What Salon Owners Need To Know About Facebook's Algorithm Change

If your hair and beauty salon in Ireland relies on a Facebook business page for its online presence, you may have looked on with concern at the news that the social media giant has changed how its newsfeed will work. And with good cause. Posts from businesses will no longer enjoy the prominence they previously had, meaning they are less likely to be seen, and your salon is less likely to be found by online visitors. Here, we outline how these changes can affect your business, and what you can do about it. (Spoiler alert: You should focus on getting a dedicated website for your salon, but we will get to that).

At the start of 2018, Facebook indicated it would be making ‘major changes’ to its newsfeed function, in order to deliver ‘more relevant content’ to its users to help them enjoy more meaningful social experiences, rather than a bunch of ads and uninteresting content. That means cutting back on posts from brands and business pages, decreasing their online visibility. It also means those businesses need to sit up and take notice.

As one marketing expert wrote, these changes are: ‘Great for humans, bad for (most) brands.’ Why? Because businesses that rely on Facebook to host their details, and show customers what they can offer, will no longer be that easy to find in an online search. That’s bad news for salons in an age when clients go online to find what they want before booking an appointment.

Facebook will still allow for branded content, but most of it will be buried away under an ‘Explore’ tab. Essentially, that means Facebook is not going to organise posts according to the number of shares they obtain, or how many comments they receive, so your salon page will become less and less relevant, and harder to find.

In order to keep a reliable presence on Facebook, you will more than likely have to resort to ads, and that means more time, and more money.

While you can do some great things with Facebook to promote your salon, it does have its limitations, and the bottom line is that any hair and beauty salon that wants to be found, and bring in clients, needs to have a different online presence, and that means having a website. Simply put, if your salon doesn’t have a website, it doesn’t have a future.

Your website can prove to be the most valuable member of your salon team, but it needs to display all of the relevant content people need, must be eye-catching, and must produce informative and useful information via blogs, in order to show up in online searches.

The type of content you would have posted to Facebook can be used on your salon website blog to generate interest and engage with new and existing clients. For example:

• Get creative and come up with topics that you, as a salon owner, can talk about and generate discussions on.
• Use creative media such as live video, how-to posts, a series of events, or news bulletins related to your field
• Think of ways to actually make your viewers' lives better, and that they will want to talk about

The difference will be that your content will be present online for as long as you want it, and won’t disappear down a newsfeed. If someone is looking online (and that is where practically everybody looks these days) for a great hair salon to cater for their bridal party, for example, or for non-locals on a short visit to your area, your content, on your website, will be there for them.

Yes, it can take time and money to create and run a website, but it is much more affordable than you think, especially if you consider a specialist salon website design company for the task, and it will give you a far greater return on investment than the time and money it takes to win the war of social media.

Find out how The Digital Salon Group can provide an effective, efficient and eye-catching website for you, and help get you beyond the limitations of social media marketing affordably, easily and effortlessly.