The PR Power of Blogging for Salons

Posted by Alexander Irving under Blogging, Building Authority, General, New Media, Strategy, Trends

I Never Really Understood Blogging

Our industry community got a later start with computers in our businesses and lives. That’s not a criticism, just a fact. It took our beauty industry sector longer than most others to adopt computers and use the internet as a daily part of salon/spa business and personal life. I speculate that’s because creative people are right-brained, and technology is not the first place right-brainers are drawn to for solutions and/or entertainment.

🙂 Back in the early 80’s, it took me (literally) two years to convince Sharon to set aside her trusty IBM Selectric typewriter for a cool new word processor called WordPerfect.

When it came to social media, including blogging, I didn’t get it for the longest time, and I like tech. I had no idea what was happening. Looking back, I’m embarrassed by my ignorance and how long I remained that way. I discounted bloggers as self-aggrandizing egoists. I was … Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

You wouldn’t believe how many millions of people (bet at least a bunch of them are your clients) who follow one blog or another out there. Many may not even know or care they reading a ‘blog’ … to them it’s a destination on the web they go for interesting diversion, information, community or to make their lives better.

At the end of this post we will give you several links to help kick start your thinking about what you need to know about the blog, its power, and how it can serve you.

A Niche Where Very Few Are

We are all looking for better ways to ‘touch’ our clients regularly. We want to do something that makes us ‘special’, distinguishes us, and makes us unique from our competition and gives us something to crow about in the press. Everybody sends newsletters, emails, direct mail, blah, blah, blah … May I introduce you to that something ‘special’ … the power of the blog?

We’ve searched all over for salons or spas that might be ‘authority blogging’ to benefit their clients. There are only a few out there. Bliss Spa is one. If any other blogging salons and spa find this post, please let us know. Drop a comment here, or reach us on Twitter @sharonandalex. We’d love to know how you are doing.

Using Social Media

Many in the industry have now embraced social networking on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc), but once again, we’re a little behind the power curve moving into the ‘next-gen’ social media of Blogs and Twitter as the powerful communication/marketing tools they are. We predict within the next year or two, salon and spa blogs, and ‘Client Tweets’, will be ‘hot & new’ in the professional beauty business. Could that be you? Yep. But right now is the time to learn what you need to know, and establish your brand before the space clutters up. I should mention also that you want to grab your Twitter name before someone else snags it out from under you too.

Why is a Blog Powerful?

Because it brings you closer to your clients and their friends and family! ─ Great blog content gets forwarded and passed along repeatedly, shared with family and friends. Your one interesting, ‘resonant’ blog post develops a life of its own, going places you could never know to send it as an ordinary email or newsletter.
A Blog Post Is Personal. ─ If written in your own helpful voice, it becomes YOU, on a regular basis, in front of your clients and their friends.

Note: Again I say friends because it’s so easy to ‘forward’ good blog posts, just like you can here on BeautyPRpro (check the bottom of the subscription emails you receive and in the footer of every blog post).

A Blog is Always Vital, Changing, and Alive. Websites and newsletters are static; the same day after day. Unless you’re spending a lot of time with your web folks changing content every other day (which we all swear we are going to do and then don’t), they remain fixed. They are your on-line ‘brochure’. Important of course because they are an important image statement and (hopefully) answers the basic questions prospective clients want to know about.
A Blog Post is Valuable ─ It always offers something of ‘value’ to the reader in some form … knowledge, ideas, tips, a learning experience, insider information, special values, etc. The best part is if someone is into your topic, your ‘good stuff’ is always a welcome guest in their inbox. (Since we started BeautyPRpro six months ago, we’ve never had an ‘unsubscribe’. Also, we monitor our blog email ‘opens’ and ‘click-thrus’ regularly, so we know you are finding our content worth reading.

How Do You Get Started?

Make the decision that if you do only one new thing this year, it will be getting started on your salon or spa’s blog. Bookmark this post to come back to it for the link references. Got questions? We’re here.
Don’t shut down when you run across technical stuff in the links below. What’s important right now is that you start developing your own perception of blogging and learning the qualities of the successful ones. We’ll post more on this topic later on down the road.
Final thought: Keep in mind you do not have to do all this yourself. There are many professional and affordable blog designers out there and we will make some suggestions in future posts. For the moment just read and use your imagination.

Good Background

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