Is Social Media REALLY That Important For A Creative Small Business/ Freelancer?

If you want to be relevant, yes.


I currently work for a globally recognised nail salon which specialises in nail art.
In the ten months I have worked here I have received maybe twenty emails looking for nail artist vacancies. I was amazed that six of them included only their personal social media handles which showed none of their nail art and two had no social media handles listed at all. Bearing in mind they are applying to work for a company whose success is greatly attributed to social media.

You know what I did to these eight emails? Deleted them. 


Not having a social media account dedicated to their art shows me they don't take it seriously.
I haven't got time to read your personal statement about your hopes and dreams and what inspires you. When I get a CV the first thing I look for is instagram handle. I want to look at what you can do, THEN I will decide if i want to read through the rest of your CV.
We live in a society where EVERY second counts. The sooner you realise this the better and the more successful you'll be. 
Think about it, how infuriating is it when a web-page takes more than three seconds to load? This is what you must bear in mind for potential customers. 
If your last instagram post was three weeks ago, you are losing customers by the day. 
By not regularly posting content you are showing your potential customers that you don't take your business seriously. 
'Not having time' is not an excuse anymore. If you are in a creative industry be it art, beauty, photography, writing, print making, frame-making, floristry, tattoo-ing etc and don't regularly post on social media you will be what the black cab will eventually to the uber. 
Obsolete. 
Mind you don't get trodden on as everyone else speeds ahead of you.

Not only is social media a platform to show your stuff, it is also a direct channel to engage with your customers. The nail art salon regularly posts nail art photos to instagram and the customers love it when their own nails are featured. They tag their friends, who then tag theirs etc etc. Commenting a question on a post is how most followers communicate with a business rather than emailing. They MUST be responded to.
A happy client will also post their own photos of your services/products, which you can then repost. 
PrickLDN is good example of this. A customer will post a photo of their brand new gorgeous cactus and PrickLDN will repost on their instagram account. 
Showing examples of happy customers is effective and easy as you don't have to create the content but just make sure you quote the source.

Not having time for this is not the end of the world, its understandable. Working on your business is a 24/7 commitment and knowing that this is not necessarily represented by your social media presence can be disheartening. 
I have only scratched the surface of how social media works and to the unfamiliar, it can be daunting. Thats why many businesses now outsource their social media management to companies like mine. 

Follow me on twitter, instagram and bloglovin' for up-coming posts about hashtags, photos and what to do when someone DARES to leave negative feedback!

S
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