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 and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host Britt Seva, really excited as always to talk about the ‘Gram. Always a fun topic here on the show.
So in case you missed it, no worries, there was an announcement made by Adam Mosseri, who’s official title is head of Instagram. He’s actually a former Facebook employee who’s now running Instagram. Facebook bought out Instagram many years back and he made an announcement on June 30th that rocked the world.
The announcement actually was not that Instagram is now a video platform. The announcement was something else, and the fact that he talked about video was the piece that everybody glommed onto.
So we are going to talk about that because it is true, from what I understand, he talked about video, so we’re going to talk about that, but the announcement was not, “And now Instagram is a video platform!”, yet that was the perception. The perception is what matters.
We’re going to talk about that, but I want to talk about what changes are coming to Instagram, how this affects your business, what you need to know, and how we can adapt to ensure that we’re staying cutting edge in our business as stylists and salon owners.
So the announcement that Adam made went on Twitter, went on Instagram. You can check it out yourself if you want to. It’s just a three-minute video. I’m going to sum it up for you here right now, though.
What he openly said is that Instagram is competing with every other social platform on the planet, which is of no surprise. He made mention to specifically TikTok and YouTube ,which YouTube is owned by Google, so he called it, I think, Google’s YouTube, but they are competing.
Facebook, Google—YouTube, whatever you want to call it—and TikTok are going to be constantly at war. They’re three competing platforms trying to get our attention. So what Facebook has historically always done—and Facebook owns Instagram. So what they’ve always done is tried to be the monopoly, right? They see any other platform coming out with a feature and they try and introduce it themselves.
Instagram TV was born of that. Instagram TV has actually been a kind of a mediocre addition to the Instagram app. It has had varying results, same with Reels. It’s like an experiment. Reels are doing okay when you look at statistically what content performs well and what is getting engagement.
The reason that we like Reels is when we post a Reel, it has the tendency to go viral really fast. And then we’re thinking, “Reels are great.” The thing is that Instagram is forcing engagement on some of the things like Reels right now, because they’re trying to make it fly.
Why are they trying to make it fly? Because they’re trying to compete with TikTok and YouTube. They are testing and they’re using us as test subjects. So when we’re like, “Oh, Reels are where it’s at,” does everybody like Reels? Or it’s Instagram just forcing it into the algorithm?
Well, the answer is, yes, it is being forced into the algorithm. We don’t know yet if people actually like Reels. You, as a Reel maker, might like that. You as a Reel viewer might like them, but we don’t know. I have real data yet that says the average Instagram user would prefer a Reel.
We don’t have that data yet because the algorithm is still force-feeding it because they are trying to capture the video market. This is a game.
That is why I consider myself a social media strategist. I never try to be first at the starting line when a new feature rolls out because I know anybody who’s using it as essentially a tester. You are the lab rat who’s trying to use these new features. I sit back and I wait and I watch everybody work out the kinks and I watch how the algorithm is favoring or disfavoring certain kinds of content, and then I’ll come to you guys and share what’s going on.
I want to talk about this most recent Instagram announcement and what it could mean for you and how you might want to shift and change the way that you show up on the platform or not.
The announcement that was made by Mosseri on June 30th was not Instagram is now a video platform. It’s not what he said. What he said was in Instagram, we’re focusing on four different areas. The areas he specifically mentioned were creators, shopping, messaging, and video. So four different things.
He mentioned creators and I actually loved what he said, because he said, “We’re trying to help individuals and make a shift from institutions to individual businesses,” and I freaking love that because it shows that they’re not trying to continue to promote the big dogs. They’re looking out for the little guys, which are us, which is great. I thought that was incredible. I think that’s where the platform intended to be used. It intended to be more community.
You look at Facebook, it actually caters to small business, and I think they’re trying to get back to those roots, which is exciting for me. They’re not saying this is just where the person with the most followers is going to get the most engagement. They’re saying, we’re looking to actually help creators, people who are getting started trying to make a name for themselves, their priority.
I loved that. That made me really excited.
Next, they said, shopping. I don’t know how much you guys follow consumer behavior. It’s my entire business, so I follow it pretty closely. Everybody keeps saying that the pandemic accelerated a shift in consumer behavior by years, and that’s why you’ll see I’ve changed the way I coach and Thrivers Society.
If you were in Thrivers society two years ago, if you join now, it looks nothing like it used to. It can’t because the consumer behavior has changed so radically, so we as stylists and salon owners have to change radically as well.
What they’re saying is there is now a huge digital consumer pool. Even those who before were not digital consumers are now. The amount of digital research being done on a business before anybody’s in choosing to invest money there has heightened dramatically.
You used to be able to get away with having mediocre social media and a mediocre website and mediocre digital everything. Not anymore.
Today’s consumer is very different than the 2019 consumer, and he touched on that. One of the things he said Instagram is prioritizing is shopping. And then he said, because the pandemic shifted consumer spending behavior so quickly—something to note and something I certainly coach to. Then he talked about messaging and he says, “What we’ve noticed is that followers tend to prefer to connect deeply in DMs versus on feeds,” which we know that. So what he’s saying is it used to be historically that they were looking for comments, right? The more comments you get, it affects your algorithm score. Very interestingly, recently, they have not been talking about comments at all as it affects the algorithm. Doesn’t mean that they don’t. We don’t know. The algorithm is still a little bit of the mythical unicorn we don’t know super well.
But I’ve been watching and they’ve been talking about likes, saves, shares, not so much comments. So I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if DMs factor into the algorithm. It’s still a little bit unknown, but they’re saying that messaging is something that they’re looking at because they’ve noticed that there’s been this shift in the way users connect with each other.
Then he got to video. So what he said was, and this is the irony for me, what he said was what I’ve been coaching too for years. And if you’ve been working with any kind of really sophisticated, educated marketing coach, we’ve been talking about this for a long time. Or if you’ve been coaching with anybody who actually studies the mechanics and not just looks at how to get more followers, like actually looks at what it takes to get business, we’ve been saying this. This should not be new radical information.
What he’s saying is the Instagram user goes to the platform to be what? Entertained. I have been coaching to that for years, and if you’ve been in Thrivers Society, you’re like, “Yeah, duh, that’s one of the pillars Britt coaches to.”
People don’t go to Instagram to look at pretty pictures and they haven’t for a long time. So if you’re still curating your Instagram grid to make it look clean or slick or pretty or curated or anything like that, those days have been gone. That shouldn’t be mind-blowing information. That is what’s been happening for a long time.
Now the content that I still coach you to post in Thrivers Society is still correct. So actual content that hits the grid is the same. But the part that we miss is I think for a lot of people using social media, especially in our industry, the goal was to make a pretty feed.
That won’t work anymore and it hasn’t worked for a long time. Some people have been able to sustain with the pretty feed… Oof. Not going to happen anymore.
Instagram shared very openly that over the next, I believe the timeframe he said was six months to a year, those who are just prioritizing pretty feed are going to have a rough rumble.
So what I’ve been coaching to for a long time and what Adam finally came out and said is that Instagram is about entertaining the follower. Of course it is. So the content that we post has to be about that.
Now the tricky thing is that a lot of times we think entertainment equals comedian entertainment equals dancing. No, the entertainment goes much deeper than that. There’s ways to entertain your followers without becoming a dance sequence star. That’s not the only thing that entertains and we’re going to talk about that a little bit.
Now we are going to get into what kind of content I think you should be creating, but I am for a second going to talk about what Adam said is going to happen to our feeds. And for some of you, if you’re in a test market, this might already be happening to your feed. I haven’t seen it yet. They test different markets at different times, but they are shifting the way that your feed gets filled.
When I say feed, I mean when you open up the Instagram app and you just start scrolling, like you’re not looking at your own personal grid, you’re scrolling, that’s considered the feed. What had happened before is your feed was filled with accounts that you follow based on engagement and algorithm, and then paid or sponsored posts.
That is changing. That to me is the massive change. You can’t believe people aren’t talking about that. That is the massive change. So what’s going to happen now is your feed is not just going to be filled with accounts of those you follow and you engage with and sponsored posts. There’s going to be a third category, which is accounts you don’t yet follow that they think you might be interested in.
Think of it as the Explore page now hits your feed. This is a test feature and they’ve openly said they don’t know if people will like it, because now you’re going to start to see this mishmash of content that you didn’t really sign up for.
But I’m going to talk about how they’re choosing what content hits your feed. I’m going to talk about that. It sounds smart in theory, they’re just not sure how it’s going to affect the user experience, so we’re going to talk about that.
Now, the other thing is you may already see this. There’s going to be notes that pop up on your feed from time to time, likely as you’re scrolling. I have not seen one yet.
I’m talking about in theory, based on what I know, something will pop up that asks you, “Is this the kind of content you want to see more of in your feed?” Essentially, you’re creating your own feed experience.
Let’s say that you’re a big fan of cookie baking and one post from a cookie blogger that you’ve never followed before hits your feed. Maybe it’ll say, “Do you like this kind of content? Do you want to see more of it?” If you click yes, they’re going to put more of that content in your feed of people that you don’t yet follow but are cookie bloggers.
Essentially you’re training your own algorithm, which is interesting, but we don’t know exactly how that’s going to play out yet. So then the question becomes, well, if you’re thinking about it, it sounds like it’s actually going to be harder to get into your followers’ feeds and you’re right. Everybody’s caught up in talking about the video thing, the video thing.
Friends, we need to be worried about the feed. That, I mean, that to me is like the shocker. That to me was like the, “Whoa, this is a big deal,” because the feed was hard enough to get into. Now there’s this third category of content that’s going to go into the feed.
People still only scroll for as long as they’re going to scroll and now you’re competing for this additional point of content that’s going to pop into the feed. That to me is a bit more concerning.
So we’re going to talk about what you need to do to make sure that you do still hit your followers’ feeds and we’re going to talk about what Instagram openly has said pretty recently about how their algorithm works. ‘Cause they broke it down, still a little surface level, but they broke it down a little bit. So we’re going to talk about that.
When we’re looking at quality of content, if you still want to make the feed of those who already follow you and potentially this new explore feed as well, what’s going to be critical is that the quality of your content matters more than ever. You can’t just post a post.
I’ve been coaching to this for years. Don’t just post a picture ‘cause it’s been awhile. The quality has to be good. People used to do things—I never coached to this, but people used to do things…have you seen it where they’ll take one photo, they’ll use an app that cuts that photo into six photos so that when all six photos are uploaded on the grid, it kind of looks cool. It looks like one photo stretched out over the grid and it looks neat when you look at the grid.
That is going to be an algorithm destroyer right now because the quality of your content has to be so good and when those individual squares hit a feed, they don’t look good. It looks like you don’t even know what you’re looking at. That kind of stuff is not going to fly.
The reason why these shifts are happening is Instagram doesn’t like that. That is not native to the platform. That’s you using an app to create content that is not considered native and no social media app likes content that isn’t native. Doing some of these funkier things to get a workaround or make it look cool or innovative, that’s going to be tough.
You have to follow the rules a bit more and the quality of your content really matters. It can’t just be stuff. It has to be very high quality.
Small businesses with good content are more important now than ever. They mentioned they’re looking out for the small guy. Again, if your content is good, you’re what they are looking for. Not just stuff.
And again, you’ve never been guaranteed to hit the feed, but now less than ever, quality is going to win. This should not be new information. That should be same old, same old.
Posts must entertain or add value. Again, welcome to Thrivers Society circa 2016. I’ve been talking about this for a long time. Posts can’t just be good hair with a quickie little caption. You must entertain, educate, or inspire, or forget it now more than ever.
Forget the video. We’ll talk about the video, but if your posts are just showing off your work, it’s going to be a struggle. Entertain, educate, inspire. Super important.
Okay, so let’s talk about how Instagram recently shared that their current algorithm works, which think of an algorithm like a mathematical equation. It’s changing all the time. They can change the rules of the algorithm anytime they want to, but this is how it works right now from the horse’s mouth. What they have said.
There’s different factors that they’re looking at and they’re looking at four things. First is going to be information about the post. So the information about any given post that you make to the platform that is being analyzed is, is it a photo? Is it a video? Is it getting likes? Is it getting shares? Is it giving saves? They didn’t say openly anything about comments. So what they’re looking for on any post you make is likes, shares, and saves. Something to think about.
I don’t think that that means comments are irrelevant. I like comments. I learned a lot about my followers from the comments. I think I make an impact with people in the comments. It’s not the comments don’t matter. They matter, because for me, I’ve always said this—I don’t care how many followers I have on the platform. I care how many followers I can impact. How many people choose to coach with me? How many people actually choose to interact with my content?
If I’m looking for interaction, true, authentic connection, then comments matter to me. But do they matter to the algorithm? I mean, Instagram is not saying openly that it does.
Next, we have information about the author. Is the post that was recently made by somebody you follow, and does that Instagram user posts often, and do their posts generally see engagement?
If you’re a social media dabbler, these changes are going to be very tough for you. You need to be really consistent with the platform, posting the right things and getting some kind of engagement. So this is going back to what I’ve been saying the whole time: quality. They’re looking for quality, consistent content.
Then we have information about the scroller, so whoever’s using the platform at any given time. The person who’s a viewer on the platform, how do they generally engage? What do they like to see? So I’ll use me for example. I don’t consume a ton of video on Instagram. Not a ton makes my feed because Instagram still wants to show me what I am most likely to engage with.
Now, as these changes shift, that doesn’t mean I won’t start seeing more video, but Reels and stuff like that hardly ever make my feed ‘cause I don’t watch them, and Instagram still wants me to be an engaged user.
So I have the Reels. There’s a section that shows up on my Instagram where it’s a bar and there’s like a handful of suggested Reels. But when I’m scrolling my feed, not really any at all, ‘cause I don’t watch them, so it’s not in their best interest to keep serving them up to me. They’re sampling them because they want me to get into Reels. But because I haven’t, it wouldn’t make sense to fill my feed with it.
When they say information about the user, they still want to show whoever’s using the platform the kind of content they’re most likely to engage with comments, save, share, right? All that kind of stuff. So that does matter.
And then the forest characteristic they’re looking for is interaction history. So if you haven’t liked, or commented, saved, or shared on an account, they won’t likely make your feed. So you’ve probably noticed this too. There are some accounts where I will like every single post they make ‘cause I genuinely care so they always make my feed. I see them every single day ‘cause I always engage with them. Then there’s some accounts I followed because I saw one post on the explore page and I’ve never seen them again because I maybe didn’t even interact on that first post I liked. I just followed the page, but because I’m not interacting on the photos, Instagram isn’t going to show me their content. It’s the same for you.
So then the question becomes like, “Oh, so I should be asking my clients to like my photos.” No, you should be posting the kind of content people naturally want to engage with. What is the kind of content that people naturally want to engage with? Content that entertains or educates. Period. Every single time. Right?
Okay, so then they got even deeper and they said, “How does Instagram evaluate each post performance?” So that was how likely a post is to hit your feed. But when they’re evaluating each post’s performance, there are five criteria they’re looking for: time spent, meaning how much time somebody spends on a post.
That’s where video matters because everybody’s going to spend more time watching a video than looking at a photo. I can look at a photo and in less than a second and understand what’s going on. For a video, I need to watch for at least four seconds to even have some concept of what’s happening.
So already right there, I spent likely eight times more time on the four seconds of a video than on the half a second of a photo, right? So the time spent is part of the algorithm, which is why things like Reels and videos perform better. Because even if it’s a minute amount of time, somebody has to watch a video a little bit longer than a photo to even understand what’s going on.
Then here’s where it’s interesting. This is where they say likes, comments, and saves. So now comments come into play. Interesting. Again, this algorithm’s crazy. Then click through to profile. I love that one. So how likely somebody is to not just see your photo or your video, but actually click through to your profile after. That makes a difference.
So what are we doing that actually makes people want to naturally go through to your profile? What do I mean when I say naturally? If you say “…so click through to my profile and,”blah, blah, blah. That’s not natural. That’s forced.
What can we do to make them naturally want to do it, right?
So then let’s talk about how they’re going to have posts coming into our feed of accounts that we don’t already follow or engage with. They mentioned essentially the explore feature is going to start infiltrating our feed a little bit. How do they decide what comes there? This is what I thought was interesting.
What they said is like I was talking about with the baker. If there is an account that you always like and follow, like there’s one that I always like and engage with and it has inspirational quotes. It just makes me feel good for the day. Pretty much every morning when I wake up, it’s the first thing on my feed pretty much and I always liked them.
So what’s going to happen is Instagram is going to be like, “Oh, she likes these inspirational quotes kind of things from this specific account.” So what they’re going to say is who else follows this account with the inspirational quote thing that Britt likes so much? They’re going to look at who else follows that account and what accounts those followers follow.
Based on people like me who like this account, what else do those people like? And that’s what’s going to create that kind of explore grid on your feed.
What’s interesting about that is that’s not about engagement at all. That’s not about likes, comments. It’s about who I’m most likely to choose to follow next. It’s a really different kind of play versus the game of likes, comments, save, shares.
So what it boils down to—so this is a lot of information I just threw a lot of information at you. I want to boil it all down to keep it simple: video matters. That’s not new. I’ve been coaching to incorporating more video on your feeds for four years. Now that’s old information.
Instagram is just drawing a line in the sand and saying, listen, “Right now, our game is to compete with TikTok and YouTube.” They said it blatantly, you can look up the quote. So because of that, they want to win with video. That is what they want and they’re basically going to test consumers to see if they can get consumers to keep up. Openly they said that. You can look it up and read it if you want to.
But the way to perform well on the platform right now is to create high quality content. Can be photo or can be video. What it can’t be is just pretty pictures of hair. But I’ve been saying that for years. That shouldn’t be new information, right? The quality of the content, the story you tell on the platform matters and your post can’t just be informational.
Here’s an example of an informational post: photo of a blonde with a comment that says “Blondes have more fun!” No, that doesn’t entertain or educate me. We have to go deeper than that.
With these changes to Instagram, what is important to understand is that they want users to be entertained. They said that openly your content can’t just be there. It can’t just be where you shout from the rooftop, “I do hair!” We need to connect. Consumers coming out of 2021 want to connect in a really deep, big way, and you need to be there for them.
If you need any guidance on making that happen, I’m going to keep talking about it here on the podcast as much as I can, but we would love to have you join us in Thrivers Society. Prep School is available now. You can join us at any time. We would love to have you and I would love to help make this as easy as possible for you, but until then, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
