Recently, we put together a list of some of the best automation tools out there. But if that’s not something you’re quite ready to look into, today we’re back with 5 simple but effective salon social media hacks to grow your following and engagement on social. Because really, the more you focus on how to be social rather than how to do social, the better your results will be.
Salon Social Media Hacks You Should Be Using In 2018
Hack #1: Instagram
Instagram has been changing quite a lot recently, so it’s hard to pick good hacks that will last. However, there are the good old tricks that have stayed relevant for years now…
- Plan your Instagram profile feed: pick the brand colours, a few filters you’ll stick to and choose a tone which you’ll keep throughout all posts.
- If you collaborate with others, tag and mention those profiles in your post.
- Spend time liking and commenting on other people’s posts: for even better results, target competitor accounts’ followers.
- Use your location or city as a hashtag in your caption, but also ‘Add A Location’ to your post before publishing it (see image below).
- Research and use relevant hashtags: the ones that are trending at 100K-200K will most likely get better results as opposed to the ones trending at millions+.
- Use between 5 and 13 hashtags per post to help your post reach a wider audience (put these at the very bottom of your caption or in the comments right after publishing your post).
If you don’t really know what hashtags you should be using, this tool can help indicate relevancy and popularity: https://displaypurposes.com/
Hack #2: Facebook
I have three simple words for the second point of these salon social media hacks: start using video. Video content is the way to go in the future – did you hear they’re even about to launch Facebook Watch, a new platform for shows on Facebook?
No, but more seriously, anything from animated gifs to videos you create yourself, Facebook Live and all the videos you might share from other accounts (I’m thinking of Tanya Hennessy, that’s right!), they will all increase your overall engagement.
Listen to Phorest’s Content Manager Chris Brennan on the subject:
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The Salon Marketing Q&A: Simple, But Effective Video Ideas For…
Our latest Salon Marketing Q&A episode is dedicated to video! The question comes from Suzanne in the UK: "I keep hearing that we should be doing more videos online. But I have no experience with it at all. Can you give me some easy video ideas that don’t require too much work?”Great question! And Chris can help you with that, LIVE on Facebook
Posted by Phorest Salon Software on Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Hack #3: Twitter
You have to remember that Twitter is all about the conversation. Create Twitter lists and add users to these lists based on interests – inspirational people, business geeks, or whatever you’d like. On a weekly basis, go into those lists and read and comment on different posts. Not only will you probably learn a few things here and there, but you’ll also slowly start building engagement on Twitter.
To create a ‘List’:
- On your profile logo’s dropdown menu, click ‘Lists’.
- On the top right-hand side, click ‘Create List’.
- Name the List & provide a description.
- Choose if you want the List to be Public or Private.
- Save the List.
Another way to build engagement is to join Twitter chats. If you’re new to this concept, a Twitter chat is a public conversation around one specific hashtag, taking place on a particular schedule. For a list of already existing Twitter Chats, click here.
Hack #4: Social Media Ads
Are you finding it harder and harder to grab existing and potential clients’ attention with ads? Then you might find these two simple tricks very useful:
- Repeat time-sensitive offers in the image and the post’s caption.
- If you’re running quite a lot of Facebook Ads, you can always choose to A/B test your ads’ content. See Facebook’s guidelines on this here.
Hack #5: Social Media Graphics
Although I only came across this genius tool recently, I’m personally a big advocate of Sprout Social’s Landscape Tool.
In a nutshell, Landscape makes the image resizing process easy. It essentially does all the work for you. All you have to do is upload your high-resolution image to the tool, and pick for which channel you want the image: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube or Pinterest and pick what exactly that image is going to be used for within that social media platform. As in, a cover photo? A profile photo? A typical Instagram square post?
Once that’s done, scale or reposition the crop and download your images! You know when Valerie Delforge was talking about time management last week? This is made to help you spend less time working out the different channels’ media sizes and instead focus on engagement and conversations.
Have a look for yourself:
Phorest Salon Software Can Help You Too!
Phorest Salon Software’s marketing solutions are made in such way that they are effective and enjoyable. Have a look at some of the features we’ve built – they’re kind of our own salon social media hacks!
Build A Following On Snapchat
Not only does our Snapchat integration makes it easy to share before and after photos onto the platform straight from our software, but it can also help you grow a following – effortlessly. Phorest Salon Software allows you to send a tailored SMS to your clients announcing that you are now on Snapchat and inviting them to follow you. We’ve even made the perfect template for it. Read more about this feature here.
Share Before And After Photos From The Phorest Go App
Take or upload photos directly through the app, assign a profile picture to client cards, scroll through previous client appointments and see the pictures from those bookings. Plus, you can choose and arrange your photos to create collages within the app and of course, share your before and after collages to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. Read more about this feature here.
Manage Your Online Reputation From One Clean And Clear Dashboard
Monitor and control what’s being said about you on Google, Facebook and Yelp. From one clean and clear dashboard, respond to positive & negative comments and increase your amount of 5-Star reviews through automated settings. Read more about this feature here.
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Thanks for reading!
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