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 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 hairstylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and it’s been over a year since we talked about what’s working well in Instagram marketing right now. So let’s dig into it. I’ll explain kind of the context of this episode and where I’m sourcing from and referencing as I talk about strategies that are working. So working to me is making stylists more money or making salons more money. To me, it’s irrelevant how many followers somebody has, how many likes somebody has, how many viral posts somebody’s had. If it’s not making you money, it’s not working for your business. I know that it feels better to have a lot of followers and to get a lot of engagement. And if you’ve been on social media for years, we’ve been trained that that’s the dopamine hit, right? The dopamine hit is when you get new followers, when you
And we don’t like to admit it, but that’s, that’s how social media becomes addicting, for lack of a better word, is it’s this validation ecosystem. I want you to pull out of that for a second, and I want you to think about what your goal is as a stylist or salon owner. The answer should be to run a profitable, successful, lucrative business that funds my personal life. Like that is the correct answer. And by the way, you should have a lot of fun doing it and love the work you do and work with amazing guests and all of that. But the point and purpose is to build a lifestyle that makes you happy. And I want you to remember that first and foremost. So I’m just coming off of doing a couple of things, hosting the free marketing masterclasses that I host at the start of every year.
We finished our 2026 season, we’ll be back again in 2027 with more of those. And I also did my hairstylist business growth bootcamp. It was 10 new clients every month bootcamp. It was amazing. It was just over a week of intensive trainings for over 3,000 stylists. And in doing that, I got to spend almost 10 days like digging through stylist businesses, looking at their Instagram, looking at their websites, looking at all their social channels, their Google, their Facebook, their TikTok, their everything, and analyzing deeply what was working when we compared energy to effort to post to revenue. And I found a couple of things interesting. One, I found that a lot of stylists are just too burnt out to even show up on Instagram, which I get. We’ll talk about that. A lot of people are still playing a very dated game. So posting things that worked a few years ago, expecting the same result, which of course is not gonna work, like trends are changing so fast, and we’re gonna talk about trends too and all that kind of stuff.
And I also notice a lot of stylists like spinning their wheels, trying to create like relatively complicated content, and then not getting a good result. And so the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Like you’re putting in so much effort for a minimal result, if anything. And the great news is like what is actually working on Instagram right now is so ultra simple. So if you’re in Thriver Society, if you were in the bootcamp, if you’re in that class, we went deep into what’s working on Instagram and what’s not. I’m gonna go a little bit more high level, give like a tactical overview of what to do, what to avoid so that you can see as much success as possible. If you wanna deeper dive, Thrive or Society is always an option as well. So a couple of things I wanna note just at the top.
Instagram is what we call an interest level platform. So if you’ve been working with me for any length of time or listening to me for any length of time, I talk about my hairstylist marketing funnel. It’s not a theory. It works 100% of the time every time to fill a stylist chair. And in this marketing funnel, there’s several levels. So at the bottom, we have opportunity, then we have trust, then we have desire, then we have interest, then we have awareness, five total. Interest lives second from the top. It’s called interest because it’s where people hang out when they’re simply interested in you. They might not be clients yet. Most of us, if we’re doing a decent job on Instagram, we’ll have more followers than clients. You will have people who follow you on Instagram who have never sat in your chair as a client.
Like if you’re doing marginally well, that will be true. That’s because they’re interested, but they don’t necessarily have desire yet. The trust is not there yet, so you don’t have the opportunity. They haven’t worked their way low enough in your funnel. And/or they might not be target market clients. Usually stylists have a lot of fellow stylists following them. There’s all these nuances to it, of course, right? But when somebody finds us on Instagram, or follows us on Instagram, they’re simply interested. They’re not necessarily a part of our clientele yet. It’s our job to get them to that next step, okay? Your feed is for new clients. Stories are for existing clients. That’s important to note because I think a lot of times in an effort to make social media fun, which by the way, social media should be fun, we put content on our feed that’s almost like an inside joke, or my clients are really gonna love this, or once you know us, you’re gonna think this is great.
The feed is not for that. The feed is for people who have never met you before. It’s a trust builder, it’s a confidence builder, stories is where you can put that kind of funny, funny, jokey stuff, the inside jokes, the messages for existing clientele, that would go to the story. Okay. And lastly, the goal on Instagram is always to appear consistent. So consistent usually feels boring. Boring is what makes you rich. So if you are thinking that I don’t want my Instagram to be boring, you should start a secondary Instagram that’s like a personal blog or something and you could put all your like, you know, fun stuff and baking stuff and stuff you do with your pets and stuff with your kids and, you know, all that, that’s great. Do that on a personal Instagram and you can make that as fun and as exciting as you want.
Your stylist one should be consistent. And consistent doesn’t usually feel like overly exciting, overly spicy. Clients just want consistency and simple, consistent, sometimes boring is what’s actually gonna make you more money. So if your goal in, in marketing as a stylist is to make more money, this one’s gonna be for you. So I want to zoom out and just put ourselves in the client’s shoes for a minute. So I <laugh> went to a very trustworthy source, you know, Reddit and I was looking at a Reddit forums about what clients say they’re looking for when they look for a stylist. Does anybody ever do this? Like go to Reddit or, uh, is it Quora and look at all the questions, ask the public, look at all those question forms and see what people are literally asking and saying. And there were several feeds where clients were talking about what are the most important things they’re looking for when they’re choosing a stylist.
It’s very interesting to hear it from the client’s mouth. So I want you to think in your mind, what do you think some of the answers are? What would a client be looking for on social media when they’re looking for a stylist? What are the qualities they’re looking for? What are they skimming for? How are they choosing? Here’s the most popular answers. Skill. Next, professionalism, then cleanliness, then style/vibe. What was interesting was proximity. There was a lot of how close they are, proximity, hours, how quickly I could get there, like logistics. And I don’t think a lot of us talk about the logistics on our Instagram. I thought that was very interesting. And then lastly, do they even seem like they know what they’re doing? And I want you to think about the content you’ve been posting recently. Call it in the last six months.
Does it show that you’re skilled, professional, clean, have a branded style or vibe, and show that you know what you’re doing? We’re gonna dive deeper into that for a moment. What I find is that the biggest mistakes that most users make today on Instagram is that they’re chasing validation through vanity metrics and going viral. So likes, shares, that feedback is what we’re chasing. All that matters is bookings. I always say butts in chairs. That’s all I care about. If you’re posting and you’re getting butts in chairs and cash in the bank account, the vanity metrics actually mean nothing. I don’t care anymore how many likes your photo gets. It’s, it’s very irrelevant. It’s how many bookings you get per post. That’s what we’re more fixated on. So one of the trends that we saw the industry really lean into starting in 2021 was comedy style posting, and that was born out of reels.
So it’s kind of funny to think about reels weren’t even a thing on Instagram until 2021. They launched coming out of the pandemic and reels for almost four years were artificially inflated. Instagram finally admitted that and said, “You know what? They were never quite as popular as they appeared. We were pushing them into feeds because we really wanted the reels platform to take off.” And by the way, it worked to a degree. Like people like watching videos on Instagram, it worked, it’s fine. The reason that I bring that up is what I think happened was people brought a lot of TikTok trends over to Instagram. If you’re somebody who uses both TikTok and Instagram, I want you to think for a second why you use both platforms and what experience you’re looking to have on one versus the other. So whenever I bring this question up in a group format, whether it’s a live speaking engagement or on a virtual class, people always say like, “TikTok is where I go to chill out.
I’m looking to have a laugh. It’s like brain candy. I’m looking to unwind. I’m looking to be entertained. I’m looking to go down a rabbit hole.” So it’s a very different experience. Viral videos, dancing stuff, trending stuff works great on TikTok, it always has. When I say what are you going to Instagram for, it’s a more serious craving. In our industry specifically, it’s like networking. I’m looking to network with my peers. I’m looking to build my business. I’m looking to connect with my clients. I’m looking to maybe find businesses for myself. It’s not that like down a rabbit hole, brain candy, doom scroll. It’s a different craving. And what happened was when reels came out, a lot of users thought, “Oh, perfect. What people are doing on TikTok will just bring on over to Instagram.” You can’t. They’re different platforms with different user bases and in order to use Instagram appropriately, you have to post the kind of content that Instagram users want.
And when I say I can’t, physically you can, right? You can make a video that’s great and viral and hilarious and gonna do great on TikTok and you can post it on Instagram. And it might do mediocre. I would argue it’s not gonna fill your chair as fast as other content would. So here’s some things to keep in mind with Instagram. Instagram openly said that when you post trendy content, like let’s say, you know how sometimes I saw a very viral post go around on Valentine’s Day and I saw thousands of salons do it and it was, “Your girlfriend doesn’t want flowers for Valentine’s Day, she wants her hair done.” If you did that post, I want you to ask yourself why you did it. Most of you are gonna say, “I thought it was cute. I thought it was fun.” I think that when we dig deep into the psychology, it was nice because it was one less post idea we had to come up with.
It was something cute to post that felt like timely for Valentine’s Day. When I DM stylists who made that post and asked if it actually got them any bookings, the answer over and over and over was no. And I’m sure there was some stylists who saw some bookings from it. I don’t think it was any kind of overwhelming chair fill. And we do that a lot with social content as we’re like, “Oh my gosh, cute. I’m gonna do that too.” And we do that not with the intention of necessarily like building our books, but like one less thing on the list. That’s a cute idea. I don’t have to think about it too hard. I can totally pull that off. It’s funny. My clients will like it. Remember, the feed is not for your clients. The feed is for new guests, and that’s generally speaking, like that trendy stuff is not gonna be what they’re looking for.
And so what Instagram openly said is often when you post stuff to be trendy, it hinders the growth of your loyal, engaged audience, meaning those who are already following your stuff are turned off by it because it doesn’t feel like what they’re on your platform for. Okay? Let’s talk about trending audio. So again, another comment from the platform, trending audio pushes initial distribution of your content, but if the content doesn’t perform at a high rate within minutes, any meaningful impact is eliminated. Meaning, whenever you post any kind of piece of content on Instagram, whether it has a viral audio or no audio, what happens is there’s a test push. Any piece of content you do goes through this. And if within the first few minutes, people are engaging in your content, meaning liking it, commenting on it, swiping if it’s a carousel post, watching a video of any length, if there’s a bunch of different indicators.
Instagram can actually tell if you slow your scroll just to look at a photo. So you can just be looking at something and that indicates to the algorithm that this content was something that was enjoyed at least to a degree, even if the user doesn’t like it, it’s pretty sophisticated. So if there’s all these indicators that followers are resonating with the photo, then that photo or that video or that post is gonna continue to be pushed out into the feed of those who already follow you and perhaps maybe beyond, maybe, maybe, maybe. If in the initial few minutes that that post hits the feed, it’s not getting indicators that people who already follow you are into it. It does not matter at all if there’s a trending audio on it. If it’s bad content, it’s bad content. And the algorithm is safe proofed not to just push junk content out because there’s a trending audio associated with it.
So trending audio is not doing as much of a boost as you think it might. 70% of Instagram users have sound turned off. So again, don’t spin your wheels on it. It’s probably not gonna be what makes or breaks your content. The other thing we’re seeing a lot of is the comedy style posting. So I saw a few recently, one was a video of this stylist looked like they were like gossiping in the back break room to their co-stylist and the text that was over the video said, when all your coworkers want the tea from your last guest, okay? And it got a lot of likes, like I totally understand. There was another one of a stylist mixing color in the back break room with text over it that said, “Calling on the color gods, hoping this formula turns out. ” Another one of a stylist looking out a window kind of for Lorne with the text that says how I feel when my client comes in late holding a Starbucks.
So when I say all of those things, if a client sees any of those things, how do we think they feel? Not great, judged, potentially talked about in the back break room, nervous that you can’t pull off their color formulation, but we get fooled because when you post content like this, all the other stylists who follow you are gonna like it and it gives you that dopamine hit and it makes you feel good and you get all the engagement and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, this was a good one.” If your goal is to entertain your peers, that’s fine. If your goal is to actually make more money, probably not a great idea. All of the content I just shared with you is actually a okay for a haircare brand or an industry educator to share because their audience is stylists. And so when we post content like that where it’s like inside jokes and like humor that stylists get, all that is fine when your target market is stylist.
If your target market is clients, we probably don’t wanna make jokes at their expense. Now, what I’m also gonna say is I go into what’s working, which is the next segment here. If you do not want to grow your business, like if your demand is already good, your chairs are already filled, you’re confident with the business you have, post whatever the heck you want on social media. Like you don’t have to follow the rules. If you want to increase your demand, this is the approach I want you to take. So if you see somebody who continues to post stuff like that and you’re like, “They seem like they’re doing great.” They might not have a, a goal to build their demand and/or there are influencers who have built an entire brand on being a persona and clients will show up just to be in their atmosphere, 99% of the industry is not there.
So if you’re the 1% that that’s your vibe, congrats. Like keep doing what you’re doing. I totally see your game and I get it. Most of us are not in that boat, so I would like you to consider these things instead. So step number one, I always advise that stylists or salons analyze what’s already working. And the way that we do that is we look at our existing feed and we look at who is engaging on our content. When we look at the vanity metrics, which would be likes, comments, shares, saves, DMs, stuff like that, when we look at those things, are they coming from existing clients, new clients, industry peers, your mom, like who is actually engaging other people who work at the salon? Is it meaningful engagement that actually is indicating that current clients or potential new guests like our content or not really?
If you’re not seeing any engagement at all, any DMs, any indication that people are moving forward to booking, the content you’re posting might not be working in your favor. Next, we wanna look at high value metrics. So higher value metrics would be comments, DMs, and shares. All three of those take the most amount of work. Likes are cheap. So we are looking for comments, DMs, and shares, and we don’t like comments that are like laughing face emoji. We’re looking for comments that are a little bit more meaningful than that. Somebody slowed down, they took time, they asked a question, they gave great feedback. We’re looking for things like that, DMs. And DMs, it’s like hard to say, “Oh, they DM’ed because of this post or that. ” When I get a DM, it’s almost always timely. Sometimes somebody will DM me out of the blue to ask a question that helps too, but often it’ll be triggered based on a post I make.
So I can make a correlation there and be like, “Okay, we know this post got a lot of DMs, this must have worked.” Shares are obvious that’ll show up on your content too. I know shares are really hard to get for stylists sometimes. When you start to get good at posting content, they’ll be less hard because friends will start, like your clients will start to share your content to their friends when they’re making a recommendation. So that will come in time. But again, that’s quality of content. Last, and this is also gonna be a quality of content one. What kind of content do your clients reference when they come in to see you? Are they pulling up your posts that you’ve made or are they showing you stuff from other people for inspiration? We hope that they’re showing your posts. If they’re not coming in and saying, “I want this look,” and it’s not something they pulled from your feed, that could be a quality of content issue as well.
So just some things to think about. We wanna post more of the content that is very clearly resonating with our existing and new clientele, and those are some of the indicators that you can look at. We’re just kinda not living in an era where follower count matters as much. Quality of content on the feed matters most. I cannot emphasize this enough, and let’s get into the other things that clients are assessing and looking for on your Instagram. So posting three to four times a week on the feed is critical. And people say, “Well, does quantity matter over quality?” No. Quality matters over quantity, and I still want you posting three to four times a week. If you can post seven, even better, if you can post 10 even better than that, three to four times a week is the gold standard minimum. Quality matters the most.
So it can’t be half asked post. It has to be real good stuff. And we’ll talk about that real good stuff is why does that consistency matter? It’s what clients are looking for. So there’s no doubt that our industry is feeling stretched thin, and clients see it, and they’re looking for the stylists that don’t appear as exhausted by their own business, like for the obvious reason. No client wants to feel like they’re a burden coming in to see you, that you’re already kind of maxed out. Now they’ve got another client to serve, which sounds so silly, like clients are what pay our bills, but these are the things that run through client’s mind. If you look like you’re already exhausted by your, your business and you’re not showing up on social and you’re kind of halfway checked in, they’re probably not gonna jump in with you, so that consistency matters, that quality matters.
Next, include details about the service you did in the caption. That’s such a huge missed opportunity. How did you pull off this look? Don’t just write in the caption, love a buttery blonde. Explain. Sadie came in, she got a partial highlight today. She had been doing a mini. She wanted to be brighter. This is what we did. This is … And you know, don’t give the formula. Giving formulas is stylist talk. Just talk about what a client would be interested in knowing what services you did, what she was looking for. Tell me what happened for that client so I can potentially see myself in the visit and decide if that’s a fit for me too. Next, talk about pricing, cost, value. This is one of the things that we as an industry continue to be nervous about, and money makes people nervous. I totally understand.
What happened is we got a little traumatized. Do you remember a few years ago where it became popular to post like, “If you wanna get your hair done, expect to pay $400, this is our value, we’re worth it. Yeah. ” And it was, we really price shocked people and it was the wrong approach to talking about pricing. Like, your prices are your prices. There’s nothing worse than when a client comes in and can’t afford you. Like it’s, it’s uncomfortable for you. It’s embarrassing for them. It’s also something that holds a lot of clients back. Like they’ll see amazing work and say, “I could never afford that. ” But if you’re sharing your pricing, they might be like pleasantly surprised or somebody who might not be able to afford, you might see your pricing and be like, “Ah, you know what? Not for me, but it’s something that I wanna work towards.” It’s okay to talk about price.
They’re gonna figure it out. It’s on your booking page or it’s on your website. So it doesn’t have to be like so mysterious. You don’t have to like throw it in somebody’s face, but it’s helpful to give context for things like that. Next, before and after transformations, there is nothing that is working better on social than before and after transformations right now. Again, it goes back to the idea of clients want to be able to imagine themselves in your chair and picture what result could possibly be theirs. So there’s several different types of content that are working well. We covered five in the bootcamp I just hosted. There’s a bunch covered in Thrivers too, but I want you to really prioritize before and afters, if nothing else, because seeing that transformation seems to be incredibly impactful right now. Next, show yourself as the stylist. I know it feels uncomfortable to be like in front of the camera and you’d rather just show your clients, but we all know clients are still nervous to be shown to.
And the reality is you are the service provider. Clients feel better if they can see you, emotionally connect with you. Imagine what it would be like working with you. Showing yourself is critical. Have you ever booked a service, walked in and wondered like, “Is that who I’m seeing? Is this who I’m seeing? Is this the right place? Is this the … ” Remove all the international mystery. Like they’re going to see your face. They’re going to know what you look like. There’s no point in hiding it. And what we’re finding right now is vulnerability and authenticity is really trending. And that doesn’t mean sloppy content. And it doesn’t just mean like post whatever, but it does mean like showing up, showing who you are as a human in a very professional way. If you don’t want to do video, don’t do video. Just do photos of yourself, but showing your face not selfie style.
Like nice photos, great captions. Clients should be able to see who you are on Instagram before they book an appointment. And don’t just post once. Remember that the average client who looks at your grid is gonna look at 16 posts or less. So look at their last 16 posts and look at the variety of content that was shown and ask if that’s a good representation of your business. Next, make sure that your bio is optimized. So this is something I coach too a lot too. Making sure that you have enough content, the right content, the content that sells you, your business describes who you are, what you do, and makes clients say, “Ah, this is who I’m looking for before they even look at your photos,” right? The bio alone should sell you. Next, having that optimized link in your bio. So the link in bio should not just be a booking page.
It’s too abrupt to go from looking at photos on your Instagram to now book an appointment and pay me money. It’s, there needs to be a smoother transition. The Linkin bio can include your booking, for sure, but it needs to also include a website. Ideally, we’re linking to the like Meet Me page on your website so that clients can do a deeper dive, get to know you and your business more. We want it to be a softer transition. The reason why we changed our marketing funnel in early 2025 is because there was a couple new levels added. There was actually the trust level added to the marketing level and the assessment level added to the retention funnel. Now, trust used to be in retention. It used to be what was built after a guest came in to see you. Trust now has to be built first.
That was a change in consumer behavior. I didn’t choose it. Clients chose it. We recognized it and added it to the funnel and thrivers are seeing results faster than ever. With that trust level, you have to give a softer transition between somebody finding you on social channels, whether it be a Google review or a Yelp review or Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or whatever. There needs to be a softer transition to finding you, getting to know you, booking with you. It takes a little bit longer. That trust has to be built before they come in to see you, and it is a bit of a longer journey than it used to be. And that does start with the Linkin Bio, how many options you have there. When I was looking at Linkin Bios recently, I saw a lot of, I clicked the link and it is book now, buy retail.
Here’s my affiliate link. So as soon as I click your link in bio, you want cash. I got it. And listen, I started this episode by saying this episode is for people who wanna make money. Trust me when I say if you create a more of a transitional experience, a softer landing, you will ultimately get more money. It’s not about asking for it faster, it’s about transitioning a guest into trust and then the opportunity to build a relationship with them that will build the wealth that you’re seeking. When we look at how to use Instagram properly, I will be honest, it’s actually simpler than it’s been in many, many years. You just have to know how to use it correctly. If you have additional questions, you can always hit me up in the DMs on Instagram. You can leave me a rating or review on iTunes for a future podcast episode.
And as I always say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
