Take Your Career To The Next Level

The first step is to think about what skills are your favourite, what aspects of your programme you’re enjoying the most and what you excel in. Think about where you want to be based and what services you want to be able to offer. A great way to collate this info is by doing some research on Pinterest or Instagram, then saving them into archives or making a brainstorm on paper. Top tip: Check out the accounts Servilles Academy follows or look at accounts such as Hair Expo or MAC and see whose work they’ve shared.

GET SOCIAL

In this day and age, having a good social media presence is a vital way to promote yourself and keep your clients in-the-know with your business. Choose a social handle that is professional, unique and represents your trade (i.e. SophieSmithHairstylist, cutsnfades.by.Tim, or AmyJonesdoes_makeup). Adding your name to your handle immediately gets your name out there, although you can always come up with something more creative, such as a nickname or words that represent you. Do a bit of social stalking to make sure you’ll not be confused with another account. Top tip: Enable the ‘business’ feature, so people and clients can leave feedback and recommend you.

Next, make a collection of your best work to really show off what you can do. Before and after images are a great way of displaying your talent. This is all about quality, not quantity, so don’t go selecting images of every client you’ve ever worked on! Top tip: Choose photos that are professional and clutter-free (i.e. against a plain backdrop or in a nice setting. Avoid things such as drink bottles and food packaging in the images… No one wants to see your half-drunken Coke-Cola!).

GET THE LOOK

Now you’ve thought about what you want to share and how you want to market yourself, it’s time to think about your look – in other words, your branding. This includes elements such as a profile picture (and other dominant images), business cards and a website. To start off, if you’re nifty on a computer, why not have some fun and come up with your own logo?! If you’re not confident, you can always go for a photo of yourself or a simple title using an app such as Canva. Top tip: Take a look at what some of your favourite creatives have as their logo or profile image. It doesn’t have to stop there either – if there are brands you relate with or love (a clothing store, for example) take a look at their choice of colours, fonts and aesthetic. Again, Pinterest is a great tool for this.

Once you’ve come out of the Pinterest rabbit hole and formed a mood board of brands, themes, colours, and fonts, you can start thinking about how to put these ideas into action. Get creative with social media, such as adding frames and fun captions and interacting with clients via stories. Think about your business cards – remember, this is likely to be the first impression a client has of you. Keep it simple. Add your name/business name, contact number, email, social media, website and address if required.

If you’re wanting to take you and your business further, creating a website shows professionalism and opens up to a world of tools, such as booking capabilities. ‘Drag and drop’ websites such as Squarespace and Wix are a great place to start. WordPress is another awesome web-building site that has a range of plug-ins such as forms, appointment bookings, maps, and Instagram integration. All of these sites have templates you can play around with and lots of tutorials online to give you a helping hand. Top tip: An excellent way to keep you and your site relevant is uploading content regularly, such as blog posts and gallery images.

PUT YOURSELF OUT THERE

To finish, share your profile and website with friends, family and clients and ask them to follow and like your content! Hashtagging and interacting with others in your industry are also great ways to get your work out there. Top tip: Make sure your hashtags and content are relevant to your profile (i.e. if you’re a hairdresser, go for things such as #hair #hairstyle #hairstyles, #hairdresser #aucklandhairdresser and images or quotes to do with hair). Also make an effort to credit work which isn’t yours.

We’re looking forward to seeing your business profiles up and running soon! Make sure to follow us and tag @servillesacademy in your work so we can see and share it ourselves!