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 am your host Britt Seva, and we are going to dive into the ‘Gram today. I always love an opportunity to talk about Instagram, social media in general, and we’re going to talk about the engagement shakeup that is rocking the world.
So whether you’ve seen it or not, the way that Instagram works has changed pretty dramatically over the last couple of years. I think most of the changes were sparked by the 2020 pandemic. People changed their relationship with social media. People really changed the way they were living their lives through that time, and I always say that, I think a lot of people are on this quest to like get back to normal. Like the amount of times people have told me like, well, when we get back to normal.
I think people are still craving like 2019 normal. Y’all, we’re never going back there. Like we will never go back to what life was like before 2020. Everything is completely changed. Mindset has changed. Values have changed. Businesses changed, landscape has changed. Economy has changed, like everything has changed, and so as technology moved forward and progressive views came into play.
We’re never going to go back there, so we need to evolve forward and we need to look at the way we’re using these tools as evolving forward as well.
So because consumer’s behavior with social media changed so drastically—and even people’s views of what social media is, how it works, how it makes us feel, that really changed. And I’ve talked on the podcast about how we have a shift to authenticity, which I do still fully stand behind. Authenticity doesn’t mean show your mess, but it means show your truth, and I always say openly that the days of like showing off that you’re flying off to France on your PJ, that’s done. That doesn’t impress anybody much anymore. It makes you somebody who feels like unrelatable, inaccessible. It doesn’t have the same shimmer and shine as it used to.
And I’m going to drop some stats today that are going to make you feel really differently about social media, so get really ready for it.
But because of that, I want you to change the way you look at the tool and think about using the tool, and let’s talk about specifically, on this episode, engagement, because I think for some of you, you’re still tracking the wrong stuff. Like you’re chasing the wrong numbers and chasing the wrong game, and I want to talk about it.
So first of all, let’s talk about social credibility. So Instagram even used to see social credibility differently. Do you remember when the link feature in Instagram stories was only available if you had over 10,000 followers? Well, they pulled that. Now everybody has the link in their stories.
Why did they do that? Because social credibility has changed. The influencer market is dying. I’ve talked about that before on this podcast, I’ve been talking about that for two years on the show, go back and listen. The shakeup in the influencer market. It’s not as cool as it used to be. The profitability is going away.
When you look at big brands who used to put a ton of money into influencers, that’s really shifting. I’m going to share some stats about being an influencer in just a second here that’s going to blow your mind.
But Instagram knows that. It used to reward people for being like mega superstars, and that’s just not all that it was cracked up to be a while ago. So, because that’s changing, social credibility is changing as well.
When you look at factors like that, you have to put all the pieces together and say, “Listen, why are these changes taking place? Why is this big billion-dollar company making these adjustments and how do I need to adjust along with it?”
I believe that now perceived social credibility comes when you have 500 engaged followers. 500. 5-0-0, not 50,000, not 500,000. 500.
For most of you in this room, if you’re a stylist, if you had 500 engaged followers who could potentially be a part of your business, you’d have so many clients and so much money, you wouldn’t even know what to do with yourself. But so many people are caught up in becoming Insta-famous that you’re missing the mark.
I’ve said this hundreds of times, and I’ll say it again: I know so many people who have like 30,000, 70,000, 100,000, 250,000 social media followers who are not doing well financially. There is such a huge difference between being popular and profitable. I’ll take profitability all day.
Chasing that follower count and P.S., that model has died, and we’re going to talk about why in just a second here, but instead of getting 1 billion followers, you need to get the right followers to choose to actually invest with you. You don’t want an empty following. It just destroys your future potential.
And you want the right people following. So you want your followers to be potential clients. The vast majority. Never will it ever be all potential clients, right? But you want the vast majority to be.
I believe once you have 500 followers on the Instagram platform for social credibility, meaning somebody looks to you and is like, oh, okay, okay, they can trust you. When you have like less than a hundred, 200, 300, you still look like an up-and-comer.
And generally speaking, the reason you’re stuck around 100, 200, 300, 400 is you’re not consistent on the platform. Can I get an amen? Like if you have 200, 300, 400 followers and you’ve been posting consistently for six months—you haven’t, right? It’s because you’re not showing up or you don’t know how to show up so your follower count isn’t growing to where it could be.
If you’re showing up consistently with high-value content, getting there should be no problem. It’s an issue with your actions. Either the content you’re posting is not good, isn’t where it needs to be.
And when I say good, I don’t mean taking pretty pictures, right? That’s not what Instagram is about anymore. It’s the right content. So you’re either not showing up with the right content or you’re not showing up consistently, right? ‘Cause that’s going to be the recipe for getting there.
Then going back to the idea of social credibility, I just said 500 engaged followers is the first part, consistent posting of high-quality content is much more impactful than high follower content. Here’s why: this change happened due to the ever-evolving algorithms.
Let me ask you this. How many people did you follow once and forget about, like you stumbled upon them, maybe you heard them speaking on a Clubhouse or you found them on Instagram or they slid into your DMs, and you’re like, “Oh, I love this person.” You give them a follow and now you don’t even know who they were. You can’t remember their name. You don’t remember their feed. You’ve never checked in on them. They don’t show up anymore.
Are you like, “Oh my gosh, I have hundreds of those.” I know.
Also, you are part of that. There are so many people who have followed you and don’t even remember you exist anymore. Truly. The same for me. It happens all the time.
Here’s why: do you know that 91% of Instagram profiles, 91% have over a thousand followers. Only 9% have less than a thousand. The majority of people are over 1000 followers. 66% of Instagram users have 1,001 to 100,000 followers. It just means it’s not that rare anymore. Well over half of that are what we considered to be an influencer status, 66%.
25% of Instagram users have over a hundred thousand followers. That’s not even rare anymore. 25%. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people at this point.
Then the top 1% have over a million. So the new influencer has over a million. I mean, that’s the benchmark now.
Do you remember when it was super cool to have like 200,000? It was like, well, it’s still good. You’ve still gotten to an amazing place. You’re at the top 25%, but it doesn’t mean what it used to mean.
There’s a lot of reasons we got to this place. Bots, fake followers, scammers, like there’s a ton of reasons why all of this happened. The algorithms changed everything. But having a massive following doesn’t carry the same growth potential and scalability potentials at once.
If you have a high follower count, you should be proud ‘cause I know the work it took to get there. I’m not saying let the pride go. But what I’m saying is can you attribute that high follower count to how it is dramatically affected your life?
Let’s say in the last year you doubled your follower count. Did you more than double your income? You just have to start asking yourself that. If your follower count quadrupled, did you quadruple your income?
I don’t know, but somebody who goes from 20,000 to 200,000 followers, I’m sure didn’t 100x their income, and that’s the problem is it’s not as scalable ratio like that. And to me, the game is not try and get your follower count as high as you can because 91% of Instagram accounts have over a thousand already anyway. Over 66% have between a thousand and a hundred thousand so that’s not going to work either.
It’s about getting super high engagement because the engagement that’s super high is going to lead to money in your pocket.
Let me talk about high engagement.
First we have likes. Likes are like trash numbers now. Isn’t that the wildest thing. Likes are good. It’s like a confidence boost, like the double tab is like, “Yay. People like my stuff.”
It doesn’t work much in the algorithm anymore, and our clue to that was on May 26, 2021. When Instagram made the statement, “Starting today, we’re giving you the option to hide like counts on all posts in your feed,” meaning you’d never see how many likes a post has, like you as a user can turn that on.
“You’ll also have the option to hide like counts on your own posts so others can’t see how many likes your posts get. This way, if you like, you can focus on the photos and videos being shared instead of how many likes a post gets.”
Do you realize that’s how Instagram is rating you as well? They’re openly saying it’s not about likes anymore. We don’t care about the likes. We’re hiding the likes. You can hide the likes. They’re irrelevant. That should have been your note. That’s not how the algorithm plays anymore. That should have been your clue in May of 2021.
Likes. They’ve kept them because they’re habitual, but they’ve been talking about removing likes since 2019. 2019 is when I first got whiff of that. They’ve been trying to get out of likes for a long time because Instagram doesn’t want to be a popularity contest anymore. They know the influencer market has shifted and they’re trying to shift and stay relevant. Instagram is fighting to stay relevant too, and so likes do not carry the same weight as they used to when it comes to the algorithm.
Now comments, comments are what makes social media social. This is what clients are looking at. And when I say clients, I mean potential investors into you and your business, clients who could sit in your chair for a haircut, students who could take part in your educational class. Comments are what it’s about. That’s where the connection, the care, and the heart, and nurturing are happening.
Now that being said, don’t create false engagement. False engagement doesn’t count anymore either. So we used to do things like “Drop your favorite emoji below to let me know how you feel about summertime,” and they’d get like 60 emojis and you’d be like, “Sweet. This is going to play well in the algorithm.” Instagram caught on to all of that stuff. There needs to be true engagement, not that fake stuff.
The other thing is why do you care if my favorite emoji is the pink heart, which P.S. it is. I use it every day. But is that gonna make me invest in your business? No. Knowing what emoji I love does nothing for either of us. It doesn’t make me want to invest with you. It doesn’t make me any more bonded to you, so why are we talking about it?
But we did these silly things because we wanted to play so well with the platform. I get it. I played all the games to win. I’m here to tell you is that’s not the game anymore.
Like we used to be like, “Ooh, how do I go viral? How do we get lots of comments?” I’m like, “How do I earn business? How do I submit myself in the authority in my market?” And those are the questions you should be asking yourself too.
Rather than playing games, I want you to ask yourself, “How do I create content that makes people want to comment and say, ‘Oh my gosh, how did you curl hair that way?’ or, ‘Whoa, I never thought about doing it like that.” Or “Can we do this on my next visit?’ Or, ‘I still don’t understand how moose works. Can you talk more about that?’”
Create genuine connection. It’s called social media for a reason. You’re supposed to be creating social conversations.
It’s funny, we go on Instagram and it’s like, we forget how to human. You’re still a human.
Pretend that you’re at a dinner party, and everybody asked you to stand up and tell us, “Hey, I’m so glad you’re here. Tell me about yourself.” That’s your Instagram post. “Hey, I’m so glad you’re here. What are three fun facts you can share with us today?” That’s the post, like be a human.
We’ve turned Instagram into this place where we’re trying to literally go viral. I think that’s the goal for most people at this point and going viral is cool, but it’s not going to pay your bills, especially as this influencer market really starts to change. It’s just not about that anymore. You’re trying to go deep with those who already follow you, not become famous, and we really need to shift our goal around that.
Even when I say famous, I mean like in your own marketing community, if you had 300 raving clients in your community, you would be banging, like you would be so incredibly successful and that should be the goal.
That to me is the softest engagement when we get to likes and comments.
So I want to talk about the four big dogs, which to me are saves, shares, DMs, and links. Let’s focus on those four for a minute. Saves do still perform really, really well and saves are the acknowledgment to Instagram that the quality of your content is high.
That’s a huge one for Instagram right now. Like they said in their quote, which let me read you the quote again, ‘cause I didn’t just make this up. This is a quote from Instagram: “Starting today, we’re going to give you the option to hide like counts on all posts on your feed. You’ll also have the option to hide like counts on your own posts so others can see how many likes your post gets. This way you can focus on the photos and videos being shared instead of how many likes your posts get.”
They’re looking for quality. Read between the lines, my friends. Not virality, quality, so you need to get those saves and shares. That is what is proving to Instagram that the quality is high.
If your post is save-worthy or share-worthy, it’s just that good.
So when you’re looking for saves, what can you post that’s going to make a client say, “Ooh, I don’t want to forget about that. I want to save this so I can come back to it”? That becomes the question.
When we’re looking at shares, what can you post that would make a follower say, “Oh my gosh, I know somebody who needs to see this,” that makes somebody want to take the time to click that share button, which is a lot.
This is what makes you an authority in your market. Those saves and shares because then you’re the go-to, you’re the answer person. You are the authority and that’s what we’re going for.
Then we look at DMs. Like I always say, likes don’t pay the bills. Follower count doesn’t pay the bills. DMs can be a huge part of your marketing funnels. So if somebody reaches out to connect, that’s an opportunity to take it further, right? Even if they’re just hopping in your DMs to say, “LOL, that was so funny.” Start the conversation, keep it going.
Now, when I say start the conversation, I don’t mean get into a full-on consultation in the DMs. That’s a huge waste of time, but keep the line of communication open. Let the relationship evolve.
This is a social experience. It’s like if you met somebody at a cocktail party and they came over and they said, “Oh my gosh, that joke you said was so funny.” What, you’d just go, “thanks. I loved it too, LOL,” and walk away from them? Or would you engage and be like, “Oh my gosh, I’m glad you loved it. What part of the country are you from?”
Be a human. Think about how to have human interactions on these platforms, right? Through the DMs, you can be nurturing those relationships and getting people to take that next step with you.
Then we look at links. These are the clickable links that you can have to Instagram stories. Instagram stories are hot right now, right? Really, really big deal, so you want to be using that clickable link feature. So your website should be optimized and you should be encouraging followers to look at your new guest page, your experience page, your feature service of the month that’s on your website, whatever. Think about your marketing funnel.
If your—I’ve said this so many times this year, I’m going to say it again, though. If your website isn’t optimized, you’re missing the point. Instagram has openly saying we want you pointing people to your website. That’s why they gave you this link. They want you building business. Do it.
Things are evolving and shifting and changing. You need to be using this. It’s so important.
So what are some of the things that maybe aren’t currently on your website that you need to add so that you can be using those links and getting people to be looking at your website all the time? And it shouldn’t be high pressure, right? It shouldn’t be like “book now,” “click to book now,” “click to book now.” It should be here to learn more, here I’m teaching you something, here’s a value add for you, click here so I can nurture the relationship a little bit more.
But using those links, very high engagement. I believe these are the things that Instagram is looking at right now, based on everything that they’ve said.
They’re looking at shares, saves, DMs, and link clicks. I really do think so. Look at what they’ve done with the DMs. Now you have like an inbox, a general, a priority, saving it, changing the colors like they are working really hard on making DMs work.
You have to look at the actions a platform is taking and play the game along with them. I know we complain about the game and we complain about the algorithm. If you just pay attention to what they’re doing, it becomes super simple. Look at the direction they’re heading, play in alignment with that, and you’ll do all right.
So I want to close out this episode by talking about the Hair Stylist Success Hourglass. This is something I coached to in the Thriving Stylist Method and the Scaling Stylist Method. When you look at the hourglass on the top and we have Awareness at the top, then Interest and Desire, then Opportunity. Awareness is how people become aware that you even exist. That you’re even a human being who does hair. Then Interest is a social media level. Instagram lives there in Interest.
You need to be pushing people from Interest to Desire. So when somebody is interested enough, we hope get the desire to come in and see you, right? “Okay, I like Britt. I think I might want to work with her. She seems to know what’s up.”
Once the desire is there, our website converts them from interested follower to somebody who desires to actually work with us. Your website is either going to gain them or lose them. Absolutely. And then if your website has gained them, then you’ll get the opportunity to build and grow a long-term business, right?
Instagram is a piece of this puzzle. The goal is always work somebody down your funnel, get them from that Interest level to that Desire piece, then into that opportunity to build and grow a lifelong relationship in your chair.
I hope this has given you some insights as to where we see Instagram heading into 2022 and beyond. I will try to keep you as up-to-date as I absolutely possibly can.
As always so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
