Welcome to the Salon Owner’s Podcast, Phorest FM Episode 82. Co-hosted by Killian Vigna and Zoé Bélisle-Springer, Phorest FM is a weekly show that puts forth a mix of interviews with industry thought-leaders, salon/spa marketing tips, company insights and information on attending Phorest Academy webinars. Phorest FM is produced every Monday morning for your enjoyment with a cup of coffee on your day off.
Phorest FM Episode 82
As with any form of advertising, businesses want to be seen everywhere to maximise every opportunity to reach their target market. Whether it be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn, it has now become the norm for businesses to be on at the very least one channel. But how do you pick the good one to be on? And from there, how do you connect with your audience? This week on the show, Jennifer joins Killian and Zoe to discuss the role and the importance of social media in the hair and beauty industry.
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Transcript
Killian Vigna: Welcome to the Phorest FM Podcast episode 82. I’m Killian Vigna.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And I’m Zoe Belisle-Springer. This week we’re joined by certified digital marketing professional and salon owner, Jennifer Swaine, to tell us why it’s so important to be on social media for anyone trying to make a mark in the salon industry along with some do’s and don’ts to keep your online on track.
Killian Vigna: So, grab yourself a cup of coffee, sit back, relax and join us weekly for all your salon’s business and marketing needs. Good morning Zoe.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Good morning Killian, how are things?
Killian Vigna: I’m good, now. So, this episode’s actually a little a little close to home for you, isn’t it?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: It actually is, yeah, so, in that last, I wanna say month or so, we were hiring for someone to do social media and community management for Phorest. And so we’ve been through the hiring process ourselves and we’re happy to have someone joining our team in the coming weeks, so late August anyways and we’ll introduce her to all of you guys very soon. But, in the meantime, this episode is gonna be a great way to kind of dive into social media and what it is and why is it important for salons. How can you really use it in a way that it’s not just a fad, it’s not just like, “I’m on social and it’s cool,” where it’s actually bringing money to your salon.
Killian Vigna: So, yeah, we actually have Jennifer Swaine on the line, and Jennifer Swaine is actually the founder of Leeson Beauty Lounge, but also of Style Media. So it’s really cool, I suppose, to get a mix of an actual salon owner and certified digital marketing expert, essentially. Can’t wait to hear the story of how she kind of went from one field to the other, so, without further ado, welcome to the show Jennifer!
Jennifer Swaine: Hi Killian, hi Zoe, thanks for having me!
Killian Vigna: The reason this one actually ties in beautifully is because you’re not only a salon owner, but you’ve decided, “Alright, well, I’m doing a bit of digital marketing here for my salon, why not go down the whole route of making this a career as well?”
Jennifer Swaine: Yeah, that’s exactly what happened kind of. Now, obviously the career change didn’t work out 100% cause I’ve landed in another salon, but, I’m multitasking and I’m doing both.
Killian Vigna: But I find it great that you didn’t just kind of take it on as an extra, looking at it as going, “Oh, it’s another role that I have to do for my salon as well managing staff and dealing with stock.” What made you go down that route and go, “Well, you know what I’m actually gonna get certified in digital marketing.”
Jennifer Swaine: Well, I suppose my old salon was it got very well known partly through our social media because when we opened in 2008, it was only a few months after when the recession happened. And we jumped on the social media side of things and people weren’t really doing that much at that stage in salons, we actually had a piece written about us in the Sunday Business Post because at the time we had the biggest beauty salon Facebook page in the country.
So, I suppose, the reason I got into doing this professionally is because I saw, over the years, how powerful social media is in our industry when used correctly and that you can and do and should, get results from it as in, footfall in your front door, online sales, walk-ins, website traffic. And so, I decided to leave the salon last year and study digital marketing because even though I had a lot of practical experience, I wanted to have that piece of paper and I wanted to learn more and be able to help SMEs, mainly in the beauty industry and startups, to harness the power of social media so that their businesses would grow.
Killian Vigna: So, you’ve been doing social media for the last 10 years. Why wait until now to go down the certified route?
Jennifer Swaine: I suppose it just got to a stage where I felt like I wanted to have a bit of a change. I’ve owned salons for 20 years, different types of salons like I had nail bars and hair salons and I had the bigger salon and, I just decided… because I have a lot of friends that own beauty salons, big and small, and I have also got a lot of friends that own beauty brands. And I would have, over the years, especially the last few years, had people ask my advice on their social media and how to grow it, how to use it properly and how to use it so it puts money in the till because at the end of the day, when you’re an SME, that’s what it’s all about.
So, I decided to go into it full time and have a career change. Now, some of my friends laugh at me and say it was a midlife crisis, but it was not a midlife crisis, it was literally time for a career change, so I decided to study it. So, I have that piece of paper and then I could go in and… I’ve always had my own businesses and I just wanted to start new and different business.
Killian Vigna: And even though you’ve only just got that piece of paper and studied it in the last 12 months, you still have 10 years worth of knowledge to support you, to back you up because that’s the beauty of digital marketing, it’s one of those things where it’s just trial and error. So, it doesn’t matter if you’ve kind of studied in college, it’s how long have you been working in that game.
Jennifer Swaine: Absolutely, and I think that’s why people would listen to me and value my advice because not only have I got the qualification, it’s more to do with the experience and knowing, because I’ve done things that didn’t work and I’ve done things that do work within social media. So, when I sit down with business owners, I can give them valuable advice from a personal point of view and I can tell them the rights and wrongs because I’ve done both sides of it.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: People love to be social on social media but there’s also that, how do you get that money in the till, aspect from it. And since the rise of it, I mean, loads of businesses have moved onto it. Would you find that there is some sort of saturated market now that everyone’s on it or how do you cut through the noise as a salon owner?
Jennifer Swaine: Not at all. I don’t think it’s a saturated market at all, I actually think that it’s essential in business now because everything has gone digital and it’s not going anywhere, it’s just gonna get bigger and bigger. I think the thing that people need to do with their salons, with their social media is, there is a lot of competition out there, there’s salons opening every day, hair and beauty salons and people need to harness the power of the social media with regards to showing what they do that’s different from the salon that’s down the road or around the corner. To showcase that they may have different treatments and to showcase their staff because essentially, people buy from people.
So be able to showcase your staff and their specialties is a big way of getting business in the door, and that’s what it’s all about, there’s no point in doing social media just because everybody’s doing it. That’s not what it’s about anymore. It was that way at the beginning, but I think now, people see the power of it, they see that they get results from it, they see that they get sales and they see more money in the till. So, it’s essential in business now.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, and I like the fact that, even though we’re kind of saying it’s a saturated market, but you’re saying it’s not really, you still need to be there. I suppose what we’re saying from that is, I remember when social media first started for businesses and every second post seemed to have been a like and share, so it was very aggressive nearly. Where now, even though everyone is on it, it’s who’s providing the best value and you can kind of see through those guys who are just trying to get you to like and share a campaign for the sake of it, there’s no value through it.
Jennifer Swaine: There’s not, and people get bored with that, so what I would always say to my clients when I’m running their social media is, “The whole point of social media is not the hard sell.” Obviously you have to post if you have special offers or if you have something new in the salon, but that’s more of and educating so the whole point behind social media, in my mind, it’s to educate, to entertain and to give people information and to have interaction between you and your clients. And then, that’s when social media really works, whereas, if you’re always just about the hard sell, and people will get bored of it, they won’t… I would always tell people that you have to educate and entertain.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: In a few podcast episodes actually a lot of owners and small managers are saying, “Yeah, social media is a big part of our customer service because so many of our new clients have been following us or have been interacting with us for months and months and months before they even step into the salon for the very first time,” so it’s almost like an extension of all of that. All of your services.
Jennifer Swaine: It is, and I think for a huge part now, especially in the hair and beauty industry, if somebody hears about a new salon, a huge percentage of people will go online and they will look at their social media before they would even look at their website. So social media shows the human side of your business, obviously a website is about information and they’re essential a lot of the time, but with social media because as I always say, I’m like a broken record, people buy from people. So, your social media is a fantastic way of showcasing the human side of your business and then, that in turn will drive business, will drive traffic to your website. So, you have to use it in a very clever way and then it’s a circle, then they all drive business to each other and that then, gets business in the door.
Killian Vigna: So, we’ll talk about kind of implementing strategy for your social media a bit later on in the show, but just to take it back a little bit more, when we talk about social media, obviously you’ve got kind of the main players like Facebook, Instagram, but there’s actually loads of different channels out there. So, as a salon owner who’s new to this sort of game or is trying to find where else to branch out to, how do you know which social media channels to limit it to?
Jennifer Swaine: Well, again, it comes down to not doing certain social media just for the sake of it since there’s so many different platforms out there, like you say. In our industry, Facebook is always going to be huge. It’s a bit more difficult now, in the last while, to get people to see your posts on Facebook, you have to have interaction for it to get out there more but still, it’s the number one social media platform that salon customers use. And then you have Instagram, which now obviously is huge and it’s a great way of showcasing your work and it stays there, it’s easy for people to go on and see your whole feed and go back and look in your history.
You have Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, YouTube, there’s so many different platforms, but you have to, even if maybe you don’t know exactly where your clients are, you have to decide which ones you’re going to harness the power of. Give it a try, count everything, check your analytics. If something isn’t working, don’t continue and don’t waste your time and your money and move on to another one.
Killian Vigna: Maybe for you salon, how did you go about deciding the right… did you have to limit how many social media channels you had or did you just go, “All right, let’s throw everything on everything first and see which one, I suppose. Let’s throw all the bait into the pond and see what the fish bite on, essentially.”
Jennifer Swaine: Not really. I think what you need to do is research and see which social media channels are working more, especially in our industry and rather than wasting time and throwing everything out there, I would always say to clients it’s like, “You might as well throw leaflets out of the bus of a window and hope that someone that’s interested will catch one.” Or it’s like… you know, that’s true! So you have to decide what you’re gonna use and maybe use a couple. I mean, you can put the same posts out on different social media platforms without doing the copy and paste or without doing the link. There’s nothing worse than seeing on Twitter a link to Facebook or Instagram because people are innately lazy now and they want… everything is instant… so, what I would always recommend is to post about the same things on social media, but you have to change them up for every social media platform that you’re using.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So for instance if we said, let’s take the Client Experience Award, cause that’s been happening loads recently. So, on Instagram you can take a photo of your team, cause obviously Instagram is way more visual than anything else, but on Facebook you could actually explain how the award works. Is that what you kind of mean?
Jennifer Swaine: Yeah, exactly, like when I post something on Facebook and you can explain it more in terms of how you would actually speak to somebody and you don’t use hashtags the same on Facebook. And then on Instagram, it’s definitely quicker and it’s a lot about hashtags and about the actual image. Twitter would be more business to business and you use hashtags, obviously, on Twitter as well, but it’s to tag the right people, maybe products that you use, your suppliers and to make sure that you’re interacting with the right people so you’ll hopefully get shares and reposts and retweets and then, it just gets out to a much wider audience.
Killian Vigna:Â Just on that… So I suppose salon owners are probably looking at this going, “Right, all these accounts, who are my client base, who are my audience,” trying to identify what accounts they’ll be using. But what are your thoughts on getting your stuff involved for sharing your salon’s brand or even, I suppose, self-promoting their own work?
Jennifer Swaine: I do think it’s a great idea. I think you have to be careful with it because sometimes it can end up being more work for you… with regards to spending time on the social media, because it used to happen to me. You’d have to check the post that someone put up because often, it just happens somebody may not be as on point as you about … cause your language and your branding are so important on your social media. So you don’t want somebody using, even if they’re working in the salon, they might not get the language and the branding that you’re trying to get out there. So you have to be careful, that you have someone that’s using the right language, that’s using good grammar and isn’t bad spelling cause that looks awful when it’s put out on social media.
So, whereas I do think there’s a great way of getting your staff involved, with regards to say Insta stories or Snapchat or Facebook Live, because that’s a very instant and it’s a personal, not being personal but being more human, whereas the posts that go out there, that are permanently there, that can be harder to let other people control as well.
Killian Vigna: So would it be nearly worth, I suppose, to find one of those free online social media courses and getting your staff involved in doing them because, while everyone is great at kind of promoting themselves on social media and how great their lives are, it’s a business at the end of the day so it’s kind of slightly different how you do social media.
Jennifer Swaine: It is, and what you don’t want, and I see sometimes mistakes with salon owners where there’s a big different between being human and being personal, if you know what I mean. You want your staff to be posting maybe on the live feeds about themselves, introducing themselves and maybe, “My name is Jennifer and I specialise in nails and I absolutely love nail art.” So from that point of view, it’s fantastic to get them to interact. I don’t know if you necessarily need to get them to do an online course.
If you’re good at it yourself, I think it’s very beneficial to sit them down and have very specific ways that you want posts put out there on different forms of social media. And just make sure that your staff %100 understands the tone that you want to put out there on your social media because tone is very important with regards to, maybe some salons, like a spa type salon, want their tone to be all about the relaxation and the luxury and all that end of things. And then you might have a salon, like my current salon where it’s very casual, and it’s buzzy and all that tone comes across very strong on social media.
Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Let’s say I’m a salon owner and I’ve thought about my current client base, I’ve thought about the audience that I wanna reach on social, how do I go about, say, creating an actual digital marketing strategy? At what frequency should I be posting, is there any tips and tricks to create an actual strategy behind it, whereas, most people would just kind of go, “Oh, I’ll just post here on Instagram one day and this other day on Facebook. Oh, and I haven’t posted on Twitter in a very long time, let’s do that tomorrow.”
Jennifer Swaine: Yeah, I see that all the time and it’s because so many business owners are so busy with the day-to-day running of their salons, or any business, that they would find it hard to have a defined strategy. And it’s very important, what you need to do is, you need to first of all choose the social media platforms that you’re going to use. And there’s no point, maybe in, using Snapchat if you’ve got maybe a more mature clientele. Cause some salons do, they have a certain age-group that comes into them and you have to realize that maybe that age-group aren’t on certain social media platforms.
I think people need to sit down and definitely schedule, I always, always tell people to schedule because if you’re on the reception desk or you’re in doing facials and the day runs away with you, and that can happen a few days in a row, consistency is so important in social media. So, defining your goals, sitting down and doing a plan, Monday to Sunday, of what you’re gonna post every day. Be it pictures, be it a video, articles that you’re taking from the media to share about relevant topics and definitely have defined strategy and schedule.
So then at least you know that it’s gonna be consistent, you’re gonna have the relevant amount of posts on each platform every day and then you’re gonna have the days where, you might have something happening in the salon, where you’re gonna be able to post as you go or you might do a bit more of live Facebook or Insta stories or Snapchat, where, you can then kind of post as you go as well to show relevance and what’s going on in the day.
Killian Vigna: So realistically, how much time are we looking at here? So, you’re saying kind of, at the end of the week or even at the start of the week, do up a schedule: your Monday to Sunday of your posts, your main posts and then you’ll have your ad hoc posts on the day. How much time are we looking at, setting aside, to kind of plan this out?
Jennifer Swaine: I think it will take a couple of hours a week. Believe it or not, people don’t realize that when you start to post as you go, you can actually take up more time because if you put yourself under pressure, it’s like people get writer’s block. If you’re putting yourself under pressure to put certain posts out there because you feel, “Oh, Monday and Tuesday, I never posted, so I better do some today,” you actually take up more time because you’re trying to be creative, you’re trying to find relevant images, you’re trying to make videos or make moving images and brand them and everything.
So, the best thing to do is pick a day, block book out on your Phorest system, that that’s the couple of hours, two to three hours, that you’re going to do your social media for the whole week ahead. Know what’s coming up whether it’s Mother’s Day or Easter or anything relevant that you can post on social media, where it’s relevant to what’s going on at the time and just schedule a week ahead. It scares people a little bit at the start, but once people start to do it, they see a huge difference. And then you can schedule the posts to go out at the best times, when people are going to be online, when people are going to see it and you’ll actually get much better feedback from your social media.
Killian Vigna: I suppose that it also helps you keep a running theme if you want to work it with that way, by sitting down and running your strategy, you see a global view of your week and you’re not trying to think, “What did I do last week on this channel, what did I do two days ago on this channel,” because you could be managing four or five different accounts here. So it just keeps it all into place with one.
Jennifer Swaine: Yeah, absolutely, some people put out too many posts as well. You don’t have to put out… You can put out too much and you can end up where people almost feel bombarded. So, when I say schedule posts, a lot of people think they have to be scheduling loads of posts every day on every platform. You don’t. You need to sit down, do a little bit of research, it’s well worth it, know how many posts should go out on each platform in a day. Know, on those platforms, what their optimum time is to send them out there, to get the best interaction and then, once you get into the swing of it and you start doing that every week, it gets much easier.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So, yeah, would you have any tools that you would particularly use? I’ve personally written about Buffer before or Later or Crowdfire and all these different things, but given your loads of industry experience, have you noticed anything that works particularly well for salon owners?
Jennifer Swaine: I think people need to use the most simple ways of scheduling and Facebook, obviously, you can schedule on the platform itself. Buffer, Hootsuite and only [inaudible 00:21:34] one that I would have used for Instagram, they change all the time. Later is a new one that I’ve started to use and I find good. So what I would suggest that people do is keep an eye on social media experts. Keep an eye on what people are recommending because it does seem to change quite a bit and I even, personally do that myself. I would keep an eye on other social media experts and I will always do a free trial and see what something is like before I change over to it all together. But it’s so quickly changing and there’s always new things coming in that what I would recommend is to keep an eye on it and do the free trials with different platforms for scheduling and find what works best for you.
Killian Vigna: So would you have any websites you’d recommend, other than the Phorest Blog of course, to keep on top of new social medias or anything like that to try out?
Jennifer Swaine: Yes, well I always check the Phorest Blog, obviously guys. There’s different people that I’d keep an eye on and you’ve put me on the spot now, I’m trying to think of their names off the top of my head. Kim Garst is a good one, she deals with Facebook. I’m trying to think of other social media websites that I use. The Social Media Today, I think is one of them, Social Media Examiner, Buffer blog. The Digital Marketing Institute, which is where I did my studying, they always have great tips and hints on different platforms and new ways to use social media as well.
Killian Vigna: So, Jennifer, you’re obviously an early adopter of social media, you’ve been doing it for the last 10 years, you’ve been doing it before most… well, I don’t know, I’m not gonna say most, but before a lot of salon owners would have. Could you give our audience a bit of a breakdown? So, I suppose anyone out there that’s not utilising all of the accounts or might just have a Facebook page or a Twitter and thinking maybe expand onto different accounts, could you give us a breakdown on the different social media accounts that you’ve tried and tested and why you may or may not want to use them?
Jennifer Swaine: Yeah, okay. Well, obviously the first one and it’s the first protocol for most salon owners, is Facebook. And a lot of the time it’s where most of your customers are. As I said it’s a little bit difficult with Facebook now, more difficult than it used to be for reach, so what you need to do is try and encourage your clients to interact with your Facebook posts. So you can do, obviously there’s competitions, but ask questions. And we’ve got a huge amount of stuff to work with owning salons cause you can talk about skin care, hair care, nails and get people to interact on your posts. Use Facebook Live, it’s massive.
If you use Facebook Live, and use it for entertaining things, people like to see you even having a bit of a giggle with your staff in work, once you keep it professional, and then if you post that up as a post… you can get huge interaction with Facebook Live. Try and use a video as your cover picture rather than just a picture and Facebook ads are great, a lot of them boost some posts because it’s more targeted. And don’t put loads of hashtags on Facebook, it doesn’t work really the same as other platforms. But Facebook is a great way to show your human side to your customers.
And Instagram, Instagram stories are massive, again, I would try and suggest that what people do on their Instagram pictures is to brand everything, try and keep to the same tone cause then your feed won’t look messy and it’ll be more attractive, easy on the eye and more people will go back to your posts and look through your feed. And always, if you’ve got a really good Insta story, put it into your favorites now and make sure you put a heading on it, whether it be New Nail Art or New Facial and New Products Coming In. Or again, things with staff, if you put your pretty pictures on your feed, would save other things now if, like I was saying, if it’s more casual or having a bit of fun in the salon, put it into your stories and into your favorites.
Twitter is much more business to business, so, I would suggest interacting with suppliers on that, with influencers, with magazines, with media, just to get the name of your salon out there and that’s how we… I’m even doing that with my current salon. It’s gotten pretty well known to Twitter. I would follow magazines, influencers, retweet relevant posts and retweet them with a comment, and again, use different languages for the different platforms. Snapchat is still a very young platform, but that’s one that might be worth your while. Let your staff get involved in putting Snaps out there.
And also, with all your social media, you should ask your clients for referrals, ask them to tag you in pictures that they put up. They are really great ways of growing your brand. You’ve got free marketers out there, if that makes sense?
Killian Vigna: Yeah, brand ambassadors, nearly.
Jennifer Swaine: Yeah, if your clients are out there talking about you and posting pictures about you, you’re gonna get huge reach.
Killian Vigna: What are your thoughts on YouTube now, because it’s kind of gone from, where people make YouTube videos and they put it out through their social media accounts to, now you can just upload videos directly to Facebook.
Jennifer Swaine: Yeah, I think it’s probably an advancement of social media in our industry because a lot of people, I know from talking to people, feel that it’s more time consuming. It isn’t necessarily more time consuming, it’s like anything when you get used to using it. It looks good to have your own YouTube channel. And then, what happens is, once people look at one of your videos, they will get a prompt to look at more of your videos, so the more videos you’re uploading… So let’s say it’s a hair salon and you’ve got new colour techniques or new upstyles, you’re gonna upload all those videos and when people see one there’s more chance they’ll go in and watch the rest of them.
LinkedIn, what I would suggest people do in there is become part of a Pod because if you become part of a Pod on LinkedIn, your reach is much bigger. I’m part of a Pod and I’ve actually gotten business out of it and because any of the posts that I put up are getting much further reach.
Killian Vigna: For anyone that’s not too familiar with a Pod on LinkedIn, what exactly is that now?
Jennifer Swaine: So, I’m part of a Pod on LinkedIn, so it’s part of a group and we post at the optimum time so we’re called the Monday/Wednesday/Friday group and what happens is, when I put up a post, we have a private discussion on LinkedIn as well. So when I post a post on those days, I’ll share it in the private discussion, and then all the guys that are in the Pod will share it or like it or comment on it, and it means that your reach… you get much more views, much more interaction and people see you a lot more by being part of the Pod. So that’s something that I’ve only gotten involved within the last few months and I have gotten physical business from it, it’s really worked well for me with the social media sides.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: I’ve actually heard this for Instagram.
Jennifer Swaine: Yeah, I became part of one in Instagram mostly with beauty bloggers that are friends of mine. So like that, it’s basically to try and beat the famous algorithms. So it’s almost like your support network, so, if you have a support network and you let them know that you’re posting at certain times, you share your posts with them in the private group and then, once they comment on it and like it, your reach is much further.
Killian Vigna: That is interesting, actually, it’s almost a step beyond with your whole analytics tracking then.
Jennifer Swaine: Yeah, it is, I mean, I always keep an eye on analytics and if I’m posting and things aren’t working at certain times, I’ll post them at different times. But if you can get a group around you, it’s hard to get other salon owners around owners around you, but business owners. So maybe your suppliers that you get stuff from, relevant people in the industry that you can set up a Pod with, so you’re all in agreement that you use this private networking end of it to share all your stories and then, just say to people, “Hi guys, good morning. I’ve put this post up,” and then, the other people in the Pod will go in and share it, comment on it, like it and your reach explodes.
The whole point of it is I think, and this is one thing that a lot of small business owners wouldn’t understand, not understand, but they haven’t really got the time to look into it, you can do everything you can on social media platforms but there are algorithms in there, obviously. You have to find ways to kind of get beyond a certain reach because, for instance with Facebook, if you’re just putting up posts and posts and posts and maybe no videos, and if you’re not getting people commenting and interacting with your posts, what will happen then is a lot less people will physically see your posts because Facebook won’t show them to as many people.
So it’s so important across all social media platforms now more than ever, to encourage interaction with followers and you will get much more reach. Which means that your brand is getting out there for because at the end of the day, is what your business is, it’s a brand.
Killian Vigna: That’s absolutely brilliant, Jennifer. So, just before we close the show today, do you have any, I suppose, tips or points for our audience listening today to get started with social media or maybe, kind of some tips to give it that little bit of, I suppose, oompf?
Jennifer Swaine: Yeah, social media definitely needs oompf. Just remember the important tips, that your social media is there to entertain and educate, and give information to your clients. Try and be fun on it, honest and be personal, maybe personal is the wrong word, be human. Again, I’ll say it, people buy from people. If you haven’t done it yet, try and do show your team. Show what their specialty is. I guarantee you those team members will get more bookings. Just try and be entertaining, don’t do social media for the sake of it because that’s very transparent now. Either do a bit of research, learn about it, know exactly how to use the different platforms.
If you’re not sure on how to use a platform, don’t use it until you’re sure about it because it actually looks worse to do something halfway than to do it properly. And just try and enjoy it, don’t be overwhelmed by it. Schedule, do a plan of action and make sure that your social media does two things: one is to build brand awareness and two, is to drive traffic to your website and to your booking system, like Phorest. There you go, what a way to end.
Zoe Belisle-Springer:Â Perfect ending.
Jennifer Swaine: You didn’t even ask me to do that, that just came out naturally.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Hashtag not an ad.
Jennifer Swaine: Hashtag not an ad!
Killian Vigna: Well, listen Jennifer, that’s absolutely perfect and again, thanks very much for joining us on the show today. So, hopefully that’s kind of shed some more light about why it’s so important to have social media in the salon industry because, like we were saying at the start of the show, some people might feel like it’s a saturated market and maybe it’s too late to get on board it. But, listening to Jennifer today, it’s absolutely not as long as you can put a strategy into place and find out which social media channels work for you. Don’t put yourself on all of the channels, don’t spread yourself thin and doing it for the sake of doing it, and especially don’t put content up for the sake of putting content up. Strategise, put a plan in place and just work with that.
Jennifer Swaine: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me guys!
Killian Vigna: Thanks very much. So that was Jennifer Swaine from, as we already mentioned at the start, Leeson Beauty Lounge and Style Media in Dublin, and moving on to the second half of the show now, so, this is the Zoe part.
Zoe Belisle-Springer:Â I love it how you call it the Zoe part. You’ve literally rebranded what was the Phorest Academy Webinars section.
Killian Vigna: I kind of got used to the whole stage of like, when it got to this stage, it’s pretty much I just kind of clock out.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Now, to be honest, it’s great that you mentioned that today because we don’t actually have a Phorest Academy Webinar, but what we do having going on, is the #SalonRetailWeek, which kicks off on August 20th. So, exactly six days from now and the idea of this whole challenge, it stems from the 30 Days to Grow challenge. So you remember in April, it was to get you to increase your average bill, your revenue and learn things about your staff, your team, yourself.
And so, this is the same kind of community, same engagement, same way of functioning, so we’re sending you an email per day for seven days, but it’s all focused on retail and the idea is that you pick a product or product line and sell it out by the end of the week. Now you can register for this challenge on www.salonretailweek.com and you’ve probably seen the ads anyways on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, pretty much anywhere that we’re on. So, if you wanna sign up for that, that’s free, any team can participate, from anywhere in the world. It’s all online and of course, we still have a group for you to collaborate, exchange, network and all that.
So it’s the same Facebook group as the #30Days2Grow Facebook group, so there’s already over 1,200 salon owners, managers, therapists, stylists, you name it, ready to exchange, ready to take on the challenge. So if you wanna sign up, like I said, www.salonretailweek.com, we’ve got great prizes this year as well. This is the first time we’re running this challenge. We’ve got prizes for team day outs and night out, we’ve got vouchers for the Salon Owners Summit and so, all the details are on the website and, like I said, it is free to join.
Other than that, quick announcement, trade show season is coming up real fast, so if you wanna know where Phorest is gonna be at, if you have any questions around Phorest or wanna try out the features or learn more about it, like I said, we’re gonna be at a few trade shows in the next few months. So to get a list of where we’re gonna be at and on what booth and what day, go onto our Facebook page in the events section. Nothing’s coming up in the next week, don’t worry, that’s why I’m not announcing anything, but you can have a look there. We’ve announced that we’re gonna be in London and in Dublin, in the next few months.
So listen, that’s it for us today, as a reminder, we’re now on Spotify, you can save our Podcast as a favorite there. If you have any feedback, feel free to leave us a review on iTunes or on Stitcher, we’re always looking for suggestions on how to improve the show, otherwise have a wonderful week and we’ll catch you next Monday.
Killian Vigna: All the best!
Thanks for reading!
#LetsGrow
