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 you guys and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host Britt Seva. We are diving into caption writing 101, the anatomy of a perfect caption today.
Now I’m going to confess right at the top of this: I did not used to know how to write captions. They used to be my Achilles heel.
So if you feel like “Captions get me every time! I can do good work. I can even take the photos of the good work. I know how to get a good photo, but then I sit down in the driver’s seat of my car, about to drive away from the salon in the evening, thinking to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, I just have to hammer out this caption before I can put a pin in the day to day,’” okay. And you can’t seem to do it.
I see you. I’ve been there. I get it and I want to try and take as much of the pain out of caption writing as I possibly can today.
Now I will say in our Thrivers Society program, you will find a really, really helpful 100 Caption Guide. It’s actually over 100 pre-written captions ready and waiting for you.
And the thing about when I teach to captions or when I serve up captions on a silver platter, one of the things I always like to say is I’m basically helping you write captions until you’ve gained the confidence to do it yourself. Even when I say, okay, let’s pretend on this episode, I served up a dozen captions for you. If all you did was use those dozen captions, and then when it came the time to post number 13, you were like, “Well, now I don’t know what to say,” you did the exercise wrong.
Whenever you work with somebody like me—an educator, a coach, a guide—the goal is always that we help you to create habit. We show you opportunity so that you can build a skill yourself, right? And so when you use a tool I’ve given, like the 100 Caption Guide or something like that, the goal would be that as you were using the words that I’ve given you to get yourself off the ground, you also then built habit, you start to see the rhythm in the way that I write captions. (It’s the same rhythm every single time.)
You start to get ideas and you’ll say, “Wow, I used caption number 64 and it did really, really well. So what was it about that caption that my particular audience really, really resonated with?”
And that’s what we have to say with captions too.
So one of my favorite things to do as I’m scrolling the ‘gram is I don’t scroll mindlessly anymore. I scroll maybe 10 minutes a day if that, oftentimes not even. Usually I spend my time going to stylists’ profiles or searching on hashtags to meet new people and going to really poignant profiles that I know I like to engage with just to make the process quicker.
But if I am scrolling, sometimes I’ll come across a caption that I love. And I always ask myself, Ooh, what about this caption drew me in?”
Part of writing good captions is as you’re scrolling, paying attention to what about a caption draws you in. Now, we aren’t attracted to all captions. Sometimes you see a caption and it doesn’t even carry any weight. It doesn’t make you want to double-tap, it’s just white noise and you keep scrolling. Pay attention to those things too.
What made this caption poor? Why didn’t I choose to interact on it? But if I do see a good caption, often what I do is I save it and I don’t save it with the intention of copying it. I don’t save it with the intention of even using the same perspective or the same topic that the author of that caption wrote. I save it because I like to study the rhythm in which it was written. I like to study the emotional reaction I had to it. And I want to teach you some of those skills today.
Rather than handing you fish, I’m going to teach you to fish. That’s another old saying—I love to butcher as I try and say all my sayings—and I want to teach you how to look at captions from the viewpoint that I look at them from so you can make your captions that much stronger.
When we look at criteria for writing captions, I have my own concept about what a caption should be, and if you work with any business coach, they’re all going to have their own ideas of what you should be posting on social. I only coach to our industry, so I know what to coach our industry to on social, and I like to see captions that are entertaining, inspiring, or educational.
That’s it.
Most of the captions I see probably about 80% are informational. It’s just words. It describes the picture. It’s in stylist speak, which potential new clients don’t understand.
When you talk about the formula in the caption, or when you talk about how much work it took to get there. For clients, they don’t care so much about the process, they care about the result, right? Those kinds of posts would just be informational.
I actually want to read you some examples of informational captions so you can cross check yourself and see if that’s how you’re currently writing.
I’m looking at Instagram right now and I just searched #balayage. If you search the same hashtag, all the photos will have changed by the time you’re listening to this episode, but you can do this too. As I’m scrolling, I’m reading the captions: gorgeous blonde, like a beautiful balyage. The caption is “Painted blonde with a melt.” Informational.
Here’s another one: “That money piece” with a fire symbol. Again, informational.
Here’s another one. “Refresh that hair, baby!” Informational. And they’re not all short like that, but often they are.
Here’s another one: “Who else loves a good summer chop?” That’s informational.
Sometimes you might look at that—and this is why I wanted to share examples—and you might say, “Well, no, that’s inspiring.” No, it would be inspiring if you said, “One of my favorite things about my client Candice is that we do the summer chop every year. She chooses to cut those locks because,” and then you explain the benefits of doing the big summer haircut for this client with a quote or testimonial about how amazing it is to work with you. That’s inspirational.
Just to say, “Who else loves the summer chop?” is informing, right? We could say, “Well, I’m asking a question. I’m trying to engage”. But what if—so for me, for example, I don’t buy into the idea of summer chop because I’ve only ever felt I looked very unattractive with short haircuts. So when you say, “Who loves the summer chop?” I’m like, “Oh, not me,” so you’ve lost me. You’re not going to get my engagement. Versus if you said “One of my favorite things about working with Jessica is she embraces the summer chop, and here’s why.”
Now I’m intrigued because I had told myself a false story about summer chop equals ugly because that’s all I had ever experienced. In my mind, you saying, “Do you like a summer chop?” No, I do not, so I do not like your post and I do not like her hair. Can you see how your informational posts that was not bad, like I’m looking at this photo, the haircut is perfection. Like I wish I could have that haircut, but your caption turned me off because I do not like a chop, so no thank you for me. I’m not going to engage with you versus if you took me down a journey as to why a summer haircut can be a really beneficial thing, and it gives you more time to be with your family and it makes travel so easy because you don’t have to bring a flat iron everywhere you go or whatever.
Sell me on it without selling me on it, right? That becomes the trick. We’re going to talk about how to do that in a second. But when I say your posts should be entertaining, inspiring, or educational, not informational, that is the perfect example of how to make a small tweak so that the perception of what you say with every post you make is more impactful.
Here are three quick tips to keep in mind when we’re drafting captions.
First, you want to keep it conversational. So often our captions turn into informational when we’re not having a conversation. When we say things like, “Who loves that chop?”, that’s not a conversation. That’s a one-way question. My answer is no, so the conversation just died, right? That’s not going to work.
Also when we say things like “Refresh that hair, baby!” that’s not a conversation. That’s an inflammatory remark. It’s not even a fact. It’s just noise and for all of us, we’re a little tired of how noisy social media has been. We’d rather it actually enhance our lives.
That’s what our captions can do.
“Painted blonde with a melt.” I don’t have anything to say to it, so I can’t—when you’re like, “I wish I got more comments.” What am I—yes, it is beautiful? How do I—? I had to really think for a minute.
If you’re not giving the opportunity for conversation to flow, you can’t be surprised when you don’t get likes, caption shares, and saves. It doesn’t make any sense.
And then there’s another theory that every post should end in a question. “Comment below with your blah, blah, blah!” “Double tap if you feel a certain way!” I rarely do that on social. I’ll dabble with it a little bit, but I’ve actually found that when I’m like, “Comment below with your yada yada,” very rarely does it actually get engagement. Versus if I just write a really good caption, the engagement happens organically.
Play with that a little bit. You can ask questions, you can give prompts, but when it feels very contrived and very forced, often you’ll see engagement take a dip versus having a very natural conversation.
Think about it this way. Would you rather sit down across from me for a job interview? I’m considering hiring you for something or would you rather sit down with me for an hour and just chit chat and get to know each other? What would be more comfortable? Always the chit-chat and get to know each other. Yet a lot of times in our captions, it reads more like an interview or an educational informational summit versus just like talking like normal humans do.
And normal human interaction, man, we are so craving it right now.
So if you can just make those captions as conversational as possible, like feeling like you’re talking to a great friend about hair or about whatever it is about, it’s always going to resonate a little bit deeper.
Pro tip number two, think about the reader, not yourself.
I used to say that social media was like your online portfolio and it was a place to show off how amazing that you are. Well, the cool thing is it’s still about showing off how amazing you are, showing how established your brand is, showing who you are, what you do, giving a taste of your salon experience. All of that remains, but actually social media is not for you. Social media is for your guest.
And I know when I say that, you’re like, yeah, yeah, obviously, but then when I look at how you’re posting, you’re posting it as your personal brag and we can’t do that.
When you look at the posts for example that I make on social media, I don’t often do things like here’s 10 facts you didn’t know about Britt. Although if I did that, it would actually work, okay, because it would get some decent engagement. That’s a post about me so it’s not going to be nearly as effective and it’s not going to resonate nearly as deeply as if I did an Instagram post based on this topic and I said, the 10 secrets to writing captions.
That’s value for you versus if I did a post that was like Britt eats gummy bears every single day, which I do. That is a fact. I also eat an apple every single day, so I feel like that cancels each other out. My favorite color is pink. I danced classic ballet for 17 years. So while I can share all those fun facts and it’s cool, you’re going to get more value out of my 10 ways to write a good capture post because it’s about you.
When you’re writing captions always say, “Is this post for me? Am I showing off me? Or am I adding value to my followers’ life?” Really good reframe when you’re sitting down to write captions.
Then pro tip number three, try to add value.
Instead of trying to sell, there is a real difference between adding value and selling. Often people will make a retail post. They’ll do a picture of a can of hairspray and it’ll be like, “I love this hairspray because it does this, that, and the other thing, ask me for more details.” Sell, sell, sell, selling, selling, selling, sell me hairspray. That’s what that says.
Where if instead it was how to know if you’re a good candidate for hairspray or not. For example, hairspray in my hair is just about doomsday. It’s just the absolute worst and I’m sure I could find a better hairspray. And maybe that becomes the caption.
Here’s a caption idea, choosing the right hairspray based on your hair texture. Oh see, now I’m intrigued. So it’s still a photo of the same hit can of hairspray. But instead of saying, “I love blah-blah-blah hairspray,” it goes back to the example I gave at the top of this episode. Well, for me, Britt Seva, I hate hairspray, so I’m never going to engage on your caption about hairspray. When you say, “I love blah-blah-blah hairspray because…” I’ve already decided I hated it.
I hate it. You love it. The conversation died versus you saying how to choose the right heck a hairspray for your texture. Now I’m like, well, wait a minute. Maybe I don’t hate hairspray. Maybe I’ve been using it wrong all along. Ding ding. Did you just get the light bulb above your head?
It changes positioning. Same photo, same concept, different conversation. And that’s when beautiful captions start to come together.
When we look at really plotting out your caption and deciding what to say, we always have to think about the first 125 characters, which I call the hook.
You know when you’re scrolling the ‘gram, all that you see is the first blippet of a caption. That is prime real estate. That is oceanfront, beach front, top of the line. The money shot is right there. If you wait and keep the hook, the really juicy stuff, three paragraphs down, nobody’s ever going to get there.
Those first 125 characters have to be really impactful and they have to make the reader say, “Oh, I need to see what’s coming next.” It needs to cause intrigue. It needs to let them know something amazing is coming. That’s where you’re going to get the engagement that you’re looking for them.
Now past the 125 first characters, we get into the foundation of the purpose. It might be the buildup of the story. Sometimes I talk about introducing the characters.
Let’s say my hook was, “I’ll never forget the first time I had to fire a stylist.” Oh. For some of you salon owners, that hook was enough to be like, “Oh my gosh, what was it like for Britt the first time,” right? Then I’m going to lay the foundation and I’m going to say—this is a fake story. P.S. Although I did have to fire a few stylists. This is not a real story.
“The first time I met Jolene, I was drawn to her energy from the start. She was fun. She was passionate. She was excited about what she was doing and we had an amazing rapport.”
I’ve laid the foundation and you’re interested because you’re like, “Oh my gosh, so when she started working with Jolene, everything was great. Then what happened?”
Not every story has people as characters. In the example I gave before when I was talking about the hairspray, the hairsprays are the characters, right? But maybe you have a strong hold, a medium hold, right? But there’s different types of hairspray. Those are your characters and you’d introduce them by saying, “Not all hairsprays are made equal. The reason why you can find over 500 cans of hairspray nationwide today is because each one serves a different purpose.”
Now you’ve introduced the characters, right? So you hook, and then you give a context to what we’re going to be talking about, and then you get into the meat of it.
This is the third component of the caption, right? We have the hook, we have the foundation, then we get into the meat. This is where we blow minds, gain concept, buy-in, really share the depth of whatever we’re talking about here in this caption.
Then we get into the conclusion, and often a conclusion includes a call to action. Not always, if you look at my captions, maybe 30% have a call to action, 70% don’t for the reason that I’ve shared with you. This is from trial and error. I found that if I say “So comment below,” sometimes it works, often it doesn’t. Often I see a reduction in engagement, so I tread lightly and I play with it a little bit. I look for trends because social media is ever evolving and ever changing, right?
The reason I’m bringing this up is you don’t always have to say double tap if you loved this. That’s false engagement, and I don’t know about you, I don’t like to be told what to do. That’s just my personality type. I will authentically like your caption or your post if I liked it and if I didn’t, I’m not going to. That’s just my reality. When you ask me to do it, it makes me that much more unlikely to do it, so difficult to work with, right?
But a lot of people are wired the way I am, so you can say, “To learn more about these hairsprays, go ahead and click the link in my bio. I have a blog on them.” Now, if I’m super into hairspray, I might not like or comment on that post, but I am going to read that blog article.
I want you to remember what the point of social media is. Is the point of social media to become Instagram famous or is the point to run a successful business?
For me, I don’t care if I ever have 100,000 followers. Does not matter to me in the least. I want to make an impact on the industry and I want to love the students that I’m working with. That’s it.
I don’t care if somebody likes or comments, that engagement helps me and I’m always searching for it because I know it’s going to push me out in front of my audience more, so I’m still playing that game. But I would take a click to my website over a double-tap or a comment seven days a week, because I know if somebody’s taking a click to my website, they’re investing in my brand, they’re listening to my podcast or reading my blogs, and they’re starting to actually work with me effectively as a coach.
So when you’re working with these captions and you’re looking at social media, I want you to say, “Am I getting the result I’m looking for?”
For me, the result with social media is always, “Is this driving butts to my chair? Am I getting referrals weekly from Instagram?” If not, you’re probably using the platform incorrectly in one way or another.
Could be your captions, could be your photos, could be your brand, could be your grid, could be any number of things, but captions is a really good place to start.
This was an action packed episode, lots of pro tips. I want you to slay it with those captions—slay, slay, slay—and then tag me in hashtag me in so that I can take a look at your captions. You can use #BrittSeva, you can tag me in @brittseva so I can take a look at your captions and see the magic that you’re making on your feed.
You guys, if you loved this episode, I’d love it if you take a screenshot, share it in your stories and I’ll be coaching to this topic even more in our Thriving Stylist Insiders Facebook group so make sure you tune in!
You guys, so much love, happy business-building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
