Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? 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 aren’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 lifelong 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 Seva: What is up, my loves, and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, for an episode you may have been looking forward to.
I do something like this every single year. We are going to talk about the 2021 social media emerging trends.
Now raise your hand if you feel a little bit frustrated by social media because every time you figure it out, something changes. Yes, social media is ever evolving and what I’m going to talk about quite a bit in this episode is that the evolution is based on consumer behavior.
There’s no Instagram wizard who was like, “Oh, you know what’d be fun is next year we did this instead.” Followers and people who engage and people who use the platform dictate what’s going to happen next.
When we think about what consumers experienced in 2020, for most of us, it was one of the more challenging years of our lifetime and never before have we, in most of our lifetimes, experienced a global pandemic or some sort of global crisis that, for months and months and months, changed the way we live our daily lives. That will have a fairly long-term effect on consumer behavior. There’s no doubt about it.
One of the things we’ve noticed is that the way that content is consumed, the way that people spend time on social media, the experience that people are looking for with small business has tremendously changed. Because of those things, the way we see people engaging on social media and the way we need to show up on social media has changed dramatically. I want to get you set up for massive success. And I want to talk about that in a few layers.
I first want to start talking about consumer behavior things that I’ve noticed. Then I want to talk about the shifts I see that you need to strategically be aware of. And then I want to talk about platforms in general, what I see as being important to prioritize, where I see you being able to take a step back. So we’re going to go deep. We’re going to get into the nitty gritty and I’m going to hope that you walk away with some massive strategy on the backend.
I want you to think about this. I want you to think about yourself for a minute. It’s actually very rare that we as social media users actually take a step back and think about how we consume content. When you’re scrolling social media—and when I say social media, I want to clarify what I’m talking about. Social media is anywhere where a digital conversation about a person or business can take place. So knowing that that’s the definition, social media is Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter, Yelp, LinkedIn, NextDoor, the list goes on and on. Anywhere where digital conversation can be had about a person or a business is considered social media.
When you’re using any type of social media, what are you looking for today? What are the accounts that you’re most resonating with? And beyond the accounts you’re most resonating with, what accounts or people or businesses have motivated you to actually invest with them?
And investing for me is not always money. For us as hair stylists, service providers, the investment would be cash or credit. However, when I think about investment, I think of it as time investment, emotional investment. When somebody DMS me, I always think they’re making an emotional investment with me. It’s hard to start a conversation. That is a choice that they are making. So that to me is an investment, time investment.
Is this a feed you always go to check on because you’re legitimately curious about what’s going on there and/or have you considered making a purchase from any of these accounts?
What social accounts are you actually investing in? ‘Cause when we look at the accounts we actually invest in, our top accounts list gets very small. There’s maybe a dozen accounts I’ve invested within the last year, if I can be honest.
When we think about the accounts we actually chose to invest in, what did they do? They likely brightened our day, improved our day-to-day life, added value, taught us something. It likely wasn’t just white noise. For so long, social media has been very, very noisy.
And often—have you ever scrolled social media and even felt a little bad about yourself? Like felt less than, yeah? That had almost become the normal social media. It was a game. It was a rat race of who can be better, who can be faster, who can finally get it.
What’s interesting is we’re going to see a bit of a shift from that. So, because consumers have changed how they like to experience social, they want to be educated. They want to be enlightened by it. They want value to be added to their life when they’re scrolling social. It can’t just be more stuff.
So because they’re looking for something bigger and better, attention spans are now short. You’re either serving that up or you’re not.
Let me tell you and—take a breath when I say this—hair photo, hair photo, hair photo, hair photo, it’s not going to work. It’s not gonna work. It’s been fading out for some time and it’s definitely not going to work now because that doesn’t brighten someone’s day, that doesn’t teach them something.
Yes, it shows off your work, but here’s a breakthrough: Your social media feed is not about you. Your social media feed is a gift to your existing guests and those who could potentially be a part of your business. Write that down.
I want you to think of social media through that frame. It’s not about you. It’s not about showing off what you do. Your social feed is about your followers, your existing followers and your potential new ones.
We know your existing followers and potential new ones, their attention spans are shorter than ever. You either deliver the content or you don’t so we need to get to the point. There is a massive push for people to be present.
How many people, how many of you were like, “I want to be more present. I want to be more aware, and when I’m home with my family, I don’t want to always feel torn between work and my personal life.” Yeah. The world as a whole is feeling that right now. Because of that, people are going to be spending a little bit less time scrolling the feed and you need to be breaking in there with just the right content, if you want to capture their attention.
Knowing all of this, you should know that the quality of your content is now of the utmost importance. How many of you posted last Tuesday ‘cause you just had to get it done? “Well, I haven’t posted in a while. I’m gonna post.” Not going to work anymore.
It’s going to be increasingly difficult to break out into the feed if you just post to post. But the good news is for those of you who were like, “Oh no, I was just getting that.”
No, no, no. The good news is what people want to see on social has really changed, and I actually think you’re going to love the direction it’s heading.
Strategy, number one, I want you to humanize your feed. Let me explain what that means. The season or the era of creating this feed that looks just simply beautiful, like color coordinated and exquisite. There’s a pattern and a rhythm, and it’s like, “Oh my goodness. Wow. It’s like art.” That is actually phasing out.
Beautiful pictures are important, very important, but it can’t be your entire feed anymore. Your feed should now be a 60% showcase of your work. And when I talk about what that should be comprised of, in Thrivers Society, we talked about the four different types of content that needs to be on a feed, right? It doesn’t just have to be after, after, after, but 60% of your feed should be a showcase of your work. Listen to this part: 40% should be creating a human connection. Today’s consumer, the 2020/2021 consumer is even more cautious when choosing a business than they ever were before.
A lot of people were worried like, “Man, coming out of the pandemic, are we going to have a recession?” We still don’t know. It’s still possible. We’re not having all the indicators that that’s going to happen, so fingers crossed it won’t. We’ll be prepared if it will, we’ll just put strategy into place.
But a lot of people are saying, “Well, what if there was a recession?” Well, we’re not seeing that, but we are seeing a tremendous shift in consumer behavior. Some of you have lost guests coming out of the pandemic, good guests. And you’re like, “What the heck? What went wrong?” It’s because consumers are looking for a humanized experience.
Their expectation of us customer service-wise has changed dramatically. The things we used to consider amenities before are not amenities any longer. The things we used to consider good communication before? Not good communication any longer. The guests have changed what they wanted and I’ve talked about that on previous podcast episodes. I trained to it in my thriver society program. I’ve talked about it quite a bit.
This is not us changing stuff up. Like “What should we do?” Different consumer behavior has changed. So when I say your social feed should be a 60% showcase of your work, 40% creating a human connection, that is what today’s clients want. That’s what they’re looking for.
Why does somebody follow you on social media? Is it because they want to see photos of your other clients? No. They want to emotionally connect with you.
Now here’s the fine line. Some of you were like, “Ah, so like a blog. Oh my gosh, this is great. So I’m going to go back to posting photos of me and my kids.” No, I’m not saying that. That’s a very different type of strategy. This is still a business profile.
The question becomes, “How do I create a human connection with my guests or my potential new guests before they walk through the door?” Write that down. “How do I make that connection?”
Then we get into tip number two: teach me something.
I’m going to say it right now. 2021 will be the year of the unfollow. I’ve already unfollowed several people this year. I don’t know about any of you. Users will be unfollowing feeds and slowing engagement with feeds that do not add value to their life.
You heard it here first. If you see your engagement drop, I’m not surprised; consumer behavior has changed dramatically. If you are not adding value to people’s lives, you will see an engagement decrease. This world is very noisy. If you’re just continuing to add to the noise, more stuff, more stuff, more information, more overwhelmed, more posts, more posts, you’ll start to do more harm than good.
What you need to do is now get very strategic about how you’re going to show up on social media. So it used to be, “Be consistent, show your work.” Not gonna work anymore.
Be consistent. Yes. Show your work. Yes. But showing your work is only a portion of the equation, right? We also need to now teach something and have a vision and values and things that we speak to on social media.
So my question to you is what can you teach? For those of you who are like, “I don’t want to be an educator”, well, here’s another little thing they didn’t tell us: When you became a hair stylist, you are an educator. You are an expert at something. I think that for most people is very, very challenging.
You know, my daughter is a teenager and she’s learning to curl her hair, and I’m remembering how challenging that is. When you start, some curls go forward. Some curls go backwards, depending on how you wrap the hair around the wand, you get a different result.
For us, that becomes second nature. For the average person, it’s not. And she’s lucky she has a mother who might be able to tell her those things. Most people don’t.
What can you educate people at large that will allow you to put yourself on a pedestal and that for them to say, “Wow, you should really check out my stylist. She doesn’t just show photos of her work. She teaches us something.” That’s going to be a value.
So when I say don’t add to the noise, show value and show up to enhance people’s lives, that’s what I’m talking about.
That doesn’t mean it always has to be hair tutorials. That’s not what it’s about, but really think from that angle of what can I post that’s not just noise. That’s actually enhancing my followers’ lives?
Number three, don’t sell to me, connect with me. So again, if you’ve been using your social feed and you’re doing things like you’re trying to shake it up, you’re trying to keep the feed interesting. So you’ll post pictures of retail. Oh my gosh. “Well, I’m really passionate about my retail line, so I’m gonna pepper that in. All kinds of different services that I offer, this just so great. I got an opening next week. I’ll do a really cute video of that and then do really fun posts about me doing some hair painting.” So that’s selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling. That’s not going to be what 2021 is all about at all.
We’re going to see a huge shift there. Raise your hand if you like being sold to on social media. If you’re like, “You know what? I go to social media because I want to be sold to.”
Nobody.
We talked about this at the top of this episode. You go there for your life to be enhanced. Do you want inspiration? Yes. When you go on social media, are you hoping to be inspired? You’re hoping it adds value to your day and maybe the value of seeing something funny, or maybe it’s a good idea, or maybe you learn something, but for most of you, you’re on social media to have your day enhanced, right?
We need to give that experience to those who follow us as well. We don’t want to be sold to any more on social media. It’s not going to work. We want real connection and we want the V word, which I actually had to swallow a little hard even to say it: vulnerability.
Because for me, if you’ve been following me on social media for a while, I’ve got a little wall up. I got a little guard up. I don’t like to talk about my family. I don’t love to talk about my personal life. There’s deep-seated issues with that. We could go, we will go into it ‘cause I’m going to get more vulnerable with you guys.
But vulnerability and connecting human to human that’s what’s up in 2021, big time. So remember the days when it was like, “Oh, I’m actually seeing a celebrity stylist, like he or she is kind of a big deal,” and that’s not it anymore. That you’re kind of a big deal thing.
If there’s not a vulnerability there and a connection there and then “I love my stylist because of the way they take care of me, because of the experience,” because that’s what it’s going to be about more than the flash bang. It’s a very different kind of connection.
We want to emotionally connect with the businesses we follow before we even set foot in the salon doors. Truly. So if you’re simply showing off your work or selling, you’re missing the mark as we head into 2021.
Ask yourself, “How am I going to connect without selling? How am I going to educate and enhance? And how am I going to add value to my followers’ day?”
Do you guys remember? I shared an episode, this was several months back now. It was called A Tale of Two Clients. You can find it if you head to thethrivingstylists.com and you can search for the podcast episode.
But in that episode, I talked about two of my friends, like my personal life friends who knew I’m a hair stylist business coach. People know that about me, but they don’t know much more. Like a lot of people don’t follow me on social. They don’t know what my methods are, what my views are, whatever.
They were livid with their stylists this year, really disappointed, and they were disappointed and livid because of all of the things I told you to stay away from. They felt like they were just a number. They felt like the stylist was, in a word selfish. Which to me—I always stand up for stylists. Even when my friends complain, I’m like, “Hold on a second. You’re talking about my people here. What do you think you’re doing?” I always stand up. But then they would share very valid concerns. And I get it.
Consumers, clients, your existing clientele, people considering looking for a new stylist. They are pickier than ever before and they want to see somebody they trust. They want that know and trust factor. That is huge stepping into 2021. They don’t want to just be a number in your business. And when your feed is hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, they know they’re just a number. That’s all you’re showing up as there’s no vulnerability there.
If you say, “Well, that’s just social media,” that is your sales mechanism. That is how people decide if you’re worth it or not. It has to be more than that.
I was teaching a class to my Thrivers recently and I was saying, “Listen, if I was going to show up on social, I would be talking. And I was trying to get people to come and sit with me and my chair as a stylist, I’d be sharing Office quotes ‘cause if you sit with me in real life and we have dinner, I’m going to talk to you like Pam from The Office, and I’m going to share a little bits and quips and quotes and things like that. That’s who I am. So when I show up on my phone, my feed on Instagram, if you read my captions, often they’re funny or they’re quirky or they’re a little bit weird. That’s who I am. And that’s who you have to show up as on social. It can’t just be this perfect, curated feed. It has to be very human. It is what clients are demanding.
So I ask you to really take a step back and say, “Okay, is my feed effective? Is it connecting? Is it showcasing? Why I’m exceptional? Or does it just show that I do good work and the salon is clean?
We have to go deeper. People are looking for depth on social. You listening to this are probably looking for depth on social. Am I right? So we need to be showing up that way too.
Okay, so we’ve talked about consumer behavior. We’ve talked about how to show up. Let’s talk about trends in social media platforms.
So you guys, I know you hate it when I say these review sites are trending really big right now. And when I say review sites, I mean Google My Business and Yelp. A lot of trust is being put there because consumers are more nervous, I already said this, and historically, I’m going to watch the stat go up. I know it.
70% of consumers trust an online review as much as or more than a referral from a personal friend. We put a lot of weight into digital reviews as a consumer. How many of you have looked up a business and you see they have a four and a half Google review stars and 200 reviews and you’re instantly like, “Oh, it’s good.” You do that. You do that as a consumer. Don’t you think your clients do that too?
Of course! Versus if they look you up and there’s not much to see there, they’re nervous. We need to calm those fears.
Have you guys noticed how Google is indexing these days? Google changes their algorithm all the time. I remember when I first started designing websites for salons, keyword stuffing was the way. It was like, “If I can get the word San Francisco salon on your site 100 times, you’ll be at the top of Google.”
People still ask about that, like, “How do you SEO optimize this? How can you get me on the front page of Google?” You know what’s on the front page of Google right now?
You can test this theory. Google My Business. Google has optimized themselves that way. If you look up best Manhattan salon, the first thing that’s going to show up is Google My Business listings every time. Then you know what is often the second thing that’s indexed? Ready for it?
Yelp. Test it. Rest my theory. See what comes up.
You have to put weight into these review sites. It’s very important. Review sites are social media. They must be prioritized.
Also, I think video marketing. I’ve been saying this for years, it is the bubble that hasn’t burst there yet. Video marketing is still what’s up. This is still where people want to be. For me, if you look and you’re like, “Oh, video marketing is impossible.”
At this point, I’ve done something like 700 hours of video content. There’s a lot out there. Do you know when I did my very first marketing video? I was on there. It was on Periscope. How many of you remember Periscope? And I was delivering my content and I was nervous as all get out, but I was going to do it anyway and I delivered it and I was like, woo. I made it.
So Periscope, you’re getting live feedback from viewers. And the first comment that popped up was, “Are you seriously done? That’s all you had to share?” It was like a slap in the face and I could have easily shut it down. Never built my business and faded into the—I don’t know because it was traumatizing.
And I was like, “No, that is going to fuel my fire. I’m going to get this.” I used to be so bad at video and so bad at using my voice, but I’ve practiced it enough that it’s become powerful.
So if you first do a video and you’re fumbly and you film it the wrong direction and the background’s a mess and your microphone didn’t work and you’re wearing the wrong outfit, and that’s where we all start. That’s yes. That’s video number one, correct. It’s exactly what it looks like.
Video number two is a little better. You still filmed it the wrong way, but your outfit was better and the lighting was good. You only mess up the words three times instead of nine times, and then it gets better and better and better.
Video marketing is what’s happening. It’s what today’s consumer is consuming. So you need to keep that front of mind. Reels is big right now and I just did a training for my Thrivers Society members on how to do Reels correctly. There’s a lot of misconceptions about how to use them. They’re an educational and value-add resource. It’s not just video content. It’s very specific and strategic. Learning how to use that micro content tool correctly, very important.
Authenticity over perfection is going to dominate in 2021. It doesn’t mean we just let it all go. It still has to be professional, but it doesn’t have to be so curated. Like it doesn’t have to be so unattainable. Has anybody ever scrolled social and you’re like, “Man, this just feels unattainable.” Like it doesn’t even seem real to pristine. We’re going to see the edges soften on that and it’s going to be more all the things I’ve said: vulnerability, authenticity, human connection.
And one of the easiest ways to connect as a human is through digital conversation and video. How much do you learn about me? How much do you get a sense of who I am more when you hear my voice on a podcast or when you watch me on video or when you read a caption? 100% you get a better sense of who I am and my vision and my voice through the podcast or video and then captions I do, okay?
But video and hearing a person’s voice is very powerful and so showing up on video and even if someone can’t hear your voice and they’re just reading captions, seeing you, looking you in the eye, seeing when you smile, seeing the inflections, right? Very powerful.
I want you to really think about how you’re going to show up authentically on social, how you’re going to add value instead of creating noise, and how you’re going to create that connection before a guest even walks through the door.
You guys, so much love, happy, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
