WAH Nails founder Sharmadean Reid uses her account to give fans and customers an inside look into what it’s like to work at her salon.
What started out as a side project for Sharmadean Reid has grown into two constantly booked nail salons, her own line of products that sell at retailers such as Topshop, two books, brand-partnered pop-up shops around the world and even acknowledgement from the Queen of England.
And it’s all in part due to Instagram.
“I essentially wouldn’t have a business if it wasn’t for it. That’s just the fact of it,” Reid told Entrepreneur. “It’s not just about messing around with you friends, it’s about having a channel that is another way to describe and show your brand’s personality and also have direct communication with your fanbase and your customer base.”
WAH originally got its start in 2006 as a hip-hop and fashion magazine for girls when Reid was a 22-year-old university student at art school. Three years later, she started her first WAH Nails salon as a side project.
In 2015, the 33-year-old British beauty was awarded an MBE (an Order of the British Empire) for impact on the beauty industry, and her latest project, Future Girl Corp, is all about to empowering young women to launch their own businesses and dream big.
The WAH Nails Instagram account has 437,000 followers, and it’s not just likes and shares that Reid gets through fan’s engagement with the account — she gets customers.
“We can’t handle the amount of requests we get. We get people DMing us for appointments,” Reid says. “We’re pretty much always booked.”
Entrepreneur spoke with Reid to get her insights on how she augmented her business with the popular social platform.
Related: Instagram’s ‘Girl With No Job’ Actually Works 24/7 to Build Her Brand
How did you get your start with Instagram?
We were going to New York to do a pop-up nail bar for British Airways to promote their new London to New York extra route. All my team was in the airport about to board the plane and I just thought, let me take a photo, actually why don’t I Instagram this and start an account for WAH. When we got back, we had like 8,000 followers. It was insane. We had all these New York girls come and experience WAH and then their friends saw what they were posting. It’s so shareable.
What other platforms do you use and what percentage of the time do you spend on them vs. Instagram?
Instagram is our main gig. Our business is so visual. That’s really important for us. We spend a lot of time on Facebook and Twitter. That’s it. We don’t have a Snapchat account. I feel like those are the big ones. It’s Instagram first, then Twitter and then Facebook.
I’m a natural early adopter for any new technology. I just would make accounts for anything new. [But the death of] Vine just made me think you spread yourself too thin if you concentrate on too many channels. You should just play to your strengths.
What makes Instagram a better platform than other social media?
I think because it is essentially a creative tool. I think if it was just about uploading pictures it wouldn’t be great. But it’s all the fun things you can do with the pictures from filters to adding videos, slideshows. It’s a creative tool for augmenting images and also bringing the salon experience to life through the platform. We’ve got followers from all over the world. They may or may not have actually ever been the salon, but it’s a window into what’s happening [here].
How much of your time do you devote to it?
All the girls contribute to it. But we do have a full-time person on it. And I help with the overall direction of the themes of what we’re doing. But I would say it’s essentially someone’s full-time job and for all the girls in the salon, at least in terms of their time, on top of their normal work, part of it is about posting.
How do you promote your account? What’s your number one way to gain followers?
We don’t promote it, really. The reason is because we are a service-based business with a finite amount of…
