Hana Johansen, co-founder of 100% natural remy hair extension brand Gee Hair, shares her advice on how to use social media to supercharge your brand’s success.
2020 and 2021 were turning points when it came to the digital landscape and the pandemic had a massive impact on the way we as brands connect to our customers and how we run our businesses. That’s why it’s so important that brands don’t restrict themselves when it comes to the ways in which they connect with potential customers. That being said, it’s also important to play to your strengths.
Here at Gee Hair, we have social media channels on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and Facebook, as well as a customer service email and number on Whatsapp. All of these platforms are valuable to our audience in different ways, with our biggest platform by far being Instagram, where we have over 230k followers and steady engagement on our posts.
So how do we do it? And how can you?
Here are some of my top tips on how you can use platforms such as these to reach a wider audience than ever before and ultimately increase your brand awareness and customer satisfaction.
Increase your organic engagement
Thanks to the billions of people that use social media all over the world, it’s more important now than ever that brands engage and interact with their consumers. Here at Gee Hair, one of the things that makes us truly unique is our customer service.
We love interacting with our customers, and at the end of the day it’s about more than just hair; it’s the customers themselves that carry the business, and if we want people to engage with us and buy our products, then it only makes sense that we engage with them, right? We see our customers as friends, and social media lets us have that personal connection with them.
Posting regularly, once or more a day at certain times, is one thing you’ve probably heard about that can help potential customers see your posts. But if you’re posting everyday then you should make sure you’re not just posting for the sake of it, or that your posts don’t come across as robotic or lifeless. Increasingly so in the last few years, people’s loyalty to brands are heavily influenced by their social media posts and customer service interactions. If your feed is full of pasted captions and uninspired stock photos, you rarely reply to comments on your posts, or you don’t check your direct messages – that’s going to turn people away before they even look at your website or products.
Of all the posts on our Instagram, the ones that consistently do the best for engagement are ones for contests or giveaways, where customers are incentivized to interact by liking, commenting or tagging their friends. But contests aren’t the only way of giving your audience this incentive. Other brands might have a question of the day, or they might run a poll for their audience to ask what they would like to see or if there is anything about the current product or service they might change. We love hearing customers’ thoughts on our products, and a lot of those reviews and suggestions have really shaped our current products and the way we do things. After all, as a business you’re catering to your clientele, so it’s absolutely vital that you take their feedback on board.
Stuck for post ideas? Get to know your audience.
Ask yourself ‘how do I want my audience to feel when they look at my posts?’. Do you want people to feel empowered by your brand and products? Are they there for convenience, or are they innovative and exciting? A lot of businesses forget that not only are you using social media to advertise to customers, you’re also using it to connect with them. Think of your ideal customer, the customer that you want to buy your product. What do they find relatable? What will make them stop scrolling in their feed and take the time to comment or leave a like, or even head on over to your website?
On the Gee Hair Instagram we’ve posted about women empowerment, beauty, even jokes and cute animals! We keep to our pink colour theme with all our posts, and maybe add a dash of editing here and there to make our posts stand out in a crowd yet fit together seamlessly and be recognisable as ours. Because we know our audience and they know us, it gets plenty of engagement. So don’t be afraid to put a little of yourself into your social media feed! It will show that you’re having fun with things and that you have passion for your grind, making you a lot more appealing to your customers. And let’s be real—when it comes to social media, soulless advertising is always a turn off.
Taking advantage of other formats too, like video or even livestream can be hugely beneficial, especially for things like tutorials or demonstrations. On our Instagram page we have a few story highlights so people can look at reviews or tutorials if that’s what they came to the page for, and it gives them a quick and easy insight into the vibe of our posts so they can decide right away if they want to follow or not.
But there’s more to it than just posting…
Another question to ask yourself is ‘what else, apart from posting, needs to be done to achieve my social media goals?’ Building a recognisable and effective social media presence is more work than meets the eye. At Gee Hair, we work closely with a lot of influencers on Instagram as well as other social media platforms, and use the sites to keep up to date with the latest trends in the hair and beauty industry. This lets us know what styles our customers might want to see, or what sort of posts will do the best.
Researching the algorithm of your platform of choice is also something you should definitely spend some time on, as this will let you know how to get your posts seen more easily! It’s all well and good having a ton of hashtags in your tweets, but did you know that Twitter is then more likely to mark your tweets as spam, and you’ll actually get less engagement? It can be frustrating for small businesses trying to get a foothold and build an audience, which is why it’s absolutely worth doing the research before you get started!
For Instagram, engaging with your followers, following accounts, replying to comments and liking posts will genuinely help your organic outreach, and your posts will be shown to more people! Remember: there’s no shortcut for building an audience that truly cares about your posts and your business, and starting out is always the most difficult bit. But don’t be disheartened; we were all there once.
Also – don’t be tempted to buy followers or use some other means of getting ahead fast; Instagram’s algorithm will be able to recognise if you’re being inauthentic, and long-term it won’t grant you the success you’re aiming for here. I can’t stress enough the importance of taking the time to build your brand’s quality as this will really speak for itself – like I said, no shortcuts!
Be passionate!
Passion is the key to so many things in life, including being successful with both an organic customer base and the algorithms that control so much of social media. Gee Hair wouldn’t be where it is today without the passion of me and my sister Cindy. We know what we’re good at and we know how to keep our motivation high to keep the ball rolling on everything, which is definitely a skill learned over our years of experience.
I truly believe that mindset is everything, especially when you’re just starting out. You can’t expect to come across as a lively, friendly brand that people will genuinely enjoy seeing on their feeds if you’re not truly passionate about it! You’ve got to make sure your brand and product is something you believe in, because otherwise how can you expect your customers to feel the same?
At Gee Hair we’re passionate about our customer satisfaction and creating top quality extensions through rigorous testing. This is what spurs us on when it comes to putting out high quality, exciting social media content for our audience. So if you have that bedrock of passion, motivation and a top quality product then there’s nothing stopping you from succeeding when it comes to supercharging your brand’s success through social media. Best of luck!
Author
Hana Johansen is the co-founder of 100% natural remy hair extension brand Gee Hair. She and her sister Cindy Johansen started the brand in 2013 as a side hustle whilst studying at university. In the last 8 years, Gee Hair has grown exponentially in popularity, becoming a trusted brand used by celebrity hair stylists and popular influencers on social media.
Website: https://geehair.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gee-hair-ltd/
Twitter handle: @GeeHair_Ext
Facebook handle: @geehairextensions
Instagram handle: @geehair
