Five New Social Media Best Practices for Salon and Spa Promotion
By Angela Rose for Creative Images Institute of Cosmetology
What do most of your salon or spa’s clients and potential clients have in common? The answer is social media. According to Smart Insights, an educational platform for marketers, there are now 3.484 billion active social media users around the globe. That means 45% of the entire world population is using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and/or other social media platforms on a regular basis.
Given these facts, social media is obviously an invaluable tool for engaging current clients and connecting with new ones – if you make sure you’re spending your brand’s time wisely. Doing so requires staying current on the latest social media marketing best practices. We suggest you start with the ones we’ve outlined below.
1. Get to know your audience.
Social media marketing is no longer about just trying to reach the largest group of potential consumers. Instead, it has become more targeted. Who is your market? What are their interests and challenges? The answers to these two questions will help you create content that will cut through the social noise and resonate with the people most likely to want your services.
PromoRepublic, a localized social media marketing service company, has a detailed article describing 10 ways to find your true audience on social media here.
2. Be authentic whenever possible.
Once upon a time, Instagram was all about creating gorgeous, cohesive feeds with flawless photos of idealized life. Now, however, brands have begun to incorporate more authenticity in their Instagram Posts. Why? Because the real world is more engaging for consumers—including your salon and spa clients.
A few ways to make your Instagram and Facebook Posts more authentic according to Sprout Social, a social media management and optimization platform, include:
· Share unedited, unfiltered photos
· Write conversational captions
· Share behind-the-scenes content of real life at your salon or spa
· Use real clients to model your work and promote your merchandise
3. Make good use of Stories.
While photo and video posts are the traditional backbone of Facebook and Instagram brand promotion, interest in Stories is growing. According to TechCrunch, an online technology publication, both Facebook and Instagram Stories had 500 million daily users in early 2019.
Instagram Stories, in particular, are an excellent tool for engaging the target audience for your salon or spa. In addition to photos and video, you can add polls, quizzes, questions, and more to your Stories and enable your audience to interact directly with the content.
4. Capitalize on user generated content.
User generated content, also known as UGC, can help you build an influential, trustworthy online reputation for your salon or spa. According to a survey of U.S. consumers by Square, a financial services merchant aggregator, 63% ask friends and family for recommendations when looking for a new salon and 24% consider social media recommendations.
Encourage your clients to help you create content by tagging you in social posts showing off their new hair and nails or reviewing their experience at your salon or spa. Comment on each post and interact with others who do as well. You might even want to run the occasional contest to drive more UGC.
5. It’s not enough to just post on social media.
If you want to grow your professional brand successfully online, you also need to make time to look at what’s working and what isn’t to engage your desired audience. This means tracking the metrics on each Post you make.
According to data collected by Sprout Social, marketers look at the following when evaluating audience engagement:
· Likes and/or comments (72%)
· Shares and/or retweets (62%)
· Interaction with consumers (60%)
· Revenue attribution (34%)
· Inspiring consumers to act (32%)
· Inspiring an emotional response (29%)
If you can’t find a pattern in the types of posts getting the most or least engagement, look at the time you are posting. You might be able to increase your likes, comments, shares, and retweets simply by posting at the optimal time.
For a little inspiration on what to post to your beauty page, head over to our website and check out our social accounts (Facebook and Instagram)! At the end of the day, all that viewers really care to see is real, pure, and honest content because remember, your content reflects you.
