 Hey guys, welcome back to my channel or welcome if you're new. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Sam. I am a professional hairstylist and today I'm going to do actually an updated version of a video that I did a few years back. I'm gonna be sharing with you how to grow your clientele as a cosmetologist, a beauty professional. Really the tips I'm gonna be sharing will work for any field. So yeah, if you're just looking to grow a clientele, grow your business through Instagram, this video is for you. Nowadays, social media is how people find businesses. It's how they find their hairstylists, their nail techs, their vets, like everything. So it's really important to have not only a social media presence, but the right presence. Because not only do you want people to be able to number one find you, but once they do find you, you wanna make sure that you are being as informative as possible and providing all of the information you need to so that they can find you right away and get in contact with you. First things first, you wanna make sure that you have an Instagram page that is separate from your personal account. Now, I do think that it's good to share a little bit of your personality and get a little bit personal on your business page and share photos of yourself and all of that, but you want to keep everything specific to your business. But when people get to your page, they know, okay, this is exactly what this person does and they can see your work right away without having to shuffle through random photos of you just out and about with your family. When you're setting up your page, you wanna make sure that the username that you're selecting is easy to remember, easy to pronounce, and easy to spell. That's why I use Sam Vey on all of my social media. Vey is not my real last name, but nobody can pronounce or spell my real last name. So I knew that if people were trying to find me, wanted to look me up, they would have a really difficult time. Keep it simple, keep it specific, whether you wanna use your name in it somehow, you wanna use what it is that you do in the title. You want it to be relevant, of course, and you want it to kind of be like your brand because after a while, people are going to recognize you by that name and they're gonna refer to you by that name. So you wanna make sure that it's something that fits you well and is a good representation of you and what you do. You also don't want it to have like a whole bunch of extra letters because that can get a little confusing. Like you don't want your name to be Sam with four S's and five M's. You know what I mean? Because people might forget, like wait, how many S's is it? How many M's? Then as far as the actual name on your page because you have your username and then you also have your name that displays on your profile. And that you can change whenever you want. So for example, my username is styled by Sam Vey but my display name is Sam Vey and then I put a little line, Pocono's hairstylist. From experience and from what I've seen, it's very helpful to have your title in your display name because if people are just searching the name of your town and hairstylist or name of your town, nail tech, right? You will come up because that's in your display name. So it helps you be a little bit more searchable and I would be specific to your area in that title. You don't wanna just say hairstylist, nail tech because it's like, okay, that's just very broad. So being more specific will help you when it comes to people searching. When you are setting up your profile, I do suggest making it a business account. I don't wanna get too in-depth with this but basically in order to have a business account on Instagram versus just like a regular personal account, you have to have it linked to a Facebook page. Now, why should you have a business profile? Well, then you can view analytics which becomes very helpful. The analytics will tell you what kind of people follow you, their gender, their age range. It'll show you what days of the week and what times during those days your followers are most active. So it can give you a good idea of when you should post. It'll tell you which posts people are more engaged with, how people are coming across your page. Just tons of information that is really helpful. Having a business page also allows you to just have access to more features. So now let's talk about what you should have in your actual profile. This is extremely, extremely important. I know people just get so caught up in the photos that they have on their page and that's important too but what's more important is the information in your profile because that is gonna tell people who are coming to your page everything they need to know about you and how to get in contact with you, where you're located, et cetera. And that's also right up top. It's the first thing they're seeing, right? So there are three things that are extremely important key pieces of information that you need to have in your profile. Number one, what is it that you do? And you want to be really specific about this. You don't wanna just put cosmetologist, esthetician because that's very vague. If I'm just a client and I'm coming across that, I might not know what the hell cosmetologist even means. Think about what services do you really like doing and what services do you not like doing so much? You wanna list what it is that you do and what you specialize in and what you enjoy doing the most. If you are a hairstylist but you specifically just like doing hair extensions, make sure that you're putting that. Hair stylist specializing in hair extensions or hair extension expert, hair extension specialist. And even more specifically, what kind of hair extensions do you offer? Because there's so many different kinds. So on my page, I have colorists and then underneath that, I get even more specific. Blondes, color corrections, lived in color. I'm specifying because just saying you're a colorist is kind of vague too. Do you specialize in brunettes, blondes, redheads, fashion colors? So then the second thing that you need to have in your profile is your location. If somebody comes across your page and they cannot tell immediately where you're located, you're gonna lose a potential client. So that's why in my profile, you can see I have colorists in Strautsberg, PA. So people know the town and state that I'm in. And then I also tagged the actual salon where I work so that people know the exact salon that I'm at too. It's just also a good way to like let Instagram know. That's the thing. Instagram's algorithm has just been getting so good lately that it can understand where you are located, what it is that you do and they will push that to people that match your content and your location. So throwing that stuff in is not only good for clients who are visibly looking at your page, but it's also good for the Instagram algorithm too to be able to categorize what your page is. And then the third important piece of information you need in your profile is how to get in contact with you. Now there are contact buttons that you can add to your page. There's like a contact, a call, email, book now, all of those different things you can add, which again, you can only do if you have a business profile. So that's another reason why it's important to set your page up as a business page, but I have found from experience that people just kind of overlook those buttons. So just as extra backup, whether you want people to call to book an appointment or you want them to DM you or if there's a link where they can book online, you want to have that provided in your profile. Call for appointments and then put the phone number. Even if you have the call button, I would still put it in the profile anyway, just so that people don't miss it. So now your page is all set up. You have all the information you need. Now you need to get that content because if somebody comes across your page, they see all this information, they see that you're a colorist, you do balayage, okay, that's cool, but I need to see photos of your work. You want to make sure that your photos look good because that's the thing. Nowadays, it's not enough to just be good at what you do. You need to also be a photographer. Not to say that you need a big professional fancy camera and that you need to know how to, you know, do all these manual settings, but you just at least want your photos to be good quality. Want them to be in good lighting. You don't want a super cluttered background. I will link a video that I did where I share how I get my content for Instagram. I explain how I like set up the photos, the photo editing apps that I use and all of that kind of stuff. So if you need a little more help in that department, go check out that video. And also make sure that you have variety. Share photos of the products that you like to use. Share photos of what your salon looks like, what your station looks like. Share photos of yourself, of you working. You do want to include that personal element because people aren't just gonna be coming to you because you do good work. They want to also feel like they can connect with you as a person because if you're gonna be working on them one-on-one for an hour or more, they need to feel comfortable with you and feel like you click. Don't be afraid to share some personal information about yourself, share some photos of yourself. But again, you want to keep it relevant to what you do and professional. And when it comes to mixing up your content, you also want to have a variety of photos along with videos. One thing that I have found with all social media apps really is you want to use every feature that they offer because the more features you're using, the more you are showing that app. Because again, the algorithms are smart. You want the app to realize, oh, you are a very active, engaged user. You're taking advantage of all the features they're providing. And so they're going to give your page more attention and show your page to people more often, suggest your page to people. So the more active you can be and the more features you can use, the better for my experience. That's what's good about Instagram nowadays is you don't have to work as hard at pulling people in and finding people and getting people to find you. Instagram will kind of do that for you as long as you are providing the right information so that they can categorize your page appropriately and you're being really active on the app. Now I want to really quickly talk about locations and hashtags. Hashtags are just a way for the app to categorize different photos based on whatever it is that you're tagging. So if you put hashtag hair, it then becomes a clickable link. If you click on that, you will then go to that page with all of the different photos throughout Instagram that have also been tagged with that same hashtag. Again, this is another way for Instagram to categorize what your page is and what kind of posts you're sharing. But it's also a way where clients can search for specific things and specific pages. Let's say I'm in Boston and I'm looking for a nail salon. I can go on Instagram and I can search the Boston nail salon hashtag and every photo that has been tagged Boston nail salon is going to then pop up. And from there I can scroll through and when I see a picture that I like, I can click on it and then I can see, oh, who posted that? I can go to their page. They're a nail salon located in Boston. Wow, they do really beautiful work. Okay, I'm gonna book an appointment. They've provided all that information for me so I know exactly where they are, how I can book with them, what kind of services they provide, et cetera. Now, when you are using hashtags, you wanna be location specific. I can add hashtag balayage to one of my photos, but here's the thing. There are millions of photos under that same hashtag and these are photos from all over the world. So the chances of someone finding my page that actually lives in my area from hashtag balayage is slim to none. So you wanna be specific with your hashtags. We'll keep using Boston as an example. Boston color specialist, Boston hair, Boston hair stylist, Boston hair salon, Boston hairdresser, but you know what I mean? So you wanna keep it really specific to your location. You can do surrounding cities as well. So yeah, keep your hashtags location specific and specific to what it is that you do and use a variety of them. What I do is I just save a bunch of hashtags in the notes on my phone and you wanna make sure that you're changing it up with every post because if you're using the same ones over and over and over, that could actually potentially work against you. So you wanna make sure that you're keeping it fresh. So I would have a huge long, long, long list of hashtags that are relevant to me, relevant to my page and then every photo that I would post, I would select, you know, maybe five to 10 out of those and I would just do different ones each time. And then for locations, everything that you post on your Instagram page, you can say where it was taken from. And even if you're in Pennsylvania, in the US, you can technically tag your post in Australia. So you can pick whatever location you want. You can do just a state, just a country, a town, city, or an actual specific business. So I suggest, again, changing it up, doing your town, doing one town over, doing your state, doing your actual salon, but you definitely do want to use locations. One thing that I used to do is I would just tag other businesses in the area that weren't necessarily relevant to what I do. So if there was like a popular mall or a popular bakery, I would tag that. I have not found that that works necessarily because the thing is if people are looking up that bakery, they're not looking for pictures of hair. It's just more beneficial to just tag the town or your salon. And again, because remember, everything we're doing is talking to the Instagram algorithm. So you don't want to confuse it by tagging a business that's completely irrelevant to what you do. And then the last thing that is super, super important to keep in mind is you don't want to get really focused on the numbers. A high follower count does not necessarily equal a big clientele. You can have people following you that are on the complete opposite side of the world. They're probably never coming to you to get a service done. What's most important is how engaged people are. It's better to have 100 followers that are all liking your stuff and commenting and engaging with you than to have 10,000 followers that don't live anywhere near you and that are just like scrolling past the stuff you post. It's quality over quantity 100% when it comes to this. And the other thing to keep in mind too is that it's gonna take a little bit of time. You know, you're not gonna create your Instagram page and within a couple of days have a completely full book of clients. It's gonna take time and it's something that you have to constantly work at and I know that it's overwhelming and kind of frustrating and it's time consuming. It really is. I consider it another part of my job. As long as you're doing it right and you're staying consistent, that's the thing. You don't wanna just day one set up your page and then post like 100 photos and then just leave it. If you can't be active and be on there every day you wanna at least be posting a few times a week. Try to be as active as possible and you will start to see the clients coming in. I promise you. So that's it for this video. I hope that you guys found this video helpful. If you have any additional questions, go ahead and leave a comment down below. I will try to get back to everybody. And if you would like me to take a look at your page and just give you some pointers, see if there's any places for improvement, you can go ahead and send me a DM on Instagram on my hair page, styled by Sam Vey. And I can take a quick look at your page and just let you know how it's looking if I have any advice. I'm not an expert at this stuff by any means but I feel like at this point I've been doing it long enough that I've kind of figured out what works and what doesn't. So I'd be happy to help you out any way that I can. I would really, really, really appreciate if you would give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to my channel. Go follow me on Instagram and I will see you guys in my next video. Bye.