Nail notes

back Instagram come to Master WITH A bang

As salons and nail techs gear up to reopen their businesses, Naf! owner Tammy Koslowski shares nine tips for using Instagram to keep clients engaged and create a buzz on your comeback

1. Test and analyse to get ahead “If your focus when you come back is to grow your social, you’re going to be doing a lot more than you did before lockdown, so test now,” says Tammy Koslowski, founder of Naf! Salon in Glasgow and Instagram pro. “Doing chatty Instagram Lives with another tech or beauty therapist is a really good way to test different times of day because you can see who’s online and watching, so try different slots and see when your followers are actually on their phones.

“You can test all the time and look at your analytics to see what’s done well but remember it could be the time, type of content, your caption or what hashtags you’ve used. If you’ve been active on your Insta Stories that day, a grid post will most likely do better than if you’ve not been active, so there are a lot of factors to consider.”

2. Start scheduling now “If you use a scheduling programme, you can test very easily. At Naf!, we use Sked Social, which is a paid service. There are free ones out there but we’ve tried a lot and that one works for us. You can set a queue and post to your feed and stories really smoothly and see all your analytics easily,” says Koslowski. “A scheduler is going to be so helpful once you’re back at work because you can pre-set the dates and times of every post and story so it helps you stay consistent without having to constantly be on your phone.

“If you’ve got loads of nail photos and you want to post every day, for example, you can just spend a few minutes scheduling them for the full week. If you’re working alone then that’s even more useful.

“Automate what you can without taking the heart out of it. It’s OK to automate replies on your DMs to say ‘I’ll get back to you when I can’, but do try to set aside some time to have those conversations and get back to people. In terms of making your channels look good and keeping them consistent, though, scheduling really is the only way to free up your life.”

3. Treat your salon or yourself as a brand “You can put up beautiful nail pictures but it’s the person posting them that people really buy into. I didn’t come from a salon background. I’d done session work and friends’ nails but never worked in a salon

environment originally, so when I opened Naf!, I took the approach to our social channels of using them like you would for a brand instead of a salon account, which might usually have the sole purpose of getting bums on seats,” says Koslowski.

“When we opened five years ago, there wasn’t really a salon like this in Glasgow or nearby, so we had a different environment to show on Instagram, which got attention, and we chose to do new looks so that helped us, posting original photos.

“Clients want to see what you’re up to behind the scenes and we’ve always shown that too. I know that the word ‘authentic’ gets thrown around a lot but I think authenticity is the best way to grow your brand.”

4. Continue the brand across the team “There’s a salon in Edinburgh called Buff Concept Store that has amazing branding. They’ve got their main salon account, then all the techs have their own accounts with the Buff name; for example, @ buffcsjen. They all have the same logo on their accounts, which looks really slick,” says Koslowski.

“At Naf!, we’ve got a big team so we decided to give each tech a hashtag. Clients can follow their tech’s hashtag to keep up with them, but it gives our techs a bit of privacy. They’re employees rather than self-employed so we want to protect them from things like messages about appointments, and hashtags are a good way to advertise techs’ work without tagging their personal accounts.”

5. Tap into your client’s current mood “When lockdown started, we decided the focus shouldn’t be tons of nail photos, because everyone’s upset that they can’t get their nails done. But we also knew that the only thing that works on our main feed is pictures of nails, so we did some throwbacks of nail art we loved in the past to keep that feed going,” says Koslowski.“On our Stories, we’ve been keeping people engaged with our teams. Every weekend we’ve asked one of our techs to pick their favourite nail styles from over the time that they’ve been employed by Naf!.

“For Mental Health Awareness Week, we spotlighted local charities we’ve worked with in the past. That had great feedback from clients and a lot of shares from other local businesses. Posts where we’ve been connecting with other people have done very well too.

“It’s been nice to see everyone sharing the reopening guidelines we’ve had as well because it feels like people are united. Posts that celebrate people coming together get a lot of engagement for us.”

6. Build up an online network “Lockdown has given the opportunity for people who have had their head down working to get out there and virtually meet the people that inspired them. I’ve really enjoyed watching the whole beauty community come together during the pandemic,” says Koslowski.

“Networking is just as important online as in real life. If someone comments on your photos, comment back. If someone DMs you, reply. If they react to one of your stories, just reply saying ‘thanks so much, how have you been getting on during lockdown?’ It might not be visible to everyone on the internet but it’s all networking.

“Think about maybe doing a giveaway for when you reopen. I’ve seen a lot of people link up with local practitioners, so a solo nail tech might link with a hairdresser, someone doing brows, and someone else

doing tans and offer a package. That’s a great way to do a giveaway because someone might be entering the giveaway via their hairdresser, who they follow, but if they win they’ll be coming to see you, getting a great service and telling everyone about it. And because it’s a competition, you’re obviously asking entrants to share it on their socials so that’s a great way to get new clients and followers.”

7. Create a buzz for reopening “I recently saw a video giving a tour of a salon and telling clients what the team’s done to change things for safety on reopening and I think that’s a brilliant idea,” says Koslowski.

“Videos do so well on social because they’re good for your Instagram Stories and grid, and you can put them on IGTV and Facebook too. For video, we use a programme called Inshot, which is £11.99 per year. There are free versions out there, I just like this one because it’s really easy to make a video just with clips that you’ve got on your phone, and you can resize it for all different social platforms too.

“Just make sure that the information is set in stone for you first, because once you put these guidelines up on social and say ‘this is how we are going to operate’, you have to stick to that.

“It’s going to be amazing when everyone comes back to the salon but there will be people that are very nervous and those guidelines that you put out might be what has made them feel comfortable to come to you, so if you do stray from them you need to be aware that you might open yourself up to criticism.” 8. Use different formats “Not everyone takes in information in the same way, which is something I’ve learned by working with a team. So, you could write very informative posts but some people still won’t absorb that information. You need to make sure you’re covering all bases. So, with the example of sharing your reopening plans, I think definitely have video, some text and an infographic that you can post on your feed.”

9. Don’t beat yourself up about skipping posts “We’ve been through a really traumatic time so if you haven’t been posting on social and desperately trying to keep your business going – well, your business hasn’t been going at the moment, so it’s fine. The other side of all this creativity is that some people feel a bit left behind, like they’re not doing enough,” says Koslowski.

“You might have all these great ideas but think, ‘I’ve not posted for a while so if I post now it might seem weird unless I say something really important’ but you don’t need to explain.

“When you do introduce a new structure for posting though, stick to it and be consistent, because your followers will get used to that frequency.” PB

Tammy Koslowski is owner and founder of Naf! Salon in Glasgow, product brand Naf! Stuff and Naf! School. She’s a session tech and has more than 122K followers for Naf! Salon’s Instagram account.

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