Facebook marketing: are you fully utilising its potential?

Facebook marketing provides hair salons with a free, easy-to-use, fast promotional tool - but despite its popularity, most salons aren't using Facebook to its full potential. Lorraine Cave, managing director of salon management solutions provider Salon Tracker offers advice on fully exploiting the powers of Facebook marketing. Content is king Make your page interesting with top tips, videos and photographs. Communication is key and the more visual a post is, the better and more effective it will be. This is an ideal way to let your customers know what you’re up to by adding value to your services. And remember, you need to look professional at all times so sloppy spelling and grammar should not be tolerated. Share and share and like Encouraging customers to share likes and promotions from your website onto your Facebook page can be a very inexpensive way of marketing your business. Use competitions and interesting stories to keep your customers going back to your Facebook page to hear what you have to say. Keep posts and updates on topic Be sure to keep your Facebook posts and updates relevant to your salon business. People expect to be updated with information related to your brand and industry. What information can you provide?

• Current salon events and special offers
• Share videos and pictures related to your salon business
• Interact with your fans by answering questions posted by your fans
• Repost interesting content from other Facebook users
• Inform fans of special milestones

Engage fans by asking questions An easy way to interact with Facebook fans is to ask interesting questions. You can build relationships while increasing fan engagement. Ask questions that are easy to answer and require short responses. People are more likely to join the conversation when you ask them to talk about themselves. Include pictures in your Facebook posts People love to look at and share pictures – that’s one of the reasons why picture-sharing site Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks on the web.  Share a picture of a salon product or service; upload pictures of clients and employees and when posting about a recent event, include a picture. Share at peak times When does your Facebook page see more activity? People start anticipating the weekend on Friday afternoon. Consider boosting your activity during this time period. Invite fans to engage by asking questions about their plans for the weekend. Take the opportunity to promote special salon services and upcoming events. In it to win it Encourage fans to take action by offering a chance to win a prize, such as a free salon service or product. Be sure to check out the Facebook policies regarding contests, and understand that you will need to use a third-party app to run the contest. Measure your marketing Facebook metrics (you will find them in the admin panel) will help you to understand your fans, as well as keep track of the success of your marketing efforts. What can you measure? You can keep track of fan conversion success, unique users, clicks and activity, retention rates, fan loyalty, and more.