Multiply your Referrals Using Twitter
By the time you’re done reading this article you’ll know how to do several things with a very simple concept using Twitter;
- How to get new salon customers fast
- How to create an amazing fan base that will love you
- How to feel good about your job as a hairstylist and what you do
- How to dramatically multiply your salons referrals
- How to exponentially gain more positive reviews online for your salon, and as a result give your salon more exposure
- How to beautify your neighborhood
It’s every hairstylists dream to have a jam packed calendar with amazing customers. Up until today many of you would have thought that such a thing could only be a dream. Enter a new circa of online marketing.
Twitter and the Hair Salon Industry
Social Media Guru Gary Vaynerchuk uses the perfect metaphor for Twitter. He calls Twitter an online cocktail party. You can use the Twitter search tool to find conversations that you’re interested in, then jump right into the discussion and try to add value.
Two stats that are important to know about Twitter when it comes to the hair salons and hair stylists;
- Twitter users are the most generous donors on social media. This means empathy and emotions run deep within the Twitter community. Good and bad news both travel very quickly. This can work for, or against you depending on how you play your cards. Follow this guide and it’ll definitely play to your advantage.
- Hispanics, African Americans and other minorities are more likely to use Twitter. If you cater to those communities, you’ll want to do a bit more proactive relationship building through Twitter and establish some credibility in your community.
Lets Get Started
If you’ve never used Twitter before, I highly suggest you read up on it and watch some tutorials on Youtube. If you’re one of our customers, call in and we can give you a crash course on using Twitter for your hair salon.
Make sure your profile is looking spiffy and is up to date before we begin. Get a logo or nice picture of yourself uploaded, check the link to your website, and throw in a little bit about yourself into the bio (humor always helps).
The next step is to search for conversations going on about hair, hair extensions, haircuts, hair salons, hair stylists, and anything you can think of that would relate to your target market. More specifically I want to search for these conversations in my local area.
Type in #hair into the search bar up top. You should get a list of conversations that are happening about #hair. To the right side you’ll see how long ago the item was tweeted.
You’ll see a gear to the top right that you’ll want to click to go into the advanced search field. Alternatively you can just type “https://twitter.com/search-advanced” into your browser.
After you click on search again, it’ll bring up results local to your area. Make sure you click on All to see all the results and not just the Top ones. You can try different variations of searches and do searches for hashtags or the words themselves.
As we mentioned earlier, Twitter users are the most empathetic and emotionally driven Social Media users out there. They update everything that’s going on in their lives constantly. An active Twitter user updates their followers with a tweet an average of 4 times a day.
When one of these Twitter user leaves the salon, I can almost all but guarantee that they’re going to tweet about. And it’ll be one of two things;
a) OMG I LOVE MY HAIR!!!! Check out the pic! Or…
b) I’M NEVER GOING TO THAT SALON AGAIN!!!!!!! (insert additional unfiltered profanity here)
As a stylist, I’m sure you know that the only way to get fresh customers outside of referrals is if someone is either new to the area, or if their previous stylist really messed up. You’ll have to train your eyes to sift through all the tweets, but as you dig you’ll quickly begin to find customers that are unhappy with a service they received. Depending on where you live and how big your city is; you’ll find one of these angry customers every hour, every day or maybe only once per week. Keep in mind that you can save this search and come back to it once a day to find updates. Don’t hesitate to respond to hair questions either. Your willingness to help won’t go unnoticed.
Here are the two types of situations we’re looking for (mind you I just pulled these up while I was typing this);
The one above is ideal. I’d throw in an offer they can’t refuse and bring them into the salon.
This second tweet is what I’m much more interested in.
A Random Act of Kindness
Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. – Lao Tzu
You already know how important ones personal image is to their own self esteem. Together we just identified someone who is extremely upset, riled up and angry because of the way she looks in the tweet above. You’ve already been spending money on non-sense that doesn’t yield in the results you’re looking for. This is the perfect opportunity for you to reach out, and offer to fix a problem you’re quite capable of fixing for free.
Let’s lay out all of the possibilities that happen after you decide to make this one persons day.
- You’ll have an extremely happy person at your chair because they absolutely did not expect a random stranger to do this kind of favor for them. What are the odds of this person coming back to you and becoming a regular customer?
- You’ll feel great about yourself and what you do because you took someone from absolutely despising the way they looked, to now feeling like a million bucks. Your regular customers don’t evoke this kind of emotion. They come in, sit down, get work done, and go. It’s a routine to them. But you just took someone from feeling terrible, to feeling phenomenal. Wouldn’t you feel great about that?
- Your potential new customer is going to be talking about you for at least the next 4 days. She’s going to be proud to share the story on social media, review sites as well to every person that asks her about her new hair color.
- There really is no worst case scenario. So what if this person never becomes a regular client? The positivity and excitement that goes along with this kind gesture should be more than enough gratification for you.
The catch with the strategy above is that you shouldn’t be doing it maliciously. There should be no expectations when the person in crisis comes to visit your salon. Of course you want to be cautious about who you provide free services to and you obviously don’t want to get carried away with the idea to the point where you’re taking on too much of a loss. Moderation in anything is key. But I will guarantee you that paying it forward will bring the karma back around. I like to think that most people are good and have good intentions and that in todays society, we can all use a little bit more positive press.
I’m interested in any stories that you have from doing this. Keep us posted!
By Ali Mirdamadi