We all know the basic services every salon offers, haircuts, hair treatments, nail care, and facials. These are the essential services we think of when talking about salons.
Now that everything is about innovation and doing more than the last guy, salons are also offering specialized treatments for your specific needs. These can be services that are exclusively offered or distinctly executed. Either way, you want to get your salon and specialization the right amount of promotion it needs.
In the technological age, social media has become the go-to promotional platform that business owners and consumers alike turn to.
Table of Contents
Getting Started
If you are already an established brand owner and your business has already made its name, but you are just looking for new ways to promote your services, then you might already have a social media account and following.
You might already be familiar with posting your services and testimonials on your news feed and how much work it needs to get to the right people but there has been a new way to get this done. Facebook’s chief product officer said that stories have surpassed news feeds as the primary way users share content. According to a marketing agency, story-based sharing is 15x faster than news feed sharing. This means that you are likely to get a wider reach and more attention with social media stories than news feed posts.
What are Social Media Stories?
Social media stories are images and videos displayed in a section of many social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. They are usually 15 seconds long and last for 24 hours on your feed, although you do have the option to save them in collections.
Social media stories have become all the rage these days because they are quick to consume content that gives you a sense of intimacy with the person who posted it, this is also true for brands and companies which let them engage with their customers.
How to Use Stories to Promote
Posting your brand’s product, or in this case, your salon’s specialized service, will not only give them an overview of what you are offering but also gives your customers a sense of security when they see what they are potentially buying. You want to show them what it is and how it is done.
Videos
You can record the process of the service that you are offering and show the before and after for comparison. This helps boost the legitimacy and the quality that you are giving them.
Because of their duration, you don’t necessarily need to edit your videos heavily. You can just cut and compile them, then add some music. But you need to find a way to get them to watch the whole thing and not skip it over even if it is only 15 seconds or less.
Images
Posting marketing images on your story is a little trickier than videos. Many social media platforms offer music options for their stories, and you can put it on pictures as well, but to effectively use these images to promote your service and brand, you need to curate something that is visually appealing.
Facebook has a lot of features in its stories, but they are not nearly as extensive as Instagram’s. Since Instagram is, first and foremost, a photo-sharing platform that means that they cater to your creativity.
You can make a salon poster that shows all the necessary information your customer would want to know. There are apps that can help you create the perfect promotional material that you can put up on your stories, you have story makers that have collage-making features and Instagram story templates.
Customer Review
You can post past customers’ experiences with your service and feedback from them. You can also tag these customers so you can validate those claims. Posting feedback and reviews helps you legitimize your work and gives other potential customers assurance that you know what you are doing, and you are doing it well.
Interact with Your Followers
Social media stories also have stickers you can use to ask questions or start polls, these stickers that you can put on your content will help you connect with your audience even better. You can have a personal interaction with them through the stories that you are putting out. You can also do this to do giveaways or start contests that will engage your customers.
Swipe Up
One of the most notable features of social media stories is the swipe-up feature, many use this to link to their website, product information, your social media page, or even a map of where your salon is located. The feature instantly redirects them to the relevant page from your story.
Final Thoughts
When you are in a competitive market, you have to think of ways to keep yourself above your competitors; you can achieve this through your promotional strategies. Having a good social media presence is important but knowing how to utilize that presence gets you where you want to go. Social media stories are the best way to promote your business especially if you are offering a specialized service, you will want to highlight it and stories let you do just that!
