Get ready to learn some amazing tips on social media for salons, spas & stylists. Let’s face it, when it comes to building and maintaining a successful salon business, learning how to properly navigate through the social media realm is vital. Indeed, there were times in which stylists and salons could work and thrive totally offline. But now we are now in an age in which social media is imperative to success. Especially given the present situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, which totally transformed how service-driven businesses operate overnight.
Today, hair salons and stylists now need to be creative if they want to remain competitive and gain/ regain loyal customers. This is where this week’s episode of Huddletime with Ronit comes in. We focus on ways salons and stylists can grow their business and clientele. This week’s show with Ronit Enos and Olivia Smalley is filled with invaluable information from two experts who have already done the work themselves.
Huddletime with Olivia Smalley
Before we get into the specific social media tips for hairstylists and salon owners, let’s find out why this week’s guest is uniquely qualified to give advice on this topic. For those who are yet unfamiliar, Olivia Smalley is a celebrity hairstylist, beauty influencer, and social media guru. She is one of the top 10 influencers for Modern Salon and has appeared in Allure Magazine, Cosmopolitan, and many more mainstream publications. She has a widely successful Instagram page @omgartistry, which is verified and has over 177k followers and counting. Olivia is a great example of just how far you can go if you start dedicated to your business and learn how to use social media to your advantage.
Social Media for Salons & Stylists
Now that we know more about Olivia’s qualifications, let’s take a look at some of her tips in terms of social media for salons & stylists.
1. Colors Matter
One tip Olivia offered is to choose your color schemes wisely and include them in all aspects of your business. This includes your social media pages. You should be including your signature colors in pictures, videos, logos, etc. This will help to make your brand much more recognizable and professional. In fact, the colors you choose can actually serve as the base for your Instagram page. If you are just starting your page or revising, including only certain colors can make your page more aesthetically pleasing. This will help you attract more followers and clients.
However, she also urges everyone to be mindful of the color schemes they choose. This is because different colors will elicit different emotions from your followers. Make sure that you are choosing colors that truly represent your brand.
2. Be Disciplined
Another tip that Olivia shared with us is that it was her discipline that helped her become successful. In fact, she asserts that being disciplined is one of the best ways to achieve any goal. Whether social media, building a salon, becoming a stylist, etc, you need to work at it aggressively and with determination. Over time, this will help you create the habits needed to become successful.
3. Daily Routines
Additionally, Olivia also points out that being successful also requires the ability to create the proper work-life balance. Although work is important, you must build a routine that allows you to have time to relax and decompress. Despite having a highly successful brand, Olivia makes sure to get at least 8-10 hours of sleep every night. She also eats right to ensure she maintains optimal health and has enough energy to complete her work each day. She is able to do so because she uses a meal delivery service.
Although this may not be necessary or feasible for everyone, Olivia asserts that if you are busy running a business, you may not have the time needed to shop and cook healthy meals. This can often result in eating fast food or snacking too much, which will adversely affect your health over time. Nevertheless, she also believes in having “cheat meals” on the weekend, which she says helps to keep her balanced and sharp.
4. Mind Your Brain Space
Another interesting tip is that you must be mindful of your brain space. In other words, your mindset plays a major role in how productive you can be each day. For instance, Olivia says that she essentially gets into character before she does everything. This includes going to her salon and creating videos or going live on social media. There are always things that will make you feel discouraged if you let them. This is especially the case for social media for salons. So often there are trolls working to tear down those who are successful and making progress.
One tip for staying in the right headspace is to consciously ignore things that are not fueling your progress. If you are going on social media, you can’t be worried about who is watching. Just ignore what they have to say about your appearance or other matters that distract you from achieving your goals. Moreover, she also expressed the value of writing things down. For example, Olivia has a huge journal which she calls her manifestation diary. In it, she writes her hopes, dreams, fears, likes, dislikes, etc.
Ultimately, keeping journals like this helps to better understand the things we want in our lives. At the same time, showing us the things we need to get rid of as soon as possible. This practice has allowed Olivia the ability to weed out the clientele, co-workers, etc., who weren’t beneficial to her. She believes that all stylists and salon owners should do this too. Working with those people is part of what kills your passion for your business. Additionally, she extends this logic to the social media realm. She asserts that you should be only dealing with those who are in line with your values and who bring positivity into your life.
5. Using stories in your social media for salons
Olivia loves using social media stories to promote her brand and grow her business. She believes that stylists and owners should use it to showcase their personality. Also, try using a content calendar. This calendar should include ideas of what to post and how often you will be posting. Salon owners and stylists should pick one day a week to post a video or a photo of a client’s hair. Then, another day post a video of the salon being cleaned and disinfected, to reassure your clients that you are taking COVID-19 seriously.
You should also be posting some fun, personal videos and photos as well. When talking to the camera, you should be sure to keep things singular and make your followers feel like you’re talking directly to them as this is another way to establish connections with your followers. Either way, this will give your clients and followers regular glimpses into your life and personality, which will help you attract clients who have similar values and are in need of the services you offer.
6. Be Engaged
One major tip Olivia offered is to always engage with your followers. Take the time to respond to comments and direct messages that are sent relative to the things you are posting. As a general rule of thumb, Olivia asserts that you should never post unless you have approximately 20 minutes to respond to your followers.
Responding very quickly to your followers is a way to This is because this is a great method of boosting your engagement rates and boosting yourself in the algorithm. For example, if you post a video and someone comments, they will come back to your page after you have responded to their comment. In doing so, the Instagram algorithm will assume that the person is really invested in your page and they will start to show them more of your content on their feed.
7. Beating the Algorithm
According to Olivia, the goal of being on Instagram is to create engaging videos, photos, stories, reels, writing good captions (which is very important). Also, responding to DMs, etc., allows you to become a “common interest”. In particular, responding to DMs can help you establish genuine relationships. This is also taken into account when it comes to the algorithm, which means if you are having genuine and consistent communications, Instagram is more likely to recognize your interactions as genuine, which will allow you to beat the algorithm and appear on more feeds.
This means you become a part of a pool of popular pages that are prominently displayed on the “interests” pages. Ultimately, you will be promoted to anyone who has expressed interest in the subjects being posted on your page. So, for instance, if you are posting about hair coloring, you could be included on that interest page. This will allow anyone who is interested in that topic to discover your content and brand.
8. Posting videos using social media for salons
Posting videos is one of the most useful tools on Instagram. Instagram measures the amount of time people spend on your posts to determine their level of interest in their content. Videos start playing automatically, once a video catches someone’s eye, they are more likely to read your caption, comments, etc. Rather than spending a few seconds, your followers will spend 30 seconds to a minute longer, helping beat the algorithm. And this is not just the case on Instagram, it’s true for virtually every social media platform.
9. Follow Your Passion
When dealing with social media, it can be tempting to become consumed with competing with others, getting more followers than your competitors, etc. This may play a role in the types of content you are posting. For instance, those who work in the hairstyling/salon sector tend to post pictures and video clips of them styling hair or of clients whose hair they styled. However, there are way more facets to this realm than just showing your hair.
Obviously, you need to post photos of your work, but you should do so in a way that excites you and that adds value to your page. For instance, if you especially love to color hair, you should post lots of videos about coloring hair. This will help you attract more customers that allow you to do what you love. On the other hand, if you hate posting and doing men’s haircuts, this is something you should steer clear of.
The Bottom Line
Overall, social media for salons is complex that requires lots of time and energy to be successful. Nevertheless, these tips are more than enough to get you well on your way. No matter if you’re a stylist or salon owner, you can use these social media tips to create and build a social media page that will not only grow your clientele but also your brand overall.