Should Beauty Businesses Be On Instagram?

Beauty businesses have invaded Facebook! It appears to be widely accepted that a Beauty business ‘needs’ a Facebook page.

We set one up, post a few deals and BOOM – we’ve over it! If this is you, don’t start an Instagram account for your business.

However, if you want to run a marketing driven business continuously inspiring men and women to look and feel their best, Insta could be the way forward!

Take a look around Instagram – search up local salons and national chains. You will see that most of them are either not there, or they are not really rocking it. I have only seen one beauty business that has been working Instagram well. This means there is heaps of space for you to grow a stronger presence than you can on Facebook.

So, how to approach. Here’s my advice:

• Don’t steal pictures. Instagram people HATE their material being stolen. Ask permission to re-post and use a re-posting App like regram.
• Be social – put aside an hour a week to follow others, like their posts and place comments, build a community. Embrace the community and the community will embrace you back.
• Use loads of hashtags, but research them first – find out which hashtags are trending and use Apps like hashme to find more.
• Use Later.com to schedule your posts – it’s too hard trying to post live all the time.
• Use the best photos you can find – it’s not Snapchat. Instagram has become more and more demanding for quality – ask suppliers for photos. Load them into Later.com from a desktop for posting at your scheduled time.
• Try and use large square image image files – Instagram ads must use images at least 1000px x 1000px. I create all mine in that size in case I want to promote them.
• Place your hashtags in a comment. Not only does this make your feed look nice and clean, it also registers as an engagement on your post. Instagram measures the speed of engagement. It’s a lot about speed.
• When you post, also post to Facebook, but when you do that – do follow the point above. Facebook users do not love hashtags.
• Use the insights to find out when your Insta followers are online – posting when they are offline is a lot like presenting to an empty room. The feed is fast – timing is crucial!

So – on to your material. On the surface, it seems that Instagram is all about the pictures. Well – it’s almost all about the pictures. Instagram is really all about the hashtags. And when I say it’s about the hashtags, it might not be what you think. This hashtag thing is quite weird, but you get used to it. Instagram is a bit weird full stop – it’s definitely a good kind of weird. I love it!

Use the hashtags that you think people will search up when they are on the Insta App – so you are looking for trending hashtags for things relating to beauty – you are NOT looking for hashtags that describe your business.

Let’s go back to that word inspiring – that’s the key here. It’s about making people feel motivated to be a part of your world because of how it makes them feel to be there. Take pics yourself of your beautiful salon and your amazing team, of your products – maybe of a treatment room and send them out into Insta world with a clever series of hashtags to attract people to you. Ask suppliers for suitable images – clean shots work well, but make sure you make it personal.

Finally, set up a posting schedule – that means to decide how often you are going to post, and every week or month, sit down and prepare your material – set it up on Later.com or any other scheduling App, research wat your hashtags are going to be – copy and paste them in and away you go! You can realistically get all this done in a couple of hours a month – 15 minutes if your images are all sized and ready to go, so get to it!

One final word of advice for Instagram – have fun! It’s social. Be social with it.