New Year Social Media Resolution (Let’s Get More Consistent)

By Kayla Zigic – Socials For Salons

Who doesn’t love a New Year’s resolution? It’s that time of the year when we reflect on the past and set our sights on the future. However, the harsh reality is that 90% of all New Year’s resolutions fail, with over 80% of individuals abandoning their goals before mid-February.

As beauty therapists, we understand the importance of setting achievable objectives for personal growth and our businesses. For many salon owners, creating consistency is a top priority; let’s explore some essential tips and tricks that you can seamlessly integrate into your social media marketing strategy.

These are aimed to help you and your commitment towards building a thriving community of loyal followers, clients, and brand advocates (and THAT is far more important than the follower count)

1.Have Clear Objectives Moving into the New Year:

Start your social media journey for 2024 by clearly defining your objectives. Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, establishing your salon as an expert in a specific niche, driving engagement, or boosting sales, having particular, measurable, and achievable goals will guide your efforts.

Whatever the goal is, it should always be top of mind when creating your content. Wanting to focus on brand awareness, you want to create sharable content that gets more eyes on your brand—wanting to drive engagement? Tell your audience to engage through your call to action. Are you looking to build your brand authority and establish yourself or your salon as experts? Create educational and saveable content.

Also, like a follow-up appointment with a client, consider setting monthly or quarterly milestones to track your progress effectively. By keeping your goals in mind, you’ll find it easier to stay on track and measure the success of your social media initiatives.

2. Create a Content Calendar:

Ever feel like you “don’t know what to post”? And when you need to post, you generally find yourself lost for ideas or panic posting. This usually is accompanied by a quick before and after, along with a closed caption like “skin goals” or “brow goals”? This is what I like to call “Panic Posting .”Posting with no real goal or objective in mind and no real strategy.

Posting without speaking directly to whom that post would benefit will continue to get you minimal engagement. Panic posting is usually caused by not having your content mapped out. Consistency is vital on social media, and a well-organised content calendar is your secret weapon and will stop panic posting in its tracks. My tip? Plan your posts, firstly, map out holidays, industry events, salon birthdays, staff birthdays, beauty celebration days, charity days or months, and anything else that’s important, and then put your posts around that.

This ensures a steady stream of content and allows you to keep that consistent goal within reach. Tools like Plann, Hootsuite, Canva, or a simple spreadsheet can help you schedule and organise your posts efficiently.

3. Embrace Visual Storytelling:

As we are in the beauty industry, you have a visual and creative advantage (yes, I said it). Use it to your benefit by incorporating visual storytelling and behind-the-scenes (B Roll) content into your social media strategy.

Share behind-the-scenes glimpses of your salon, treatment setups, and points of difference, showcase the transformational journey of your clients, or demonstrate your expertise through tutorials. Engaging visuals are taking a back seat, and video content captures attention and evokes emotions, fostering a deeper connection with your audience.

4. Consistent Branding Across Platforms:

Ensure that your brand identity is consistent across all social media platforms. Maintaining a cohesive brand image helps create a recognizable brand when your audience is scrolling. Use the same colour palette, fonts, and tone of voice, reinforcing your brand identity and making it easier for your audience to identify and connect with your content.

The best way to do this is with Templates. Canva has an incredible library of social media templates you can customise to your branding. To help save time creating content, I recommend the same templates for different types of content. Create one set template for FAQ, one template for Lists, and one template for quotes. This will chop your content creation time down in half and keep your content feeling consistent and on brand for your salon.

5. Engage with Your Audience:

This may be a light bulb moment, but social media is not a one-way street. Create a sense of community by actively engaging with your audience. Respond to comments, ask questions, and encourage user-generated content.

Showing genuine interest in your followers strengthens your relationship with them and boosts your algorithmic visibility. This two-way interaction is invaluable in building a community of loyal supporters.

6. Utilise Analytics Tools:

Want to stop creating content that doesn’t work? Knowledge is power, and analytics provide the insights you need to refine your strategy in social media. Leverage platforms’ built-in analytics tools. Analysing metrics on reach, engagement, and demographics helps you understand what works and what doesn’t, allowing you to tailor your content for maximum impact.

Review your best-performing posts from the past year based on reach, engagement saves, and shares. You usually start to see patterns in what performed well and what your audience likes seeing and engaging with. Then, start creating similar content. This is a huge game changer in creating content that serves.

7. Stay Updated on Trends:

Social media is a dynamic landscape with trends that change rapidly. Stay informed about the latest developments in social media marketing by following industry leaders who can quickly help you understand the changes and how you can adapt those changes to your salon.

Adopting and incorporating current trends into your content keeps your brand fresh and relevant. Don’t be afraid to explore new features introduced by platforms and adapt your strategy accordingly, ensuring that you remain at the forefront of industry innovation.

8. Be Consistent (duh)

It seems obvious, but consistency is vital to social media connection and growth. And when I mean consistent, I don’t mean posting every day. Consistency is being consistent with whatever you can commit to. There is no secret number to how often you should post on social media; I see salons posting daily without a strategy, getting no results.

Then, I see salons posting 2-3 times per week, with a defined plan, hitting their goals. So, it’s also ensuring you’re keeping a healthy relationship with social media and not having it feel like a tooth-pulling task. As soon as you feel like that, guess what? You suddenly don’t feel like posting.

Work out what you can commit to regarding the number of posts and what feels consistent for you, and stick to it. There is no rule here; stay consistent.

Social media doesn’t have to make you feel sick to your stomach. The journey towards social media success in 2024 begins with setting realistic and focused goals.

By incorporating these practical tips into your strategy, you start to work on your consistency and create an engaging online presence for your salon.

Here’s to a year of growth, connection, and achieving your social media aspirations. Cheers to a successful 2024! @socialsforsalons