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? Britt Seva here. So excited to kick off 2021 with this episode all about social media impact and efforts as we head into this new year.
So this very interesting thing is happening. I’m recording this episode just after hopping off a really amazing roundtable conversation with some of our Best Year Yet program VIP big winners. A handful of ladies and gentlemen from the experience won a one hour coaching session with me, and I noticed a few running themes, but one of them was this concurrent theme of, “I really want to take a hold of my business in 2021. I really want to own social media. And I want the C word, which is consistency.”
That’s for a lot of us the Achilles heel. Like we have great intentions. A lot of us actually understand how to use the platforms. We want to use them. Really good intentions. The consistency kills us.
For me, I think consistency comes down to a few different things: knowing what to post, definitely knowing who you’re speaking to and what your message is, right?
Even if you know what to post but your messaging is really inconsistent or unclear, it’s going to miss. That’ll be a misfire which leads to frustration, and then we lose our consistency.
But another piece is where do I even need to show up?
Raise your hand if this sounds like you. Part of the reason you’re inconsistent on social media is you feel like it’s overwhelming. It’s like this big monstrous beast that’s like chasing you down the street every day. And it’s like “Post! Do something, say something, the people are waiting.”
Maybe even that monster has my face sometimes because I’m saying that. I’m saying you have to show up, you can’t run from social media.
You can’t say, “Oh, well, I’ll get better at that next week.”
I was talking to an amazing salon owner in this round table conversation that I was doing and he said, “Britt, you know, I got to tell you, I’m the stylist that you talk about. I’m the stylist who had it all a decade ago, had everything super successful, more clients than I knew what to do with,incredible referrals. I saw social media coming and I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll do that another time. Maybe I’m good. I don’t need to worry about it.’” And he says, flash forward in 10 years, it’s a huge problem for me that I don’t have this under control. His question was “How do I get a grip on this?”
That’s so common, like we can put a pin in something for only so long until it causes massive pain. It’s so much easier to get a grip on your marketing, your social media messaging, and your efforts before it becomes this giant pain point. That’s when I want to help you do as we step into 2021.
So here’s what I want to do today, and it’s going to be one of those sipping-from-a-fire-hydrant episodes. I want to give you an overview of all of the different social media platforms you have to choose from, because let’s be honest. There’s about a million of them. Let’s try and refine what each platform does, where you specifically need to be, and how you should be spending your time.
First I’m going to go over all the different platform options, the top contenders that are getting our attention today and then let’s talk about where you as a stylist salon owner or industry educator influencer need to be showing up. Sounds good?
Get your pen and paper. This is going to be a noteworthy one. Let’s dive in.
Let’s start right at the top with Instagram, arguably our industry’s favorite platform. When we think about it being our industry’s favorite platform, I want you to think about who you follow on Instagram.
Generally speaking, it’s how I use the platform to I follow people that inspire me on Instagram. I’m there to learn. I’m there to feel happy. I’m there to have a laugh. I’m there to get some tips. And I definitely follow businesses and people that I admire and want to network with.
Keep that in mind because that’s what your clients are there for too. That’s not just you. That’s just how you use the platform. That’s how everybody uses the platform. Since we know that on Instagram, people are there to feel inspired, learn something, have some joy, experience something uplifting, my question to you is how you’re using the platform right now?
Are you inspiring joy? Are you educating? Are you teaching something? Are you inspiring somebody to want to take action with you? Because if you’re not, we’re missing the mark.
Years ago, I called it your online portfolio. I was like, oh my gosh, this is a place where you can just showcase your work. It’s almost like a digital gallery of your work. That was so 2016 and that was great back then.
That’s not 2021 Instagram. Now more than ever people, people are craving inspiration. You’re probably craving inspiration. You need to inspire when you show up on the ‘gram. It can’t just be a picture of a blonde, a picture of a brunette, a picture of my salon, a picture of myself. That’s informational. It showcases what your business is and what it does, but it’s not going to hit the mark and it’s going to be very challenging to grow that way.
So if you were in Best Year Yet or in Thrivers Society, you know we talk about how do we inspire, educate, and entertain with that platform? That’s how I want you to think about showing up. I want you to take a step back, look at your own Instagram right now and say, “Am I inspiring? Am I teaching something? Is what I’m posting here shareable?”
Meaning is the content so valuable that clients want to share my posts with other people? Because if not—that should be the mission of 2021.
When you show up on Instagram, I want you to ask yourself, “What are my goals?” If your goal is to grow, grow as an educator, you should be using stylist speak. You should be talking about the things that stylists want to hear about or whomever you’re looking to educate wants to hear about.
If you are looking to grow as a salon owner or a stylist, you should not use stylist speak. You should use clients’ speak. You should be showing at-home hair tutorials of how to make your blonde less brassy, how to style your own fringe, how to use a flat iron properly.
My gosh, I have a teenage daughter and her little friends were over, they had spent the night. —this is months ago—and I had such a cringe-worthy moment watching them all flat iron in their hair in the morning. I was like oh my gosh, this is the most painful thing to watch.
And it’s not just teenagers. Grown adults don’t know how to use the tools that live under their bathroom sink. So we need to be using that platform to educate and inspire if we want to get a grip and a hold on it in 2021.
Okay. What I like about Instagram is it does have local optimization. Not all platforms do, but there is a lot of features that work well for local small business, which is what you are listening to this. For a lot of us, that’s going to be key.
For most of us, 99% of the people in the room, we do need to prioritize Instagram heading into 2021. Then we have the book and that’s Facebook.
So Facebook, so funny, a lot of people are like, ah, Facebook’s dying out. I still get the majority of my students from Facebook. I know it’s so crazy.
Facebook is still incredibly important. The funny thing is it’s not an instant gratification platform. You’ll see people with massive followings who will do a video that’s gone viral somewhere else and it only gets two likes and one comment on Facebook. That’s the nature of the platform.
When a user uses Facebook, it’s almost like reading a digital newspaper, which is actually what the platform was intended to be used for. So the irony is we, as users are like, ah it’s dying out. It’s not dying out. It’s actually serving its purpose. It’s not meant to be like Instagram. It doesn’t have an explore feature in that way, right? It’s not meant to do that. It was always meant to be a digital newspaper and it actually does a really good job of it.
When we go there, we’re looking for what? Headlines. Who got engaged, who had a baby, news articles, right? You’re seeing curated news articles on Facebook. When you show up on Facebook as a business, you’re not chasing likes and shares.
How many of you get frustrated on Instagram? And you’re like, “Ahh, this didn’t get enough. likes”? Cool. Try Facebook. It’s not about likes. It’s different than that.
The objective is still the same valuable content: educating, inspiring, creating community. Facebook is really around local, small business so creating community, getting your current followers to invite their friends to follow your page because you’re sharing so much value. Facebook is really, really powerful. We’ll talk about who needs to be showing up there in 2021 in just a bit.
Then we get to my review sites, which are Yelp and Google My Business.
You guys, Yelp and Google My Business are both social media. Social media is anywhere that a digital conversation can be had about a business or a person. Yelp and Google My Business meet those criteria.
And you yourself may not like the Yelp monster. I’ve had times where I don’t like the Yelp monster either. I think he’s mean. I don’t think he plays fair. I think he has challenging rules.
The funny thing is what we don’t like about Yelp is the same things we don’t like about Instagram, but we give Instagram a pass. Somehow we’ll still feed the Instagram monster, but the Yelp monster we’ve decided we hate.
The reason why your reviews on Yelp are filtered is because of the algorithm. The reason why your posts don’t do well on Instagram is because of the algorithm. So what is Yelp’s algorithm? It’s actually the same as Google My Business’s. All they want you to do is show up and that’s the cool thing about those two platforms. With Instagram. It’s not just show up with Instagram. It’s show up consistently, right? Good captions. Get saves, get shares. Make sure that you’re showing stories, use the platform in full. Do you have highlights? There’s all of these criteria.
With Yelp and Google My Business, it’s simple. You need to show up once a week, okay? And update your pages once a week, add a handful of photos, be present. That’s it.
So if you’re saying, “Why don’t my review stick?”, my question is, are you honoring the platform? Do you show up or do you just hope cool stuff happens there? ‘Cause imagine if you just hoped cool stuff happened on Instagram. Would it work out? No, but we have that expectation with Yelp and Google My Business. It’s crazy.
You have to honor those platforms just as you honor your existing one.
Now, why should you be there? You hate the Yelp monster. Why would you give him any love? Because whether you hate him or not, the Yelp monster is optimized in SEO. In every Google search that takes place on the internet, Google My Business is now the number one indicator of how high you will show up in an internet search for local salons in your area.
The number one indicator.
So love it or hate it, these are being prioritized and consumers love it. Consumers like being able to go to these platforms and in 30 seconds see if you’re reviewed well or reviewed poorly.
For me, embracing those platforms is the easiest form of social media. They’re just so misunderstood. I want you to really focus on giving them still some love in 2021 and we’ll talk about who really needs to be there moving on in a second.
Then we have the NextDoor app. The NextDoor app is not even in every city or state in the United States yet, but in those where it is, it is huge. I was talking to a student last night who was like, “It was so weird. I don’t even know what happened, but all of a sudden I got eight clients from the NextDoor app.”
I know, it’s amazing. And the coolest thing about the NextDoor app is when you’re using it correctly, it’s actually completely hands off. Everyone’s like, how do you market there? You don’t. That’s the magic of the NextDoor app and in Thrivers Society, we go deep into exactly how to harness the power of it. But for local small businesses and for local salons, this is how you start outsourcing. You shouldn’t be having to put in so much effort. And if you’re like, “Oh, paid ads,” I’m not talking about putting any money into it. You shouldn’t be having to do all of the work.
NextDoor app is about community networking and community conversation and if we can allow our community to rally around our business and have powerful conversation there, we don’t have to work so hard.
That’s what I’m all about in 2021. How can we make your business feed itself so that it’s not always waiting on you to show up and do the work right?
Then we get into some of the more complicated social media options, so let’s move on to, let’s go to Tik Tok and then we’ll shift into YouTube. So I enjoy Tik Tok. I’m actually a Tik Tok user thanks to my daughter who’s helped me so much. I say send me some Toks, she sent me Tik Toks all the time and I’m finally starting to get into it. I like it because it’s very much value add content.
The irony is the reason why people like Tik Tok is it’s a platform that’s actually respected. So if you’ve never been on there, you think that Tik Tok is funny dance videos. It’s actually not. It’s all educational content. There are some funny dance videos for sure, because with social media, we want to be entertained. We want to be inspired and we want to be educated. I see more education on Tik Tok than anything else to be totally candid.
So the funny thing is—shouldn’t you just be educating on all the platforms like I’ve been saying all along? Of course you should, but Tik Tok is a place where those things are happening. I have seen some stylists, salon owners, and especially industry educators do really, really well on Tik Tok because it’s just about education.
My challenge with Tik Tok is it’s not optimized for local small business. And it’s the same thing that’s my challenge with Pinterest. Can a stylist, salon owner, or industry educator become a big deal on Pinterest? Yes. Can they become a big deal on Tik Tok? Yes. Will it drive local clients to your chair? Yes and no. It will to a degree. Absolutely.
Any social media will, but when we’re looking to spend our time in the most valuable place, it’s almost like the litmus test. Like if you put the same amount of energy that you’re putting into Tik Tok or Pinterest into Instagram or Facebook or something that is actually optimized for local small business, would you 10x your results? I tend to think yes.
So even though it can work and even though it’s incredibly impactful, unless you’re trying to build a national or an international brand, I’m not sure that I’d say to put all your eggs in that basket.
Now, if you’re an industry educator, Tik Tok is amazing, because it’s all about education and you don’t need that local following. So for educators, it is phenomenal. For local small business, it has some setbacks.
The thing of it is if you gain a really strong tech traction on Tik Tok, it’s going to increase your followers on all of their platforms, right? You’ll see your Instagram followers go up, your Facebook followers go up, your Yelp following, everything. The problem with that—there’s always a plus and a minus, right? The problem with that is Instagram’s algorithm, which we’ll talk about in a future episode, has changed quite a bit and they are really looking at percentage of engagement. If you have 50,000 followers, but you’re only getting like 300 likes a post, it’s not going to perform well in the algorithm.
The reason why something would like that would happen is because those who follow you on Tik Tok or a national or an international platform like that who then try to follow you on a local small business platform are going to water down your local small business reach. So when you go to a bigger platform or something that’s really made for an international or a national brand, really think is this helping me with my current and existing efforts?
Just keep those things in mind. Like is this an alignment with growing my salon? Is this in alignment with growing my stylists? Am I seeing the results I’m looking for? Because you might be. I’m not saying it’s not possible. I’m saying, look at all of the moving pieces and just make sure all of those efforts are giving you the exact result you’re looking for and then ask yourself if I showed up this way on a local small business platform, could I 10x these results and try it.
So even when something works—the way my marketing mind works is always to say but how do I double down on this? How do I make this more powerful for myself?
YouTube is another really great platform for educators, salons, and stylists, because when you look at YouTube, the people as a whole show up there, again for all of the same things: to be educated, to be inspired and to learn. The cool thing about YouTube is it’s about micro content.
Our attention span keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Have you noticed this? I certainly have. So even if you were to show up on YouTube with a four-minute hair curling tutorial, that can be really powerful.
Imagine this: if you do a quick Instagram story about how to do at-home curls in the morning. Five minutes or less curls, and you do a teaser and then at the end, you say for more detailed tutorials, head on over to my YouTube channel. Then you show in depth and in detail.
The reason why we do that is the more we can get somebody to invest in our brand, our business, our message—and when I say invest, I mean, invest time, right? There’s only two things anybody can ever invest: time or money. I don’t like to ask for my client’s money. I prefer to ask for their time because I prefer to serve, right? So here’s a little teaser, head on over to my YouTube channel where you can learn more.
The more they invest with your message and your brand and your education and the more value you give them, the more likely they are to want to work with you in the future.
So YouTube can be great for all of us. The reason why we’re hesitant on YouTube is it feels so big and heavy and it can be. What I ended up doing, I wanted to, to really dive into video marketing in 2021, although it’s always been a huge part of my platform and brands, but we’re going to go even deeper. I set up a great video space. I got a DSLR camera with video capability and a tripod, and that was it.
The barrier to entry is actually quite low. A lot of people are like, “Oh my gosh, I need to get a videographer, a video editing, all of this stuff.” Just start. Just start and then as you learn and as you get more confident and comfortable, get fancy later.
There’s great resources and places like Upwork where you can get video editing for like 10 bucks a video. Really good resources out there to make the barrier to entry so much lower.
If you have a kid who is pretty tech savvy, if you have a partner who’s willing to help you, really simple video editing is all that you need. If you don’t have the DSLR camera, if even as I say that, you’re like, “That’s laughable,” that’s fine. Use your smartphone propped up on a stack of books and just go for it, right? Don’t be afraid to start.
And YouTube is a huge beast. When we talk about the Yelp monster being big, the YouTube monster is big, so that’s not where you have to start. But if you’re considering, “How do I get more fancy? I’ve already kind of mastered Instagram. I’ve already kind of mastered Yelp. What do I do next?” YouTube.
A lot of people are like, “Oh, I didn’t make it big on YouTube a decade ago. It’s dead.” YouTube is still one of the largest, fastest-growing social media platforms. That’s crazy. You just need to show up with the right message and you can still do really well.
Then we get to podcasts. Podcasts are another form of social media. For me, podcasts live somewhere between the interest and the awareness level.
My podcast is my number one traffic driver. Facebook is where most of my students come from, but my podcast is still my number one traffic driver. We have well over 2 million downloads. We’re the largest, fastest-growing podcast in the industry and the reason I love the podcast is it allows me to talk about a very specific topic in a condensed amount of time, add tremendous value, and you can listen back whenever you want to. It’s almost like this amazing index resource bank of all of my info that I share with you guys.
The challenge with a podcast is it feels really easy. It’s not. It’s not easy to get a podcast off the ground. The reason why we like a podcast is we’re like, “Oh, well, video is hard. I have to do my hair. I have to do my makeup. I have to do the video editing. I have to figure out what I’m doing. That sounds hard.” You know, none of that is easy.
A podcast though, the problem is there’s no natural organic rates or searchability for a podcast. You are on your own. If you think that a podcast is just going to go viral, it is not. I promise you that.
The only reason a podcast works and the reason a podcast becomes successful is because it is well-marketed. Somebody has a very clear message and is driving traffic to that podcast every single day, 365 days a year.
My team and I are focused on how do we grow the podcast. It doesn’t just happen on its own and when I started the podcast, I already had a decent following. You don’t have to have a decent following to start a podcast, but you do have to have a marketing plan because your podcast is not just going to gain traction. That’s why there’s almost a million podcasts out there and maybe 10,000 that actually do well because people are like, “I’m excited. I’m going to start a podcast.” The barrier to entry is so low, but what it takes to actually make that podcast hit is quite high.
I went through this list on easiest to most challenging. A podcast can be phenomenal, but it’s not where I would start. It’s something that I was shoot towards once you have more consistency with your marketing and you’re really ready to create a strong marketing plan around that platform.
Okay, so we went broad overview, we hit him big, we hit him hard. Let’s talk about where you need to be showing up based on your goals for 2021.
If you’re a stylist, I want you to strongly consider Instagram, Facebook, Yelp, and Google My Business. Those are the four places I would ask you to be.
If you’re a stylist ready to level up, then I would consider incorporating something like YouTube or other high impact video marketing. Please let this be the year you own video marketing, stylists. There is maybe 0.02% of our industry that actually prioritizes video marketing. I can promise you this: If you prioritize video marketing, your brand will explode on the local level and beyond. It’s huge.
If you’re a salon owner, you need to be prioritizing Instagram, Google My Business, and Yelp. The reason I didn’t include Facebook is not because I don’t want you to be there. But if you’re a salon owner, I know that you wear two hats. You’re a stylist, most likely, and a salon owner. Your plate is already full. If I’m looking to make the strongest impact with your brand, I want you to show up in the three places that will help you to attract stylists to work for you and clients to come in to see you. When we’re looking at those two objectives, it’s going to be Instagram, Google My Business, and it’s going to be Yelp.
If you are an industry educator or influencer, get ready because your list is long. Where I would be hanging out this year is going to be Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and on the podcast. You don’t have to do all of those things, but what’s important is never put all your eggs in one basket. You never know when a basket’s going to break. You never know when a basket is going to go away.
The thing that you need to do the most is refine your message and educate no matter who you are. If you’re a stylist, if you’re a salon owner or an industry educator, here are the two main things I want you to do in 2021: refine your message, who you are and who you’re speaking to and how you can help and show up consistently with education.
Yeah, even if you’re like, “I’m a stylist. I don’t want to be an educator as a stylist”, you’re in charge of educating your clients, right? You’re supposed to teach them how to take great care of their hair. You’re supposed to teach them why you are the person that they should be working with. That’s your job, so I want you to show up on social doing all of these things.
All right, that’s the social platform roundup as it stands here at the top of 2021!
I would love it if you took a screenshot of this episode and then shared it on your Instagram stories and overlay that share with any questions you have for me about any specific platform. I’m going to make note of those questions.
Also, if you want to leave me a rating or review here on iTunes, ask me a question in those ratings or reviews about what you want to know more about on any given platforms or head to iTunes, leave me a rating or review—an honest one, pretty please—and then in the comments say, “Hey, Brett, I’ve got a question”, ask me your question about any of these platforms, and I might just feature you in an upcoming podcast or in one of my video trainings that I offer for free every single week in my Thriving Stylist Insiders Facebook group.
You guys, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
