The Future of Social Media Marketing for Hair Stylists
The Internet has continued to connect us to one another in an incredibly fast pace. This has lead to new ways in marketing yourself and putting your services in front of new customers. As a hair stylist, marketing techniques that worked for decades have not only become obsolete, but even what worked a year ago won’t give you the same results today.
Today I want to share with you the trends that will change how hair stylists gain more business in the near future. I also want to show you how successful hair stylists are beginning to think about the new social media outlets that are gaining popularity.
Often, if you’re an early adapter to a social platform, you can gain new clients and new business that have yet to be discovered. It’s an amazing time to get involved with some of these programs.
Hair Stylists Will Market Themselves and Will Rely Less on the Hair Salon
Through social media, each hair stylist has the opportunity to get themselves in front of their potential customers without having to rely on the hair salon for marketing to new clients. Hair stylists will become more self sufficient and won’t have to pick to work at the hair salon with the most walk-in traffic or in the busiest part of town.
There are already stylists that have strong followings on outlets like Instagram and you better believe that their clientele will follow them anywhere they go. People want to do business with people. They want to have a connection and bond with the people they hand their money to. Once that connection has been made, the business is yours to lose.
More Stylists Will Pick and Focus on a Specialty
As you continue to take on more clients and gain more exposure through social outlets, you’ll start seeing a pattern of services that you are offering and being recognized for the most. Chances are, it’ll be what you enjoy doing as a hair stylist. This could be men’s haircuts, ombre, balayage or hair coloring in general, bridal hair, and etc.
It’s easier to grow your social presence if you concentrate on one or two services that you like providing. More hair stylists are finding this out and using it to their advantage to drive in new clientele. Your ability to show case your strengths is as easy as posting them to Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.
More Emphasis on the Quality of Media
Less text, more media. Please understand that a lot of your social media followings are happening through a mobile device. Most people won’t take the time to read your long blurb, or well written content. Use media to your advantage and keep it simple. A great free tool I can share with you is Canva. It’s a free application that allows you to create posters and banners for your website or social media outlet.
The size and the quality of the photos are very important. Another free resource you can take advantage of is this social media image size guide. It’ll give you the perfect dimensions for your Facebook cover photos, Twitter pics and etc.
My tip for you is to take lots and lots of photos. Make sure you have a decent camera on your phone and remember that it can take a few shots to get the one that’ll be worthy of your Instagram.
The Rise of Live Media Streaming
If you have not heard of applications like Meerkat or Periscope quite yet, I highly recommend you doing so. Both of these social outlets are just gaining momentum and no one has quite found a particular way to use these live stream applications for branding themselves. They are both apps that allow you to live stream video from your phone to the universe. Why would you use this versus YouTube to record your work? Because the viewers can interact with you and ask you questions in real time.
Periscope is owner by Twitter so there’s a bit more of a following on that application as of right now. There’s no right or wrong way to use either of these applications. You can host a live show where you’re demonstrating hair coloring, or your viewers can watch you work away on a fancy men’s haircut. The goal is to give you and your personality added exposure. Heck if you’re really good at hair coloring and have a strong social media following, you could turn it into live lessons where participants can register and interact with you.
Additionally, don’t forget about the strength of Snapchat. They are about to hit the 200 million user mark which is quite staggering. An idea I’d use for Snapchat is to maybe entice your clients to follow your snaps by letting them know that on occasion you’ll be running promotions that will only be available to your Snapchat followers.
In the end, these are just a few examples of where Social Media is headed. Everyone and every business is constantly being affected by these new ways to connect to each other. For example, the impact Instagram has today on hair salon marketing is much more greater than it was just a few months ago. I’ve seen hair stylists book multiple new client appointments a week just using Instagram and disregarding the most popular platform which is Facebook.
Remember to continue trying new things and to keep pushing the boundaries on how you gain exposure to potential clients. It takes just one good picture, one good snap, or one good live stream for things to completely take off and have a snow ball effect.