Fresh back from an advanced social media course run by The Guardian, Respect Editor Lauren is buzzing with new ideas and useful tips for upping the ante when it comes to your salon social media strategies. Do you even have a strategy? well it’s time to get one – social media is free and the biggest marketing tool available to you.
Rule no 1
Rule no 1Make sure you have a clear idea of what you’d like to achieve with your social media and know your target audience. For example are you a new salon wanting to generate excitement ahead of opening or are you eager to promote your colour services? Oh and it’s important to know who is posting your content – if there are multiple people, it’s important that your message is consistent.
Eeny meen miney moe
Don’t try to be everything to everyone. It’s important not to spread yourselves too thinly. You will have a lot more success if you just choose two or three social platforms and concentrate on producing engaging content for them. Top tip: hairdressers are visual creatures so Instagram is an obvious choice!
Aghh, what shall I post?
Put yourself in your client’s shoes and ask what content would grab your attention? It’s important to adopt a voice and use language that is both human and chatty (try to avoid exaggeration – people see right through it). Drive engagement by starting discussions and asking questions. And remember you can always recycle old posts if they did well before.
Be ‘appy’
Be ‘appy’Utilize the plethora of social media apps that are available to you, i.e. boomerang, to create real time experiences for your followers. Be in the moment and be creative with your storytelling. Also, if you notice a post doing the rounds that has gone viral, be proactive and consider if/how you could relate it to your brand and jump on the bandwagon.
A word about Instagram and hashtags
When posting on Instagram make sure you’re posting regularly, ensure you have crafted a great bio and tag people in photos. Being in such a creative industry, it’s also a great idea try and create a style and colour palette for your page. With each post it’s good to use around two to five relevant hashtags, which can really help to increase your exposure. Keep an eye out for those being used by your followers. For example, a good one for us is #hairoftheday – check it out!
Secret to success
There’s no point increasing your social media activity if you’re not going to measure your success. Ensure you do this from the start by setting up spreadsheets to monitor activity. Google Analytics is your tool for doing this, which can give you a wealth of information from where are your readers coming from to how long readers are spending on your page.
Other tools to measure your success include: Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, Hootesuite, Followerwonk, Iconosquare (for Instagram) and Tweet Reach.
Have we missed anything? We would love to hear your top tips too. Email lauren@ihaa.co.uk
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