What shows up when you do a Google search of your salon’s name? Robert Andrew Salons & Spas (robertandrew.com) in Gambrills, MD, owned by Robert Zupko, decided they wanted to boost their number of responses in search listings and hired an agency to help them accomplish it.

The spa consulted Andrew Krebs-Smith, a word-of-mouth director for Cyphers Agency. “Our first goal was to further engage the existing fan bases they had on Flickr, Facebook and Twitter and to increase the awareness of all the different things the salon and spa offers,” says Krebs-Smith. To accomplish that goal, the agency helped the spa launch a blog on its website and link it to social media sites. Krebs-Smith encourages the salon to blog at least twice a week.           

“Your fans grow tired if all they see from you are promotions—they want beauty and fashion tips and inside access to useful information that directly benefits their lives,” he explains. “When you add value to their lives, then you can engage them and they’ll listen. And, now we can track that viewers are spending more than two minutes with the blog.” 

One of the salon’s biggest social media success stories was when they were tapped to do hair and make-up for photo shoots for the Washington Redskins and the Baltimore Ravens cheerleaders. “On Flickr, where we posted the images, the salon earned up to 41,000 views in the past few months, with 8,000 on a single day,” says Krebs-Smith.

Another social media goal was to drive more positive reviews on review websites to counteract a smear campaign initiated by a former disgruntled employee. Krebs-Smith helped salon employees identify 26 clients who were highly involved with the brand to become the Robert Andrews Insiders. Krebs-Smith sent each insidera survey about their social media usage, then helped them find outlets to post more fair representations of true salon experiences. “Within one month, 13 new positive reviews were posted, and now these list first during searches,” says Krebs-Smith.

The work is paying off. Two months ago, a search of "Robert Andrew" only yielded four company mentions within the first 50 results, now the salon earns 13 company mentions, with six appearing on the first page.

 

 


For reprint and licensing requests for this article, Click here.

Read more about