If you run a hair business, chances are that you have a Facebook business account and an Instagram business account. If you don’t already, you should head over to Instagram NOW! Instagram is the best place for you to connect with your customers and allow new potential customers to discover you. If you run a hair business, what’s better than advertising the beautiful extensions that you have on Instagram! In this article, we are going to reveal some of the free hacks for you to grow Instagram following organically for your hair extensions and weave business. We will not be talking about paid advertisement so If you want to learn how to use Instagram Ads and Facebook Ads for your hair brand, read this article: Instagram Ads and Facebook Ads for hair business

Instagram focuses on visuals. The platform favors consistent, quality content that keeps the users more engaged and obsessed with the app. So the better your content quality is, the faster your following will grow. Due to the ever-changing algorithm, growing organically on Instagram might not be easily achieved without ads. But the tips below will help you engage existing followers and make sure that your feed has a lower bounce rate.

1. Find your hair brand’s niche market and target audience.

Is your hair business a local salon? Do you have a lovely branding color? Do you only do ponytails? If your hair brand has a niche or something that’s different than other brands, find it and stick to it. This niche can be the type of posts that you post or a specific color that your feed uses. A good example of visual-niche success is Fashion Nova. 99% of their content is endorsed photos of sexy influencers in tiny bodycon dresses. That’s their visual niche for their Instagram and you barely see any other type of posts on their feed. Whether you are a local stylist or a hair weave business, you can implement this tactic to have a visual niche for your brand. For example, a local hair business might want to only post happy local clients and tag the environment of the salon. A human hair weave brand can post videos of the each specific wig or hair texture. If you don’t have a lot of content or are just starting, you can simply start posting pictures in a specific color (for example, black and yellow like Branded Hair Extensions)

2. Research hashtags related to hair extensions and hairstylist

Hashtags allow new users to discover you. You will also get a chance to be featured on the “Explore” page where more users are able to see your page. Make sure that you use relevant hashtags on every post so all of your posts get a chance to be discovered by others. You can tag up to 30 hashtags on every post. Many marketers recommend using 11-15 hashtags but we say why not use them all if it works for you! Finding the right amount of hashtags may take some time but once you get a hold of it, you can save your favorite hashtags and just copy-paste them on new posts. Do make sure to switch it up every time because Instagram might ban you for “spamming” if you keep using the same hashtags over and over again. Rember to include hashtags in your stories too! You can include up to 10 hashtags in an Instagram story.

3. Stick to quality content and video content

Instagram wants its viewers to see things that they are truly interested in. You should actually put in the effort to take good photos of your hair products and clients’ cam in both pictures and videos. It is also advised to post more videos because viewers tend to engage with video content more than they do with photos. Having interested viewers can convert to higher sales. Since hair business is in the beauty industry, taking some videos to give your viewers a good feel of what you sell will help them turn into more happy customers in the future. The videos don’t have to be “movie-ready”, it can be fairly simple. See video examples here, here and here. Make sure you frequently use new features on Instagram and use IGTV too.

4. Ask your clients to repost their photos and tag you

Real-user generated contents are the best ways to make new viewers trust your brand. Try to politely ask for reviews and photos from customers, if they like your brand, 90% of the time they will be very happy to be featured on your Instagram. Don’t force your clients to give you photos and reviews, just ask politely and tell them how you want to feature them on your account. Frequently tagging other people can help Instagram recognize your account more. You can also use branded hashtags to let more people post content about you.

5. Hashtag rules and geolocation tags.

As we mentioned before, you can include up to 30 hashtags in your posts and up to 10 hashtags in your Instagram stories. Some of the most used hashtags for the hair extensions industry are #lacefrontal, #frontalsewin, #nyhairstylist, #atlhairstylist, #edges, #babyhair, #sleekponytail, #bodywavehair, #deepwavehair,etc. There are so many more hashtags out there, you can do a little bit of stalking and see what your competitors are using. Try to use hashtags that are niche-specific, not something like #hair or #beauty because your post will be quickly disappear from the hashtag feed since hundreds of posts are added under that hashtag every minute. If you are a local hairstylist, wig stylist or hair salon, make sure to use geolocation and hashtag your location. This allows local users to discover you when they search something like “New York hairstylist”

5. Comment and like target audience’s pages

Pick a hashtag such as #lacefrontal and go to the main page. You will see how many hair photos are shown there. Find a person or brand that has your ideal target audience. Go down to the comment section and go to everyone’s page. Leave a comment or like their photos. Don’t think that this is spammy. As long as you are not leaving annoying advertisement links to your target audience, chances are the person will be curious enough to check out your page. If they like your content, boom, you gained a follower, if they don’t follow you, at least you will receive a couple of likes on your own photos. This is a slow way to grow followers, but it’s absolutely free!

6. Engage with your viewers and be genuine as a business

Reply to your customers, comment on their posts and be genuine when you interact with the customers. It takes a long time before a customer can trust a brand to make a purchase, especially when you have a small following and barely any posts. But every business starts that way, just make sure that you never give up and be consistent in a smart way. Eventually, your hair business Instagram will grow to a satisfying point.

7. Follow your target audience by searching relevant hashtags

This is different than the follow unfollow method which we are totally against. You can find your niche customers by searching for a relevant hair industry related hashtag. Find a related post under that hashtag and follow everyone that commented on the post. Following people who comment may help you attract people who like to engage and aren’t just ghost followers. After you follow these people, some of them may check out your page and decide to follow you back. Some of them might not even notice that you have followed them. After a good week, you can unfollow the people who don’t follow you back. Doing this gives you a quick jumpstart to your Instagram following and helps you avoid getting stuck at low following numbers (10 followers? no thanks). You may only continue to do this for a little while and stop once you reach a good point of a few hundred followers. Because at this point, your following and follower ratio might be really low or even negative. As a brand, you don’t want to look like you are doing follow 4 follow. At this point, you may want to consider using some paid promotions to advertise your hair brand.

Organic following growth for a new hair business account can be difficult since Instagram continuously rolls out a new algorithm that makes it difficult for business accounts to show their posts. A good way to quickly gain some traffic is by utilizing both Instagram and Instagram Ads. It does cost to run these ads but the result is proven to be effective by many brands whether big or small. We strongly recommend using both the organic method and paid promotions such as Facebook/Instagram Ads to grow your hair business. But as a starting account, the Instagram posting tips above will help you maintain healthy growth.

If you want to learn how to grow your hair business Instagram account quickly with paid promotions such as Instagram/Facebook ads, influencer endorsements, Youtube and Google Ads, check the article here. How to grow your hair business on social media with paid promotions.

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