I’ve learned a few things along the way to mediocrity in my own Instagram account as well. I can’t tell you very much about growing a following other than that you must engage with people if you want them to engage with you. That’s a lot of work and a big reason I struggle to grow my own account.

But I can help you to take a better image. Here are some tips:

• Learn from other successful IG accounts or from stylists who put out imagery and content that you love or that resonates with your brand. Copy them until you develop your own voice. It’s totally OK to copy people, just credit them as an inspiration. And there are a lot of genres and ideas out there. Look at Dominick Serna’s page as an example of someone who has created a unique niche that stylists and consumers are loving.
• Make your page public and viewable! Yes, it’s super cool to be exclusive and mysterious. But guess what? It’s actually not, and nobody gives a shit about your account unless you are famous or they can see your content. And even if they can see your content, most people still don’t give a shit, so at least make it easy for the few people interested in you. If Guy Tang is public, you should be as well.
  I personally won’t follow anyone who is private, and there are a lot of you.
• Keep consistently putting out great imagery, and delete anything bad or with no action. Remember what I wrote above about being objective? Clean up your page, nobody is going back 6 months on your page, so get rid of the duds, but absolutely repost the cool older stuff as you grow.
• Do free work in order to grow your business in a new direction. Do you wish you could do more vivids in the salon but you don’t have any in your current clientele? Do you wish you could do more barbering but you don’t have a male clientele? Offer your work for free in order to create imagery to attract the clients you want. Better yet, do a model call and get your co-workers together and do a little jam session and get a photographer friend to shoot it for you.
  And take the time to style your model multiple ways so you can get multiple images. One good model can get you 4-5 strong images if you change angles, crops, and styles.
• Never shoot in Instagram. That means always use your phone’s camera app rather than shooting in the IG app itself. When you shoot in Instagram, you are limiting your image to a square determined by the width of the device the viewer has. That means for longer hair, you will need to be further away from your subject, leaving empty space on the sides of the subject and forcing you to frame your subject from further away.
  If you shoot on your camera app and then add it to IG, there is a handy arrow on the lower left that allows you to toggle between square and 4X5, allowing you a traditional style image, which means you can fill the frame with about 20% more. It is like night and day in it’s impact.
• Lead With the After Pic. Makeovers and Before and Afters are a great way to showcase your skills and show meaningful change. When you do a B&A, never show the before pic first when featuring a makeover. Most of the time, people won’t even notice there are multiple images together, and even if they do, many won’t bother. Consider how you use IG. Do you read everything or do you quickly scan. Assume people are scanning and show your best right away. You can also do a split screen, but make sure your framing is complimentary to the work. I personally don’t like a lot of busyness to an image, so if you are going to have multiple shots in one image, make sure it looks good.
• Shoot Tight. It’s a much bigger impact to fill the screen with your hair image, but don’t use your camera’s zoom to frame your shot, use your feet and arms and move the camera closer. Digital zooming or cropping in tighter after the shot degrade your image substantially. So get awkwardly close to your subject and try to frame the work as closely as possible to what you want during the actual shoot. If you are shooting an SLR camera, this is less important as you are generally working with more pixels.
• To receive, you need to give. Tag the pages that share people’s images and engage with them. Comment on other people’s work. Become a positive and contributing member to the Instagram community. These people/ accounts will engage back with you and the return can be good. You have to have other people sharing your stuff and engaging with you. It’s hugely important.
• Repost other people’s work. This is also about engaging with others but it helps you to constantly be adding new content to your page even if you haven’t got anything of your own to post.
  But make it very clear that you are inspired by the other artist. It’s a total douche move to imply to your following that it’s your work. Most people quickly scan their feeds so you need to make it super obvious it’s not yours.
• Get a ringlight, and finish your clients flawlessly in the salon. A ringlight can look generic in the result but it creates even and contrasty lighting and generally doesn’t effect the white balance on your phone because they are usually flourescent, which cools down your blondes. Also, vivid work looks incredible when lit with a ringlight. If you don’t want a ring light, see below.
• If you are shooting with available light, always have your back to the window or light source. Never shoot across or into the light, the light must be behind you, facing what you are shooting. It’s the first rule of shooting with natural light. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule but master the rule first. Monika Q always shoots with available light and her stuff is amazing. Light is everything to showcasing your work.
• When shooting longer hair, stand back. Your camera’s screen is much longer than 4X5, so if you framed it for what you saw on your screen, you will have to crop out length when posting it to IG. Instead, stand back a bit so you won’t lose your length when cropping.
• Use the process of shooting your work to improve. If you want to get better, you have to know that there is room to improve. Look at your work critically. The camera showcases all the things wrong with your work, much like stepping way back from it when working. I’ve seen things in the image I couldn’t see in person. Look at the image and if it needs fixing, sit your client or model back down and fix it. usually there are lengths that don’t line up, or straight bits in your curl, or your waves are too compressed and not loose enough. You’ll see lines in your fades, bits in your bobs, uneven perimeters, straggly bits. The camera is a great critic. Use it as a way to improve your work.
• Get a new phone, or better yet, a real camera. If your phone takes bad pictures even after trying to improve your shots with light and positioning, it;s time for an upgrade. I personally like my LG G7, but almost all phones released in the last 2 years take amazing shots. But the newest phones are able to achieve a bokeh effect, which gives your images a much more dimensional look. I personally am a photographer and a bit of a purist, so I prefer an actual camera. I shoot Sony myself, and you can get their entry level mirrorless camera with a great lens for under $800.
• Use filters. Most of them look crap, but you can touch the filter a second time and dial it down. I like Clarendon and then I’ll dial it back to between 10-20%. It will give your image a bit more pop. And if your image is looking a bit yellow, lower the warmth or desaturate it a little. Play around with things, but less is more.
• Follow the formula for success in the genre you like to work in. Do what everyone else does on IG but with your own slant. There is a huge amount of noise out there but the formula is clear: vivids, waves, sexy hair. And cute girls and boys.
• Create videos. People love to see a video makeover and it seems video content is becoming bigger than still imagery. But this opens up an entire now can of worms if you struggle, and even more issues if you don’t have a friend or co-worker who can shoot for you. Not every video has to be a big production like this, and as much as I would like to be fun like these guys, it’s not my style. But you can create super cool video by yourself. Firstly, follow the same lighting ideas you would use for an image. Instagram doesn’t lend itself to a 16:9 video format very well, so shoot your video vertically if using a phone.
  I shot this entire video myself just by propping my camera  on the counter in a few different positions so I could get some different angles. I had someone help with the cape trick at the end, but you can do cool things alone with the help of a few tools. Quick cuts, no more than a couple of seconds, are more interesting for videos, and at first your videos will probably suck, but keep at it and eventually you will be creating cool content that people will love.
  And even if you are doing one thing that looks kind of cool, grab a co-worker and ask them to video for you for a few seconds. I got a lot of action for this quick video, which took zero effort and no editing. Interesting content is key.
• Include a few selfies. There are a lot of people who want to look at your face, not just your work. People want to see a bit of personality. Me? I honestly hate anything with oversized eyes and some ears on your head, I truly think there is nothing that shows a lack of creativity more than your Snapchat pics, but I’m probably not your audience so ignore my opinion. But even an ugly old chunk of coal like me gets a decent amount of love on the selfies I post.
• Tag what locals will be looking for in finding a new stylist. Remember what the entire point of it is: to position yourself as an expert in your niche, which is hopefully in high demand, fill your chair, your book, create a situation where demand exceeds supply, and then raise your prices. You can do this with a relatively small following provided you are putting out the type of work people want to wear. Use local hashtags so potential clients can find you easily.