Building Your Instagram Content Strategy

Beauty businesses need to have a content strategy for their Instagram. Building a content strategy will drive engagement and encourage potential clients to look into your services. Content marketing is cost-effective and offers great returns compared to traditional marketing programs, such as print advertising, flyers, and radio. It costs 62% less and generates approximately three times the volume of potential customers.

Your strategy will focus on the planning, creation, and delivery of your content⁠ on social media. Your goal is to create and find the best type of content to post to reach your business and marketing goals. Ultimately, you want to use it as a tool to drive new clients into your beauty business.

Before you can create your Instagram content strategy, you will need to brand your profile the way you want potential clients to see it. The way you brand your Instagram will help make the first impressions count and build your online presence. It should give an idea of what your beauty business is about and the services that you offer.

Your brand should come with a business name, logo, and color scheme, which should all be embedded in your Instagram profile. Your profile should include keywords about your business and the type of services you offer. Be sure to also include a link to your booking page and call-to-action buttons to initiate messages, booking, and emails. It gives potential clients various ways to contact you at their convenience.

What Type of Content to Post

If you’re not sure what type of content you should be posting, take the time to see what your competitors are doing on their social media channels. This is the easiest way to figure out how they are marketing to their ideal clients. See what is or isn’t working for them and use it to construct your content strategy. This allows you to find areas of improvement to make your business stand out even more.

Things to look out for include:

• How they are branding themselves (colors, tone of voice, etc.)
• What type of content are they are posting? Photos or videos?
• What hashtags are they using to promote their content?
• Which posts are doing better than others?
• How high-quality is the content?

Identify areas where you can add value and stand out from your competitors. If you think there’s a better way to capture and showcase your work, then test it out! The best part of marketing is being able to try out new things and seeing how your audience will react to it.

Now, look at your business and the services you provide. What stands out about your work that you think potential clients will love to see? Test out different images and videos to find what will drive the most engagement, while still adhering to your brand standards. For each post that you upload, ask yourself these questions:

• What is the purpose of this post? Is it to provide inspiration, promote my services, or make an announcement?
• Why would my ideal clients want to see this?
• How will they benefit from it?
• How can I add my personal touch to it?

When uploading content, consider using more video formats to show off your work. Videos are a highly effective form of content that consumes audiences across social media platforms. It was shown that 53% of customers engage with a brand after watching a video on social media. Capturing your work in motion is an effective way to showcase your skills and get all the angles that a regular photo can’t. It works in your favor to encourage more action from your ideal clients.

They are also effective at presenting the before and after shots of your work. Makeup artists, hair stylists, and nail estheticians commonly use video to capture the process from beginning to end. The audience is intrigued to see what it takes to get to the final products.

Show Integrity in Your Work

Meet Natasha Thasan, Key Makeup and Hair Artist of Allure Illona. She specializes in making women feel beautiful and exploding with confidence for weddings, special events, and photoshoots. When Natasha was younger, she was always in charge of getting her friends and family ready for events. You can say that she always had the magic touch for creating the perfect look. She enjoyed the preparation process of getting ready more than the event itself. This is when she knew she could create something bigger, thus creating Allure Illona.

Natasha started Allure Illona in 2015 but admits that her priorities were a bit all over the place especially when it came to her makeup and hair career. She calls herself the “jack of all trades” type of girl as she wanted to dabble with different hobbies. “I never took this craft seriously as it was just a side hustle,” she says. “However, my brand reflected that and lacked a consistent, strong presence.”

It was just in the last 6 months when Natasha decided to put her focus back into her makeup and hair career. “I hit a rebirth. I came back stronger than ever and more importantly, passionate,” she says. “I am solely focusing on this craft and it has been the best thing I did for my brand and well-being. I brought purpose to my life.”

With a greater emphasis on her beauty business, Natasha knew she had to put some time into her social media marketing to grow the brand presence she earlier lacked. She uses Instagram to showcase her latest work and to connect with the greater community she serves.

When it comes to building her brand on Instagram, Natasha believes in integrity. “For people to believe in you, you need to give them something back,” she says. “Choose your absolute best every time.” As she continues to grow her brand, she wants to stay true to herself, her clients, and everyone who supports her.

Natasha believes it’s crucial to provide her clients with a service that she would want for herself. She puts her best effort into each client, which is then shown on her Instagram channel. She uses the platform to showcase her portfolio, emphasizing the great detail she puts into services.

Be Consistent and Passionate

The recipe for creating your brand on Instagram as explained by Natasha is to consistently create high-quality content that you are passionate about. “With this, you’ll effortlessly align yourself with people who believe in you and your brand.”

Natasha said the greatest thing she did during her branding refresh was to post only post feel-good content. “You will never know which content will blow up, so create passionately and show off your work,” she says. This strategy allowed her to organically go from less than 500 followers to over 2,000 within 6 months.

As your brand and Instagram following starts to grow, it’s important to stay authentic and true to your brand. Natasha explains that it is expected that not everyone will align with your intentions and sometimes unforeseen situations can happen online. She suggests taking everything on social media with a grain of salt and move on.

Collaborate with Other Beauty Professionals

If you’re looking to grow your Instagram quickly and authentically, Natasha recommends collaborating with others to create high-quality projects that the audience will enjoy. “When you work with people who take their craft seriously, it’s refreshing to play apart in the synergy,” says Natasha.

Natasha collaborates with jewelers, fashion designers, and other hair and makeup artists to create the perfect curated look for each event or photoshoot she is apart of. With each of her Instagram posts, she will tag and list the other professionals that helped in the collaborations. Others will do the same thing, creating an online community of beauty professionals that work to empower each other.

You can also collaborate with other beauty professionals to create giveaways to attract potential clients and expand your brand presence. As a method of entry to the giveaway, you can ask others to repost your photo and tag a friend. With this method, your giveaway post will gain more traction every time it’s shared or reposted. More people on Instagram will be exposed to your giveaway and be enticed to share with their circle of friends.

Once you determine a content strategy that works for your beauty business, you will start to see a growth in engagement and clientele. Natasha will continue growing her brand and collaborating with the beauty community. To learn more about her business, you can check out Allure Illona on Instagram.

If you are a beauty professional and would like to be featured in future blog posts, let’s connect!