Social media is changing the game for businesses, especially beauty brands, making a social media strategy more important than ever. 

Social media has become a vital tool for businesses to reach their target audience, but it’s easy for beauty brands to get lost in the noise. With so many other brands competing for attention, it’s no longer enough just to have strong campaigns and pretty posts. 

To stand out from the crowd, you need a well-thought-out strategy that addresses your brand and audience on a deeper level. In this article, we’ll cover how having an effective social media strategy can help you grow your brand to crazy new heights.

What is a Social Media Strategy?

Basically, it’s what it sounds like: a strategic plan to use on social media. You can’t just share your name, logo, and a few pretty pictures of your services on Instagram or Facebook and expect big results. Trust us – it doesn’t work. 

A social media strategy is a plan of action that helps your beauty business achieve its goals and objectives. It can be as simple or as detailed as you’d like but including as much information as you can only help your brand grow, show consistency to your audience, and use social media as a strategic marketing tool for your business.

Why is Having a Social Media Strategy Important For Beauty Businesses?

Social media can be the difference between thriving or fading away. It’s where people go to get information, ask questions and make decisions. You want your business to be visible in this space and having a social media strategy is the best way to ensure you are doing it correctly.

Here’s what having a thorough social media strategy for your beauty business can do:

• Build brand awareness – Your audience and potential clients need to know who you are and what you do. Of course, you’re not the only beauty business on social media, so you first must ensure your logo, brand colors, and graphics stand out from the competition. You want them to pop on screen and also have it where when your audience sees the colors or logo, they automatically know it’s you. Another way to build brand awareness and something to include in your social media strategy is to share information on what makes YOU different than other beauty businesses, such as a different technique, method, or customer service. 
  
• Build credibility – Social media gives people insight into who runs your particular beauty business, how long you’ve been in this industry, the types of services you provide, and how well you know what you’re doing. However, building credibility doesn’t stop at how much you know or the educational information you can share. It’s also about sharing your brand story. How did you get started? Why? What emotional aspect of your brand connects to the audience you’re trying to help? The way to build trust and credibility is to invite your audience into your brand on a deeper level and show they really are a big reason, if not THE reason, behind why you do what you do. 

However, this is not just about sharing content and calling it a day; it’s also about making yourself available online in case someone wants more information or wants to ask questions about what your beauty business does (such as recommending treatments). Including this aspect into your social media strategy will strengthen that connection with your audience and potential clients because they will feel that you genuinely care. Connection leads to trust, which leads to engagement, then leads to conversion. 

How Can You Create a Social Media Strategy For Your Beauty Business?

Now that you understand the benefits of creating a social media strategy for your beauty business, it’s time to get your hands dirty and create one.

Your social media strategy should include the following:

• Include specific goals and objectives for your beauty business’s social media platform. What are you looking to do or hope to happen when using Instagram or Facebook? Grow followers, increase conversations on social media to lead to conversions, hire new stylists or techs, etc.? Understanding this information will help you see if the content you share meets your goals. 
• Know who your competitors are and what they’re doing. You want to stand out in the beauty industry, not do what everyone else is doing. You can take a competitor’s idea and put your brand twist on it.
• Who are you specifically targeting? You want to ensure you know your target audience in terms of what they like and don’t like, the problems they face, their needs, and how your brand can solve these. 
• The themes of content you want to share with your audience. Sharing behind-the-scenes, before and afters, products you sell at your salon or studio, etc., are types of content to include in your strategy. 
• Include how you will keep track of your analytics. Will you be checking your insights weekly? Monthly? Bi-monthly? You want to have a plan to see if your social media strategy is working and what you can do differently if it isn’t. 
• What does engagement on social media look like to you, and how important is it? Not sure of the answer? We’ll give you a hint – it should be vital! You want someone on your team to interact with your audience daily to increase your brand awareness and your chances of having followers become clients.
• What is your budget if you plan to create social media ads? Know how much you want or can spend when creating ad campaigns to target specific audiences. The best part about social media is that the cost for Instagram ads, for example, ranges between .20 cents to $6.70 – not high at all!

What Are the Negative Effects of Not Having a Social Media Strategy?

You may be thinking, “well, I don’t have time to sit and make an entire social media strategy for my beauty business, so I’m just going to wing it.” Let us be honest – if winging is your strategy and interacting with your audience is the last thing you want to do, you might as well not even bother. We understand the busy schedules, but social media has become THE place for everything today and where people go to find new products, services, companies, you name it. 

So, not having a social media strategy in place does have a few negative side effects:

• Losing out on potential clients. We may sound like a broken record at this point, but social media is where everybody goes for literally everything. If you don’t have a well-thought-out social media strategy for your beauty business and simply post cute pictures and random quotes, no one will take you seriously. 
• If engaging with your audience is not a concern, or you only do so sporadically, you’ll lose out on current and new clients and potential revenue. The day when calling to get ahold of customer service is dwindling. People want to connect online and connect with brands using social media. If they reach out to ask questions, share their thoughts, or are looking for more information and find you don’t respond, you might as well consider them gone because you’re not keeping them interested, happy, or engaged. Losing clients means losing revenue. 
• You will miss out on new opportunities. Social media platforms offer the chance to discover new opportunities, such as finding an influencer who could help get your products, services, or beauty business out there for more to see. Social media allows you to cast a wider net to a broader audience and increases your chances of having a blogger or influencer want to learn more about your brand and share it with their audience. Without having a strategy, you won’t look reliable enough for influencers to want to work with you and miss out on that ample opportunity.  
• You can miss out on new ideas. For your beauty business to stay ahead of the competition, you must think outside the box. By looking at how other businesses in your industry use social media and what people in your target audience say, you can develop innovative ways of improving products, services, and the content you share with your audience well before anyone else. This will give your business an edge over rivals who haven’t spent any time considering such things yet.

Conclusion

A social media strategy for your beauty business can help build brand awareness and credibility with your target audience. Also, by having a social media strategy in place, you’ll be able to reach new clients and generate sales outside of your brick-and-mortar salon or studio.

However, if you don’t have a strategy in place, you may find yourself wasting valuable time trying to figure out what content is most effective or which platform works best for reaching your target audience. Or, if you’re not putting effort into what you share on social media, you’ll lose out on new clients, lose current ones, and miss new opportunities that could skyrocket your brand. 

Overall, having a social media strategy is essential for any business. But it’s especially crucial for beauty businesses that want to build brand awareness and credibility in today’s digital-heavy world. Not only does this help you reach new potential customers, but it also helps them find out more about your products and services by providing them with helpful information and making you the go-to resource for everything in the beauty industry. 

Ready to create a social media strategy but feel stuck or don’t have the time? Reach out to us at Daring Creative to learn more about our services and how we can help get you to where you need to be.