4 minute read
Why you need a social media strategy
Alicia Humphries outlines what to think about when creating a social media strategy for your beauty or hair business.
So why is having a social media strategy so important? Well, several reasons actually…
With a well thought out social media strategy, you can create consistent brand messaging, engage with your target audience, and establish your brand’s identity and values.
Social media can help drive significant traffic to your website, leading to potential conversions and bookings. A social media strategy helps optimise your content and to maximise website traffic and generate bookings.
A social media strategy helps you identify the platforms where your target audience is most active and tailor your content and communication to resonate with them. By responding to comments, messages, and mentions, you can nurture a community around your brand and gain valuable insights and feedback.
A well-executed social media strategy can give you a competitive edge in your industry. By staying active and engaging on social media, you can showcase your expertise, stay up to date with industry trends and position your brand as the best. Monitoring your competitors’ social media activities can also provide valuable insights and help you identify opportunities to separate yourself from your competitors.
Social media tools such as the Meta business suite provide analytics that offer valuable data on your audience’s demographics, preferences, and behaviour. A social media strategy enables you to track and analyse this data, allowing you to measure the effectiveness of your content, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to improve your social media efforts.
What to consider when creating your own strategy
Before you start anything, take note of where your social media is currently at, look at your follower numbers, engagement rate, average post reach, how often you’re posting and how much time you spend on social media. This gives you a starting point to work from and will help you see your growth later on.
Your social media goals
Start with your goals, what are you hoping to achieve with your social media? Is it more followers, engagement, leads, messages? Remember, followers, likes and comments are a vanity metric; it’s pointless having 10,000 followers if none of them convert into bookings!
Think about who you want to attract
Who is your ideal customer? (Hint: the answer is not ‘everyone’). If you’ve never done this work before take some time to really think about who you want to attract to your business. Working mums, people earning over a certain amount, clients of a particular age, clients who shop in certain places etc. It seems tedious but it will help you with creating your content in the long run. What platforms do you want to be on?
Instagram only? Facebook and Instagram? Pinterest? Again, this will determine the kind of content you create later on.
Your social media content pillars could include images and videos of your work or educating your followers on skin care etc.
What are your competitors doing?
Look at your competitors’ websites and social platforms and make a note of the kind of content and messaging they’re sharing. Look at the types of content they are creating (video, static posts), which platforms they’re on and how much engagement their posts are getting.
What do you actually want to talk about?
What kind of content do you want to post? Reels, static posts etc. Now think about what you actually want to talk about, have four or five content pillars that you can move between and think about what you can slot into each pillar. For example, your pillars could be images/videos of your work, talk about your salon or work space, educate your followers on hair care/skin care etc, ask them a question, post something funny! Look at the kind of content that’s worked well for you in the past. If you don’t have any, look at what people are engaging with on your competitors’ pages.
Commit to engaging every day
Think about how you will engage with your followers. Will you be carrying out engagement work daily (which I recommend), how often will you check your DM’s etc. Use your strategy to commit to engaging every day, even on the days you don’t post. And finally, don’t forget to come back to your strategy and review it as often as you need to. I review my strategy every six months or so to ensure I’m still speaking to my target audience. You can do it more, or less, but it’s important you do it to ensure your social media pages stay focused on those clients you want to attract.
Alicia Humphreys is Owner of Pink Fox Salon Socials, who help salons grow their social media presence.
