Marketing expert Ursula Brett discusses whether Facebook likes matter, and looks at the most popular social media platforms in South Africa.
What a time to be a stylist or salon or brand owner! Never has there been a more vibrant, fast paced and in-your face time than right now – social media and digital advertising is currently the best and still cheapest way to get your salon/brand out there. Even individual stylists are their own brands online and can instantly share their work and draw new clients into the salon.
Do Facebook Likes Matter?
With Facebook continuously changing their algorithms, in most cases it’s irrelevant how many LIKES or followers your business page has. They’ll either not even show up in a fan’s newsfeed at all or they’ll miss the post. So how do you make an impact?
Firstly, remember that Facebook is still the most popular platform with users spending an average of 20 minutes a day on the site – that’s big.
Secondly, Facebook knows more about all of us than we realise and this allows you to target your niche audience by location, within as small as 10kms radius from your business or right up to the entire country and beyond. Then you can select your ideal audience’s age, gender, interests, behaviours, job titles and more. AND you get to see results on all these exact demographics. Now that’s something that can’t be done with any newspaper or print advert.
There are some smart marketing ways to optimise your advertising, so that you not only reach the right people, you also entice them to give you their contact details, track them to your website and back to Facebook and get them into your salon chair! All this can work for you 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I’ll be giving away some of those secrets in the near future…. Watch this space!
South Africa Social Media Stats
In South Africa, Facebook is still the most popular platform with over 14 million users (over 10 million of these are visiting the site via a mobile phone) and Instagram 3.8 million users, LinkedIn with 6.1 million and although Twitter is declining slightly it still has 8 million users here in SA* (stats from www.businesstech.co.za). That’s not to say you should be on all social media platforms, but use the ones your audience are using and you can create incredible marketing and sales strategies. Apps like Pinterest and YouTube can be very useful in so many ways and take you far in our industry too.
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