Intro:
Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hairstylist?
Like you got into this industry to make big things happen?
Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability.
Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you weren’t seeing any results.
Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more.
Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.
Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a life long career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy.
When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt:
What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
I’m your host, Britt Seva, and I thought we’d dedicate this week to the social media shift of 2025.
I’ll be totally honest.
This is one of the more off the cuff podcast episodes.
The thing with social media is I think often we’re looking for, so what’s the answer?
We want someone to just tell us, like, OK, what are the things I do?
If I do X, Y, and Z, what result can you promise me?
And unfortunately, social media is one of those things that doesn’t work like that.
And when you talk to creators, like really successful creators, they will tell you it’s a game of highs and lows.
I’m just listening to an interview with MrBeast.
If you haven’t heard of him, he is the host of the largest and most profitable YouTube channel in the world, I believe was the statistic that he shared.
He’s an extremely young person in my perspective.
He’s 26 and he has created a billion dollar platform using social media.
So nobody would look at him and say he’s a novice.
Like obviously, this is somebody who’s an expert.
He’s monetized.
He’s built a tremendous brand for himself.
He has worldwide acknowledgement.
He’s done it super well.
And he’s talking on the episode about how as recently as six months ago, he was in a really dark place because he felt like none of the content he was creating was working.
And the reason why I share that, I think it’s important to understand, that is the game.
You can look at arguably the most successful person in the social media game, and they’re still trying to figure it out.
And so the reason why I wanted to preface this episode this way is I think so often we’re chasing the answer when it’s social media.
Can’t somebody just tell me the two or three things I need to do to guarantee a result?
Wouldn’t that be amazing?
I’m waiting for somebody to tell me that too.
And unfortunately, it’s not how it works.
And this is why when you talk to really successful business people, they refer to it as the game.
Because to be successful in business, it is trial and error and wins and losses and experiments.
And being the person who is brave enough to mess up, that really is what social media is all about.
So here in 2025, there is no doubt, we are in the middle of a massive social media shift.
And there is facts and data to back that up.
And I wanted to share a lot of that with you in this episode.
Share with you strategies that I know are working because Stylists and salon owners like Coach are telling me about them.
So there are some examples I can share of like, okay, well, we know this is working or we know that this isn’t working.
What nobody can tell you, and I think it’s really important to understand this, especially now in an age where education is everywhere and everybody’s an expert and all the things.
There’s nobody who can give you a step by step plan to guarantee social media success.
It’s not a thing that’s real.
And if you want to be successful in marketing growing forward, you can’t avoid social media.
You can’t.
I want to read with you a couple of the comments that were left in recent Thriving Stylist Podcast reviews that led me to decide to take on this topic.
So local hair artist commented and said, I’ve been a stylist for 14 years and with all the recent social media conflicts, like people leaving Facebook and the possible end of TikTok, now this comment was left a couple of months back before we lost TikTok and now it’s a negotiation to come back and stay back and all the things.
Local hair artist said, what platform would you predict or recommend for stylist to continue effectively promoting our work?
So this person’s saying, with meta going through its highs and lows, with TikTok, we lost it for a time, right?
And it made us realize how fragile these platforms are.
Where should we be?
So that was the first question.
Then Deep Thinking Human commented and said, With TikTok officially getting banned in the US, what’s your thought on meta, Facebook, Instagram, being the main platform for subtle promotion, building, advertising, etc?
Personally, I’m loving the idea of one less platform to nurture.
I get questions all the time from people saying, I don’t want to do social media, so what can I do instead?
That is unfortunately not a choice today.
There aren’t any generations.
So looking at millennials, Gen Z, Gen I that’s now emerging, Gen X, Boomers, you can go across all consumer sectors right now.
There is not a consumer sector that’s not using the internet when making business decisions.
There just isn’t.
You look at people in their 70s and their 80s who are doing it.
You look at children who are 6, 7, 8, 9 years old being influenced by the internet.
You cannot run and hide from it.
It is one of those things that can feel like this new skill set that’s hard to learn, but just opting out isn’t a choice.
What I did love about deep thinking humans question was, I love the idea of one last platform to nurture.
And I’ve always been really obsessed with that.
I don’t think everybody needs to be everywhere.
I think you need to show up in the places where your clients are looking for you.
And when we can figure out what those places are, which by the way, the answer on that is different for everybody, we’re going to talk about that a little bit today, too.
When you can figure out where those places are and choose to go all in on two, maybe three of them, man, would you be in great shape.
And generally speaking, when we’re creating our social media strategy, there’s usually one platform that’s a bit of a heavier lift.
And then the other two are extremely light and easy.
So we’re looking for a big commitment to one, a light commitment to two.
And you can generally see some pretty good success in 2025.
So what is it that I mean when I talk about the social media shift of 2025?
When you look at consumers, so not necessarily hair stylists and salon owners.
Hair stylists and salon owners are business owners.
And business owners like having places to promote their business.
The challenge is clients are over it.
I started reporting in 2021 that the age of the influencer culture was dying.
And now here in 2025, it’s barely got a pulse.
I mean, it’s really, really bad.
When you, if you were to connect with people who were paid brand influencers for many, many years, ask them now how those paychecks are looking.
They’re not looking good.
And the reason why is because clients don’t want to be sold to on social media.
Because of that, we saw that really unravel very fast in 2024.
It was like a slow burn.
And then in 2024, the explosion took place.
But there was this outcry from clients, consumers, normal people, social media scrollers, who said, we don’t want to be sold to.
We’re here to learn, to feel good, to maybe make some shopping decisions.
But I want it to feel natural and organic.
I don’t want it to feel like you’re trying to force something on me.
So when we look at how social media behavior has changed, I saw this great article that was shared by Brock Johnson.
So he shared it probably in early February of this year.
It was a social media study by a company called Metricool.
And I went through this study, and there was a couple of things that I think are important for us as an industry to know.
It said that the reach on Instagram posts was up 21%.
So your reach is, if you make a post on social media, you’ve probably noticed this.
Let’s say you have 200 followers.
If you make a post on social media, on average, 1-3% of your followers actually get that in their feed.
Which is why you can have 200 followers, but only 9 likes on a post.
Because probably only 12 people saw it, and 9 people chose to take action.
It’s not like all 200 of your followers are going to see all of your posts.
You don’t see every post from everybody you follow, right?
So, reach is the amount of people that the platform chooses to view your content.
Okay, that’s reach.
And you could simply say it by, how many people is the algorithm allowing my posts to be seen by?
Same thing.
Okay, that’s up by 21%.
Reel’s reach is down by 20%.
Reel’s impressions per follower are down by 61%.
Post impressions per follower is down 91%.
So, what this means is that when you’re creating content, specifically Reel’s, the reach it used to have will never be back again.
And Instagram did openly say at the end of 2023 that they were always artificially inflating the reach of Reel’s because their hope was to have it be an alternative to TikTok.
It didn’t work out.
As soon as they pulled back that artificial inflation, the virality that Reel’s once allowed somebody to gain was done.
So what this is saying is the platform is a little bit saturated with Reel’s that are not effective, and it’s lacking in the posts and content that people want to see more of.
If you post content that is not good, Instagram will not promote it.
And by good, what is the judgment of good?
A lot of people think that Instagram is judging your content.
They’re actually not.
Who’s judging your content?
Your followers and the test market that Instagram puts your content out in front of, who don’t yet follow you.
So one of the things that Instagram and most social media platforms do, especially a platform like TikTok, is they will test your content in the feeds of people who don’t yet follow you, and they wait to see what happens.
If it’s a good content creator, they can post this content in the feeds of people who don’t yet know them, and those new people will engage.
And Instagram says, oh, this is good.
Or TikTok says, oh, this is good.
Because people are watching this video of a stranger they don’t even know.
Versus if you’re posting reels and posts and videos, and your own existing followers aren’t even engaging, Instagram is not looking at your content.
They actually don’t care.
The signals that are being provided to them by your existing followers are, this content is not of interest to me.
And this is why we call social media the interest level.
Because when somebody chooses to follow you, they’re simply interested.
They’re not your loyal diehard fan.
They’re just interested.
And if you’re not keeping their interest high, they’re not going to engage with your stuff, right?
In 2024, there were twice as many reels posted as posts.
So the platform is a little bit oversaturated with reels.
And what’s important to understand from that is, not that you should stop making reels.
Video content is still winning.
It’s still what I’m coaching to.
You should stop making the crappy ones.
All of the viral videos about like trending sound and funny, funny joke, no one has a tolerance for that anymore.
It’s not about gimmicks and hopping on the trend.
It’s about what kind of value does your content provide to my day and to my life.
And so when we saw that way more people were making reels, but the reach was down and the impressions were down, it’s because yeah, more content was being made, but the quality was so bad.
And so when you look at a platform like Instagram, when you look at Adam Mosseri, who is the CEO or the COO of Instagram, I can’t remember which, he’s saying over and over, nothing counts more than quality.
Nothing counts more than quality.
So it’s not about just banging content out, it’s really gotta be good.
And I know for a lot of us that’s frustrating because we’re like, gosh, the last thing I have time for is to make really high quality content.
The way that these platforms feel and the way that consumers and clients feel is that businesses have had a decade to figure this out.
If you haven’t figured out how to create quality content in a really easy to bang out kind of way yet, what have you been doing all this time?
And so what I’m training my Thrivers to do now and where my big focus is is, okay, maybe you’ve not gotten comfortable with video marketing yet.
Maybe you’ve not gotten comfortable with photo posts yet.
The train left the station and we have to catch you up as quickly as possible because the mediocre, generic, quickie photo on your phone, quickie video on your phone type of social content is not going to work moving forward.
And we’ve got to get to the place where it does work.
Now, the other trick is the over-stylized, the stock photos, the very sterile content that was popular back in like 2016, 2017, 2018.
That also doesn’t work.
So it’s not about creating an artificial reality.
It’s about showing authenticity in the most polished way that you can.
Okay, so let’s talk about Facebook for a minute.
Facebook Reels reaches up 13%.
Now, Facebook is having a moment.
It’s having such a moment.
And I’ll be honest with you, it’s snuck up on me.
I haven’t coached to a lot of Facebook strategies since probably 2018, 2019.
And then I really softened my approach with it because we really saw the platform kind of age.
And it was this place where like Millennials even kind of Gen X pulled back.
Gen Z wasn’t hopping on there.
So it kind of looked like Facebook was going to be for the elderly.
I think that’s kind of how we categorized it in our mind.
While a lot of us, myself included, kind of slept on it, a lot of really smart stylists doubled down, and they are really reaping the rewards.
There’s a lot of conversations in the Thriving Stylist community right now about stylists who have been using community groups to build and grow their clientele in the last year specifically.
When a lot of the other strategies kind of started to fail, they went old school and they started leaning back into community groups while building their Facebook pages and doing all the other things and leaning into Facebook reels and seeing really good results.
When you think about how you interact with Instagram versus Facebook, let’s just talk about those two for a moment.
I have both, not just as like Britt Seva, business coach for hair stylists, but as like Brittany Seva, the mom and the wife and you know, born and raised in the same small town.
That human and my real life human also has Instagram and a Facebook.
And when I’m interacting on both of those platforms with like my real life friends and my family and all that kind of stuff, my experience on Instagram and Facebook are totally different.
On Instagram, I’m being influenced all the time by like small businesses and people selling stuff and up and comers.
And you know, I still get friends and family updates.
But if I want to see what’s going on with my friends and my family, like who’s having a baby, who celebrated something cool, what your vacation photos look like, that’s all going out on Facebook for me.
And so what happened was when people start kind of getting burnt out by like the viral dancing videos on Instagram, they were like, forget it.
I don’t want all that.
I’m just going to go back to Facebook, where it’s my friends and family catching me up.
As that was happening, a lot of local small businesses really took advantage of that attention and have been able to grow a really great clientele there.
Facebook is not dead.
It is still growing faster than Instagram is.
It still has a larger percentage of daily active users logging in.
This is an interesting fact.
I think it’s important to understand.
Instagram has two billion monthly users.
So we think two billion with a B, that’s a lot.
Yes, but only 500 million log in daily.
So 75% of Instagram users are not even using the app every day.
Now we as Hair Stylists and salon owners are using Instagram and TikTok constantly.
We’re obsessed.
The average human is not.
And that’s something we have to really get our head around is that, yes, while our community still loves Instagram so super much, the data shows that 75% of people are not in that app every single day.
So it can’t be the end all be all.
We really do have to diversify.
So what is working on Instagram and Facebook right now?
Less curated, more documentary style.
But the trick is, like I said, quality really has to be there.
Instagram really is about authentic personality.
Facebook is about community and connection.
It’s not about showing off some fictitious reality.
It’s not about funny dancing videos.
It’s about really showing up as the whole human that you are and allowing somebody to fall in love with that variation of you.
Another update that’s important to note is that Instagram openly said at the end of January, hashtags do not work.
So that is a direct quote from Adam Mosseri.
Somebody cornered him and said, do they work or do they not?
And he said, they do not.
So I stopped coaching to hashtags in I think 2021.
It’s been a long time.
And if you look at my feed, we don’t use hashtags.
The search ability of them really died off during the pandemic and in a post-pandemic world and never picked up Steam again.
And Instagram has tried a couple of different things to get search ability kind of back on track.
To date, nothing’s really been a slam dunk strategy.
There’s some things you can do with geotagging and adding your location to your profile for sure.
But there’s not been a solid replacement for the magic that was the hashtags of like 2017.
That was a really incredible era.
But they did openly say hashtags are being phased out altogether.
They’re not searchable right now.
So if you’re hoping to like hashtag it up and get found, they’re basically slowly sun setting that feature.
So use them, don’t use them, but the platform itself is openly saying they’re not a feature that is working any longer.
So just something to keep in mind.
Okay, so let’s talk about the review platforms.
Whenever I coach the social media, I coach to the core four, which are Facebook, Instagram, Yelp and Google.
The reason I coach to those four is that they are the four platforms that predictably produce new clients for stylists and salon owners.
Do some people grow on TikTok?
Yes.
Do some people grow on Pinterest?
Yes.
Do some people grow on the next door app?
Apps are freaking litly.
Some of those apps are great.
Is it predictable?
Nope.
Is it scalable?
Nope.
It’s a little bit more hit and miss.
So when we look at where you’re getting the biggest bang for your buck, it’s still the core four.
If you need more information on the core four, you can check out episode 262 of the podcast.
It’s called The Marketing Funnel, Brand Awareness.
That’s a good place to look also.
Episode 261 is where I talk about interests, so more about social media also.
So either of those episodes would be a really good listen.
So going back to our review platforms, let’s talk about Yelp, and I know Yelp is a dirty four-letter word.
That’s fine.
Here’s some stats.
Net revenue for Yelp in 2024 increased by 6% year-over-year to $357 million.
Net income increased by 158% year-over-year to $38 million, reflecting an 11% profit margin.
Adjusted EBITDA, which is essentially the valuation that’s placed on any business.
When somebody says like, oh, the business is valued at $500 million, we’re using EBITDA to calculate those kind of things.
That grew by 9% year-over-year, reflecting a 26% margin.
Yelp is growing.
What happened was when people realized that they couldn’t just fully and blindly trust platforms like TikTok and like Yelp to make small business decisions, they regressed.
And regressing in marketing strategy and in consumer behavior has happened forever and ever and ever.
There’s a marketing cycle that has taken place for decades and a regression back to what worked historically is something that’s underway right now.
We’re seeing an uptick in physical mail marketing.
Billboards are having a moment again.
And then Yelp and Google and these review platforms are really on the up and ups.
I want to talk about Google for a second as well.
I was coaching a salon owner.
She’s in my Wealthiest Year Yet program.
And she shared with us openly that she is spending $350 a month on Google Ads, which is driving 50 new clients a month to her business.
And let me ask you, if you could spend $350 a month and get 50 new guests a month in return, would you do it?
If you don’t say yes to that, we missed the mark somewhere.
I would love to coach you and work with you because that’s an easy slam dunk.
Yes, you will not find a lower cost of client acquisition than that when you factor in money and time.
That’s phenomenal.
Now, for those of you who are like, perfect, I’m going to do that.
I’m going to do Google Ads.
Well, this owner has been working with me for a couple of years.
She’s incredibly driven, already has over 500 reviews, and was getting 100 to 150 new guests per month from Google already.
Let me say that one more time.
Has 500 reviews.
And this salon is not like in a major metropolitan city at all.
So if you’re like, yeah, in New York City, you’re like, yeah, in San Francisco, nope, not.
500 reviews, getting 100 to 150 new guests a month from Google.
I just don’t know of another platform that is providing at scale like that, predictably.
So when we look at what these review platforms can do for you, when I look at stability and consumer behavior, I do think clients continue to lean into the review platforms because there’s so much less fear.
Think about it this way.
If I was to go on Instagram and make this video about how amazing I am and how everybody who works with me gets incredible results, would you believe me?
You’d believe me to a degree and, you know, it would sound great and you’d want to believe me.
But if you were to instead go on Google or Yelp and see 500 five-star reviews of people talking about how working with me was phenomenal, that’s a great sales pitch.
And so when you’re going on Instagram or on Facebook trying to sell yourself and trying to shout to the world how incredible you are, it’s good, you should continue to do it.
But nothing’s going to sell you faster than reviews.
They’re just not.
Now, for those of you who are still accumulating reviews through your online booking platform or your website, it’s not on the right level of the marketing funnel.
It doesn’t mean to stop doing those things, but it’s not going to be as effective as Google or Yelp would be.
So I’m still coaching to Google, I’m still coaching to Yelp, that doesn’t go anywhere.
I think Instagram is best for visibility.
Facebook is best for connection.
Again, I know I talk a lot of crap about Instagram.
I want you to know why I come from that place.
One, the data supports that usership on the platform has been on a decline for several years.
We can’t avoid it, we can’t ignore it.
Two, it is a tough platform.
Like the needs of the content on that platform can feel heavy.
It doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.
Instagram super works for those who are willing to learn it and go all in on it and are comfortable being open and vulnerable and sharing.
Because that’s what that platform has become.
It’s not about showing off your work.
It’s becoming a real heartfelt share platform when you look at those who are actually growing effectively as local small business owners.
Talking about TikTok, it does continue to dominate for video content and user commitment.
The amount of time anybody can get sucked into a social media app is always going to be dominated by like a YouTube or TikTok.
Like a longer form video scrolling app is going to win.
TikTok is still dominating for video content.
The challenge is it’s not great for local small business.
And when you look at pretty much any local small business coach I’ve ever followed, they’ll tell you the same.
I had a conversation with Gary Vaynerchuk about it.
We had him at one of our events and I had the opportunity to ask him a question.
And he said the same.
He’s like, I love TikTok.
I’m all about it.
They’ve not optimized for local small business and it’s a gap for them.
When you look at Stylists and Salons who have blown up on TikTok, look at who’s following them.
It’s mostly Stylists and Salon owners.
I happened to coach somebody who is a fairly significant influencer on TikTok.
And she’s openly told me, I’ve got a big following there.
It doesn’t drive clientele to my chair.
So it’s not to say TikTok doesn’t work.
It’s just maybe not going to be what is the game changer in filling your chair.
And like I said, it’s not scalable to coach to in that way.
Here’s the thing with social media and what you need to understand in 2025.
You can’t just passively post and find success.
If we can’t be their guilty social media pleasure, we have to focus on where people are looking for local small business.
And if somebody is looking for a new stylist or salon owner, they’re not going to find you through Instagram hashtag search.
It doesn’t work anymore, right?
They’re going to find you through referrals, reviews, search engine optimization, your incredible website.
Now, like I said, you cannot skip social media.
I do think all stylists should have an Instagram, a Facebook, a Google, and a Yelp and be active on all of them.
I do.
How active do you need to be is going to shift and change based on how comfortable you are creating content, where your target market clientele is hanging out, right?
A lot of different factors.
The point of all of these channels is to peak interest.
Somebody has to see you on one of these platforms and be like, well, damn, okay.
If you’re not going to give those kinds of feelings to somebody, it’s going to feel frustrating.
And if you’re somebody who’s been posting on social and you just feel like you’re doing all the things you’re supposed to do and you’re not getting a result, probably not doing the modern things you’re supposed to do.
You’re probably doing the 2022 or 2023 things you were supposed to do when times of building Clientele were much easier.
But now as everything has changed, the economy has changed, consumer behavior has changed.
What clients are looking for in a salon has changed so radically social media strategy has to change too.
Social media is just the megaphone.
It’s the megaphone for the rest of the marketing funnel that you’ve built around your business.
And like I said, this is more of like an open share podcast versus the five steps to master social media in 2025.
I’ve got some trainings coming out about more of the strategic examples of like, see how the stylist did this.
This is what’s going to work for you.
So keep an eye out in an ear out for like my upcoming trainings for sure.
If you’re in Thrivers, all of that good stuff is in there.
But what I want you to understand, like the primary reason I share this episode is I want you to know you cannot continue doing what you did pre 2024 and expect to see a good result.
The social media landscape is changing really, really, really fast right now.
And it’s important to be eyes and ears wide open because we are at this crossroads where some stylists and salons are about to be more busy and more successful than they’ve ever been before.
And some are going to start to feel like it’s sliding backwards and crashing down.
It’s because a lot of this has changed.
So I hope this episode has at least got your wheels turning.
I am certain there’s still a lot of unanswered questions.
I wanted to set the foundation.
If you have very specific questions about social media, please leave me a rating or review here on iTunes or on Spotify.
I’m happy to review those questions and dig in deeper.
But if you want specific visual examples, it’s real hard to give on a podcast.
So make sure you’re enrolled in Thrivers or you sign up for my upcoming trainings that I’m hosting all the time so that you can get in a room with me where I can show visuals and share more examples of exactly what’s working.
As I always say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
