Taiyaba Saleem of Soft Touch Studio: Five Ways To Leverage Instagram To Dramatically Improve Your Business
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
People remember visuals more than just text. In fact, most customers respond much better to visual content than to written content. This is why Instagram is a massive hub for marketing opportunities, especially in the beauty industry so keep your pictures high quality. It’s better to post 3 good-quality pictures than 5 low-quality ones. The aesthetic of the feed should be decent as it makes a good first impression people are most likely to click on the post and dive deeper and follow you.
As a part of our series about How To Leverage Instagram To Grow Your Business, I had the pleasure of interviewing Taiyaba Saleem.
Taiyaba is a talented and skilled micropigmentation artist who has mastered the exquisite art of permanent cosmetics. She was awarded the first Grand Master in Canada by the International PMU Academy and is now dedicated not only to her work at her own studio and training through her courses, but also to coaching other Permanent Makeup artists on growing their businesses up to 6 figures by sharing her 10+ year experience in this industry, following the roadmap (bumps in the road excluded) that got her the successful business she runs today.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
My commitment to excellence combined with my skills and meticulous approach to art and my passion for visual aesthetics is what led me to Permanent Cosmetics in the first place. I have An honours degree in fine arts and a background in medical aesthetics but I found my love for PMU through actively improving people’s perception of themselves and that’s when I finally felt like I was fulfilling my true calling.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?
As an immigrant, I worked really hard to obtain the respect and acknowledgement of my peers and masters, and thanks to their ongoing support I accomplished my dream, climbing titles from being a beginner artist to earning the highest ranking Grand Master title within the Academy which celebrates my hard work and presence within the PMU community. Since then, my next goal is to help other artists to live their dreams of becoming renowned professionals so that they can improve not only other people’s lives but their own by reaching financial independence and a better life quality leveraging Instagram. I’ve seen and done a lot in my years of experience and the world is changing fast, and I want other artists to learn from my mistakes in order to skyrocket their careers much faster than I did with mine, with less risk and hard mistakes.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I remember that when I opened my business I thought I would become a successful entrepreneur overnight but soon enough I realized I had no clue as to how to run a business! I was so naive about how to do biz and marketing and do my own booking.
During this entrepreneur journey, I learned that there are so many factors that go into being a successful person — it’s one thing to do the work as an artist and another thing is to run a business.
Though, when I understood the importance of social media, things started to change for the better.
Ok. Let’s now move to the main focus of our discussion. For the benefit of our readers, can you explain why you are an authority on Social Media Marketing?
I grew my permanent makeup business from zero to 6 figures in 3 years using my 12k following on Instagram and I have been teaching others how to leverage social media, and how to upgrade their management and marketing skills to build a strong social presence and grow their businesses. I have great, very useful content on Youtube that people love watching and recently got into Pinterest as well, where I’m steadily and organically building exposure with the same method.
Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?
Instagram is the best platform. Visual content is one of the main reasons it became a platform with one of the biggest traffic audiences. It makes collaborations easy and it’s most leading in the beauty and aesthetics industry. Everyone wants to look “instagrammable” and –sometimes for the worst– fit into the platform’s beauty industry standards that it portrays. I think that’s why I receive the most messages and bookings through here.
Let’s talk about Instagram specifically, now. Can you share five ways to leverage Instagram to dramatically improve your business? Please share a story or example for each.
- People remember visuals more than just text. In fact, most customers respond much better to visual content than to written content. This is why Instagram is a massive hub for marketing opportunities, especially in the beauty industry so keep your pictures high quality. It’s better to post 3 good-quality pictures than 5 low-quality ones. The aesthetic of the feed should be decent as it makes a good first impression people are most likely to click on the post and dive deeper and follow you.
- Use Reels because the primary benefit of Reels is brand awareness. You reach a much larger audience and get more engagement from new people on reels than any other feature on Instagram!
- Stay relevant by using trending audio and adding your unique spin to your content. Remember there are millions of users and the only way to stand out is by being your unique self.
- Keep consistency. This builds trust with your commitment to success and if you don’t put yourself out there regularly then how can you expect others to know of your existence? Just pick a schedule 3 times a week or whatever it may be stick to it and be consistent
- Use storytelling and captivating hooks in your captions. This is one of the main ways you’ll add more value and get your audience to engage.
BONUS TIP: It is most important to get to know your target audience (you need to know what type of person you’re talking to in order to hook them according to their taste and likes) and don’t forget to choose the Call To Action phrases that work best!
Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I want to inspire and encourage all women to go after their dreams and work hard for the life they want by sharing my life experience. Let’s reach out to one person a day to offer help, advice or even just a few kind words. If everyone did that, it would be a better, kinder world.
Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
I would love to meet Gary Vee and ask him about what it was like when he started and about the details on how he built his multi-million business, since he started at a “later age” I kind of identify. He’s my strongest aspiration and daily motivation, and I think it is really inspiring how he has used social media for his advantage and overall growth.
Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!
Taiyaba Saleem of Soft Touch Studio: Five Ways To Leverage Instagram To Dramatically Improve Your… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.