Social Media’s New Role
Posing under the Arrojo Salon Twitter handle, featured on the wall to create a space for candid salon shots, are Kelly Rowe, Arrojo’s social media coordinator; Andrew Arrojo, the digital director; and Corrinn Dian, a salon stylist who is incredibly active in the salon’s social media outlets. When asked to list various positions in the salon, a typical owner may rattle off titles like “manager,” “color director,” “product educator,” or “spa director.” Now there’s a new title in town — digital director. Don’t have one yet? You will soon. Digital directors can be full-time staff members, part-time experts hired from the outside or professional consultants. But what, exactly, do they do? It depends on the salon. But salon owners recognize the need for a serious commitment to their social media platforms and websites, and are hiring digital directors to suit their salon’s specific needs. At Arrojo Studio in New York, Andrew Arrojo (brother of owner Nick Arrojo), serves as digital director. In this position, he writes a lot of the salon’s blogs and oversees its huge social media presence with the help of a social media coordinator. Andrew elaborates, “Currently we have 15,000 Facebook fans, 13,000 Twitter followers and 1,800 Instagram followers. Style Noted receives 60,000 – 80,000 visits per month– a mix of 70 percent potential clients and 30 percent stylist community.”
Just how did Andrew manage to get thousands of followers to tune into his message? Definitely with a little creativity and innovation at the right time– we also discovered a few essential tips on getting you started.
- Invest the time and resources in directly managing your content
- Focus your efforts. Pick no more than four social media platforms. Each with a specific purpose and message format.
- Start a blog and post two to four times a day.
- Embrace social media’s ever-changing nature and stay current with trends.
- Invite creative ideas from your younger stylists, they are your most valuable technology-savvy resource.
- Keep close to what your customers want. Educate stylists to make it part of the conversation with their guests.
- Be careful not to over-post, cluttering your client’s feed will result in getting you turned off.
- Be strategic when choosing those who you follow, they will help elevate your social media profile but should reflect your quality image and culture.
Managing Your Message
Social media and blogs have quickly become THE place to communicate with the world. Online is where clients and stylists reside– whether you want to send out a quick tweet about a product promotion or Instagram an amazing haircut. Andrew recognized this years ago and continues to strive to stay ahead of the curve. “The important thing was to be able to share our message, both as a company and as hairdressers,” he says. “We wanted to be a leader, and now because of the digital revolution, every company can become the publisher of their own story. If you can produce high-volume content, clients can recognize who you are and what you stand for. They can understand your mission and our philosophy.” When the Arrojo brothers witnessed the digital world emerging around 2010, they invited 30 of New York’s biggest bloggers into the salon, treating them to services and showering them with free products. “We were one of the first ones to jump on that, and the bloggers wrote about our salon and services which gave us traction in the digital marketplace, which helped grow our social media networks exponentially,” says Andrew. Since then, the salon has built a strong presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr and launched their creative hair inspiration blog, StyleNoted.com, and post four times daily on Monday through Friday and two per day on Saturday and Sunday. Now, Andrew tries to empower his staff to use Arrojo social media to promote themselves and the brand. “For example, we placed a sign with the salon’s twitter handle, ‘@Arrojo’ sign on one of the walls in the studio. We encourage stylists to take smartphone pics of their clients under the sign, post it on their own social media and tag Arrojo, so our in-house social media coordinator can pick up the image and share it through the Arrojo networks,” he says. In addition, Andrew encourages stylist submissions on the blog. “When a member of the team creates a nice image, they can send it to me, and I can write it up and post on StyleNoted with credit for the stylist,” he says. “Over half of the StyleNoted audience is from the tri-state area so it’s another way our stylists can promote themselves to potential clients, using Arrojo social media.”
Picking Your Platform
With the sheer volume of social media outlets these days, it can be hard to figure out where to focus your efforts. Clientele, location and your stylists’ comfort level with various platforms will all affect how you determine what platforms make sense for your salon. At Arrojo, the focus is on three main outlets: “We use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram every day,” says Andrew. And he says for each outlet, there is a purpose:
- “On Facebook we post the image and intro to our StyleNoted posts as well as all of our educational classes and salon promotions.”
- “Twitter is such a fast-paced medium that we can post things from across the whole brand, from events to stylists’ work to product launches to StyleNoted posts to sharing inspirations from our Arrojo Ambassador salons (salons that carry Arrojo products).”
- “Instagram is visual, so it’s the best place to show quick snaps of stylists’ work. We are educating our team to use Instagram like the new business card.” Andrew also maintains Instagram is much better than a business card because a potential client can see a stylist’s work.
“Social media is effective in general because it’s quick and personal,”
he says. “It feels friendly, not corporate. But more pertinently, for a brand like ours, it allows us to be the publishers of our own evolving story.” For example, Andrew tells followers Nick is in California doing a product knowledge class for a new Ambassador, or they post pictures on Instagram of the sample packaging of new products that are in development. “People seem to like being ‘in the know’ about what’s happening behind the scenes,” says Andrew.
STAYING ON TREND
One of the big struggles salon owners and their staff have with social media is its ever-changing nature. It’s not a problem you can easily find a solution to, fix and walk away. This is where young stylists in your salon can play a big role. Andrew relies on his young stylists’ creativity and savviness often when it comes to social media. “Up until this year we were mostly using Facebook and Twitter, but when we saw so many of our stylists getting into Instagram we knew we had to adopt the medium for ourselves,” he says. But he’s also paying attention to what his clients want and need from social media, too. This is why he stays aware of what is posting and is careful not to over post. “If you’re cluttering up your client’s feeds with multiple posts a day they will soon get turned off. So it’s important to edit yourself, too,” he says. There’s one more group of people on social media you need to think about — those you follow. “Following the right people can help grow your social media profile, and we do try to be strategic in that area,” says Andrew. “Mostly though, we let it grow organically through the quality of what we do and the snowballing effect of the medium. “We educate our stylists to make it part of the conversation with their clients, not some kind of hard sell in the same way we ask stylists to talk to clients about product in a conversational way.” An Arrojo stylist may say to a client, “If you check out our Instagram page we’ve been posting pictures of some of those hair colors you said you liked. Take a look and let me know if there’s anything you want to try.” Everything Andrew Arrojo is doing at Arrojo Studio may seem overwhelming at first glance, but he’s spent years building his blog, gaining followers, and figuring out the strategies that work best for the salon. Spend some time talking to your staff, especially younger members who are active on social media. Talk to clients, too, and find out what their social media habits are. And remember, your social media journey will evolve month after month, year after year. Enjoy the ride.