We sat down with Lexie from Blackroom Salon in the South End to discuss transparency, the importance of hashtags, and how they use social media to foster a culture of inclusivity.
The Stats:
Blackroom Salon
Boston, MA
Instagram: 2,372 Followers
Facebook: 200 Likes, 205 Followers, 60 check-ins
When Blackroom Salon opened in Boston’s South End this past winter, they made a concerned effort to distinctively brand themselves and set themselves apart from every other salon right from the start. They are a woman owned, woman run salon that offers a gender-neutral pricing structure. Performed with professionalism, creativity, and open mindedness, they offer a comprehensive menu of just about every hair and makeup style you could think of.
As a small business, they are an amazing example of how you can develop a new brand and get off to a great start by first finding your unique voice on social media and using that to bring in new customers.
Tell us about Blackroom Salon
We are located in the South End of Boston. We are a female business, run and owned by a female. We’re all-inclusive; we want anyone and everyone to come to our salon and feel comfortable and feel taken care of every single solitary time you come. We want it to be a special place for everyone to come and really just be themselves.
Describe Blackroom’s voice on social media
Our biggest thing is, we just want everyone to be themselves. So when we post, we don’t hide anything. We don’t edit people’s faces or their hair, maybe lighting but that’s about it. We just want everything to be super authentic; really, we’re putting out exactly what you’re getting. So there’s no crazy, glorified expectations. If someone says, “That’s the most amazing hair or makeup I’ve ever seen in my life”, we really did do that.
One of our biggest things is we don’t price anything based on your gender. We price based on the thickness and length of your hair. If you’re a person that identifies as a male, but have hair to your butt, it’s going to take a lot longer than someone who identifies as a female but has a buzzcut. We don’t care who you are, we just want to make you feel like the version of yourself you want to be.
We try to not post the same thing over and over and over. We really try to make sure everybody gets their post of the week and that kind of stuff, but we’re also putting out different content. We don’t want to be your normal, typical salon. We also want to be very approachable; we want you to ask us whatever the hell you want to ask us.
What channels to you generally use?
We are definitely first and foremost Instagram. We do have a Facebook, because some people aren’t on Instagram, but we don’t seek out anything on Facebook. It’s all about being instantaneous. We want real time photos; it’s just a lot faster.
What new trends are you seeing out there in social media for small business that you want to try out?
I definitely think doing Instagram “take overs” are huge right now, especially in our industry. Where somebody will go to another salon and teach a cutting class or a class on makeup. Them being able to take over that company’s Instagram account for one day, it really shows that we’re not just stuck in one place, we also do stuff outside of the salon. Showing that kind of stuff; I think we need to do that stuff more.
What advice would you give to a small business just getting started with social media marketing?
So I will say, especially when it comes to Instagram, doing things like posting often is huge. You can’t go a week without posting; it is crucial to your business. Everybody is on their phones 24/7, 365; we live in a world where you have a computer at your fingertips.
I think one the biggest things is to post all the time and hashtags. I was never a hastagger, I never really knew what they did. But when somebody goes into their search bar and types in “big eye brow”, “fluffy brow”, something like that, I want them to be able to see what I’ve done. If you type something like that in, you along with 65 other people that have hash-tagged that - that’s what’s coming up. You need to make sure that you hashtag similar things in all your posts so that they can all come up. My personal hashtag is #justmebrowqueen. If you click on that it’s almost everything that I’ve posted while this Instagram has been up. Make it seen, make it known; make people realize that’s the hashtag - they can click on that and see every piece of art and every piece of work you’ve ever done.
Have you been able to successfully collaborate with other brands through social media?
We’ve done a lot of stuff at other salons. Whenever we’ve done photoshoots we use local models. We’ve used photographers from Parachute Studio. Collaborating with the Revolution Hotel - we have a hotel across the street that is new and up and coming. It used to be a women’s hostel, now it’s a full blown hotel and we did a photo shoot there a few weeks ago. All we did was walk in and say, “We’d love to do a photoshoot here. We just did this models hair and makeup and we’d love to showcase you and tag you in our posts to make sure our followers know we’re here”, and it worked out really well.
Have you been able to mitigate a crisis using social media?
Anybody who direct messages us about anything, you will 100% you’ll get a response that day. There’s always someone looking and responding, making sure that every client, future client, and friend is being taken care of. If we do something wrong, we can use social media to find out what we did or why we offended someone and make sure we never do that again. We can also find out why they feel that way and fix it.
Thanks for speaking with us Lexie!
To follow Blackroom Salon:
www.blackroomsalon.com
Instagram - @BlackroomSalon
Facebook - BLACKROOM salon
To follow Lexie:
Instagram: @justmebrowqueen
Other brands Lexie mentioned:
Parachute studios
Facebook - Parachute Studio
Instagram - @parachute_studios
Revolution Hotel
therevolutionhotel.com
Instagram - @revolution_hotel
Facebook - The Revolution Hotel
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