“How do I get better engagement?” One of the most popular questions about Instagram. The answer? It takes time, effort and whole lot of patience, but not impossible! If you’re really dedicated to boosting the engagement you’re getting from your salon Instagram profile, here’s a tried-and-tested list of tips. Hope they help!
Phorest FM, Episode 82: “As with any form of advertising, businesses want to be seen everywhere to maximise every opportunity to reach their target market. Whether it be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn, it has now become the norm for businesses to be on at the very least one channel. But how do you pick the good one to be on? And from there, how do you connect with your audience?”
Effective Ways To Get Clients Engaging With Your Salon Instagram Profile
1. Switch To An Instagram Business Profile (It’s Free!)
Let’s start the list with an easy one. Switching from a regular salon Instagram Profile to an Instagram Business Profile will require at most 10 minutes of your time, and it provides your clients with a direct contact method within the app. With a business profile, a few contact buttons appear on your profile allowing your customers to either get your business’ address, call your salon, email you or even book an appointment. Additionally, you get analytics on your profile! What’s not to want?
Use this step-by-step guide to switch to a salon Instagram Business Profile.
2. Post Consistently, But Make Sure It’s Quality
Getting traction on Instagram is not going to happen overnight. But if you don’t disappear every 3-4 weeks and then reappear suddenly flooding users’ feeds, you should see gradual growth in engagement and followers. That is, of course, if you post beautifully curated photos – they get much higher engagement.
3. Interact With Other Users And Respond To Comments
The more you engage with other people’s profiles and respond to comments left on your salon/spa’s posts, the more you’ll see engagement build. Think about Instagram as being a mix between Facebook and Twitter (Instagram = a platform for engaging content + a conversation). After all, you can’t always expect your fans to initiate the first contact! To substantially perk up your engagement, you’re going to have to work for it.
4. Advertise And Use Relevant Hashtags
Hashtags are proven to be one of the most valuable tools you can use for reaching new clients and raising brand awareness. The most common ways to use them is to put them in your posts and stories and hope people find your content by researching those topics. Don’t overuse them though (aim for a maximum of 12) or Instagram will “punish” your overzealousness and decrease your engagement.
Another way of going about hashtags is by initiating contact with potential new followers. By liking and commenting on other people’s posts, you send out notifications to users, which ultimately will make them more likely to check out your profile and engage with you as well.
5. Post During Opportune Times
On Instagram, there is such a thing as posting at the right time. If you’ve switched to a Business Profile already, that means you have access to seeing at what times your followers are most active on the platform (on a day-by-day basis). If your followers aren’t online at 9:00 AM, maybe try posting at a time when your audience is most active. It does require planning, but know that there are platforms out there to help you schedule posts in advance.
6. Tag Brands & Customers
When you post content on your salon Instagram profile, you can tag people or brands, which sends a notification to the user you’ve tagged. This can also lead to increased engagement… but again, don’t start tagging everyone and anyone just for fun! People aren’t advertising billboards after all!
7. Show Off Your Customers
Recent stats show that images showing real customers using products and pictures with faces get a whopper 30% and 38% more engagement. These stats alone say it all.
8. Run Contests & Giveaways
Contests and giveaways are a winner – get it?! – way to boost engagement on Instagram. People love to win things, and unlike Facebook, Instagram doesn’t “punish” people for doing like/tag/share campaigns. Go wild!
9. Use Instagram Stories To Drive Engagement
Easy to access and quick to use, Instagram Stories can help you give customers and potential clients or followers a taste for your brand. The feature can also give you a good indication of what content resonates with your Instagram audience without clogging up your page’s feed. The beauty of this functionality is that you can also tag other profiles and locations – aka the same as you would for a post! Get creative with before & after shots, Q&A’s, salon fun, tutorials, new product announcements, etc!
Read more on using Instagram stories for your business.
10. Create Instagram Ads Through Facebook
The final tip on the list: pay to run ads on your salon Instagram profile. For this, you’ll need a Facebook page and a Facebook ad account as you will be using the same tools you use to create Facebook ads. Your promotion will appear in people’s feed amongst regular posts and will have a “sponsored” mention. These posts will not appear as a post on your salon’s profile feed. The ad can display a call-to-action which appears after a person hovers over it for at least 3 seconds. Slick and efficient, this technique will generate brand awareness and get you more followers.
Other Salon Instagram Resources
The Phorest Academy Salon Instagram Masterclass
- Watch the hourlong masterclass on-demand here!
Phorest Blog Related Articles
- Everything Your Salon Needs To Know About Instagram’s IGTV App
- 13 Fun Marketing Ideas For Your Salon’s First IGTV Video
- How To Schedule Your Salon Weekly Instagram Posts
- Which Salon Hashtag Will Actually Reach Your Audience?
- 3 Effective Rules To Create Outstanding Instagram Salon Posts
Tried one or more of these techniques? Let us know what worked best for you! Got feedback? Let us know either in the comments below or tweet us @ThePhorestWord! (Pssst! We’re on Instagram too!)
