Published 4th June 2018
In 2018, it is vital that your salon has a good online presence, as according to HubSpot, 81% of shoppers conduct online research before making big purchases, and when it comes to beauty, this is incredibly important.
But first, how are you online? Do you rely solely on your website? Do you have a social media presence and use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram? Do you also create content, for blogs and YouTube?
Social Media
We have spoken about this briefly before on PamperPad, with our ‘How to Use Your Facebook Page more Efficiently’ post.
On top of this, make sure your salon joins as many groups as you see necessary, for example there may be a Facebook group for beauty lovers in your area, or even still, join a more general group for the town and surrounding areas, where you can advertise any offers and deals you may have, as well as potentially offering small discounts or freebies (For example, a 45 minute treatment for the price of 30 minutes, or a free eyebrow wax voucher) for those who make enquiries and then appointments through the facebook group.
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO
Having a website that looks amazing and functions well is one thing, but what is the point if no one visits it? Make sure you use keywords in your titles, headers, bodies of texts and image tags. These keywords should be relative to your business, and the sort of thing that people search for when conducting online searches for salons. Sites like Wordpress are really good at indicating when your SEO is at the level required to run a successful business online, as they use plugins that colour code everything to make it really simple to use.
Consistency
Creating your space on the web, whether it be your website, social media, or blog is all well and good, but there’s no point even bothering to make them if you’re not going to update them.
To do this, try and set a couple of times each day and have a facebook post or a tweet go out at these times every single day. This way people will see your name more without having to witness you update your pages all at once and put people off because they think that you are spamming them.
A good way to keep on top of this, for example, is to create a spreadsheet or timetable with what you are going to post on what social medias. If you are sharing a blog post, it is best to hit either rush hour at both ends of the day, or about 1pm when people often go on lunch, as this is when people are mainly on their phones at these times and are more likely to see it.
If you post content to a blog or YouTube channel, create an upload schedule, and try to stick to it as much as you can. If you want to upload several pieces of content a week, can you try and create a schedule where each day of the week has a specific type of content? So for example on Mondays you upload advice videos/blogs, wednesdays are tutorials or talk throughs of your treatments and then on Friday you are free to upload anything else.
Competitions, Giveaways & Discounts
A good way to boost engagement on a post and therefore have more people see it is to run competitions or giveaways. For example, if you a launching a new treatment at the salon, upload a post all about it and add ‘tag someone who you think would enjoy this and you could both win a free treatment’.
Also, a post on instagram explaining how you have received a surplus of products and you are hosting a giveaway with them is a good way to raise engagement and follower counts.
Another way to boost your online presence is to team up with other local businesses and work together. For example ‘Did you know that we now stock X products and gifts in our salon?’ Or, ‘If you book your appointment online, you will receive 10% off of your food bill at X restaurant.’
Keep Track
We would be lying if we said it wasn't all about the numbers. Keep a note of your follower counts and statistics at the start, and find out your audience demographic, ie what percentage of your audience is male or female, how old are they and where abouts in the country are they from?
Also keep track of every single post that you share, and what the engagement rates are with them. How many shares, likes and comments are they getting? Are your customers sharing pictures of your work that you can share on Facebook and Instagram?
With this information you can then begin to figure out what times of day is best for you to post, as well as what types of post do better. Whilst it is better to share a broad range of medias, make sure you are sharing a bit of everything to keep your customers and followers interested.
You can also set up Google Alerts so you can get a notification everytime your business is mentioned online.
Reviews
On top of all this, it is important to remember that no one will come to your salon if you have mainly 1 or 2 star reviews, or even worse, no reviews at all!
To increase the number of high rated reviews, we suggest running competitions that are linked. For example, a post on Facebook saying something along the lines of ‘If you have visited our salon in the past 6 months, leave a review on our page and you can be in with the chance of winning a free treatment worth X amount.’
This encourages your customers to leave a positive review, because they know that leaving anything less that 3 or 4 stars could jeopardise their risk of winning that free treatment.
Unfortunately, bad reviews will happen, and it is important that you react to these in the correct way. If it’s a negative comment on social media, respond in a polite and courteous way and ask them to get in touch with you privately so you can arrange to fix whatever it is they weren't impressed with.
Make sure you react professionally when you reply to any negative reviews, take your time to read the review several times over and think about how the words you’re typing will affect your business.
For more information and advice on how to improve your online presence, become a Premium member of PamperPad.
