Twitter…does my salon really need it?

Well, do you really need anything? Apart from clothes and food and shelter and that basic needs of life stuff? Twitter, you’ll be extremely pleased to find out, is amazing in lots of ways. Not everybody ‘gets’ new things straight away, which is totally fine, because it took us ages to figure out how to use the toaster we bought at IKEA last month. So it’s understandable that new techy-stuff like Twitter might not be obvious straight away.

Like everything, it takes time; you need to play with it, stalk it and break it several times before you start to feel like an old Twitter-pro (fortunately you won’t have to pay for it if you break it, because it’s worth about a billion dollars).

Twitter is the entire world squished onto the Internet. That’s not the dictionary definition we’re sure, but probably a lot less posh and a lot more understandable. Basically, it’s millions of people sharing short snippets of information about anything, everything, anywhere and anyone! Twitter lets us to keep up-to-date in nice 140 character bite-sized chunks. Seems like too little doesn’t it? But it’s really not. It’s actually just enough and perfectly fitting for today’s need-information-this-instant environment. Twitter is where we learned of Michael Jackson’s death just a short while after it happened, it’s where we follow updates on celebrity news, politics, science and everything else; it’s where we chat to friends (some are friends we only know through Twitter), and sometimes to companies or brands we use.

But how does it help business?

Well, lots of companies use their Twitter account to connect with thousands of people in order to tell them about whatever they see fit. It’s a great way of keep in touch with people outside of your “normal” marketing. You just talk to your customers. Get to know them. Not only will you build relationships with them, but the information can be priceless too! We can roll right out there and ask our twitter followers what colour shoes they’re wearing today! Totally unnecessary information, but you get our point? You can send out and receive any type of info you like. At any time you like!

Take Lady Gaga for example; she has 12,000,000 or so fans on Twitter. We’re not sure why because we think she’s a bit weird, but each to their own and all that. But that type of connection power is awesome. We mean awesome in the original sense of the word, not the American slang way. Imagine being able to connect with all those people, and how valuable it would make your brand…

So, let’s take a quick look at the aspects of Twitter –

• Every Twitter user has a “profile”.
• This profile contains all the “Tweets” (updates) by that user.
• All the tweets of all the users of twitter flow into a massive timeline (you don’t see that – there’d be way too many to be able to make sense of).
• Each user can “follow” others; that means they see the tweets of those people in their own personal timeline.
• Others can also follow you, so they’ll see your tweets in their timeline along with everyone else they follow.
• All of the tweets make up “trends”. So, for example, if there is a political election running lots of people will be talking about it, which will make it a “trending topic” because it’s a hot point.
• The trends of the moment are listed beside your timeline stream. If you click on one you’ll see all the public tweets about that trend from all the users that are tweeting about it. It gives you an insight into what they are saying and thinking.
• Tweets can be public or private. If your tweets are private then other Twitter users can’t see them unless they “request access”. But this isn’t a great idea if you’re a business – you really want to be getting the word out rather than hiding away.

Well, that’s Twitter in a nutshell. A large nutshell. Twitter isn’t growing at an enormous rate for no reason. Our advice? Be part of the trend! Set up a twitter account and begin tweeting today! Tweet out tips and tricks on beauty therapy (if you’re a beauty therapist) or whatsoever tickles your tweeting fancy! Don’t just use it as a way to advertise – instead, have a chat with people. Find out what they like (and don’t like) about your business, or other beauty therapists.

Do you already have a Twitter account set up? How do you use it for your business? Leave a comment below and fill us in on what you think.