5 Social Media Platforms Every Salon And Spa Must Be On

5 Social Media Platforms Every Salon and Spa Must Be On

2/25/2016

Most salon and spa owners aren’t necessarily privy to all of the best social media marketing strategies.

But at SalonTouch Studio, we do constant research and stay current on the latest trends online.

For those that don’t know, every social media marketing guide begins with the same first step:

Identify the social media platforms you should be on in the first place.

Otherwise, you’re likely to burn your marketing dollars for nothing. There is nothing more important that customizing your message to fit your market.

Each of our picks in the top five is strategic. Read on to see why they are so important and get a heads up about how to properly leverage them to build your brand and bring in more sales over time.

Facebook

Everyone is on Facebook.

It is by far the largest network of interconnected users in the world. It has more than 1.5 billion active monthly users, over 150 million of them in the United States.

For the vast majority of businesses, this offers an enormous opportunity to connect with people. Spas and salons are no certainly no exception. It’s pretty obvious that the average spa or salon customer uses Facebook.

What might not be so obvious to the casual user is the vast number of ways Facebook can be used in your online marketing campaigns.

You probably already know that “Fan” Pages give you a centralized location to post brand updates, pictures, and videos. For serious businesses though, there are plenty more options.

You can use your page to send traffic to your website, offer discounts, use Facebook’s extension advertising features, and even collect addresses for your email marketing campaigns.

Plus, it is one of the best places across the web for your fans to show how much they love your service with positive reviews!

At the end of the day, there really isn’t much excuse for any modern business not to have a presence on Facebook. As time goes on, this massive company is primed to stay relevant with users for years to come.

Certainly you can count on this online juggernaut to continually improve features for the sake of average users and businesses alike.

Pinterest is a must-have profile for spa and salon brands because it is full to the brim with their target audience.

Not to mention, it’s one of the simplest social platforms around.

That does not take away from it’s power, however. On the contrary, Pinterest’s visual focus and high share-ability means the frequency of posts going “viral” is quite high.

If you don’t already know:

Pinterest is like a digital bulletin board. You can “Pin” your content to a board that you create. Then, anyone on Pinterest can share your content from anywhere on the web and pin it into their own board. This allows your content to spread across the web quickly.

Leverage this properly and it’s like having your own army of social media marketers.

On top of everything else, beauty and fashion are huge topics on Pinterest, as the majority of its users are women.

Yelp!

While this isn’t quite your typical social media platform, experienced owners likely saw this one coming.

In most markets, Yelp! is the place you’ll find the most reviews for spas, salons, and tanning salons. People online put so much stock in reviews nowadays that you really can’t afford to ignore it.

Not to mention, the search engines give a lot of credit to what reviews from business directory sites have to say about your brand. That means a great Yelp! profile can help you get ranked in Google.

Here, there really isn’t much for you to do on the platform itself.

But you still have to give it attention. Try to respond to all of your reviews.

In the case that you get a negative one, make sure that you make sure you go above and beyond to clear things up. Understand that a negative review is basically like a public complaint against your business. How you handle it will then also be public. Act wisely.

In addition, it is a good idea to encourage your satisfied customers to leave you 5 star Yelp! reviews talking about their experience. Asking is sometimes the only way to get what you want.

When it comes right down to it, the main way to do a good job on Yelp! and other platforms like it is to satisfy your customers.

Twitter

Twitter is one of the top 10 websites in the world.

It is probably the number 1 website in the world for brand building.

The use of hashtags and the platform’s ticker-tape nature creates a unique form of connection. It’s easy to tap into national conversations and trending topics with the use of Twitter Search.

As one of the leading social media across the world, you can expect the platform to continue its evolution, offering more and more ways to connect over time. If you didn’t already know, Twitter held out on major innovations for quite awhile.

Twitter is all about engagement, but they aren’t stupid.

Recently, they’ve added more tools for serious brands and businesses. In addition to the growing number of apps and web extensions, they’ve also added advertising, lead generation “cards”, and promoted videos.

While it is certainly a different animal, you can expect Twitter to try diligently not to get too far behind Facebook in its suite of features.

For salons and spas, however the main thing about this platform is that your users are likely to seek out here. Make sure you’re there when they do.

Google+ Business

Most of your target audience will never see your Google+ Business page.

Still, this platform is probably as crucial for spas and salons as Yelp! and Facebook—if not more so.

There are two main reasons for this:

Google dominates search traffic. If you want to show up on the first page for that coveted “salon near me” search, you’ll have to get yourself listed on Google with a Local Business Page. It’s also the only way to even show up in Google Maps.
It’s another big place for reviews. And once you have them, those stars show up right beside your name in the Google Maps listing. If you want to make into into your local “snack pack” at all, you’ll probably need a few to bump you up the ranks.

Smart entrepreneurs certainly don’t ignore search traffic, especially in service industries. The generally rule of thumb when dealing with search engines to cater to Google. They pretty much make the rules. It might not be fair, but it does make things simple.

Google+ is a social media platform that blurs the line between a way to connect and a way for Google to collect data and get closer to achieving an information monopoly.

Along with all of the others on this list, it is absolutely vital for salons and spas that want to make their digital marketing dollars work.

Once you have your salon or spa on these social platforms, consider your social marketing efforts on a promising path.

But just creating the profiles isn’t enough. Create campaigns and take a scientific approach with their execution.

Like any piece of the marketing puzzle, social media takes both effort and patience. However, if you do things right, it can be a great way to build your brand and grow your bottom line.

Still have questions on how to market your spa or salon, give us a call and we can point you in the right direction.

Let's continue the conversation below in the comments section. What social platforms do you think work best?