Social media — it’s one of those things that many business owners see as an annoying “to do” part of their job. You know it’s important, you know lots of people say they find clients on it, but it just doesn’t seem to be of much use to you.

But you do know that you should stay active on it. Which honestly, is better than not posting at all and letting it get stagnant. So you do what comes naturally to you: you snap photos of your client work during the day (beautiful nail designs, flawless balayage, glowing post-facial skin) and a few times a week you’ll post it with a cute caption.

Your Instagram profile has turned into a living portfolio of your work, which shows off your best stuff to potential clients. And your Facebook page has been echoing the same thing, with some fun links and memes thrown in for good measure.

And like I said, if that’s what you’re doing with your salon’s social media, you’re not doing bad! It’s so important to use it as a work portfolio, because potential clients DO want to see that.

But your social media doesn’t need to stop there. There are SO many ways to make Facebook and Instagram work well to grow your business, that goes beyond nail, hair, brow and lash pics.

If you’re stuck for inspiration on how to make social media build your beauty business, then keep reading and I think you’ll get inspired!

Use social media as a platform to promote your personal brand

A personal brand is no longer reserved for athletes, writers, and Kardashians. Nope, every single business owner out there needs to cultivate a personal brand if they want to stand out and build their business in 2019 and beyond.

So, what exactly is your personal brand? And why is it so important?

Your personal brand as a beauty business owner is how you express your personality, values, and uniqueness to the world in a way that helps clients connect with you and want to buy from you.

Your personal brand is separate but related to your business brand. Your business brand might consist of a logo, a set of colors, and a design style. Instead, your personal brand is all about you as a person and how you represent your knowledge, expertise, and opinions as the face of your business.

And yes, you absolutely do need to be the face of your business — especially on social media! Gone are the days that you can get away with hiding your face and just showing your logo or just showing photos of your clients.

In order to brand yourself as “the expert” in your beauty niche (whatever your expertise is) and in order to have potential clients feel comfortable enough with you as a person to make the leap to book with you, you need to promote your personal brand!

Here’s an example I’ve given before about a badass hair salon owner, Sofia Hilton of Not Another Salon:

Sophia’s salon and herself are intertwined: her salon is an expression of her own style, personality, and philosophy towards life. And she expresses those things in her posts as well, sharing lots of photos of herself, her personal life, her struggles and triumphs…

Your followers don’t just want to see photos of the client work you do. They also want to feel a real human connection with you, and yes, they do want to look up to you as well.

How to promote your personal brand on social:

• Do a personal branding photoshoot

• Start posting more photos of yourself on social media (at least once a week)

• Express your personality and opinions in your captions

• Start looking at yourself as the expert (even if you don’t feel like it yet… you are) and share your knowledge in your posts

To learn more about developing your personal brand, check out my blog posts here:

3 powerful ways to build your personal brand as a beauty-preneur

How to put your own personality into your salon's marketing

Personal branding 101 for beauty professionals

Work with local Instagram influencers to spread the word

If you’re active on Instagram personally, then you probably follow at least a handful of influencers. Maybe you don’t look at them as influencers, but that’s exactly what they are: beauty bloggers, successful salon owners, travel bloggers… they’re all influencers!

And you can bet that there are hundreds of your ideal potential clients in your city that follow influencers as well, especially if those potential clients are under the age of 40.

Instagram is where many younger women decide what makeup to buy, which hot restaurants to try out, and what indie brands to support. They do genuinely pay attention to what influencers say and sell, and your salon should take advantage!

If you partner with the right micro-influencers - local influencers who have under 10,000 followers but an active and engaged following - they can do huge things for promoting your salon!

Just listen to this story from Ashlee of Bronzed Babes with Ash, a spray tanner in Australia who partnered with a local Instagram influencer:

“I wanted to target a clientele who loved the gym, so my two tanbassators are gym regulars. One owns her own business boot camp and the other is a gym lover. They both had a great following in the local area and great content so they were perfect.

I tan these two women for a largely discounted price and they give me great shoutouts, tags, send photos, and word-of-mouth shoutouts too. They also receive 10% off retail items at my home studio.

These woman have definitely brought me business. I have received a lot more followers since having these two ladies tag and post and at least 30 new clientele have seen my business via their feed/stories. I am very happy with the results! We have formed great friendships in the process of this also. Every so often we’ll have a photo shoot day where we catch up and create some great content. I couldn't ask for anything more."

How to start working with influencers on Instagram:

• Decide what your goals and budget are

• Research local influencers who have the same audience as you do

• Decide on what the campaign will look like (photos, videos, timeline, promotion, etc)

• Make sure you track the results of the campaign

Sound like something that’s doable for you? It’s actually way simpler than you probably think! Read my guide below to learn how to organize your own salon influencer campaign:

The Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing for Salons

Show off your salon’s fabulous decor to attract Instagram “aesthetic” lovers

If you’ve got a gorgeous, Instagram-worthy decor in your salon, you NEED to be flaunting it on social. And if you don’t, there are so many fun, easy upgrades you can do to beautify your space!

Nowadays, younger audiences are looking for something more in the salons they go to. Not only do they want rockstar customer service, a flawless job, and decent pricing… they also want their salon outing to be an experience.

And they want to show off about that experience to their friends and followers. Getting pampered at the spa or the hottest nail salon in town after brunch is the ultimate status symbol, and they WILL share proof on FB and Insta.

Just look at salon of these gorgeous salons and spas on Instagram - I honestly believe a huge part of what attracts their clients initially is the design aesthetic they have:

So, how can you take advantage of this? First of all, make sure you share the big and small design details of your space in your social posts. It shows that your salon is higher level, that you care about the customer experience, and that you’re generally just a cool place to see and be seen.

Also, if you’re not paying attention to your salon’s design, you totally should be!

Some super simple ways you can upgrade your interior to make it Instagrammable:

• Buy a couple of arm chairs for your waiting area that are in your brand colors

• Hang some bright, poppy, abstract art

• Make a space for selfies with fun wallpaper

• Put fresh greens and flowers around

• Make your lighting on point with oversized lamps and hanging pendants

Ready to stand out on social media and level up your decor? Read all about making an Instagram-worthy salon interior here:

How to make your salon decor "Instagram worthy" on a budget

Advertise fresh promotions to new audiences on Facebook

Have you noticed that your Facebook post reach has gone down? If you feel like no one is seeing the posts that took you forever to put together, you’re not alone!

Now that most people have had their profiles for 10 years or more, we’ve each collected thousands of business page “likes” that we’ve likely forgotten about. Each one of those pages is vying for our attention on Facebook, but we usually prefer to see posts from our friends or family as opposed to businesses.

So what does that mean? Business posts are being seen less and less on Facebook. In fact, when you post something on your page, less than 10% of your followers are probably seeing that post. So you put together a fabulous post with amazing text, publish it…

And all you got are 100 people seeing it, and about 5 likes. That’s it!

The solution that many businesses have found is to “boost” their posts on Facebook. To spent 10 or $20 and have their post seen by an extra 5000 people in their city. Sounds great, right?

However, if you’ve ever boosted a post, you probably noticed that although it’s great for getting better reach, likes, and comments, those boosted posts rarely lead to more bookings.

What you need instead is a real advertising campaign put together with intention, targeted to the right people, and optimized to get bookings.

Here’s what one of my clients said about the Facebook ad campaign we put together:

See, Facebook ads can be extremely effective if done right! You want to make sure you have all the right elements.

Here are some things your Facebook ads campaign needs in order to be successful:

• An attractive promotion that makes people pay attention and say “I need this NOW!"

• A video starring you (yes, you need to get on video) and showing them around your salon

• Ad text that hooks readers, explains what you’re offering, and tell them how to book

• Targeted towards the right people

If you’re serious about making Facebook ads work - because they seriously work SO well - then download my ebook below!

Grow your salon’s team with social posts that attract rockstars

If you’re in the process of hiring team members for your salon, you know how hard it can be to find good people! All the good stylists/nail techs/esty’s are already employed somewhere else!

There is so much turnover in the industry, and everyone is trying to figure out how to attract team members that will help them build a solid business.

But have you ever thought about using social media to scout and attract the right people?

I recently interviewed several salon owners about their secrets for employing the best talent available, and many of them said they used social media!

Whether you use Instagram stories, like Eunice from Bella Bar did:

Or you use Facebook ads to get the attention of local nail techs, like Heather from Heather’s Nail Boutique:

Or searching for skilled team members through Hashtags:

There are so many ways you can use social media to build up your business with like-minded beauty professionals.

If you want to read my full article on Nails Magazine, check it out here:

Social Media: Your New Best Recruiting Tool

In conclusion

I hope that in reading this article, you’ve got a bunch of ideas for things to post to your Instagram account; whether you’re a self-employed beauty professional or the owner of a multi-location salon. Social media gives you so much freedom to grow your business, you just need to take advantage of it and start using it as more than just a portfolio.