Maximize your marketing to minimize social media stress
As hairdressers these days our workdays no longer begin and end behind the chair. As much as we might hate it, we are now expected to post on social media to market ourselves and attract new clients. It feels relentless - the pressure to be on camera and make cute reels and show amazing hair transformations can be paralyzing. Most of us did not go into this work to do marketing, but unfortunately it is the reality we live in and marketing yourself is necessary while you are building your book. However, when you feel like your soul has been sucked dry by vapid reels and frenetic timelapse videos, you have other options to explore that build upon each other so you’re doing less work but getting farther reach. So let’s jump it…
Email:
This might seem antiquated, but you might be shocked to know that email is still the most effective form of marketing and has conversion rates almost double those of Instagram. Make sure you have a way for your clients to sign up for your emails when they’re in your chair - if you can, create a QR code that brings them to a Google form where they can input their email address. It is such a quick and painless way for them to sign up, it’s a no-brainer. But you can also absolutely do it the old fashioned way: have a small cute notebook with a nice pen for them to write down their email address. By signing up for your newsletter they can keep up with what’s going on in your world — any continuing education you’re doing/new skills you’re adding to your repertoire, if you’re going away, changing your hours, etc. Let’s be clear: You do not need to send out daily emails. In fact any more than 1x per week tends to get obnoxious. You could do 2 emails per month if you want to start with a manageable goal. They could be updates from you, a quick before and after pic and explanation, events that might be happening at the salon or just in town. They could be a specific topic, for example “new techniques in balayage” written in language that clients can relate to and that will differentiate you as an expert.
Blog:
Piggyback off of your email newsletter by posting your email as a blog. You can set up a free blog site and post your monthly (or weekly or biweekly) newsletter. Make sure to use searchable keywords so that your blog is findable through search engines.
Pinterest:
Once you have your blog entry up, create a post on Pinterest. Just like blogs, Pinterest is great because it is evergreen and searchable. Instagram posts are only seen within the first few days of posting and they are always at the mercy of the algorithm. Someone might see your post and try to go back to find it and it’s seemingly been vaporized. With Pinterest and blogging you have two searchable places on the internet that people can find you.
Instagram if you must:
I know I know, it’s so hard to divorce ourselves from social media… for better or worse, it’s the air we breathe and the water we swim in. So if you feel you must maintain a presence there, do it in a way that won’t make you want to throw your phone out the window.
Here are some strategies to make Instagram a little less painful.
Film “B roll” content that you can pull from and reuse with different ideas. Create a content library.
Batch content: choose a day and take a few hours to create a batch of posts that you can roll out over the month.
Keep a running note on your phone of ideas as they come up
Choose “buckets” for your posts and rotate through them.
For example:
Mondays: Showcase your work
Wednesdays: A peek into your life
Fridays: Salon life
Partner with another stylist at the salon and film each other for your content library
Look back through your posts and see which posts did very well — if you have a carousel that did well, repurpose it and turn it into a reel, or vice versa. You don’t have to recreate the wheel every time!
When planning your marketing and social media strategy, the way to make it the least painless, (and perhaps even enjoyable) is to figure out how you want to show up in the world. Genuinely. When you put yourself out there as you genuinely are, that is when you will attract your people. People want a good stylist, but personal connection might even play a bigger part in attracting and retaining your clients.