KEY TAKEAWAYS: Learning how to be an influencer as a hairstylist comes down to authenticity, consistency, and connection. By developing a strong brand voice, engaging genuinely with your audience, collaborating with peers and clients, and building long-term momentum through consistent content, hairstylists can grow their online presence and attract new opportunities both behind the chair and online. Staying relevant without sacrificing your identity is what ultimately helps you build a loyal community and sustainable influence.
Social media is a powerful tool for small businesses and aspiring influencers. From growing your business to building a vibrant community of peers and followers, there are many examples of social media transforming people’s careers and lives practically overnight.
As a beauty pro, embracing social media is essentially a must in this day and age. The marketing potential, ability to connect with your audience, and other benefits are simply too compelling to ignore.
So, whether you aspire to internet stardom or simply want to enhance your reach and deepen your relationships, becoming a hairstylist influencer is a phenomenal way to achieve your goals and exceed all of your expectations. Read on for your guide on how to be an influencer in the beauty industry!
Before we dive into the steps you can take to build your social media presence, grow your audience, and become a hairstylist influencer, it’s important to review exactly why these goals are important in the first place.
Social media is a tool that you can use to support and grow your career, show off your handiwork to a larger audience, connect with fellow beauty pros and brands, enhance your reputation, build loyalty with your regular clients, and attract new clients you may otherwise never reach.
In other words, an effective social media strategy can positively impact nearly every aspect of your career as a hairstylist. The question is, how do you achieve social media influencer status?
The Ultimate Hairstylist Influencer Guide
Develop Your Authentic Brand Voice
Before you open accounts on various social media platforms and start posting your little heart out, it’s important to take a moment to determine who you are and how you want to present your brand to the world. Developing and defining your brand identity and voice is step number one when considering how to be an influencer.
You need to stand out from the crowd by embracing your unique personality and voice, all while being true to who you are.
You don’t have to fake it until you make it; simply focus on what makes you and your story different, then integrate those things into your brand image, how you speak, the type of content you create, and how you communicate.
Engage and Connect with Your Audience
Whether you’re passionate about content creation, view yourself as a creative soul, or take pride in showcasing your work, the thing that makes social media such a potent tool is the people. Engaging and connecting with your audience is what leads to opportunities for your beauty biz and your career.
Deepening preexisting relationships helps promote loyalty, engaging with new audiences creates career opportunities, and growing a community of like-minded people can inspire, motivate, and lead to new friendships and networking possibilities.
As you engage and connect with your audience, be authentic and transparent. You want to foster genuine connections and build a foundation of trust, something that social media allows that other marketing strategies might not.
Collaborate with Your Peers and Clients
As a hairstylist, social media can open many professional doors and put you in contact with some amazing people, both in and outside of your industry. To take full advantage of this particular benefit, you should lean into the social aspect of social media and collaborate with fellow professionals and your clients.
Whether you team up with a beauty brand for a giveaway, take on a fun project with another beauty pro, or highlight your favorite beauty influencers on your page, professional connections can be a lot of fun and pay huge dividends. From making new friends and accessing a larger audience to scoring brand deals and learning new skills, collaboration is one of the best ways to grow your beauty career.
Showcasing your work with the help of your clients is another excellent example of collaboration. When your clients post about their new look or provide positive feedback about their experience at your salon, you can share their user-generated content (UCG) as social proof of your work. Be sure to ask their permission before sharing!
Build Momentum with Consistency
Every aspiring influencer hopes that one of their posts will go viral and help their visibility explode overnight. For more hairstylists, however, building momentum over time with consistent content, engagement, and brand voice is how to be an influencer.
The path to a larger, highly-engaged audience can be long, so patience and persistence are key. Stay focused by emphasizing the small victories, including the relationships that you are forging, and keep your goals (both big and small) in mind!
"You don’t have to fake it until you make it; simply focus on what makes you and your story different, then integrate those things into your brand image, how you speak, the type of content you create, and how you communicate."
Stay Relevant without Compromise
In the pursuit of a viral post, many beauty pros will hop on any passing social media trend, even if it doesn’t fit their brand identity. While there is nothing wrong with having fun and embracing relevant trends (in fact, it’s a good idea), staying true to your brand voice and your audience should override any impulse to create a post purely for the viral nature of it.
Staying relevant and up-to-date is important, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of who you and your beauty brand are!
To learn more about the beauty industry and how you can find success, be sure to subscribe to Elite Beauty Society and visit our blog!
Meet Hanna Marcus, the Founder and Head Copy Gal behind Boundless Copy, a one-of-a-kind copywriting agency that specializes in big, bold brand voice and industry-disrupting copy that’s all about resonating with the right audience.
Hanna has proudly teamed up with Elite Beauty Society for several years as their go-to copywriter on all things beauty, small biz marketing, and brand voice development. She’s big on feeling-first writing–her personal soapbox is that the best copy starts with telling a story.
When she’s not writing cheeky, converting copy for clients, she’s mentoring other aspiring copywriters and creating digital copywriting resources designed for service pros and focused on taking the stress out of DIY copywriting.
