Should You Post on TikTok or Instagram?

Hello, my friend. Welcome back to the Modern Hairstylist podcast. So, I got a DM, and it is, like, something that I feel like I've been hearing about a lot and getting asked a lot in other ways as well. And I thought that I might as well fricking address it on the podcast, and so many people keep asking and talking about it right now.

And I do think it's relevant. I think it's, like, about time for us to have this type of conversation because of how these social media platforms have progressed and how they've been popularized and, um, all of those things. So, the DM reads, "Hi, I just love you so much and your podcast. Just an idea, content is a big topic of conversation, and as a hairstylist, I always wonder whether I should focus creating content on Instagram or TikTok.

Totally feel free to make an episode about it, but I'd love to hear your input." So, I decided to make an episode about it 'cause genuinely, I swear to God, this is like the fourth or fifth time that I've heard this conversation come up in the past couple weeks with hairstylists. So, I wanted to address it with you today, my friend, and here's the thing. Uh, you know me.

I've never given you, like, a straight up, like, 100% yes, go this way or that way answer, but I am going to probably be leaning one other way more than the other, you'll notice, as I go through this episode with you today. But it really depends on you, your individual goals, what you're willing to do, and et cetera, et cetera. So, if you're down to know whether or not you should be spending more of your time on TikTok or you should be spending more of your time on Instagram right now if you want to grow quickly, then make sure to tune in to this episode of the Modern Hairstylist podcast. Listen all the way through, and we'll be spilling the tea together.

Let's go. What's the tea, friend? My name's Hunter Donia, industry business educator for hairstylists, but my friends just call me Hunty. Whether it be growing your clientele, making more money, or automating and streamlining your systems, in the next 20 minutes or so, you'll be hearing realistic, actionable strategies to create a beautiful career for yourself behind the chair.

So, if you're ready to get into it, welcome to the Modern Hairstylist podcast. So, at the top of the episode, we're gonna start off with the fact that I'm a s- a strong believer, and I teach this within my marketing programs that I have, I'm a strong believer that you should only be posting on the platforms until you have exhausted these platforms. You should only be posting on the platforms in which your ideal audience is living, the majority of them are living, and the majority of them are actually finding hairstylists or service providers. And the way that you find that out is by getting real data and feedback, and I am a big, firm believer in instead of us making assumptions, we get real data from clients to make our decisions, such as when I sh- w- a- all of the surveys and statistics I shared in Mind-Blowing Statistics: What Your Clients Prefer In Today's Day And Age, that podcast episode, where I actually ask our clients, like, what they want, what they prefer.

Because what we are really good at as an industry is either taking one or two of our clients' opinions and then feeling like that is fact for everybody, or we make assumptions based upon our own experiences or just based upon what we think. And all too often, those things can lead us in the wrong direction. And when we can get real data and feedback from our clients, like I teach my students how to do, to then assist you in your marketing decisions, you can really show up in a beautiful, strategic way. And the thing is, is I think that everybody would like to be as omnipresent as possible.

I think that people would love to be posting on every single damn platform and marketing in every single damn way, right? Like, why wouldn't you be posting on your Google My Business and your Yelp every week, right, and then posting on your Instagram and Facebook on a daily basis and, like, trying to get reviews and then maybe sending out postcards and then going out in your local area and handing out your cards and creating small business giveaways? It's like, why wouldn't you want to do all that? Oh, yeah, that's right.

'Cause you're one human. The majority of people listening to this are independent stylists, right? And even if you aren't an independent stylist, you're still responsible for growing your clientele, right? So, you, y- this is just so much, like this is just such a massive task to be omnipresent, that what ends up happening is, is number one, you get burnt out of it, and number two, you are spreading yourself way too thin to make any of those marketing efforts even work well enough because you're not pouring 100% of yourself into them.

You're giving this little thing 15%, this little thing 15%, this little thing 15%, and we wonder why we're not growing, and it's because we're focusing our efforts in so many different areas, right? So, it's really advantageous to actually just pour 100% into the one place that's gonna get, going to get us the most massive results. But you have to make sure that you're niched down, speaking to a specific audience, and that you need to make sure that your audience is actually showing up on that platform. So, when f- when we talk about, like, which platform should we be focusing on the most, it really comes back down to where are your clients hanging out and what niche do you have, because your niche is very relevant to where your client's hanging out as well.

Please take in consideration, whenever you're choosing a platform or posting on a platform, take in consideration the unique audience that is on that platform. Like, for me, for example, I built my entire clientele on Instagram. I did not screw with Facebook. I did not screw with Google My Business.

I didn't have SEO on my website. Genuinely, everything was from Instagram. And then, naturally, word of mouth, a little bit. So, here's my thing, okay?

And this is when people are like, "Oh, should we still be using hashtags? Hashtags are dead." I'm like, you are absolutely insane for saying that or even thinking that, because I've just moved to Philadelphia, and I had to find a new barber.And the way that I'm looking for a new barber is going to be on Instagram.

Like, I'm going to open Instagram, and I'm going to be searching "LGBTQ+ Philly barber." Like, that's, like, the things that I'm gonna be searching. And I know that if, like, if I put that in Google, like, it's just not going to give me the results I'm looking for. But if I put it in Instagram, maybe, hopefully, these freaking barber shops will use social media correctly, and they'll add those hashtags to each of their posts, right?

Because I need something specific. I'm looking for something specific, and I know that if this barber shop does not put their hashtags on that— on their post or something such as that, then they're not gonna show up in my search, right? So, I'm, uh, literally a new client ready to throw money at somebody. Specifically, I'm ready to throw a lot of money at somebody who is offering this safer and more specific experience to me, and I can't freaking find them because they're not using social media to its fullest.

Like, why wouldn't you use hashtags? I would argue that people—people think that, like, they're just posting on Instagram and people are just supposed to magically show up to their posts or magically see their posts. No. What you wanna be doing is creating as much passive marketing and active marketing as possible.

Passive marketing being you wanna create as much searchability as possible with your hashtags, with your geolocations. And then you wanna create as much active marketing as possible by going out into your local area, your local geotags, your locial- local hashtags, and commenting and liking and creating relationships with other people within your area on social, right? It's two- it's a two-sided coin. You gotta make sure that you optimize your searchability, and then you gotta make sure that you're actually creating active effort to go and then make yourself aware to the local region in your area by going out there and doing so, even if it's on social media and not in real life, right?

You wanna make sure that your platform is set up for searchability, specifically Instagram especially. Now, the tea is, is that both Instagram and TikTok are search engines. Like, I would say that, like, a lot of people, especially TikTok right now, are using TikTok as, like, a search engine, but I would not say that people are using TikTok as a search engine for people in their local area. And I think that's gonna be the biggest difference between TikTok and Instagram, at least as of right now.

I think that with TikTok, it's not very local area, regionally focused enough. Yes, every now and then, I will get, like, specific content from my area, but I think that's just because of the algorithm. It's not because the TikTok actually knows that, like, that's where I live and I wanna see content from my local area. Therefore, you know, you could be posting a shit ton of content on TikTok, but you're going to get a bunch of views and a bunch of attention from so many different places around the world, right?

Like, your content is getting pushed to everywhere, where I believe Instagram does a lot of a better job at keeping things a little bit more regional and showing things to people in your local area, um, and plus showing people- showing it to people who specifically follow you, right? And the majority of the time, people who follow you are going to be people in your local area. And people are using TikTok as a search engine, yes, but I believe it's more for, like, either products, right? Like, beauty products, um, like, reviews of those things, reviews of shampoos, tools, that kind of stuff, or they're searching for DIY tutorials, right?

So, they're searching for, like, how to color my own hair, how to cut my own hair, how to cut my own bangs. Like, that's a lot of what the TikTok content is, and that's what a lot of people are searching for. Where I think that people are really, really looking f- when they're searching for something on Instagram, I think that the majority of people would still go- i- if they were going to be looking for a hairstylist in their local area, I think Instagram would be the place that they would wanna do it. You wanna take those factors in consideration.

Like, these are search engines, and the way that the majority of consumers are using TikTok and the way that they're using Instagram is very different as far as what they're searching for. And plus, being on TikTok and having that same platform, you're gonna be going up against a bunch of other influencers who are literally teaching your clients how to do their own hair at home anyway, right? So, there's, like, a lot of competition and a lot of things that are distracting from your main mission over there. Where with Instagram, I think it's a little bit more focused, and I think it's a lot more regional and actually going to allow you to get found by and make sure that you get in front of people in your local area instead, okay?

Now, I know that it sounds like I'm hating on TikTok. I promise you, I will get to, actually, the pros of TikTok soon. But off the top of my head and, like, the biggest things that you s- should take in consideration, I think that that's really where it comes down to, is where is your ideal client hanging out? If they were looking for a new hairstylist tomorrow, where would they search?

And then, you wanna take in consideration the nature of each of these platforms and think about, "Okay, is- am I gonna post this, and is it going to go more to my- my regional area, at least to a fair bit of people in my regional area, or is it just gonna go to a million people around the world?" It comes down to which one is going to fill your chairs with butts? Which one is going to fill your books with your ideal client, with people who are actually gonna pay your prices, right? People that are actually going to fulfill your goals.

And that brings me to my next point, which is, if your goal is to reach people outside of your local area, then TikTok is fantastic for you. I mean, I've seen people literally just post on TikTok and blow up as more of an influencer to the general public, to people all around the world, right? And when you do that, you have different types of opportunities. You're building a different type of business.

Yes, it can be helpful for you getting people into your chair. For sure. However-While you're doing that, you're also reaching a much larger audience, and you're building that s- very slowly but surely. And the only reason you're building your clientele with something like TikTok is because you are reaching that small little audience.

However, you're building a lot of clout for yourself. People are gonna go on your TikTok and see that a lot of different people are interacting with you from all over the world, and they're gonna maybe possibly wanna see where you work, and they're gonna see that you have this big audience, and then they're going to be more likely to trust you off the bat. That's why TikTok may work for you. However, it takes you a long time to get there.

But regardless of if you wanna fill your business behind the chair or if you want to create different opportunities for how you make your revenue, such as affiliate link marketing, right, with product sales. Let's say that you wanna do virtual and digital consultations, right? I one time got paid a stupid amount of money. It was definitely more than $100 for doing a virtual consultation with somebody across the country up in San Francisco, because they found me on Instagram, because I'm an influencer, right, like, within its own right.

I mean, it's weird calling myself an influencer. But once you're past 10K on Instagram, I would recommend that... I would, I would probably call you an influencer at that point, you know? That's how she found me.

So I was able to make that revenue, although she wasn't somebody in my local area or that I wasn't doing her hair, right? So now you, you'll get asked to do brand deals, or you'll be more likely to be considered for doing brand deals with a company, right, and getting paid for that. So you're opening yourself up to a lot of these other opportunities. You know, you have to ask yourself, are these opportunities that you actually want, right?

Are these in alignment with your long-term goals, your long-term vision? And you have to make sure that the business right in front of you, I believe, is actually working while you're building that new one, you know? So that way you have that stability. And I think that with TikTok, yes, you can build both, but I think that it's a little bit more of a longer game than if you were gonna build on TikTok for your regional local area to get butts into your chair, right?

The other thing with that, too, is that TikTok is purely video, right? Yes, they have the carousels, but they don't really do that well, or, like, they're not really shown very often, specifically for hair content, right? And doing purely video is a lot of work. I mean, you are just editing and filming nonstop, where with Instagram, yeah, fo- uh, videos are definitely getting pushed, and they're taking up a lot of the feed, so you still can't get away from doing video.

However, you can still definitely do really well with pictures and carousels, especially when clients first find your profile. If you have a bunch of pictures and carousels, those will still work really well in gaining trust from your client. You don't need to have an entire video feed to impress somebody to f- when they find you and wanna look through your portfolio of work. So the learning curve and the extra effort that it takes to be creative when coming up with these videos and to, um, actually film them, edit them, and keep them consistently going is a lot.

I mean, I have a really good friend who's, like, a micro-influencer on TikTok, um, and he just literally does dancing videos, and he, like, hates doing them a lot of the time just because he feels like it's an obligation, and sometimes it's not fun for him anymore. And I see the work that he puts into it, and, I mean, he doesn't even edit things, and it's still a lot. So for us, as hairstylists, I think that a lot of the editing that we would have to do, a lot of the filming that we could do could be a really big learning curve. Now, it might sound like I'm trying to convince you out of TikTok.

I promise you, I am not. You need to do what's best for you, my friend. I'm truly just laying out what my thoughts are as of right now about this. I mean, I have somebody in my programs who actually came in and taught us a TikTok master class, and, uh, I thought it was really brilliant.

And what they do with TikTok is fantastic. Like, they make really great money off of affiliate link sales from their product line, and they do get clients into their chair with their TikTok, but that's because they've built such a large following and they've worked so hard at it. Now, what I would probably recommend, just as a general, you know, suggestion... And again, you have to decide what's best for you.

But if right now you are thinking, I want, I need to choose which one I should be focusing, uh, building content for, and you had to choose one or the other right now, I would choose Instagram, period. And once I would take Instagram and absolutely maximize it and make it a well-oiled machine, make it something where I'm c- I'm consistently showing up and it's really easy for me, that's when I would start to maybe branch off and start to focus on a second platform, such as TikTok. Plus, I would encourage you to try your best to reuse the content that you post on Instagram and post it on TikTok as well. However, repurposing content over to another platform isn't as easy as it seems, especially when the algorithms work a little bit differently.

But I don't think it can hurt, right? Like, it's not gonna hurt you to repurpose that content and put it over to TikTok even if it doesn't do a crazy good job, right? At least you're posting there and you're building a foundation for yourself. But if I were a stylist and I was starting from scratch right now, I would not be focusing on TikTok at all.

I'd be 100% diving into Instagram, as long as I knew that my ideal audience was showing up and searching for hairstylists within those spaces. One last thing that I definitely want you to take in consideration is I think that TikTok is a lot more of a meaner platform. I don't think... I know.

The bullying and the vulnerability, like, the way that you're putting yourself out there, and the mean comments, and the way that people will just, like, go crazy is really real. Much more, much more, much more than Instagram. And so, if you are going to go into TikTok and you're gonna make it a thing, just make sure that you take care of yourself. I think that you can filter certain words out of your comments.

And just make sure that you are prepared and ready for that, if that does come along, because people are just wild on there. Like, they are insane. And I've seen people's videos just get absolutely flamed. Um, I think that cancel culture, like, ge- can really blow things up really quickly and out of proportion as well.

So I'm s- just be careful with TikTok as well, too, um, and make sure that you protect yourself and your mental health, and love on yourself when you're going through that, because there is the possibility of that happening for you. So I'm gonna say it one more time. I'm not trying to talk you out of TikTok. I'm just saying that I think it's a little bit more advantageous for you to possibly just try Instagram, make it work the best that you possibly can, and go from there.

That's what my general suggestion would be, my friend. So, I hope that this episode of the Modern Hairstylist podcast was insightful and helpful for you. If you enjoyed it, then go ahead and please leave me a five-star testimonial wherever you're listening to this. It helps me reach more hairstylists just like you looking to build their businesses without the overwhelm.

You and I are in this together, my friend. If it isn't for people like you who tune into this podcast and set an example for this upcoming generation of hairstylists, then, uh, then we can't have a revolution at all, you know? So you leaving that testimonial helps me revolutionize the industry, helps you and I revolutionize the industry, and I appreciate that in advance. So much love to you all.

I'll catch you in the next episode. Peace out, girl scout. Bye-bye.

End of transcript. © 2023 Hunter Donia LLC.