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 and I’m here to talk about everybody’s least favorite four letter word, Yelp.
I know that Yelp is probably the least favorite social platform for, I’m going to say like 80% of the industry or more. I totally understand and I know too that it’s not as popular in some markets as others. So if you’re like, “Nobody uses Yelp in my area,” check yourself before you wreck yourself. Does really nobody use it in your area or do you just hate it?
So check yourself before you wreck yourself, but if truly nobody uses it in your area, awesome. Go back and listen to a different episode this week and have a beautiful week ahead. I will see you next Monday.
But for most markets, Yelp is on the rise. I’m going to share some statistics that double down on that theory. I’m mostly recording this podcast now so that in the next few years when it becomes as big as I think that it will, nobody can say I didn’t warn you.
Let’s talk about Yelp, what it is, how it works, the point.
Yelp is a social media platform. I know not everybody loves it when I say that, but it is the truth. When you look at the definition of social media, it is any place online where people can have a conversation about a person, place, or a business. Yelp definitely fits that category. Other sites and platforms that would be considered social media are the obvious things. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest. I think we think of those things as very typical social media. Snapchat could be considered social in some ways, although it’s quite different.
Then we do have things like Google Business. We have the Nextdoor app and we have Yelp. There’s some things we don’t like about Yelp, which we’re going to get into them, but we have to realize that Yelp usership is on the rise.
I’m going to read you a quote. “Yelp’s record breaking top line quarter results are a testament—” this is from Yelp itself, by the way “—are a testament to our increased product velocity and consistent execution across the company for the ninth consecutive quarter.” We’re looking at over two years, folks, and interesting timing. That means basically after the pandemic, we delivered double digit growth and achieved a new high in net revenue driven by record advertising revenue across categories.
Now, before anybody eye rolls at that ad revenue comment, hold tight for a second, I’m going to get into that. “Self-serve and multi-location also accounted for more than half of our advertising revenue for the first time.” Self-serve means there’s a lot of paid features on Yelp that you don’t have to work with. Any kind of brand representation with you.
You know how if you use Yelp, their company will call you and be like, “Hey, it’s me, Bill from Yelp. We’d love for you to use ads with us.” They have all these self-serve features that don’t include you talking to Bill and don’t include you doing the typical promotional Yelp style advertising. There’s other paid features that can be used, and what they’re saying is half of their ad revenue is not coming from traditional Yelp ads. It’s from small businesses choosing to use these micro features.
And, for the first time ever, they’re seeing a really huge surge there.
The reason I think it’s important to bring all of this up is that Yelp has changed post-pandemic. Consumer behavior has changed post-pandemic, and we as an industry need to adapt as well. I know change is hard. Too bad. We’re going to have to do it for the rest of our careers.
We’ve gotten very comfy, cozy in the social media arena loving on Instagram. Instagram is like every stylist’s best friend. You get into the industry and everyone’s like, “Did you start your Instagram account?” It’s like do not pass go, do not collect $200. Start your Instagram. I get it.
In a few years. I don’t think that’s going to be the story that people are saying.
I looked at some statistics ‘cause I’ve been touting Instagram is on a downturn if you look it up. There’s statistics about it everywhere, but I thought I would share some statistics and some quotes with you.
HubSpot reports engagement for static photos across Instagram has decreased by 44% since 2019. Has anybody else noticed decreased engagement since the pandemic since 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022? Engagement for static photos has decreased by 44%.
Here’s another Instagram statistic. The Wall Street Journal shows that Instagram users spend 17.6 million hours a day watching reels. That sounds so sexy and exciting, like, “Wow, 17.6 million hours. That’s amazing.” When you do the math on that, there’s 2.35 billion daily active users on Instagram. That is less than one minute of viewing time per user per day. Not as sexy now, is it?
So not going well. Then when you look at TikTok, TikTok has 197.8 million hours spent every day watching TikTok. TikTok has about the same amount of users these days, but people are so much more engaged, literally more than 10 times more engaged. The average TikTok user is on the platform at least 10 minutes a day. Versus on Instagram, people are watching less than one minute worth of reels a day, right?
So reels engagement has declined by 13.6% in recent months with most users generating no engagement whatsoever. So if you’re feeling that way, it’s not just you.
So when Instagram touts things like 17.6 million hours a day, I hope that you look at that a little bit differently and are like, “Yeah, that’s less than a minute per user.” That’s not good. But they throw these flashy numbers out to make it sound fancy. Then you hear the word “million” and you’re like, “Wow, that’s amazing.” When you run the math, it’s not great, right?
This was interesting to me. Better Marketing, which is a marketing platform that shares industry news said Instagram is hiding likes to protect themselves, not their users. How many of you have thought about hiding your Instagram likes? How many of you have hidden your Instagram likes? We say we do it in the name of “I’m just here because I want to produce great content and the likes don’t matter.” Perfect. You fit into the Instagram machine. That’s what Instagram wants you to think.
Instagram wants you to be brainwashed to think, just show up. Just be a creator. Just post great things. Don’t worry about the engagement. Just serve your community. All of that is well and good, and certainly when I show up and post content, I’m not like “This has to go viral.” I’m actually fairly anti-viral content because the repercussions of viral are usually not great. But I want to serve my community and that’s the primary focus.
When we’re creating social strategy, we don’t say, “How can we get the most likes?” without a doubt. That being said, when you look at a lot of market research companies, what they’re saying is Instagram is trying to hide the fact that they’re a failing company.
The data starts to prove it. Engagement is down, viewership is down, the amount of daily logins is down. It should be no surprise to us that an app or a system like Yelp is having this revival because people are looking for other resources. Social media burnout is an all time high.
Yelp had 28 million average users so far in 2023. Now, when I say 28 million, you’re like, “Ha, that has nothing compared to Instagram’s 2.35 billion.” Actually, it’s everything. The difference is when you go on Instagram, are you there saying, “I want to find a place to go to breakfast tomorrow?” Or are you on Instagram to pass time, to feel inspired, to have a laugh?
When somebody goes to Yelp, they are looking for a local small business. Nobody goes to Yelp to have a laugh. Nobody goes to Yelp to pass time. People go to Yelp with intention, and so because people are trying to be more intentional with their time, more intentional with their efforts, more intentional with their focus, social media burnout is high. This is where they are turning to make local small business decisions. You do not have to like it, you just have to know it’s the truth.
The data shows it. Yelp’s stock prices up. It’s up by about 25% this last year. It is a growing platform. It’s not shrinking, it’s not dying, it is growing. When you look at the stats and the figures, it shows.
I know that a lot of us don’t love Yelp. Consumers like it and I really want you to try and keep that in mind. You don’t have to use it. But if you know based on the data I’m sharing that some of these other platforms, Facebook and Instagram, are owned by the same parent company—if you were to lose both of those today, where would you go?
I just want you to start asking that question. If you say Google, great, just know that Google owns Yelp and both Google and Yelp play into your SEO, so just keep that in mind.
Now, I know a lot of our big complaints about Yelp or around their business practices. One of the big things that people complain about is that reviews get filtered. Yes, but so do your Instagram posts. How many of you feel like nobody sees your Instagram posts anymore? Could we argue that that’s because they’re being filtered? My engagement on my stuff is low. Could we argue that that’s the algorithm working against you? When Instagram chooses to filter reviews, that is simply their algorithm.
It’s always been very fascinating to me that we will work our booty cheeks off to master TikTok. We’ll learn to be dancers, we’ll learn to be comedians, we’ll learn trending sounds, we’ll learn how to make reels. We’ll learn what carousel posts are on Instagram. We’ll spend hours and hours writing captions. We will not spend two hours a week working on Yelp. It’s so fascinating to me. Knowing that it is an app that promotes local small business is on the rise and has 28 million people every single month going there looking for local small business. But we’re like, “They’ve funneled out some of my reviews, so I don’t like them.”
Okay. Just know that all the other social platforms are doing the same thing.
How many of you have seen the Tiktoks, of the literal TikTok influencers being like, “I don’t know what’s happened, but the people who follow me don’t see my stuff anymore.” How many of you are on TikTok and you feel like you don’t see the stuff of the people you follow anymore?
Listen, y’all, every social media platform has an algorithm at play for some reason. We are more forgiving of the platforms that are brain sucks than we are of the platforms that are strategic. I’m not sure why, but I want you to really think about your relationship with these platforms and if you’ve been doing those things.
Another thing we don’t like about Yelp is that people can make up fake reviews.
Has anybody in this room ever had a hater on social media? I certainly have. People can go on any social media platform and make up any kind of story about you that they want to, and then you get in the position when you have to defend yourself or have the hard conversation or maybe own up to the fact that you did do something wrong. Accountability exists on every single platform.
The next point I was going to make is negative reviews. We feel like negative reviews are the worst. When you get a negative review on something like Yelp or you get a negative review on Google Business or you get a negative comment on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok because, let’s be honest, negative comments happen everywhere. That is not just on review platforms. They happen literally everywhere. When you get a negative review, it’s an opportunity to have a powerful conversation.
That’s how I look at it. The reality is no business serves everybody to sheer perfection every day. I certainly have bad days. I have certainly made mistakes, I have certainly done people wrong. You have too. That’s what makes us humans. That is humans having a human experience. And when somebody shares their experience, let’s say in the form of a negative review, it gives us the opportunity to say, “Hey, listen, I understand you’re upset,” and take some accountability there and try and do some from a place that’s not defensive.
I have definitely written my share of nasty reviews when I am on one and I’ve also written my share of glowing reviews when I’m on one. But when I share a nasty review, for me, it’s always the last resort. I have always tried to go directly to the person I did business with and be like, “What is happening here?”
Now, not everybody gives that kind of grace, right? Most people try to— Most people get nervous when they have to have that hard confrontational conversation.
That’s the irony of this whole thing is when somebody leaves you a negative review, you immediately often go to defense and you’re like, “I just want to tear them apart because this is not even what happened.” The reason why they wrote you the review is ’cause they were scared you were going to do that and they were scared you were going to do that to their face. Doing it as a keyboard warrior felt safer, right? It’s also what people do in cancel culture and things like that. Rather than having like saying, “Hey, can we have the actual conversation?” or being open to hearing what the other person was maybe experiencing, they just want to state how they felt and be done with it. Very common.
Rather than showing up to the table and having the conversation or being open to hearing what somebody else might be thinking or feeling, it’s, “I’m going to go on here. I’m just going to share what I feel and be done with it.”
That’s why we don’t like Yelp is it feels like it’s a platform where people can just spout off and then they have power. It’s not true. When somebody leaves a negative review, I look at it as an opportunity.
For me when I have read a negative review on a businesses page or whatever on Yelp, I always look to see if the business replied. If the business replied, for me, we’re generally all square. If there’s a negative review and the business did not reply, I’m like, “Oh, they just don’t care.”
Now what’s funny is when you’re reading a negative review—and I’ve done this with my podcast reviews too, I think it’s so funny when somebody leaves this long, long negative review, a) most people never read it because who has the time to read your life story novel? Also, it starts to look very emotionally charged. And usually when things are emotionally charged, the reality starts to get blurred. It’s not generally factual.
Versus if I was going to leave a negative review about your salon because you were 30 minutes late to start my service, I might give you two stars and be like, “I wanted to love Seva Salon. It was very disappointing. I booked an appointment with Sadie and she greeted me and she said she was running a little bit behind. I sat and then I didn’t see her for another 30 minutes. I saw her checking out her client, it took her about six minutes to check out her client. They were chatting it up as if my time wasn’t a priority at all. Once I finally sat in her chair, I was already pretty irritated. Sadie did a great job on my hair, but the experience wasn’t what I expected.”
A review like that is pretty factual, right? I explained the story of what happened.
Now, if I had started going on and on and on about how you wouldn’t have believed the conversation Sadie was having with her client and her client didn’t care that I was there and then the salon was dirty too and I didn’t even like the way she did her hair and she was so unprofessional and she was chewing gum. As soon as you start to rant, it starts to be a lot less believable.
Most long, ranty Yelp reviews, nobody gives weight to. You should know that. Think about yourself as you’re reading reviews. When you see a review that looks like a life story novel, aren’t you like, “Oh my gosh, here we go”? Of course you are.
When somebody leaves you a negative review, it’s always the opportunity to respond. If somebody leaves you a negative review, they’re not judging you as a human. They’re judging you as a business person. I want you to take off that emotional weight of “They hate me, they think I’m a bad human.” Nope, they’re just judging the business component, and then you can respond from a very rational place.
It is the opportunity to show those who are considering you how you handle the bad days. Because most consumers know not every day is going to be great, and to be able to show that you know how to navigate conflict is actually very enticing to somebody considering your business. Look at that as an opportunity.
Going back to the idea that people can make up fake reviews, people can make up fake stuff about you wherever they want to. I see fake stuff all over the place. The idea that it is simply on Yelp is not true.
Now, let’s talk about paying for Yelp ads because this is the thing that people complain about also. You don’t have to pay for Yelp ads to have amazing success on Yelp. That being said, ads on any platform can be the fuel to your engine if the platform’s already working for you. If the platform is not already working for you, putting money into it is like putting gas into a car where the transmission fell out. You’re still never going to go anywhere. But if you’ve just souped up an incredible Bel Air and you put gas in the tank, you can do a nice cruise down the highway. It’s the same thing.
Let me ask you this question. If you were to pay $300 a month to Yelp ads and it brings you three new guests, would it be worth it to you? You’d pay a hundred dollars per client.
Some of you were like, “Nope, it’s not worth it.” Think about that for a minute. What did you have to do to attract those three clients? Paid the $300 and that’s it. You didn’t have to post five times a week, you didn’t have to write innovative captions, you didn’t have to beg your clients for referrals. You just put money into the machine and then clients landed in your chair. That’s not a bad deal. If you retain all of those clients, that ad spend will have paid for itself probably in two visits.
A lot of times we look at ad spend as a spend. If you have a really well-built Yelp page and ad spend can be an investment for you now, you need to build out the Yelp page first. You don’t just pump money into it. We’re not ready to put money into ads until we probably have 20 5-star reviews and we’re uploading photos pretty regularly, which we’ll talk about in a moment.
But Yelp can be really powerful doing an ad spend. That being said, you don’t have to. That also being said, there’s a ton of other ways to use Yelp without doing that big huge ad spend.
Now, I want to give you a little pro tip that’s worked well for me. If an advertiser calls you, which they will. As soon as you set up an ad account, an advertising executive calls you and a lot of people are like, “It’s so annoying.” Get over it. It’s just how the world works. It’s how sales works.
Guess what? I run ads on Instagram. Guess how often Instagram calls me All the time. All the time. All these platforms do it. It’s nothing new. If a rep calls you, what you say is—don’t even let them talk. Be like, “Excuse me, I’m just going to interrupt you for a moment. I don’t have the budget to pay for any ads. I literally don’t have the money for it.” You can even make something up. Say “I’m in deep debt, I’m not going to spend money on Yelp ads.” Shut them down. The people who are selling Yelp ads are generally people who are salespeople freshly out of college or people just trying to learn how to do sales. Honestly, they want to get done with you and move on to the next lead ’cause they’re being paid on commission, so make their job easy. “I don’t have the budget for anything. I can’t pay you anything. But here’s what I’ll tell you. If you call me in six months, I’ll consider it. Make a note in my file. I don’t want anyone to call me for six months. If you call me in six months, I’ll consider it.” You can keep doing that and doing that and doing that and buying yourself time, okay? Try that strategy.
Here’s the thing: if you work Yelp for six months, you might get to a place where you want to put little ad spend into it because I coach quite a few stylists who now pay for Yelp and don’t worry about any other platform. It’s powerful.
When you look at how to nurture Yelp properly, few things you want to do: upload photos, and I would recommend you upload photos to the platform once a week. You want to be asking for reviews and you want to be asking often but not early.
I was in a class recently where a different educator—not me, somebody I didn’t really know—was like, “What I like to do is advise people to start asking for reviews from their clients after the first visit and making that a part of the routine.” I don’t like that. I would never coach to that. Much respect to the person who did that. Maybe it’s working for people. Go ahead and try that. If that doesn’t work for you, what I would suggest is asking for reviews from people you have a longstanding relationship with.
I was just at my son’s orthodontist, he just got his braces off. Congratulations, little man. At the end—we’ve been working with his orthodontist for about 18 months. My son, both of my kids and my husband. It all comes from my husband. They all have these very narrow mouths, so they all need early intervention orthodontics and so we have this long orthodontic road ahead of us for both of our kids. My daughter’s done, my son is in the thick of it and we’ve been working with him for 18 months. My son is still little and we have more ways to go, but he got the braces off. We’re in this downtime period at the end. We’re 18 months into the relationship with this orthodontist. At the end, after he takes the picture of my son’s new smile, he says, “…and when you get a chance, I would love it if you would leave us a Yelp review.” At the end. Not at the beginning. At the end, 18 months into our relationship. I went home that night and did it because I’m grateful he hit me in the moment where my emotions were high, right? The transformation had happened. He didn’t ask me after our first consultation, didn’t ask me the day my son got his braces on and came home and cried that night ’cause he couldn’t eat dinner. Highly inappropriate. He didn’t ask me six months in when I was irritated to have to take him to another band change appointment. Inappropriate. He asked me after we had a major win.
Think about when you’re asking for these reviews and how you’re asking for them. A little food for thought there.
Last, don’t pay for ads. Don’t pay for ads. I talked about ad spend because I wanted to give you some clarity on it. Don’t even go there. Do not put a dime into Yelp until when and if it’s working for you.
My ask in doing this episode is that you get curious about it. I’ve been studying social media for a really long time, longer than most, and what I believe is that this app is on the rise. I think you’d be wise to set your foundation there now so that in a couple of years, when I do believe it’s a big dog again, you already have a fighting dog in the arena versus having a puppy in two years when things are shifting massively. I want you to really give it a thought.
I hope I’ve given you some food for thought in this episode. We have lots more training on how to Yelp in Thriving Stylist Method. If you need to learn more, you can head to thrivingstylist.com/thriverssociety to learn more.
And as I always say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
