ETS Tanning Bed Blog

Twitter has been in the mainstream media for the last several weeks, which means it has probably reached its tipping point. It was on Charlie Rose last night, on our local FOX station this morning, in the New York Times, and a lot of other mainstream media outlets.

Tanning salons are in a great position to take advantage of social networking tools like Twitter. Twitter is an important way for people to communicate with a lot of people quickly and easily. By typing a 140-character message, you can ask questions, provide information, tell people about books or articles you're reading, and even make plans with friends.

You build up your readers – called followers in the "Twitterverse" – by following them, and they'll follow you in return. Pretty soon, you have a small community of people with shared interests, geography, or relationships. Then, when you send out a message, your followers will see it, and respond. If they write a message back, their followers will see the response. It's like instant messaging in a crowded room.

You can follow people who live in your city, who are in your field, or who share your passion. In my Twitterverse (I'm @RonWilsonETS), I'm following people who are in marketing, in the tanning business, and/or live and work in Indianapolis. I use Twitter to send messages ("Tweets") about our blog, answer questions, and communicate with people I might never meet otherwise.

 The general rule of thumb is that the more people follow you, the farther your reach. And the more value you provide to someone on Twitter, the more they'll pay attention to what you're doing.

CoffeeGroundz, a Houston, Texas coffee shop, first used Twitter to grow their sales, by accepting direct messages (a private Tweet) for pick-up orders. A client sends a DM to CoffeeGroundz with their food or beverage order ("Can I get a breakfast wrap at 8:30?), and it's ready and waiting for them when they arrive. Some customers can even DM their order for lunch or coffee right from their seat, so they don't even have to get up. Useful for when the place is filled, and seats are scarce.

Want to know how you can use Twitter to grow your business? Tomorrow, we'll give you 10 ways you can use Twitter to do just that.
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