KEY TAKEAWAYS: Social media can play a major role in transforming your barber business from a passion project to a rollicking success. From reaching a larger audience to building a portfolio of user-generated content, social media is a powerful tool for small businesses looking to grow.
Building your barber business from a dream into a success story doesn’t happen by accident. It takes intentionality, thoughtfulness, and strategy–on top of all the hard work and time you pour into refining your talent and perfecting your technique. While there is no surefire step-by-step guide to reaching the entrepreneurial heights you envision, there are certain things you can do to move forward on your journey.
By leveraging the resources available to you and implementing a strategic approach, you can unlock your full potential as a barber and write your success story on your terms. Among these powerful tools is one that you, as a barber business, should make a priority. That’s right; we’re talking about social media.
Begin Your Barber Business Success: the Social Media Edition
How Social Media Can Benefit Your Barber Business
User-Generated Content & Reviews
There are few outlets that let you connect with your audience, including your clientele, as easily as social media does.
Staying in touch with clients is an obvious benefit, as engaging with people helps forge personal relationships and promote customer loyalty, but that is not the only positive of fostering a social media community that is adjacent to your in-person connections.
Consistent, organic content is key to a sustainable and impactful social media presence. By encouraging interaction, including accumulating and sharing user-generated content (UGC), you can grow your social media presence while recognizing the value of your customers.
These pieces of UGC (such as before and after photos), as well as reviews from your patrons, also give your barber business visibility and legitimacy to a broader audience and potential clients.
Staying Consistent on Social Media
While there is such a thing as being online too much–you don’t want to overwhelm your followers with gratuitous content–posting consistently is important when it comes to growing your social media presence and reaching your target audience.
Unfortunately, this is easier said than done for many barbers. Running a barber business is demanding, and your time and attention is often needed elsewhere. Establishing a consistent social media schedule is not always in the cards.
In situations where effectively running your barber business social media simply isn’t in the realm of possibility, working with a social scheduler or utilizing software that helps with organizing and automating your social media is worth considering.
Yes, this means you will be adding an expense that you’d likely prefer to avoid, but the potential dividends of an effective and consistent social media strategy should far outweigh the investment.
Develop a Recognizable Style
Your social media is a reflection of your barber shop, which means it needs to represent your brand and business clearly and effectively. If you have a particular branding aesthetic and voice that your barber business is known for, you will want those things to carry over to your social media platforms.
To accomplish this, you need to develop and maintain a recognizable style. In other words, there’s more to remaining consistent than simply posting on a schedule.
To start, establish a clear social media strategy that includes the vibe you want to set and the branding elements you want to include. From there, craft your captions and visuals to match that tone consistently.
The goal should be to create a social media that is instantly recognizable as being on-brand. If you are handling the content yourself, using editing apps that allow you to make and reuse presets or filters is a wonderful way to ensure your photos, videos, and branding elements stay consistent post after post.
"The goal should be to create a social media that is instantly recognizable as being on-brand."
Involve Your Clients
Outside of UGC, finding ways to involve your clients helps build your barbering community, emphasize the importance of your clientele, and provide relatable content to your broader audience.
Making before and after content, highlighting client transformations, and otherwise involving your clients on your social media (with their permission, of course) can be a game-changer. If you want to go the extra mile, you can even create a backdrop within your shop for making this content, ensuring consistency while keeping the process fun.
Learn How to Leverage SEO, Hashtags, & Algorithms
The primary benefit of social media (beyond building an engaged community) is the potential to reach a huge audience of like-minded people and potential customers. To do this, you’ll need to learn how to use search engine optimization (SEO), hashtags, and other aspects of each platform to best promote your content.
This is easier said than done, especially when it is not your sole job. To get the most out of your social media and maximize your reach, you may want to partner with a social media manager who specializes in building your profile and getting the most positive exposure possible.
If you want to grow your barber business and write your success story, we encourage you to subscribe to the National Barbers Insurance and visit our blog for more tips, tricks, and insights.
