One of the biggest challenges I find beauty business owners have is with their salon social media strategy and how best to use it within their businesses.
Over the past couple of years, there’s been one social platform that has just exploded for the hair and beauty industry. It’s a platform that has transformed beauty businesses, created new careers and turned z-listers into influencers.
The platform is, of course, Instagram. More and more people claim to find successes and as growth soars to over 1 billion users, as salon owners, there’s one question that we have on our mind.. how can we get in on the action?
Well, that is exactly what we’re going to look at today.
The following steps are four easy ways you can implement on Instagram to catapult your salon’s followers into the stratosphere and filling it with quality prospective clients all of whom want to book treatments with you and your team resulting in filling your appointment book to a point where it’s overflowing a nd you’re oversubscribed.
Help Not Hype
There is a lot of pressure to find the shortest and quickest way to get that sale that as a result, your content is full of money off offers and bribes to get people through the door and in the seat for the treatment. But instead of having the desired effect, what happens is that instead of attracting fans willing to follow your brand for its personality, knowledge and value, instead, we repel them by trying to hustle with each post and sell to them time after time.
The problem here is that we have one goal to sell a treatment, as a result, we constantly shove offers down our follower’s throats in our desperation to get that seat filled. The fact is you’re missing an even better opportunity to win your prospective client over through appealing to what they really want and understanding why do people buy from you?
What I am getting at here is that your focus is not where it should be when it comes to really understand why do people buy, and often, it’s not just down to price. You need to start thinking about who you are, what is your brand is about, what are your goals, what is your mission?
Ask yourself this question – why should anyone follow you? what do they get out of this relationship? if your audience starts feeling like this is a never-ending sales-fest then they’re gonna hit the brakes. But if they catch a real glimpse of what you’re all about then that’s where the magic happens, because you will start attracting those people who resonate with your message and want to be part of your tribe.
This ultimately means that when you do get new clients, they’ll be better, more profitable and more loyal customers.
Consistency Wins
One of the keys to a successful social media is routine, if you make it a point to post relevant, engaging material on a consistent basis then you’re showing your followers that you have something to say and by keeping the flow of content coming you will remain on their mind more often.
Alternatively, if you just have a shotgun approach with a load of posts up at the same time which then disappear for a few weeks, it’s difficult for your fans to truly connect.
Now we may not always be able to maintain the quality posts for every single day, I understand, but this is where having a social media plan comes in and to help you create that social media plan we have something to help you, all you need to do is sign up to the academy for free and download our social media plan for you to use in your business.
High-Quality Images
Your business may have the best intention, a concrete strategy, a fantastic voice and personality, however, if you’re wrapping all of that in a low-quality photo or images then I’m afraid your follower count is going to start dropping fast.
Instagram is a very visual platform so the quality of your post is crucial to your success and even the most charming and engaging caption can’t help you if the imagery is a bit meh!
Look I get it, we can’t all be photography superstars, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try right? and if you don’t feel like you have a good eye for photography maybe someone on your team is, so play to each other’s strengths, get them involved in some way, share what you are trying to do and maybe ask them to take some images for you that could be used. more likely than not, they will really appreciate being part of the process.
Engagement
How do you build a following on Instagram is a question we get time and time again, it’s a common issue and understandably it’s no easy feat, however there’s one thing that you can do as a brand that will definitely help and that does not ignore your audience. After all, this is social media we’re talking about, even though sometimes it feels like we could just be yelling in the wind we can never treat it as such, the goal on this platform should be to get engagement, so how do you do that exactly?
- ask questions,
- provide answers,
- run competitions, engage,
- Make your account feel like it’s a digital version of your salon, a place where people feel welcome and comfortable you don’t even have to wait for them to come to you,
- check out your own news feed of people you follow, you’re not the only person on Instagram hoping that someone sees what they’ve said you have the exact same power to do this with your audience too.
- You can even hop into a relevant hashtag and see if you can answer some questions that people may have.
So, short and sweet, the four best ways to grow your salon Instagram followers and to explode your account to get more customers.
I hope you enjoyed this episode and as a special gift we have a free social media planner available to download free at the academy, check it out to get yours. https://academy.salonmarketinexperts.com
