Many salons and beauty parlours use Instagram as a way to reach out to their local customers. Engaging in a meaningful way on social media like this can be challenging, and achieving the right mix is essential for making the biggest impact.
Business Advice for the Beauty Industry
To do this, you need to be aware of the potential with Instagram and have a clear posting strategy in place. Here are our top tips for improving engagement and being more effective on social media.
Get a Free Business Profile – The first thing you need to do is swap your personal Instagram account for a business one. This is easy and free to do and gives you a few more tools to play with that can be useful, including allowing customers to book an appointment. Simply go into your account settings and click on ‘Switch to Professional Account’.
Post Quality Content Often – Instagram is a mostly visual social media platform, so posting attractive images, either of customers, new products or treatments in your salon, is vital. It’s more about quality than quantity, and you should take some time to learn what makes a great image and how to frame a photo or video and do a quick edit before posting.
Don’t Sit in Your Bubble, Engage – Many salon owners make the mistake of simply posting two or three times a day and ignoring any likes or replies. However, Instagram is about engagement. If someone leaves a comment on your feed, then read what they have written and then reply to them.
Post Images of Real Customers – There is evidence that salons who post images of their real customers tend to get more engagement. Of course, you need permission to do this, but you’ll be surprised how many are willing to help out.
Instagram Stories – Learning how to use Stories allows you to publish highly engaging, snappy content. Each story stays at the top of your feed for 24 hours and is excellent for things like before and after shots of clients. Stories are also a brilliant, engaging way to generate new customers.
Use Hashtags – Finding out which hashtags relate to your salon business and how to use these in individual posts can also increase visibility and engagement. For most private salons, this should include a mix of general and local hashtags, picking four or five most relevant to your business.
Run a Contest – You can add more interest to your salon’s Instagram feed and get more engagement by running regular contests. This could include discounts on new treatments or even a free makeover, for example. This type of post also tends to get shared quite a lot and receives more comments and likes.
Invest in Ads – Finally, another approach is to look at running ads on Instagram. To do this, you need to go through Facebook, which allows you to create paid ads that can target a particular audience. This is a great way to attract new customers who are not following your Instagram timeline at the moment and can have an immediate effect in boosting appointments for your salon.
Correctly used, social media can play a huge part in your salons marketing success story.