BOOK MORE BRIDES WITH INSTAGRAM HD 720p

Hey, guys. Welcome to my channel where I help bridal hairstylists and makeup artists fill their inbox with their dream bridal clients using Instagram. If you're someone who's wondering how you can start getting your dream bridal clients into your chair using Instagram, I'm going to be sharing with you guys today my five best practices or tips that helped me to book over 80 weddings this year in 2021. So if that sounds like something that you might be interested in and you want some real actionable tips by the end of this video that you can start implementing today, then keep on watching. The first best practice that I have for you would be to have a business account. If you have an Instagram account and let's just say you do hair or you do makeup for weddings and maybe you're still using your personal Instagram to post some hair and makeup pictures here and there. Or maybe you, if you should have a business account, if you should keep it personal and just move it over, here's what you can do. You can still keep your personal account, but transition it into a business account. And here's why. Say your cousin Mary is looking for a makeup artist for her wedding and she getting married and she's like, hey, do you know anybody who is a wedding makeup artist that specializes in that? This is the exact look that I'm going for. I'm wondering if you know of anybody and you're like going through your friends list and you're thinking, well, I know a few people. Yeah, but they, they kind of are all over the place. You know this girl Marissa, she's been posting a lot of bridal hair photos. I know she does hair, so if you need a hairstylist, definitely hit her up. But this girl Leslie over here, she just, I mean, she posts makeup sometimes, but I don't know if she does it full time. I don't know if she's an esthetician. She's just kind of, she does lashes, she does facial, she does everything. I'm not sure if she does on location wedding makeup right there. You lost a referral client because your page is confusing. So that is one of my best practices that will help you start seeing more bridal clients in your inbox is just by starting to use your account as a business account. I know you might be thinking, well, do I need to start from scratch? Should I start a whole new Instagram? That is completely up to you. In my personal opinion, I don't believe you need to totally start from scratch. If you have an Instagram already, maybe just change it into your business account, switching the name and just start posting your business and letting everyone who is already in your inner circle know that, hey, Leslie over here is a great on location wedding makeup artist and she's showcasing that. So now everybody knows what you're doing. By showing up and having your business account and just keeping a business and showcasing and highlighting all of of your work within that one page. It's going to be super clear to anybody who is either on your friends list that's following you or anybody that is inside your circle to know like, hey, I know exactly what she does. The second best practice that I have for you to start getting more bridal inquiries into your inbox is to have a signature style. So what I noticed for myself when I was just kind of all over the place and didn't really know exactly what my style was for bridal hair. If you know my story, I originally was doing bridal hair and bridal makeup and I kind of was all over the place. I was doing boho, I was doing glam, I was doing classic because I thought that's what I needed to do in order to book more weddings for myself. What ended up happening was I started getting all these different clients who weren't necessarily my dream clients. I was getting all these different kinds of styles. Hair, makeup. All the things that I didn't really necessarily know how to do and I wasn't really an expert in any of them, led to me not really being known for pretty much anything. It was kind of like, oh yeah, she does hair and makeup. But I didn't have a signature that anyone was like, you have to go to Marissa to get this. I wasn't focusing on really honing in on any one specific skill, such as maybe a glam wave or a particular makeup style, like a glam style or natural makeup or anything like that. I was just all over the place and I was like, hey, I am open for business. If you need hair, if you need makeup, I am here. Come to me. This was honestly a huge mistake that I made in the beginning of my business and I don't want you to make it. So instead what you can do. What I started was I started honing in and figuring out exactly what I like. So. So if you're someone and you're like, I don't even know where to start for a signature style, I don't even know what that is. A signature style is just something that is unique to you. It could either be your detailing or maybe the finishing that you do with your hairstyles for makeup. It could be the way that you apply the makeup or again, the style, the vibe that you go for. It's your secret sauce. So. So if you're someone who doesn't really know what your signature style is, or you don't really know how to figure out how to find it, or you're just struggling with finding your signature style, make sure you hit the subscribe button because I'm going to have a whole video dedicated on how to find your signature style. But in the meantime, I want you to ask yourself, what styles do I love to do? What do I want to be known for? And what styles do I not love to create? There are three questions that I asked myself when I was trying to define my signature style, and these are the kinds of questions that'll start getting the juices flowing for you to really understand. Like, hey, I don't really love creating braided styles. I don't really love doing, you know, classic clean looks. For me, what I found when I was asking myself these questions, I don't really love doing Big Boho. Those styles, they're beautiful, they're amazing, but it's not really my of expertise. I can do them, but it's not something that gives me joy and lights me up. What lights me up is doing a clean, polished style. I just love that. It lights me on fire. So once I honed in on that and I said, okay, this is the signature style that I want to do. I love clean, classic, those kinds of polished looks. I then decided to update my whole portfolio and really focus in on those kinds of looks, really create that as my signature. So real quick, I'm going to show you guys a picture of what my Instagram used to look like. As you can see, it is all over the place. I was doing everything and anything. I didn't really have a signature aisle for anything. And again, I was doing hair and makeup. But if we fast forward to today, you can see that I have really niche down and I do love that classic, clean, polished look. It is never too late to update your Instagram profile and start creating the looks that you love to start attracting that client to. Third, best practice that I have for you to start getting more bridal inquiries in your inbox using Instagram is to start being consistent on stories. Now, I know you might be like, oh, my gosh, Marissa, I don't want to show my face on stories. I. I don't want to do this on stories. Why do I have to post on stories every day. I hear this all the time from you guys. So first thing I want you guys to realize is that you don't have to show up and show your face every single day. You don't need to make it like a talk show about your life. I do have a formula for a few best practices just for stories. And don't you guys worry, I will have a few videos dedicated just to how to use Instagram stories to get wedding bookings for you. But what I want you guys to realize is we need to think of how your bride is actually using their Instagram. If you guys notice, I've done a poll on this, all my stories is that majority of people aren't really scrolling their feed. They're going through and they're tapping through on their stories. So you want to be visible to them or someone who hasn't really been active on their stories or maybe doesn't utilize them at all. That's okay. Start small and work your way up. Just start taking that action step to show up on your stories. So my method for stories to start showing up for you is number one, use the 8020 rule. 80 20. Show 80% of your work and show 20% of your personal life. What does this mean? So if you're out on a job or you're working or maybe you're packing up to go somewhere, take a quick picture of you packing your kit or the location that you're at so that way you can show like, hey, I'm working. This is what it's like to work with me. 80% of your business. Then maybe personal, a few daily things that you do. Maybe you're always going to Starbucks and you're getting latte or something, whatever it is personal. Or maybe you have dogs like me. I like to showcase my dogs on media social stories. Or you have kids and you're a mom and you want to showcase that on your stories, those little things to start connecting with your audience. Next thing for method is you want to make sure that it is relevant to your niche, to your signature style, to what you do. So if you are a bridal hairstylist like me, I'm going to be posting things on my stories that is relevant to bridal hair stylists or relevant to helping my bride who is looking for a bridal hairstylist. I try to keep things that are relevant to brides and relevant to bridal hairstylists to help. That way people know when they're popping all my stories, what they can Expect from. And the third thing in my Stories method is to make sure that it's interactive. People. People love to go on stories. I know I do. And tell me if you guys don't. When you're doing like the polls or you're doing the slides where it's the hard eyes, if you're Harding on any of your work or if it's just like a simple poll like this or that, people love that stuff and they're really easy to create. Those are just three simple ways that you can just start showing up on Stories today to start getting word out about your services and what you do. So that way people know you are, what you offer and what they can expect from you on your Instagram. The fourth best practice that I have for you guys, add value with your captions. Now, I know you guys maybe have heard this a million times and you're like, what the heck does that even mean? How do I add value to my caption? Okay, so let's imagine that you're in a fitness journey and you want to start finding someone that can help keep you accountable. Maybe like a nutritionist or somebody in the health field. So you go on Instagram, you start doing a lot of research and you start following all these fitness Instagrammers in hopes of finding somebody who can help you out along your fitness journey. Because what you really struggle with is meal prepping and figuring out what to eat and all those things, things that are going to maybe help you build muscle, but at the same time, fat loss. And you're just really wanting this information. Value from a fitness Instagrammer. You followed a whole bunch of accounts and you're scrolling through and you're seeing all these new accounts on your feed. Hopes of getting value that you want about what to eat before the gym, what not to eat, what's going to help you lose fat and all the things. You're scrolling through your Instagram and you're reading some of the captions from all these different people and some of them are just like them working out or the caption of just their workout plan and they're not really talking about anything nutrition wise. Then you pop on someone's page who has a detailed caption about exactly what you should be eating before the gym to fuel you up and gives you four tips on how you can start implementing these today. So am I going to be more likely to want to follow that person and hire them as my nutrition coach to help me out in the gym, or am I going to be continuing to follow all these other accounts that are like leg day, that all their captions are kind of superficial with either just a little emoji or had a really killer shoulder workout, you know? Or do I want to follow the person who actually gives me value and talks about stuff that relates to me? Most likely going to choose the one that adds value in their captions and helps me out along my fitness journey. The same thing applies to your brides. And I've said this to my business coaching clients that I've had previously. The days of oh, beautiful braided style in your caption are long gone. Yes, people still read your captions. You want to make sure that you are adding value in those captions, so that way they know that they can expect that value from you. Okay, so at this point in the video, we've already gone over four of my best practices, so let's just do a quick recap. Number one is to have a business account and showcase your bridal services. Number two, have a signature style. Number three, be consistent on your stories. Number four, add value with your captions. And number five, best practice is to plan your content. Once I started actually having an action plan and planning my content and being intentional with the way that I show up on my social media, it was like a three. Six of how many inquiries started coming in my inbox from Instagram. Obviously, I didn't have an action plan for Instagram. I just kind of. If I took a really beautiful picture of a hairstyle that I did or a makeup look that I did, I would just upload it with a fluffy caption that was like natural glam or beautiful red lip or something like that, it was just a super fluffy caption. Once I started being intentional and actually coming up with a marketing strategy for Instagram to add value, that way I could start attracting more dream clients to my business was crazy how that actually started happening. And I know what a lot of you guys are probably thinking, like, Instagram is so hard. It takes so much time to plan the content. Takes me forever to. To even make one post or to write out a caption. I get it. Which is exactly why when you're intentional and you show up, being at Instagram as an opportunity to talk about your services for the people that are actually looking for them, take that overwhelm and that weight of off. So once I actually created a workflow and an action plan for my social media, because I know that it's important, I just made it a priority, you guys are interested on exactly how I plan, batch and find my content ideas for my Instagram. Make sure you hit that subscribe and let me know in the comments if that's something you guys want to see from me. If you're like Marissa, you know what, I just use wedding wire and the knot for, you know, to get my wedding inquiries. Do you use wedding wire in the knot? Or maybe you're somebody who is new to this business and you hear everybody talking about it and you're like, is it really worth it? Should I sign up for wedding wire? Should I sign up for the knot? How much is it? Is it a good investment for my business? Make sure you hit that subscribe button because in next week's video I'm going to be talking about wedding wire and then not if it's actually worth it for your business. I hope these best practices help and I hope you guys are able to start implementing it today and I hope you guys have a great week.