The salon and social media
Tony has watched the tides of the hairdressing industry change countless times during his three-decade career. One of the biggest changes arrived ten years ago: the advent of social media. The digital age was born, and every business on the planet had to adapt or be left behind.
Especially those in creative sectors, like hairdressing.
For Tony Wood Hair, the whole purpose of social media marketing quickly became defined as any way in which clients’ experiences are extended beyond the walls of the salon. It starts with raising anticipation and expectations before clients visit us, and lasts long after they leave.
We celebrate the beautiful hair we create for them, and keep in constant contact with our clientele on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In many ways, we consider our clients our family.
Instead of appointing a single member of our team to document everything, we encourage every stylist on the salon floor to take pictures, videos, Instagram Stories, and Boomerangs of their work, inspiring them to take pride in their work.
This brings a range of different perspectives to the wider pool of content we can tap into for our social media campaigns. The varied style of our content beckons a broader following. Many of our stylists also run their own Instagrams, through which they build up direct relationships with clients.
We aim to make each stylist’s role a marketable niche, building up their clientele based on varying types of cuts, styles, and colourings. This is the core concept of our ‘WOOD Work’ scheme!
When clients build up relationships with certain members of our team, they enjoy seeing social media updates from them, and are moved to book appointments.
Appointment booking was also revolutionised by the rise of social — we probably take about 30% of our bookings via Facebook Messenger!
The Tony Wood Hair selfie board
In the past, we used a ‘selfie board’ to take pictures of clients — a black board with the Tony Wood Hair logo plastered across it. Over time, we moved away from using the selfie wall in favour of showing off the unique beauty of our salon as the backdrop for each photo. We like to show just enough of the salon to tease new clients, so that when they first visit, they’re still pleasantly surprised by just how stunning our clocktower interior is. A spiritual successor to the selfie board came in the form of floor-to-ceiling strip lighting in a corner alcove of the salon, which provides flattering lighting for pictures of clients.
Peggy the Morris Minor
The Tony Wood Hairdressing van is a rare Morris Minor — read about it here — which ties in perfectly with the stylish vintage aesthetic of the salon and the clocktower building it’s situated within. Not only does the van come in handy when we attend outdoor events: it also caught the eye of some Morris Minor enthusiasts who visited us in Portsmouth to create a short documentary film about the van. This video enriches our brand, standing as a quirky unusual aspect which piques the interest of clientele, existing and prospective. We also held a Spot the Morris competition on Facebook — anyone who guessed the whereabouts of the van won a free cut and blow dry!
Styling the celebs
Using social media properly really takes you places! In 2015, we were honoured to be invited to do Lily Allen’s hair for her concert at Portsmouth Guildhall. This immediately got us recognised by local models with national followers, like Daisy Darling and Miss Deadly Red. When they started interacting with us on social media, we quickly jumped at the chance to welcome them as guests to the salon, and they proved instrumental in helping us launch our presence on Instagram. And that was just the start of it — a strong social media presence has gone hand-in-hand with our wider industry work. We were even invited to work with Dyson on a show in London!
Other examples of how we’ve used social media, and campaigns we’ve created for social media, include the WOOD Work scheme, the Magic Scissors charity venture, the Dumpster Design collaboration aspect of our De-Renovation, and, of course, this Advent calendar 😉
Join us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to keep up with what we do! #NoFilterNeeded
