Social networking (i.e. myspace, facebook and other sites) seems to be the hottest thing on the internet these days.  Created to allow people to “connect” online with friends, colleagues and like minded individuals, social networking sites are growing exponentially (facebook, the largest of such sites now has over 200 million users worldwide). 

Knowing that our members highly value professional networking, NCA has created a group on facebook which has quickly grown into the largest of the closed* beauty group in the USA with over 2000 participants.  The NCA discussion board on facebook offers a great way for members to share ideas with one another.  The sites ability to show videos, links and photos is a great way to personalize the site for members.

*requires user to request entry by the group’s administrators. This is different then most groups on facebook which allow anyone to join. 

Just two weeks ago we also created an NCA account with Twitter, the fastest growing social networking site.  And although we still have our training wheels on and don’t expect to do our first “tweet” (Twitter speak for “comment”) until next week, we’re enjoying the uniqueness of twitters “140 character” rule that restricts posts to short sentences or phrases. 

Our goal with a presence on both of these sites is to provide new ways for NCA members to connect and learn.  We hope that you will use Twitter and/or facebook to keep in touch with NCA – as well as with thousands of other salon and spa professionals and manufacturer and distributors around the country (make that the world!).  We also hope that members will help us to find new ways to provide member value through these sites.

To learn more, go to facebook.com and twitter.com.  To join the growing NCA facebook group, simply enter “National Cosmetology Association” in the search bar on the facebook home page and “request to join group.”  To follow NCA on Twitter, search for NCANOW and click on the “follow” link.

To share your thoughts on these and other social networking opportunities, post your comments here or email NCA’s Gordon Miller at gmiller@ncacares.org.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Salon Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.