How to Build a Salon Social Media Strategy

In today’s congested hair salon market, it’s important every salon owner puts some emphasis on a salon social media strategy. Unlike your personal social media channels, your business accounts need to put towards goals and targets.

A good social salon marketing strategy will list out all of your ideas. It will help you stay on track — it summarizes all that you hope to achieve. Marketing ideas work best when they’re specific and scheduled. Keep your strategy concise and adapt it as time goes on.

Operating a thriving social media content strategy can be time-consuming. If you’re currently boot-strapping your business, you might need to manage your marketing strategies yourself.

If you’re time-poor but need to build brand awareness online and expand your customer service, you’re going to need more than just word of mouth marketing. Following these salon social media marketing strategy ideas to help you retain the attention of loyal and potential customers.

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1. Set Goals for Your Salon Social Media Strategy
2. Determine Your Target Audience
3. Choose your Social Media Platform
4. Create Social Media Content Calendar for Your Salon
5. Make your Social Media Presence Timely
6. Top Hair Salon Social Media Content Ideas
7. Review Your Results
8. Conclusion

Set Goals for Your Salon Social Media Strategy

Pretty much everyone has some sort of social media account these days. Unlike your personal account, your salon social strategies have to be clear, defined...and you need to have some goals and objectives in mind.

If you’re a new business, you might want to focus your salon marketing ideas on increasing brand awareness. A beautifully curated Instagram page is a great way to impress and get potential new clients and retain the attention of existing clients.

If you’re looking to really ingratiate yourself into the community, set your sights on boosting your follower count. Salons with a large follower count look professional and in demand. An active Instagram and Facebook page that posts regularly will draw more attention, which could, in turn, boost your new client list.

Maybe your main objective is to encourage people to visit your website for the first time. If this is the case, you want your social salon marketing strategies to find ways to encourage people back to your website.

If you’re a new business, it’s a good idea to focus your marketing plan around garnering positive client reviews and testimonials. The more of these you get, the more impressed potential clients will be when you share them. Encourage people to leave reviews and offer an incentive if you have the means to do so. If they don’t leave them in the comments section, they might leave them on Google My Business, so make sure you’re checking there too.

Respond to reviews, even if they’re negative so that the author is encouraged to change their opinion and return to your salon for a next visit.

Determine Your Target Audience

Defining a marketing strategy for salon services that center on social channels means you need to also define your target market and audience. This will help inform what social channels should have your attention.

It’s easier to believe that you should try and attract all different types of people to your business, but actually, it can be better to find a niche.

• Do you want older clients?
• What local demographic would you like to attract?

The more you define this, the more it will helpfully inform your marketing strategy for hair salon plans.

Choose your Social Media Platform

If you want to keep older clients coming back, you might want to focus your salon strategies on posting images and videos to Facebook.

Did you know that the baby boomer generation loves Pinterest?

Learn about your target market, find out where they spend the most time, and then focus your advertising there.

If it’s a younger audience that uses your service, make sure you explore marketing outside of social media, you can also put in place loyalty programs that help boost your follower count and client list on Instagram and TikTok.

Create Social Media Content Calendar for Your Salon

Managing salons and trying to grow your local business online can feel like an uphill struggle. Rather than leaving your posting schedule to luck, a good way to manage your social strategy is with a content calendar.

Spend some time once a month prepping your calendar. Fill it with key dates that will impact your clients. This is also a great way to track how well each post you put up performs. After all, there’s no point in spending your precious time posting high-quality images if you’re not meeting your objectives.

Organize the content across each platform and get each account in-line. This will help you stay aligned with your purpose and you’ll have more opportunity to create and use images and posts that followers actually want to engage with.

Also, there’s no point in creating a calendar if you don’t actually post the content!

Use a free online scheduling tool to upload in advance, so you don’t have to worry about it.

Make your Social Media Presence Timely

Once you start executing more marketing ideas (not just social, email marketing, and loyalty programs too), you’ll learn more about your clients. Followers tend to engage on social media at specific points during their day (that’s if they manage to put their phone down at all!). Track your statistics and learn people want to engage with your channels.

You can also start engaging with other local businesses in your area. The more you communicate with locals in your community, on social media, and beyond, the more people will be intrigued by your salon. Swap business cards with people in your area and leave a book at the front desk for clients to write down their email address and their social handles. You could even set up an email newsletter that directs clients to your social network pages. You don’t have to rely solely on social channels.

Top 5 Hair Salon Social Media Content Ideas

Struggling with social media content ideas? This could help…

1. Before and after shots

You create new hairstyles every day, so why don’t you document that and share the pictures on your social channels? Before and after shots show off your work and give people an insight into what you do.

2. Share news about your team

A hair salon is a social place and your clients get to know your teams well. Take this one step further by posting about your team on your social channels. The more you share, the more comfortable clients will feel when they visit your salon.

3. Share inspirational daily quotes

You don’t need to constantly promote appointment time and sell products to your clients. Posting motivational quotes and will give potential clients an insight into your salon and brand — you’ll reach them on a more personal level.

4. Testimonials

If your clients are saying good things about you, share that on social media. A recommendation will make potential clients feel secure and reassured about booking in for a treatment.

5. Video transformation

As great as photos and pictures are on social media, it’s a video that will really help bring your engagement up. Post a video of you transforming someone’s hair to show off your skills and offer people a fun and creative piece of content.

For more brilliant ideas make sure you do not miss our Top 45 Hair Salon Social Media Ideas article!

Review Your Results

Track your statistics and learn people want to engage with your channels. Get to know your audience's habits to serve and offer them the content they actually want to see. And don’t wait to adapt your processes once you’ve found out what’s working well and what isn’t. If your clients want to see more of something, give it to them.

When you’ve done that, you can center your online ads around that time to make sure clients come back to see what you have posted. You also have to be honest with yourself and check the results of your efforts. What’s working and what isn’t? You don’t want to spend a lot of money advertising your services to the client on social if they’re simply not paying attention to it.

Hairstylists can show off their talents in a number of different ways. Not all salons will benefit from very active social accounts. You attract new clients in other ways too. Maybe you focus on promoting one social channel in particular. Or maybe you boost your online booking count with Google ads. You could drop advertising cards and leaflets through people’s doors promoting one specific offer too.

Conclusion

Having a balanced and cohesive salon social media strategy is one important aspect of your business that you need to spend time on. It will help you stay on track with your goals and see the true value of Facebook ads and business time spent on social channels.

Consider what you want your social channels to achieve and center your efforts around those things. If you want to get more reviews to boost your bookings, ask for testimonials in-person and online. A good stream of testimonials will leave clients feeling more reassured about your treatments.

Outside of social media, you can put in place loyalty programs that will boost your follower count and client list. Incentives (like a free gift card for example) will catch the attention of new and established clients, so make sure you publicize these loyalty bonuses on your most popular social accounts.

And if you love these ideas or have some other ideas that you've used in the past to promote your salon business, why not share them with the Zolmi community in the comment section below. We would also be delighted to answer your questions, as well.

Citations

Maximize your social: A one-stop guide to building a social media strategy for marketing and business success https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JTOyAAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT6&dq=small+business+Social+Media+Strategy&ots=HCih4ag9TY&sig=HcigJPjDyVkjyZFeUTe--S5oheY

To be or not to be in social media arena as the most cost-efficient marketing strategy after the global recession https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042811016119

Strategic use of social media for small business based on the AIDA model https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042815004000