Connection Content

So now you should have a really good understanding of the different types of content that you can be creating and that it doesn't always just need to be nail picture after nail picture. In fact, that's not a marketing strategy and hopefully things should start turning in your head now where you're starting to understand what marketing truly is. It's about connecting with your ideal audience in a way that feels really authentic to you and also to them. So one of the ways in which we can do that, as you now know, is through connection based content. And I've given you so much information about how different your profile style can look, about how important it is to have connection based content and what it actually does for your ideal clients. However, what I haven't showed yet, how rude of me, is how to actually create the connection based content and where to sort of get your ideas from and how to create a strategy around connection based content that will mean that you've got loads of content ready to post, you know, for weeks and weeks ahead. So if you want to join me on the screen here, I'm going to talk you through connection content and the four steps to creating that type of content as well. Now I have split this down into four easy to follow steps because I do feel like I have been creating content in a connection focused way for a very long time. And I also help nail techs to create connection based content too. And in doing that, I have found that there is steps to follow where if you follow these steps, number one, it makes it so much easier for you. But number two, you can't really go wrong with that content and by the time it comes to posting it, you know absolutely that it's going to land with your ideal audience. And that's because you followed these steps. So step number one is to choose your themes. I'm going to go through that with you. Now step number two is to create your hooks. Number three is to give your action to the potential customer. And step number four is a bit of a bonus one that I have added in there, but that is the scroll overall test. So let's go through step by step. So first step is choosing your content themes. And you might have heard this spoken about before in the form of content pillars. So just another snazzy way of saying themes. And the reason that we choose content themes is because now that you know who you're posting for and the types of posts that you should be creating, you, the easiest thing for you to do is start to categorize your content into themes. Themes. So I've given you some examples of different themes on here now or different categories of content. And I want you to think about what's the type of stuff that you like to see when you scroll on Instagram or when you scroll on Facebook. And psychology shows that as human beings, when we go onto Instagram, we want to either be educated, inspired or entertained. So when you're creating your content themes, you want to think about those three things and how can you put those three things across based on who you are or what you do and what you have to offer. So there's things that you could show your audience. Things like the treatment process could be one theme. So every single day you're carrying out multiple treatments. To you that's quite boring. You do it every day to other people, they might never see that happen or they might be interested in the process. So treatment processes is one category by itself. That's something that you could show regularly, over and over again. The process of what it is that you do. Personal development could be a content theme if that's something you're interested in. Nature, nail inspo. So showing actually different sets of nails that you do as inspiration for others, as inspiration for your clients. Educational content. So more so if you are a nail tech who niches in industry standards in quality in health and safety or those types of things, or if you are an educator and you're really trying to position yourself as an authority, educational content is a great category for that value based content. So again, providing people with value, really teaching them something or sharing something that's worked for you given value. So like here are some journal prompts that I did this morning that really helped me. Here are the four ways that I open up my salon in the morning that I find and really sets me up for a great day. You know, education based on like, you know, facts and nail education. It's more value that you can give to other people based on your own lived experiences. Family and personal. So if your family and your personal life is actually a huge part of your why a huge part of your purpose or you know, your clients tend to come in and feel like they're a part of that and then maybe you want to have a category for family and personal. If you're more sort of reserved and you actually don't like to show your personal life on social media and in your marketing, then maybe that's not a theme for you before and afters so you know the process, the customer coming in and what their nails look like before to the after or the process of a student coming in, who they were before and after what they left as. So what was the transformation that student gained or that client gained? Appointment behind the scenes. So showing the full appointments of actually what goes on behind the scenes. So you might think, God, if these walls could talk, there'd be some funny stuff to show. So it's even just, you know, showing things that happen. Like when your client comes in, do you greet everyone with a hug? Do you have a station full of snacks and refreshments that is iconic and that your clients know you for? What else happens on the appointments? You know, do you do a consultation at the start? Do you sit and talk about different TV programs that you've been watching that week? Do you sit and you know, look through Instagram inspiration or Pinterest inspiration when your client first comes in? Like, what's a that look like? So appointment behind the scenes. You can also do client focused categories. So you could actually do a series based on your clients, their jobs, their hobbies, and what their favorite nails are that they choose, how old they are, all of those things. Or you could do testimonials and reviews as a category as well. And if you find that, you know, you're set up on Google my business and you get a lot of reviews on there, or maybe you just get a lot of authentic messages of clients just saying, amy, I absolutely love my nails, I can't stop looking at them. Can we be screenshotting these and saving them in a folder and then sharing them as one of our content themes? Now, obviously there's loads of different themes there and that is not limited to all the ones available as well. So depending on your business, there might be other themes that I've not mentioned that feel appropriate to you. Now, having three to five themes that are reflective of your ideal audience, your marketing goals and your business goals means that you don't have to keep scrolling for inspo every time you want to post. Instead, you will have endless content and endless things to talk about. Because within each of these themes, I could tell you 10, 20, 30, 40 posts that you could share based on those themes. And remember, good marketing isn't finding new things to say all the time. It's about saying the same thing over and over again before finding different ways to say it. So, for example, testimonials and reviews, how many clients do you currently have on your books? And if you have, let's say you have your fully booked, you have 70, 80 clients visiting you every single month. That's 70, 80 reviews that you could get every single month on Google, on Instagram, on your booking platform, on email or whatever, that's that many pieces of content. They could be stories, they could be videos, they could be, you know, career posts. There could be so much you could do with those reviews. So that in itself there's 70 pieces of content you could post in a month. You've also got like Nail Inspo. How many nail designs do you do? This is more of your skills based content, but how can you actually make it more connecting? So if it's Nail Inspo, could it be a reel that says five nail designs to save for your next appointments that you could get this week, or a copy, four blue nail sets that will take you from spring to summer? So actually bunching this together, you don't need to create new content for that. You can just go back through your camera or find all the blue nails that you've done. Imagine how many different categories we could do of Nail Inspo based on all the treatments we've done so far. Bridal nails, yellow nails, pink nails, holiday nails, Christmas nail. Like there's so many different categories we could have under the category of nail Inspo. And you don't need to be creating new content all the time to have that. Another one could be like, I don't know, personal development. Like, if you're somebody who is really passionate about personal growth, personal development, imagine there is stuff you do on a daily, weekly basis as part of that. Maybe you journal, maybe you meditate, maybe you listen to podcasts, maybe you have really deep and meaningful chats with your friends and discuss it a lot. You know, when you're having a coffee, all of those things could be content. One thing that I learned today from having a coffee with a friend that I wanted to share in case it helps you too. It could be two podcasts I've listened to this month that have changed my mindset completely. It could be, I don't know, what else did we say? Self development books. My top five books that made me a happier human. Like even stuff like that. If you know your ideal client or also enjoys personal development, or if it's something that you enjoy yourself, it's one of your values. So authentically, it would be nice if you could attract more clients who are interested in that too, because it's what you want to talk about, then why not? Like it's. It's about being authentic, being yourself, showing that within your posts, but also categorizing it so it becomes so much easier so rather than thinking I've got to think of something to post today, all you need to do is go, okay, what, what category am I going to post in today? Am I going to post something educational? Am I going to post something based on personal development? Am I going to post some nail inspo? Okay, well I've got loads of nail inspo, so I'll do that today, I'll do the educational one tomorrow. So see how you can just know exactly what to post based on what your themes are, based on what content you might have available, or based on what comes next in your content themes. Endless things to talk about when you do this. Once you have got your content themes. Okay, so once you've come up with three to five of these that you are just going to focus on on your feed, you can forget about everything else. So you decide. Today, for example, I am just going to post nail inspo appointment, behind the scenes and personal development stuff. Great, amazing. Let's just post that from now on. That ticks all the boxes of what we want our customers to know about us, helps us get closer to our overarching business goal and therefore that is our marketing goal. So you then want to choose a hook for every piece of content that you post. Now your hook can be visual, it can be verbal or it can be words on a screen, but it is positioned right at the beginning and it is designed to hook your viewer in and keep them on that piece of content for as long as possible. So a hook can be as simple as a background that you use when you take your nail pictures, right? But let's say someone is scrolling through Instagram one day and they come across a nail picture that you've posted, would they straight away know that it was yours? Some people get this commented to them. So I remember back in the day when I worked in my salon, my clients used to say, I always know when you when it's your post because you put your stripy towel in the background, right? So I used to work on a salons direct black and white stripey towel and I used to remove the bed roll at the end of doing the set of nails. I used to set my camera up and I used to get a picture and with the stripy towel as the background. So people started to know when they seen them stripes scrolling on Instagram straight away. That's one of Amy's posts because they recognized the stripey towel. That's a hook, that's a visual hook. So it doesn't matter that some nails might be Short or long, it doesn't matter that some might be plain or nail art. It didn't matter what nail set I'd done that day. If they saw the stripey towel straight away, they would know that it was a signature Amy set. So your hook can be as simple as that or your hook can be verbal or it can be words written on the screen. So I'm going to give you some examples of where you might have seen that on other nail text content. So here's an image taken from Beauty by Eve, who's one of our amazing members. So she did a reel and it started off with, I have three words for you. So straight away, as the person who is scrolling on Instagram that has stopped me in my scroll hole because it's left me on a cliffhanger, I'm like, what are the three words? I don't even know what she's going to say. But again, there's a visual hook there because there's the letters on the screen that spell it out to us. But also there's the nail desk in the background. So if I'm a nail technician and I'm scrolling through this, or if I'm someone who loves getting my nails done or is looking for a new nail tech and I'm scrolling through this straight away, that visual hook of the nail desk is going to keep me trapped in. Okay, another one. This is taken from my own Instagram page. This was a while back. Now I did the post that just said, said I wish I could tell here with a picture of me from back in the day, sat at my nail desk, my very first nail desk. If anyone else had this, the Amazon fold out kidney shaped desk, you might still have this. Now. We had this in our training academy as well, where we used to teach our courses from. I feel like this kidney desk is a huge part of so many nail text journeys and still is to this day. It is so, so trusty, so affordable. But there I was. Anyway, this is going back like God, over 10 years ago. I look so young and it just says, I wish I could tell here. And then it was a carousel post. So you swipe across and all of my sort of like thoughts, intrusive thoughts, if you like, were placed on each of the images written as text. This post has so much engagement, it adds over a hundred comments. I think it has over 4000 likes, which is really, really high engagement for me. And most of all, I had so many DMs from people who could relate to it. So many other ambitious Nail techs that I started a connection with, which is obviously who my ideal client is or my ideal audience is based on the fact that what I offer is a membership for nail technicians. So it was a relatable post with a clear hook. Again, this is another one of our amazing members, Evie. Her Instagram is Evie Glows. So she done a nail tech to educator series where she shared the whole process of her going from a nail tech to an educator, doing her AET course with us, getting qualified as an educator and putting those courses out there. So she's documented that whole journey, created a reel out of each section of it, but the visual hook is her face. So. And she sat in a car on most of them as well. So when you see her face in the camera, you know straight away it's a part of this series. Another one, an image taken from my account, which was how I earned 5k in my first month as a nail tech. And then when the audience swiped across it said spoiler alert. I didn't. However, this is what I did to grow my income, blah, blah, blah. But that's a hawk because straight away it's shocking. It makes you go, what? This person earned 5k in the first month as a nail tech and they're willing to share it. What? So straight away you want to, you want to understand more. It doesn't matter what pictures in the background I am hooked in just by that. And then lastly, you've got stop wasting your time doing this. So straight away you are hooked in the hands as well. A nice visual hook. We know you're going to tell us something about nails, right? Something about being a nail tech, something about booking your nails in, something along those lines. And that one was done by Fion, an educator, also a nail technician in our members membership. So once you have your content themes, you can then create content and add hooks to each one. Your hooks are what are going to keep your viewer on your piece of content for that first couple of seconds. If they're there for the first couple of seconds, they're more likely to stay for the duration of that piece of content. And if they stay for the duration, they get to know you. They get to know a little snippet of your life, your character, who you are, your values, what you offer, what it is they could get if they walk through your door. And the more time they spend with you, the more they are going to trust you. So the more time we can keep them on your content for the better. Your content hook can be visual variable or words on the screen, but it is positioned right at the beginning, designed to hook them in and keep them on for as long as possible. Here are some examples that you can go away and use. So you've got things like I don't know about you but. But straight away I'm like, but what? Explaining something to you in under 30 seconds. I think we can all agree that. I don't know who needs to hear this, but I did a set of nails for the first time and this is what happened. It's that time of year where how I feel about X or if I needed to do X in 2025, here's what I would do. You can adapt those hooks to you, but there are some examples. And also in your business program, if you head to your bonus module, which is the social media vault, I have given you 100 content hooks for you to go and use straight away now. So if you're like, this is really exciting but I struggle to think of hooks, do not worry, I've taken care of that for you. It is all in your bonus social media vault. Okay, so so far I just want to recap. We've chosen our theme from our themes. We've then created content with a hook, okay, that hooks the viewer in. After that we need to give the viewer a call to action. Okay, so they've come onto our piece of content, they've really enjoyed it, we've hooked them in. But what about when they get to the end of that piece of content? We've got their attention. You get to decide where you send them next. So you need to add a call to action to all of your connection based pieces of content. Whether it's in the caption, whether it's in the actual reel itself, whether it's written on the carousel, whether it's on the post, wherever it is, you need to make sure you give them an action. So the action could be things like click the link in my bio if you want nails like Sarah or whatever it is that you've just posted. DM me. The word wait list if you want to be first in is a great one. You could do tap here if you want me to send you the information and do a sticker tap, which again tells the customer what to do but takes all the hard work out of it. All they do is tap and then you can DM them without feeling like you send in a cold dm. Follow me for more of these vibes. So if it's just that, you just create in a really good piece of Content because you want people to know what you're about. The call to action can simply just be Follow me if you want more of this or save this post so you can come back to it when you need it. A great one for increasing your engagement. The Instagram algorithm specifically favors posts that people heavily save. So if you can get people to save your stuff, then they are more likely to show it to more people and to get people to do stuff. People are lazy. They like to be told what to do. They like you to make it easy as possible for them. So tell them what you want them to do at the end of that piece of content, they are more likely to go and do it. And if you're really serious about marketing strategically before you post any, any piece of content, then it needs to pass the scroll test. Now, the scroll test is something that I invented that works and I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to do. So I want you to imagine you are slumped on your sofa, you're mindlessly scrolling on social media, you're going through Instagram and you scroll past your own post. Would it stop you in your tracks or would you easily just scroll past it? If you would easily just scroll past it, then you need to go back and look at that piece of content again. You need to understand, does this reach my target audience? Have I really focused on solving a problem or becoming a part of their day or speaking to them specifically? Would my Emma or Chloe or Michael resonate with this? Is there a clear hook? Is it what my audience is going to benefit from? So, questions to ask yourself before you click post. Who is it for? What problem are you solving and what action would you like them to take off the back of it and make sure each of those things are answered in your piece of content? If they are, it has passed the scroll test. There is a reason and a point to that piece of content and you are to click post. If there is an underlying mindset issue of, oh, you know, I don't know if people are going to resonate with this. I feel like they will, but I'm just not sure then that's your limit and beliefs, you still need to click post anyway. But the scroll test is more of a logical thing, like, does this actually speak to my ideal client? Is this the type of conversation I would have in my salon? Does this feel an authentic reflection of me and who I am as a nail technician or an educator? Those types of things? Yeah. If that's the case, click post. I'm not telling you that this is going to go viral. I'm not going to tell you that this is going to get all the traction that you want it to get. What you will get off the back of it is data. And that data will then tell you exactly what worked and what didn't. We'll discuss all of that in the next few videos. You will not have anything to go off if you don't start posting. So start today. Start messy. Start imperfectly. Start. Even though you feel like you don't know what you're doing, I have given you enough strategy there to dive straight in. So create your content themes. Understand exactly what types of content you want to post. Come up with your hooks. Create the content and pass it. Give the call to action and pass it through the scroll test. Let me know how you get on with this on the newsfeed.