The Business of Tattooing: The 5 Mistakes You're Making On Instagram That Are Costing You Tattoo Clients 😱

MISTAKE ONE

YOU ARE ONLY SHARING YOUR TATTOOS

It's not 2014 anymore, and while you may long for the days of posting a photo on your feed every week and getting engagement, we are never getting those days back. Our industry is over saturated and you need to stand out among the sea of tattooers; sharing who you are and how you interact with your clients in reels is an easy way to make yourself relatable and to make potential clients feel comfortable with you.

REEL IDEA: Try taking a video of you joking with some clients while placing a stencil or a happy reaction upon a client seeing their tattoo finished for the first time.

Make sure to try to have a quieter background in the video (no loud music or lots of commotion) and add a trending sound at low volume. Make sure the voices of you and your client are clear and louder than the music.

Write a relevant caption about how important your clients are to you and how much this reaction or interaction means to you.

Include a call to action like "dm me today to start talking about your dream tattoo"

MISTAKE TWO

YOU AREN'T ENGAGING WITH YOUR AUDIENCE

It is so important after you post on instagram to spend 30 minutes interacting with other posts, replying to comments on the content you just posted, liking and commenting on posts in your feed and checking your dms!

IG rewards activity and engagement so make sure when you do post, you have some time to dedicate to hanging out on your instagram app and engaging with others.

MISTAKE THREE

YOU AREN'T DOING FREE TATTOOS (bear with me here)

At my studio, we posted a contest to giveaway one DREAM tattoo.

We asked followers to

1. comment their dream tattoo idea
2. follow our page
3. share the post on their timeline and include a hashtag like #shopnamedreamtattoo
4. for additional chances to win, tag friends in the post

We gave clients one week to enter, and then the artist or shop would pick the idea they liked the best.

This got clients thinking about how much they wanted this tattoo, then we waited the time line we set, picked one winner for a free tattoo and then dm'd every. single. entry telling them how much we LOVED their idea, how much we WANTED to do it, and gave them 20% off if they booked it.

Within 12 hours, we had 8 day sits (at least 3 were full sleeves, so MULTIPLE day sits) with deposits BOOKED, making the cost of one free day of work absolutely worth it. And the best part -- most of the tattoos we booked were actually fucking GREAT ideas.

MISTAKE FOUR

YOU ARE FOLLOWING AND INTERACTING WITH UNRELATED CONTENT

On your tattoo business page, only engage with relevant content.

Don't like funny dog videos. Don't comment on thirst traps or cooking videos.

The algorithms are wildly responsive and will really focus in on what you like and what you are interacting with.

Make a personal page if you want to actually enjoy social media and have fun there just consuming content, but on a business page, only interact with tattoos, suppliers, content creators creating tattoo content, local businesses etc.

Follow back clients, local businesses, and other content/accounts directly involved in where you are looking for clients.

MISTAKE FIVE

YOU DON'T POST CONSISTENTLY

You don't need to post every day, but you do need to be CONSISTENT. Set a realistic goal of posts per week, even if it's once a week, and then actually POST.

PRO TIP: make sure you are a business or creator account on IG, check your engagement stats, and post the busiest days at the busiest times for your followers. Checking the internet to find out the best time for posting is irrelevant when you can determine what time the people interacting with you are the most active.

Right now, QUALITY is more important to the algorithm. The priorities are constantly changing as the IG gods keep changing the metrics, but consistency is something that has consistently been important.