How many hours per week do you spend on your salon’s Instagram?
If you’re like most hairdressers and stylists, this is over 3 hours per week.
Think about it.
If you were to spend that same time servicing clients instead, how much income would you generate? Probably in the range of $100-$300 per week. Or $4’000-$12’000 per year.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t spend time on your Instagram. The opposite.
If done correctly, Instagram is one of the most powerful tools for building your salon’s clientele and sales.
To turn all the quality time and work you’re putting into your Instagram into business, you need a setup that converts your followers into customers.
How you craft an Instagram bio differs from your regular salon or stylist biography (which I cover here).
In this article, I’ll explain five steps to crafting a compelling beauty salon Instagram bio that will convert followers into customers.
I’ll also give some good examples of hairdresser Instagram bio, beauty salon Instagram bio, and short stylist bio for Instagram.
The 5 steps we’ll go through in detail are how you:
- Convert your salon Instagram to a business account
- Add and update all your salon profile information
- Create your salon Instagram highlights
- Craft your bio copy
- Get inspired by hair stylist bio examples
But first, are you clear on what an Instagram bio is and any important role it plays?
Why You Need to Get Your Salon Bio Right
I think you’re probably familiar with what an Instagram bio is.
Yes, it’s the information you see at the top of any Instagram profile when you visit it.
You’ll not find much information there. At max, a profile picture, a few buttons, and a 150-letter text.
This is not much. But that’s also the beauty of Instagram.
It’s a very simple platform for image sharing without much text, which is probably why it’s become such a popular platform.
In 2024, Instagram had an estimated 2.4 billion monthly active users worldwide (source). This represents approximately 35.71% of the 5.6 billion global mobile internet users who access Instagram monthly (source).
People will go to find out more about you in this small space.
So you need to be clear about what information you should have there.
Your bio should achieve two things:
- Give a concise introduction to you/your salon
- Guide the visitor to the action you want them to take when they land on your profile
If you’re a salon owner, you’ll most likely want them to book an appointment or take any other action that’ll help grow your business.
This is why your bio is sooooo important.
You’ll spend a lot of time putting content on your profile and running activities to drive engagement and account following. So, you want to make sure that the people who engage with you have an intuitive way to do business with you.
This is the role of your salon Instagram bio.
Now let’s discuss the steps you should take.
1. Convert Your Beauty Salon Instagram to a Business Account
First, you’ll want to convert your salon Instagram profile into a business one. It’s free and straightforward to do. Just follow the steps lined out by Instagram here.
By converting your profile into a business profile, you can add useful information to your bio (like phone number, address, etc.). This is not possible with a regular profile.
On top, you’ll get access to statistics about your profile. This allows you to track how many people view your profile and content, giving you more insight into what content is working for you and what is not.
2. Add & Update Your Profile Information
Before we discuss how to write your bio copy, please ensure you have all the other information on your profile.
Your Salon Profile Picture
I recommend using your salon logo as a profile picture. If you have any other recognizable symbol that represents your business, you can also use that. This will help you build up your salon brand as you interact with and comment on others’ content.
I’ve seen some salons use hair pictures or staff pictures. The problem is that it’s very difficult to see what it is, as the icon is so small on Instagram. The only case where I would consider something other than your logo is if you’re building your name as a brand rather than a salon. In that case, you can, of course, go with a picture of yourself.
Salon Username & Name
Your username and name are searchable on Instagram when people are looking for you, so make sure you use your salon name in your Instagram name.
I would also include the type of salon you run as part of your name and the city where your salon is based. I’d include the type of salon in the name because this is the only information visible in search results without going into your profile to see your full salon Instagram bio. So you want to give as much relevant information as you can.
Here’s an example of what a nail salon’s Instagram name and username could look like.
@SalonGlowNY
New York Nail Salon
Call-To-Action Buttons
When you’ve converted your Instagram profile to a business profile, you’ll get access to additional buttons that allow people to e-mail your salon, get directions to your salon address, call, or access your online scheduler.
You should encourage staff to have a personal online booking link that takes people to their specific services.
Whether you can get such a link will depend on the salon software you use for online bookings. If you’re using Mangomint, you’ll find this link on your staff member’s profile (see my screenshot below).
Category
You can also select your business type when you have a business profile. This information will also show on your profile, so you don’t need to include it in your minimal bio space.
3. Create Your Salon Instagram Story Highlights
Getting people who don’t know you or your salon to book an appointment with you is challenging.
They don’t know you.
Regularly posting good images of the work you’re doing in your salon is a good way to show potential new clients what you also can do for them.
Instagram stories are a powerful way to let people know what’s going on behind the scenes in your salon. It gives a more authentic picture of you, building trust with potential new clients.
You want to make sure you feature those in your Instagram bio. Instagram let’s you do this via the Instagram story highlights that you can stick in your bio.
You can structure them as you like. The hair salon “Needle in the Hay” is using them to feature their staff, which I think is a great idea. It gives a nice introduction to the people you’ll meet in the salon, making the experience much more personal.
Another typical approach salons take is to promote their different services on their profile so that people can learn more about the offer.
You can also set the cover image of each story to make the highlights easy to navigate and visually in line with your salon brand.
Think through what makes your salon unique – the staff, your services, or maybe yourself and add this to your bio via Instagram story highlights.
4. Craft Your Copy
Now we’ve come to the exciting part.
It’s time to write your salon Instagram bio.
You’ll need to be brief and to the point here. You only have 150 characters to convey both 1) who you are; and 2) the action you want your visitors to your profile to take.
Salon Instagram Bio Tools You Can Use
You have a few tools at hand here to make your salon Instagram bio as powerful as possible:
Hashtags and profile links
Instagram has now added the possibility to include hashtags and profile links (i.e. @mentions) in your bio. This means you can let your visitors learn more about your salon via salon-specific hashtags you create or by linking to other accounts (e.g., your staff or partner salons).
Get creative with emojis
You can layout your salon Instagram bio in creative ways also using emojis to grab the attention of your profile visitors. Just be mindful that the design can look very different when visitors view their computer screen vs. on their phone, so you should test it in both places.
Website link
Finally, and most importantly, you can have one website link in your bio. This is, in fact, the only place you can include a website link (except from inside your Instagram stories). It’s not possible to have them in the captions of images you post. So you want to use this link very wisely.
If I were you, I would always use this link for a “book now” call to action to get people into your salon.
Most salon software should provide you with a shareable booking link under online booking settings (example from Mangomint below).
If they don’t have that, but just a really long URL with random letters and numbers, you probably want to use a link-shortening service.
Writing Your Bio Text in Your Voice
Get personal.
People don’t want to interact with a robot. They want you. You want your salon’s Instagram bio to be personal and use language that shows you understand them.
George North Wood is doing an excellent job of this with an informal tone while promoting their podcast, where you can get to know the salon even more.
It’s all about building relationships and trust here, so anything you can add to make you relatable is good.
Show What Makes Your Salon Unique
Why should people book your salon vs. the salon down the street?
You want your Instagram bio to bring across what sets your salon apart from others.
This can be your services, the brands you resell, your values, or anything that makes you different.
The Lavender salon clearly shows that their POD (point of difference) is their focus on sustainability.
What is the thing that sets you apart?
Show it in the Instagram bio for your salon.
The Call-To-Action
This is an essential part of your salon’s Instagram bio.
This is where you convert your followers into clients that grow your salon business.
Salon Solé makes this very clear on their profile with a spelled-out action to go to their website to book or shop.
They even have an offer directly in their biography to intrigue people to click through.
I’d encourage you to play around with this and craft an intro offer that fits your business to get new clients to click through to your booking page.
If you are linking out to your website (and not directly to your booking page), you want to make sure your website makes it very clear how people can book, like the example below with a book now button in the top bar that takes you to the Mangomint booking widget overlay.
Check out my list of salon website design ideas for more inspiration on how you can design your website and promote your online booking.
5. Get Inspired by Other Beauty Salon Instagram Bio Examples
Now, you should have the background on creating a powerful Instagram bio for your salon. To get your creative juices going, I’ve summarized some examples of Instagram bios from salons that are doing it right.
The profiles here more or less tick all the boxes for what a good salon Instagram should look like. 1) Uses business account with all profile details; 2) leverages Insta story highlights smartly; 3) good creative layout and copy; and 4) most importantly, has a call-to-action link to book an appointment.
Look through the examples below but also head over to Instagram and look at what other salons in your area are doing. This will get you more fresh ideas on what you can do with your profile.
Now Over to You
Your bio is central to your Instagram account. It is where you take the people who engage with your content and move them to your salon website, where you can convert them to new clients.
It may seem like a small detail, but it’s worth taking the 30 minutes to set it up now. Doing so will significantly increase the business impact of your Instagram account.
I also recommend you look through the hair stylist biography examples I have listed here, which will give you further ideas on how to effectively communicate who you are. This article is not specific to Instagram but will help you write a salon biography that you can use everywhere.
Also, check out our video with 5 hot Instagram tips:
And finally, when you are ready to attract more people to your Instagram account and business, check out my top salon marketing ideas here.
