ETS Tanning Bed Blog

Yesterday, we talked about how tanning salons can get started on Twitter. Today, I want to give you some ideas on how you can use Twitter to grow your tanning business.

CoffeeGroundz, a coffee shop in Houston, Texas, is credited with having one of the first commercial transactions on Twitter. It all started when one of their regulars sent a direct message (DM) to the shop for a breakfast burrito pickup. Since then, they have turned their Twitter presence into a regular communication method with their customers, even holding a special Twitter meetup (called a Tweetup) that not only let their regulars meet with each other, but brought in big sales that day.

So how can you use Twitter to grow your business?

CoffeeGroundz tapped their regulars for their efforts, so start with yours. Ask them if they're on Twitter – if they're not, get them on it – and start following them. Send out regular Tweets to your clients, and build the expectation that you use it regularly. When that happens, your clients will start communicating with you too.

Once you've built up a Twitter following, and are using it on a regular basis, here are some ways to use it.

• Send out announcements, sales, and special offers to your followers. ("Special Twitter sale: Refer a new member, get 2 weeks of free upgrades.")
• Send out cancellation notices to fill a spot: ("We had a spot open up from 3:30 - 4:00. First DM gets it.")
• Forward articles to your followers about the industry, tanning techniques, and things that might affect them (this is where it pays to get to know your clients).
• Create a "message-ahead" program. Let clients DM you for appointments and cancellations.
• Use GroupTweet.com to create groups of clients. Maybe you can communicate with your premier members with one message, regular members with another, and a third to occasional members.
• Run Twitter-based contests where the winner gets a special prize. ("Tell us your most outrageous vacation story, win a free bottle of tanning lotion."
• Make sure you send Tweets that are actually interesting to your clients. While it's good to have 1-on-1 conversations with your followers, if that's all you're doing, your followers will get bored. Get a personal Twitter account if you want the personal conversations.
• On the other hand, participate in group conversations with your clients. See if you can stimulate conversations between them, and build a community of Twitter tanners (Twanners? Why not?). (Asking questions to your followers, like the outrageous vacation example above, will generate this conversation.)
• Use a program like Tweetdeck – a Twitter client that sits on your desktop – and keep it open all the time. If you have an iPhone or BlackBerry, there are special Twitter clients for them too.
• If your clients are going on vacation and putting their tan to use, encourage them to Tweet photos to you via TwitPic , and retweet them to all of your followers. This will help build your community.

If you can build your Twitter following, you will have made your tanning salon a special place to be for your clients. The more they feel a sense of belonging – a sense of community – the more they'll stay involved. Occasional clients will become regulars, regulars will become premier members, and they'll refer their friends.

That's a great ROI for a free application that only lets you send 140-character messages.

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.