In today’s world, posting on social media is the new version of having someone stand on a street corner with a big flashy sign advertising your business. For salons, engaging with your audience on social media is especially important since many people use platforms to search for stylists and other beauty content.
We understand that running a salon keeps you busy, though, and you may not have much time to devote to coming up with strategic social media content. So, to help you out, we’ve combined our best social media tip articles into one convenient resource for you to consult.
Happy posting!
Social Media Marketing for Hair Salons
One crucial aspect of running a successful salon these days is social media marketing. 82% of the U.S. population currently uses social media, which means a majority of your target clientele will be on it too. Engaging with your audience on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and so on, is a great way to spread brand awareness and bring in new and repeat clients.
Creating salon social media posts can feel daunting though, especially when you have a salon to manage and customers to see. In this article, we’re going to make it easier by offering tips for using social media to market your salon!
Social Media Marketing Tip 1: Define Your Brand & Voice
Before you start creating social media posts, it’s important to be clear about your brand personality and voice. For instance, you’ll want to decide on set colors and fonts to use so you can keep everything cohesive for your audience. These are the types of elements people will use to identify and remember you.
You also want to make sure you’re consistent with the voice you use. For example, are you a professional and high-end brand, or is your brand more down-to-earth and sarcastic? There’s no wrong answer, but your voice should be based on what your ideal clients like, and then used consistently once you make a decision.
Social Media Marketing Tip 2: Create for Your Target Audience
Your social media target audience is the group of people you want your posts to reach. These should be people who are most likely to become your clients and thus will find the most value in your content. Creating salon social media posts for the general public is not an effective use of time or resources. You need to hone in on users who have the greatest chance of becoming clients.
To figure out your social media target audience, look to trends and similarities among your clients. Do you mostly service middle-aged women? Young adults looking for fashion colors? Modern men’s cuts? People of higher or lower incomes? Narrowing down these demographics will help you create social media content for the right audience.
Social Media Marketing Tip 3: Batch Content
When creating salon social media posts, it’s best to batch create content. Content batching is when you create multiple days’ worth of content in one sitting. For example, every week, you could take one or two hours to create and schedule all your posts for the following week. Then, if you are feeling extra inspired, you can try to create your posts for the entire month.
Content batching is a great technique for social media marketing, especially for beginners, for several reasons. First, it ensures you have enough content to post consistently throughout the week. Second, creating all the content at once makes it easier to keep it cohesive for your audience, as you’ll know exactly what the last post they saw was. Finally, content batching will save you time and stress throughout the week, as you’ll take care of all your social media content at once.
Social Media Marketing Tip 4: Use Themes to Set a Social Media Schedule
Batch creating may sound overwhelming, but it can be much easier if you create your content around themes. For example, rather than coming up with a unique idea for every day of the week, the theme will help guide you and make it easier to create new posts. Here are some ideas of themes to go off of when creating social media content:
- Client transformations
- Haircare tips
- Favorite hair products
- Holidays
- Days of the week (e.g., transformation Tuesday, throwback Thursday)
- Meet the salon employees
- Contests
Social Media Marketing Tip 5: Do More of What Works
There’s no shame in recycling great social media content that had high audience engagement. As you’re creating and posting content, keep track of what types of content perform the best. Do people love your client #transformationtuesday photos? Do a client transformation week. Have you been getting a ton of comments when you post haircare tips? Make it a series.
It might take you some time to figure out what kind of content your social media audience likes and responds to. But once you do, future content creation will be faster and easier, and your content will be more engaging.
4 Social Media Theme Ideas for Salons
Running a successful salon surely keeps you busy. Even though you probably already know how important it is to promote yourself and engage with your audience on social media, your time to sit down and brainstorm post ideas is limited.
To help you get ahead on your salon social media strategy and spend less time doing it, we’ve put together some social media theme ideas to inspire you.
1. Giveaways
Social media giveaways are a highly effective way to capture new leads for your salon and increase brand awareness by growing your social media following. In fact, research shows that an Instagram contest or giveaway can help you grow your followers 70% faster in three months.
The idea behind a giveaway is to have users input their email addresses and other contact information to enter. Then, you can use it for targeted email campaigns to shorten the time between liking a post and sitting in your chair. Most people are willing to give up this information for the chance to win a good prize, such as a discounted color service or free hair care products.
You could also ask participants to do a little something more for an extra giveaway entry, such as sharing your post, following your account, or liking and commenting on it. These strategies will help you boost engagement and grow your followers.
2. Contests
A contest is similar to a giveaway, but typically the prize in a contest is bigger and only one winner is chosen. A contest winner is also decided based on merit, as opposed to being chosen randomly in a giveaway. The benefits of running a social media contest are the same as running a giveaway—you can grow your following faster, spread brand awareness, and generate more interest in your salon.
An example of a contest your salon could run on social media is a selfie contest. Ask your guests to take a selfie with their stylist or of their before and after transformation, post it on social media, and tag your salon. The photo that gets the most likes and comments at the end of the month wins, and the guest would get a free service or beauty product.
3. Seasonal Posts
Staying relevant can be a challenge for businesses on social media, but seasonal content can be a simple solution. Especially for an industry like beauty, trends often change with the season, offering ample opportunity to show your followers that you’re timely and knowledgeable. For example, when spring and summer come around, you can make a post about this year’s best wedding updos and attract next year’s brides-to-be as potential clients.
Another benefit of posting seasonal content on social media is that you can save it to use again next year. Just be sure to refresh it to reflect new trends and provide something new for your followers.
4. Holidays
Like seasonal content, posting holiday-themed content on social media can keep your feed interesting for your audience and increase engagement during specific times of the year. You can run a holiday promotion, share holiday-related beauty tips, do fun posts about your stylists prepping for the upcoming holiday, or post reminders for people to schedule their appointments in time for the big event.
Here are some social media post ideas for your salon based on the most popular holidays:
New Year’s
- Ask clients to comment their New Year’s resolutions.
- Share your salon’s goals for the new year.
- Create a salon or spa membership for the year.
Valentine’s Day
- Share hair and makeup tips focused on self-love.
- Recommend look ideas for Valentine’s dates/gifts or a Galentine’s night out.
- Run a Valentine’s Day makeup promo (who doesn’t love lip gloss?).
Mother’s Day
- Offer haircare tips for busy moms.
- Run a giveaway where you’ll do a full makeover for a busy mom, who clients can nominate.
- Run a Mother’s Day gift card promo.
Christmas
- Create a reminder post to let clients know December slots are filling up fast.
- Share your salon’s holiday hours.
- Offer an online bonus gift card incentive (e.g., buy $150 in gift cards and get an extra $25)
Daily Salon Social Media Ideas: How to Engage Your Audience
By now, you’re probably aware that if you want your salon to grow, you need to be on social media. Promoting yourself on social media platforms will help you attract new clients, engage with current clients, get client feedback, spread brand awareness, and connect with your audience.
Since you’re a salon owner and not a social media specialist, you may be unsure about the what, when, where, and how of social media marketing. Our last social media marketing blog post covers the what, so now we want to get into the when, where, and how to help guide your strategy.
How Often to Post on Social Media
One of the most frequently asked questions by business owners getting into social media marketing is how often they should be posting. While there is no magic number that will get you the most attention or engagement, there are some best practices you can follow that differ with each platform. Here’s what the research recommends:
- Instagram: 2-7 times per week
- Twitter: 1-5 times per day
- Facebook: 1-2 times per day
- LinkedIn: 1-5 times per day
- TikTok: 1-4 times per day
When added to the other day-to-day responsibilities you must handle to run your salon, those numbers can sound scary. But remember—they’re just recommendations. Aim to start posting at least once a day and go from there. Social media moves fast, so you need to stay in front of your audience if you want that audience and your salon to grow.
There are ways to create and post social media content faster that allow you to stay active online without taking on too much extra work. Creating batch content is one example, another is using an automatic scheduler to post. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have to post on every social media channel, just the ones your audience frequents the most.
The Best Social Media Platforms for Salons
Speaking of social media channels, you’re probably wondering which platforms are the best for salons to market on. The answer is going to depend on your target audience.
For example, 71% of people ages 18-29 use Instagram, while it’s only used by 48% of people ages 30-49. So, if you’re catering to mostly young adult clients, Instagram is a platform you’ll want to prioritize, whereas if you work with older adults, it won’t be as important. That’s why it’s essential that you research your audience and the demographics of each social media channel.
Here are the most popular social media platforms for salons to consider in your research:
- TikTok
- YouTube
- Snapchat
- Nextdoor
Salon Social Media Ideas for Each Day of the Week
A trend that has long been popular on social media is using hashtags for themed posts on different days of the week. For example, on #throwbackthursday users post old photos and memories to look back on.
Hopping on these themes or even creating your own can be a great way for your salon to engage with clients and potential clients, as well as inspire them to post themselves (and spread even more brand awareness). We’ve put together a few social media content ideas for each day of the week that your salon can use to spark your audience’s interest.
Sundays
- Selfie Sunday: Share a selfie with your audience and allow them to ask you questions in the comments.
- Self-Care Sunday: Give tips for how readers can take better care of themselves.
- Secret Sunday: Share a “secret” discount code that a select number of customers can use (first come, first serve).
Mondays
- Motivational Mondays: Post an inspirational quote or image about beauty and self-care.
- Monday Funday: Post a fun hair idea, like a new updo, that people can try.
- Makeover Monday: Post a before and after photo of a client.
Tuesdays
- Tip Tuesdays: Post a haircare tip.
- Tuesday Truth Day: Post two truths and a lie and ask followers to comment which one they think is the lie. Or post a common haircare myth and debunk it.
- Transformation Tuesday: Share a before and after photo of a client.
Wednesdays
- Wednesday Wisdom: Drop a knowledge bomb on your clients related to beauty and style.
- Humpday Meme: Post a funny meme or quote about getting through the rest of the week.
- Woman Crush Wednesday: Share a photo of a female client (with their permission) or stylist for your “woman crush” of the week.
Thursdays
- Throwback Thursday: Post an old hairstyle from another time period and ask people for their opinion in the comments.
- Testimonial Thursday: Share a client testimonial.
- Thursday Trivia: Post a trivia question about the beauty industry and offer a prize to the first person who comments with the correct answer.
Fridays
- Fun Fact Friday: Share an interesting fact about hair or beauty.
- Freaky Friday: Share a unique hairstyle you’ve done or a weird hair story with your audience.
- Funny Friday: Post a funny beauty or hair meme.
Saturdays
- Saturday Style: Share a new outfit and hairstyle pairing with your audience.
- Weekend Trend Report: Post about a recent industry trend, such as a service many of your clients have been asking for lately.
- Date Night Hair Tutorial: Share a quick hair tutorial for a fun Saturday night date.
Get Ready to Grow Your Salon Business
The more time you put into marketing strategies like social media content, the more brand awareness you’ll build and the further your reach will go. With SalonBiz, you can simplify and automate day-to-day tasks, freeing up your time to focus on growth.
Our end-to-end salon management software has everything you need to run your business more efficiently and increase your bottom line. Easily manage everything from online booking and performance metrics to automated email/text confirmations, POS, and more.
Book a free demo of SalonBiz today to learn more about our salon management solutions!
