Last weekend I learned a few powerful lessons: 1. Don’t be afraid to speak up – you can end up in a much better situation; 2. Acknowledging you were in the wrong doesn’t mean you can’t be strong, smart and upbeat; and 3. A service business should have a cohesive, relevant and well-managed online presence.
The background. 2 weeks ago I got a haircut at a wonderful (and not inexpensive) salon. That afternoon I got on a flight bound for Wellington Wellington
Fast forward to the actual fixing cut, and it was fantastic. Luke was great – apologetic (but not overly so), honest in his assessment of his colleague’s work, and just as polite and chatty as any other time. He also told me it would be “complimentary”, which is always good.
Now, I’m sitting and beaming at my new fixed haircut, and I want to share it with the world wide interwebs, because that’s what you do now. You change your Facebook status so everyone else knows that it’s all ok now. You tweet how happy you are that everything is now right in the world. You might even send an email or post a comment on the company’s blog so that all those scouring the internets know how very awesome this company is…
Except, Heaven on Adelaide
???
So, I would like to propose to Heaven on Adelaide
Here goes nothing...
Here goes nothing...
- Fix your website. Right now. Even if it’s just to put up an image saying “New website under construction” and put your contact details. Why? Because you need to appear in a Google search for “Heaven on
- Change your email to “info at heavenonadelaide dot com”. None of this Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail or, even worse, an Internet provider (e.g. Bigpond, AAPT or iiNet) as your email address. A cheap and easy alternative is to create a Google Apps Business account. This gives you access to at least one customised email powered by Gmail, and also access to other Google apps like it’s calendar, online document collaboration and contacts management.
- While you’re setting up your website and Google Apps account, create a blog. You can use Google’s Blogspot or maybe Tumblr for some good free options. You’ll want to pay for a beautiful design in keeping with the rest of your branding later, but right now, just get one. Business blogs are big right now. Your customers want to understand you and relate to you. They want to share in your success and feel like they’re dealing with a real person behind all the text and money they’re spending. Some things you could blog about:
- Awards you win or competitions you enter
- Why you need training models (I saw the sign outside today)
- Introduce prominent staff
- Introduce new staff
- Hair news from around the world – comment on recent fashion weeks/shows (
- Introduce new product lines
- Stories of/from your customers (with their consent or anonymously)
- Sticking with the Google theme, claim your Google Places page on Google Maps so only you can edit the details. Update it to include links to your revamped website, blog, email address and later your Facebook page and Twitter account. There are some tips and tricks to make your information appear closer to the top of results, but firstly you need to claim that page because until it’s claimed anyone can edit any of the information on it. And that’s not a good idea.
- Talking about Facebook – create one. Include some basic details for now, the links we just put in your Google Places page above. Upload a good quality photo of your logo, store front, key staff or all staff. At some point you will need to invest in professional photos of all these things to maintain your reputation as a prestige salon, ok? It will be worth it. Remember, Facebook is about being social, and igniting interaction. Good examples I’ve seen include Steve Madden, Virgin Blue and Beanhunter (for a SMB they seem to have high interaction rates). Take note of the topics and way they post, and adapt. Some things you can update your Facebook about:
- New blog posts
- Interesting stories from around the web
- Interactive messages
- Log in to your Twitter account. See how you have only 21 people following you yet you follow 236 people? That’s not so good. Ways to fix that will be:
- Tweet more. You’ve only sent 5 tweets, all over a year ago. The more you tweet, the more discoverable you’ll be, the more followers you’ll get, the more influence you’ll have.
- Tweet about relevant things. You can tweet about similar topics to your blog posts and Facebook, or even links to your blog posts. Avoid just tweeting links and auto-feeds from your Facebook/Blog. Twitter is about sharing information and participating in conversations. It also allows very public and immediate connections.
- Follow people in your industry and that join in relevant conversations. Avoid spam following anyone and anything - it doesn't do your image any good to have a particularly high number of follows and so few followers, you don't look like the real deal.
This is not designed to be a comprehensive tutorial or list of all resources/applications/websites you can, and possibly should, be using. There are numerous other things to look at, including Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) both for your website page/blog and Google Places page and developing a social media policy for how you respond to positive and negative comments online, and how your staff talk about you online. You may not want to use all Social Media options available - it's a delicate balance of resources (time, staff, money) and potential return.
Inspired by these online articles/resources
http://mashable.com/2010/06/02/small-business-social-media-success-stories Particularly, Emerson Salon http://emersonsalon.com/
http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=175 – Facebook Pages for Business
1 comment:
very interesting my darling. youve given it a lot of thought. here's a website that ive been following on the subject: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/
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