Social Media Tips for Your Salon or Spa
This guide is full of social media tips for your salon or spa. Level up your social media presence on all major platforms!
You know as well as we do, that social media can vastly improve your presence, customer service, growth and community. We’ll explore how you can create the same sparkling vibe as your salon, and bring that spirit to your social media channels.
With simple advice and useful hacks, this is the perfect guide for getting things started right, or improving your social media presence.
Let’s get started.
Social media and your business
We’ve explored the most frequently used channels: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and broken them down in bitesize chunks to help you grow your business.
How does social media relate to your business, and why does it matter?
- Social media is an extension of your salon’s portfolio.
- Be consistent with branding, style, and tone of voice.
- It should be well considered and crafted to reflect your brand.
- For consistency and to avoid confusion, use the same profile pictures (preferably containing your logo) across all platforms.
- Promote your salon via photos, posts, and videos.
- The best way to showcase your talent is through photos that illustrate your creative side.
Posting engaging content
Before immersing yourself in the world of social media, take a step back and reflect on your salon’s unique style and image. What sort of salon are you? Artistic salon, punk, traditional or vintage? Maybe even a combination! Your tone of voice needs to be represented across all of your social channels.
Create a community by posting content that people will engage with. A poll like, ‘Which is your favourite style of bob?’, or ‘create the look’ guides. Interactive pieces of content will increase social media shares and widen the reach of your brand.
Free tools to create awesome social media content:
- Canva – create graphics, infographics and brand your images.
- Pixlr, Unsplash ,Pikwizard and Pixabay – free, high quality, stock images.
- Boomerang – stop motion app for Instagram that is incredibly easy to use.
- Instagram – play around with superzoom, rewind, hands-free and stop-motion on your stories.
Consistent online engagement makes your brand appear approachable and well connected with its clients. It also promotes the idea that your salon is forward thinking and wholly accessible.
Maintaining your salon’s social media presence
Ensure that you regularly update and maintain your social media channels. In an industry relying on word of mouth, this also applies to your reviews and comments online. Early morning, lunch time, evening, and weekends are when clients have the most time to see your posts. Always check in once a week to see which posts are performing well, and try replicate them.
Tips and tricks to maintain your social media:
- Create a content calendar – feature global events and holidays. Mother’s Day, April Fool’s, Easter etc. Consider which of these holidays suit your business and can become a genuine extension of your conversation. Pet friendly salon? Great, National Puppy Day will work perfectly.
- Monitor hashtags – which ones are most popular within your field? You can search for hashtags online or in Instagram and Twitter, simply use the search bar.
- Set up Google alerts – set up the name of your salon, competitor, or industry related keywords. Try not to be too broad; you will get a lot of alerts!
- Read and share industry related news – trade news, trends, interviews, tips and tricks. Demonstrate thought-leadership in your field.
- Communicate with clients – If a customer came into your salon and said hello, you wouldn’t ignore them, right? The same applies to social media. Always interact with comments, reviews and questions to show you are a friendly and approachable business.
To understand more about building and nurturing a thriving community, check out our guide on ‘Using Social Media to Deliver Great Customer Service‘.
You know that building relationships with your clients and potential customers is super important. One of the best ways of doing this on Facebook is to post consistent and daily updates. This shows that you’re always available and accessible, you’re up to date with the current trends, and you interact with your clients.
Facebook posting tips
- Photo posts generate more engagement than posts with just text.
- Share before and after pictures/videos to show potential clients what you and your team can do for their hair.
- Video outperforms every medium on all social channels. Your mobile device can often be the most useful tool at your disposal. Combine this with a small tripod (you can grab good quality pods very cheaply online) and a free editing app and you’re all set.
Our customer Blow combines imagery within graphics and collages, offering a diverse and interesting way of engaging their customer. Using free tools like Canva allows you to upload your image and combine it with graphics that bring your story to life.
Insta is all about the visuals, so post high resolution and clearly focused photos. Keep the blurry snapshots to yourself! Before and after photos are ideal. When a customer is going for a new colour or transformational cut, it’s the perfect opportunity to show what you and your team can do. Remember to ask permission first!
Share the latest wedding hairstyles you have done, or other styles that are on trend at the moment to inspire customers to come and try it for themselves. Show your customers that your salon is up to date and relevant. This could be as simply as showcasing the seasonal snowflake nails you’ve created for a client. Be fun, creative and relatable.
Instagram posting tips:
- Show off your brand’s personality – cheeky, premium, sleek, etc. Harness your environment to showcase the benefits of visiting your salon. From creative updos, new products, upcoming events and offers, there is an unlimited pool of creativity you can share on Instagram
- Keep on eye on things that might influence people’s purchasing habits. Sunshine? Come in for a spray tan and quote ‘sunshine’ for 20% off. This also enables you to track where your traffic and bookings come from.
- Instagram allows 30 hashtags per post. Four or five hashtags can improve your visibility
- Write your ‘hygiene’ (for example) hashtags into a notepad app on your device and copy and paste them into your post to save time. Hygiene tags include the ones you would use everytime you post – #Salon #Timely #BFF
- Hashtags you could use to get noticed: #Hair #Hairstyle #Hairoftheday #Haircut #Hairstylist #Haircolour #Hairdresser #Hairfashion #Hairextensions #Instahaircolour #Hairup #Hairideas #Hairsalon #Haircare
Twitter is a great B2B channel, use it to engage with your followers, fellow businesses, and brands. It was also the first platform to introduce hashtags. A Twitter hashtag is simply a keyword phrase, without spaces, with the # symbol in front of it (just like Instagram). A hashtag links all Twitter users (who are not otherwise connected) who are interested or researching the same topic. It pulls them into one easy list for you when trying to find a salon in a particular location for example.
Twitter posting tips
- Run polls. Cocktails with the girls tonight? Will you be rocking crazy curls or slick straight hair?
- Promote offers/discounts. Track discount codes to measure success via channel.
- Tweet links such as seasonal hair and beauty care tips, or hair styling ideas (which you can link back to your Facebook or website).
- Share industry related articles e.g. “How to look after dry hair”, “How often should you visit your salon”.
- Use your specific keywords to help push your salon stand out e.g. your town name, special offers, specific hairstyles, seasonal promotions.
- Edit your bio. Let people know what makes you special, why they should follow and go to you over any other salon. Include location, business hours and a link to your website. Emojis work well here also as they’re eye catching and playful.
- Header image. Consider this your billboard. Use photo of your salon, team, latest event photos or highlight your salon brand. Change this regularly to highlight promotions, events or product news.
- Pinned tweets. Post an important tweet at the top of your timeline by harnessing the pinning function. This allows visitors to make sure they don’t miss key information about your salon. Share your latest news like a change of location or a new branch that you have opened up.
Well there you go, everything to get you started and improve your social media channels. With these top tips you’ll have increased your following and improved your social media presence in next to no time!
Thirsty for more? Here’s some websites with more awesome tips and tricks to keep you in the know about everything social:
That’s it, folks! Check out more useful guides here.
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