble in social media as part of your marketing mix, then we seriously suggest setting some time aside soon to do just that.
Six out of the 10 most visited sites on the World Wide Web are social media sites. Shouldn’t you have a presence on at least a couple of those highly visited sites?
What exactly is a social media site? For baby boomers or gen-xers that didn’t grow up in the .com wave, the answer may not be so obvious. According to Wikipedia, “Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues.” Basically, it’s a site that doesn’t just provide content in a 1-way conversation (monologue), but allows the content provider to interact with an audience for a 2-way conversation (dialogue).
Here is an example:
Let’s say you create a salon newsletter and post an image of a new service that you provide. You send out the newsletter, but don’t really have a way of immediately finding out if the message resonated, if the service looked interesting to your clients, etc. This is an example of a 1-way conversation in marketing. You are giving the information, but not readily receiving feedback.
If you post that same image and content on a Facebook page, you may immediately start receiving comments like:
“Wow! That looks amazing!”
“How long would that take and how much?”
“Are you offering any discounts?”
This is now a 2-way conversation! You can answer the questions, which gives more information (maybe something you never thought of providing before).
Thinking you might not reach your target audience with social media? Think again. Here are some stats pulled from a Milady webinar on social media:
- Twitter doubles in size every 90 days (estimated at 50,000,000 by Christmas 2010).
- Facebook has 355,000,000 users and adds 350,000 per day. 45% are women between the ages of 26-44. Sound like your clients?
- People the ages of 18-34 send an estimated 40% of their free time in social media.
- Those in social media read an average of 6 blogs per day.
- 60% of people who go online belong to a social media site.
There are many different social media sites, but the top three that a salon should consider are:
- Blogs
LinkedIn is also very popular, but is more of a professional networking site. You may not find it as useful in developing new business or communicating with your clients.
If the stats above have convinced you to give social media a go, there are a plethora of resources for how to start. Milady is just one resource that provides free information on social media specifically tailored to the salon industry.