Content That Books Brides vs. Content That Hears Crickets

I've posted over 1,500 pieces of content, worked with over 500 brides, and in 4 years I took my bridal business from $20,000 a year to generating $728,000 cash collected with just weddings as a solo bridal hairstylist. And I can tell you exactly what kind of pieces of content booked out my year in advance and what kind of content just got me views and LOLs from bridal pros, leaving me with an absolutely dry inbox. And after serving almost 400 bridal pros— hairstylists, makeup artists worldwide— and looking at all of their content, I can tell you most bridal pros aren't posting the wrong amount of content. You're posting the wrong kind of content to get you bookings. And if your inbox is dry, the content you're posting is exactly the reason why. Before I became a bridal hairstylist, I was in the trenches with Instagram. I sat at like 5,000 followers for years. I had no idea what to post in order to go from a bride finding my content literally just like getting brides to find it, to actually getting her to fill out my inquiry form and then actually book with me. It was an entire process that I had no clue of until the pandemic hit. And I was like, well, I got nothing but time on my hands, might as well experiment here. And when I decided to experiment with content, specifically more conversion content, I didn't start out getting viral content all of the time or even getting views. Like this kind of content actually got me less views. But what I did notice was when I would post this piece of content, not only would brides inquire with me, but they would be like really excited to work with me and they would sign their contracts super fast. And that's when I really learned that bookings are greater than views because views don't pay the bills, but brides do. So if you want more bookings and more inquiries from when you're posting content, your goal shouldn't be 10,000 followers. Your goal should be $10,000 months. And those two things require completely different strategies. So let's break it down. Your business goal is gonna change everything. So I wanna ask you right now, again, is your goal 10,000 followers or is your goal 10K months? Because if it's 10,000 followers, likes, going viral, getting views, maybe working with brands, you're gonna wanna focus on content that's getting you views, that's going viral. So posting a lot of trend-based content and you're gonna be optimizing for the Reels page, for the Explore page, so you can get more visibility and you're just kind of posting a bunch of trends, not a lot of content that's actually gonna lead to bookings. Majority of people that are probably going to be watching your content are going to be hairstylists, makeup artists, people who are interested in like tools and products, like influencer style kind of content. But if your goal is bookings and $10K months, one, you're in the right spot, but also you're going to be focusing on an entirely different set of metrics within your Instagram. So when you're posting, you want to be focusing on getting saves, shares, comments, engagement within your content. And before you post, you want to make sure you're asking yourself, what's in this? For my bride. And so the way I like to explain this is the goal for your content is number one, get more brides to know you exist. Then we go down the funnel into attract your ideal bride specifically. So we gotta let them know you exist, and then we want to filter out for your specific ideal bride. Next, you want to warm them up so when they inquire, they're ready to book with you. And then lastly, they book faster. So these are all the goals of your content. That's the content funnel, and most bridal pros are living only in the top percent. So this is where everything is going to click. So the content funnel is also what I like to map over to actually the client buyer journey. So awareness, this is she found you. This is top of funnel content. She knows you exist. So she's aware of you. Then we move down into consideration content. This is she's watching you. She's binge scrolling. She's going over to your feed. She's going over to your profile. She's checking you out a little bit more. Maybe she's reading your bio. Maybe she's binging more of your reels. And then maybe she even hits follow. She's starting to actually like you. Connect with you. And this is the stage that most bridal pros are missing. They're not creating this kind of content that's actually nurturing their bride to get them to connect. And this is where the bookings and the money is actually made with your content you're posting. Then we move into the last phase, which is decision. This is she trusts you. She basically already decided she wanted to hire you. Maybe she needs a little nudge to like reach out and actually book, But your content here is going to be the type of content you want to be serving in order to make that decision happen faster and speed it up. Yet the trap that I see most bridal hairstylists and makeup artists fall into is 90% of you are posting the awareness content. So you're posting B-roll trendy style reels. You're only focusing on trending audio, posting clips that are of you working, but there's no actual person behind it. So it's either just your clients, maybe you working, but there's no voice. There's no connection there. This is all for cold audiences, for more brides to be aware that you exist. This isn't the type of content that's going to make her speed up her booking process in order to trust you, hire you, pay that $500 deposit, and hope that you show up on her wedding day a year from now. She really needs to build that trust, and the consideration content is where that comes into play. That's where you're going to get the saves, the shares, the DMs, the brides who are in your inbox that you haven't heard from coming back around and booking you. Now again, after reviewing hundreds, I mean hundreds of bridal hairstyles and makeup artist content, doing Instagram audits, I did 50 audits just last year. Here's 3 types of content that is blocking your inquiries and is not speeding up your brides to book and is probably why you're getting left on read or a lot of those budget brides, price shoppers in your inbox and the type of client that it's bringing you in. So the first one is in-depth tutorials. So that's going to look like you posting a video of a hairstyle and the shot is actually zoomed zoomed in on your hands, we never see your face, we never see the face of the client, it is literally just a tutorial. The same thing with makeup. If it's just zoomed in of your client's face and like you just see maybe your hands and we're going through a full tutorial start to finish, this is very makeup artist, bridal hairstylist, pro-focused content. If you step away and you say, hey, what's in that for my bride? Not much. This isn't the kind of content that's going to attract brides. The next content that's not actively booking you out is signature list content. So if you're posting anytime you work a wedding, anytime you touch a client, clients that are outside of weddings, so you're posting like proms, clients coming in for Halloween makeup, salon stuff, that kind of stuff isn't going to get you wedding bookings or brides. Or you're only posting pro photographer photos. When you're only posting pro photographer photos, that is going to sell your work as if you're a photographer. You're selling the beauty, right? So So what this is going to bring you in is a client who's looking for a style that you're posting, but it might not be the kind of client you want to attract in. So maybe you're somebody who wants to do only boho brides, but a bride came in and she wanted soft glam waves. Well, if you're posting the soft glam waves, but you really want to work with the boho brides, you're going to attract in more brides who want the soft glam waves, right? And vice versa. If you're posting super dramatic glam clients that are requesting this look, maybe bridesmaids, things like that, but you really want to work with the naturally slam bride, it's, it's contradicting itself. You're not going to be attracting that bride in because of what you're posting. You— what you post, you attract. And the last kind of content that's not going to book you out or get you inquiries in your inbox is vanity metric content. So posting like you're an influencer, posting content like hot tips for a bridal makeup artist, or talking about how you're walking up the stairs and the bridal suite never looks good for you and you need more and you have to rearrange. Like, that stuff is funny for a bridal hairstylist. That's just funny for us. But you left the bride out of the joke. And so if you're posting a lot of meme reels, trending audio, and it's like the lip-syncing stuff, but you're like kind of low-key making fun of brides or making fun of weddings, or like, this is why I charge XYZ, that kind of stuff is going to get you views, but it's going to be the wrong viewer. Or if you're posting a lot of like influencer style stuff, so if it's a lot of you doing makeup on yourself, you doing your own hairstyles, stuff that's outside of the wedding world, stuff she wouldn't actually wear on the wedding day, and where it's only on one hair type, one skin type. Or hairstylist, if you're posting a lot of mannequin work, that's not going to get you brides. It might, but what ends up happening is the bride who's sitting in your chair is like, why doesn't that look the same on me? And it's like, well, you don't have the same hair type. Or if like 80% of your content is like influencer style, like vlogs that are super focused on you talking about your morning routine, your outfit of the day, what you're eating, things like that, very like influencer-based, again, that's not going to attract brides in. She's like, yeah, why should I care? What does that have to do with my makeup or my hair look? And so what this kind of content draws you in is you might get some inquiries, but the brides are going to be more like those last-minute brides who are kind of like in panic mode that just need to hire anybody, and they probably weren't planning to hire you first. It's also going to attract misaligned clients because you don't have a signature that you're posting, and it's also going to attract in the brides who genuinely can't understand why hiring their cousin who does hair on the side isn't a better idea, or why they shouldn't just do their own makeup themselves. And you're like, 'Hey, I'm a professional, and like, this is why you should.' But they're— it's going in one ear and out the other. And I want you to understand, everything you've posted so far attracted the bride you have in your chair right now. Let that sink in for a second. What you post, you attract. And I know it's really, really hard for us to get stuck in that virality, posting that vanity metric content, really wanting to listen to all the gurus who are talking about like, 'You need to have the personal brand, you need to have this, you should be posting this kind of content, this isn't working on Instagram anymore. The Instagram algorithm has changed. And I get it, they build a lot of hype around it. But again, that's content that's going to get you views, which is important, but it shouldn't be your entire strategy because your inbox will be dry. And so the viral trap goes like this: you post that vanity metric content, you likely get some views, maybe you even hit a million Reel views, and you're like, oh my God, now I'm getting all these followers, this is amazing. And maybe you start posting more of that kind of content and you start getting similar results. More views, more followers. And then you're like, wait a minute, I'm getting all these views, I'm getting all these followers, but it's not actually leading to inquiries in my inbox. And my calendar's kind of wide open. And then you take a step back and you realize, oh, the people who are watching are actually bridal pros, they're not brides. So then maybe you decide, okay, I'll post a piece of conversion content and it tanks. And then you're like, oh, I'm just going to go back to posting for views. And this is the kind of trap that goes around and around that I see so many pros stuck in. Because yeah, if you post something and it tanks, you're like, why would I post that again? But I need you to understand the kind of content that lands bookings doesn't need a lot of views. If you're only working with 40, 50 brides and you post something and it gets 500 views, well, okay, you only need to work with 40, 50 of those brides, if that. If you get a post that lands a million views, how many brides in there, one, are actually watching, and two, are you actually going to be able to handle? And before this starts to get really messy for you and you start going off on the route of like, maybe I should just be an educator because this wedding thing isn't working for me. I'm— I want to stop you right there, my love, because you can absolutely do this. You can post content for brides and still get views, but you also need to know not all content is meant to get hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of views. The next time that you post, I want you to look at that piece of content and I want you to ask yourself, what's in this for my bride? And if you can't think of something that's in it for your bride, then I don't want you to post that. Or remind yourself like, okay, this is going to be a viral piece of content. Maybe the next piece of content, you're going to post something for your bride. Now let me show you what I mean between pro-focused content versus bridal-focused content. So let's look at a vlog. So a pro-focused vlog would be something that focuses on like cleaning your kit, stocking your kit. When you go into a wedding, it's all about your morning routine. It's all about you setting up your kit. It's close zoomed-in shots of you setting up your kit. Or if you're working and you're a vlog, it's close zoomed in of your client applying makeup, applying the hair. It's in-depth styling. So the entire video is just styling or applying makeup. You're talking about your products, your tools, you're talking in professional language, like here's why I use my crimper to clean up the hairline and like you're using that kind of language as if you were talking to a bridal pro friend. And maybe you're talking about like the the stairs that you had to walk up to with your kit, and this is why I charge a travel fee. Versus a vlog that's going to be bridal-focused is going to look like you walking in and you embracing the bride and giving her a hug, uh, more in-depth original audio, no trending sound. So it's original audio of the consultation conversation you're having with your bride, maybe talking about the changes you made from the trial, maybe different things she wants to add, how she's feeling, showing the transformation, the before, the during, the after. All of your shots are going to be more further back and it's not so zoomed in close up. So you're in the frame, your bride's in the frame, the actual conversation that's happening as you're applying makeup, as you're doing her hair. Maybe you show behind the scenes of like the bridal party PJ photo or like them getting hyped up. Like it's more of those emotional moments. Then let's look at meme reels because I know that these are like really popular, or even if it's like a meme reel or those reels that are like the lip syncing where it's like dubbed audio and they're just like those funny sarcastic reels. Like I love this kind of stuff. So what would be pro-focused versus bridal-focused? A pro-focused meme would be like when the bride says you're too expensive and this is why I charge XYZ because I have 20 years experience, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That is for a pro. Again, that's as if you're talking to one of your bridal pro friends. We're in on the joke. Your bride is not.. So a bridal-focused LOL that she's in on the joke is gonna be something like this. POV, you got an inquiry for a bride plus 12, but you only do bridal only. Or POV, she booked your stay all day and you're sweating outside in July heat. So like that's still kind of funny, but that's more focused on your bride and she's in on the joke. And so here's the framework I want you to use with every piece of content you're creating going forward. So that way, you're speeding up your bride's buying process, building that dying-to-book-with-you energy just from posting. Okay, so I like to break it down to my clients so they understand it like this. Let's imagine that your bride has a migraine. She's like, oh my God, I can't even think, I have such a migraine, I just want my prescription. She goes to her husband and she says, oh, I need— I have such a migraine. He's like, hey honey, here's a bunch of vitamins. And she's like, a multivitamin? I have a migraine. What do you mean? What do you And then she's searching around, searching around, and then he finally gives her her prescription. Now her migraine goes away. She's able to clearly think. Okay, imagine this is your bride. She has a migraine, and this migraine is all of her past traumas. The time she was a bridesmaid and hated her hair, hated her makeup. She was in the bathroom changing it, right? It's blocking anything else from entering in her mind. So it's acting like a filter for everything that she's viewing. When you have a migraine, you literally can't think straight. That's what her traumas and limiting beliefs are. She can't see anything else. That's all she's looking for is her prescription, right? So when you're serving up these pieces of content like viral trendy reels or a HairKit vlog, or you're showing your tools and your products and different things like that, it's like serving her up a bunch of vitamins when she has a migraine, okay? It goes in one ear and out the other, and she scrolls so fast, okay? Versus when you're posting conversion content, it's gonna look like posting what she's already saying in her head. So talking about the time you helped your bride make her curls last all day so she wasn't fixing it up in the bathroom, that's the prescription that's going to heal her migraine because those are the real objections that's stopping her from actually booking with you. So where do we find these real objections? You can actually find them in 3 places. So the 3 ways that you can do this is number 1, reread your old emails, read through inquiry forms and find the question that's coming up like 3, 4, 5 times in a row. Because if this many brides are asking it in your inquiry a lot of other brides are already thinking it. Screenshot those, save them, create content around it. The second is listen during your trial conversations. Your job during the trial consult is not just to take notes and obviously give her a stunning makeup or hair look, but it's also to listen. Listen to what she's nervous about, listen to her frustrations, listen to her fears, why she doesn't want to do a look, what she loved about a look. When she talks about like, nobody ever does my bangs right, I'm so nervous about the breakage in my bangs, client's— write that stuff down. And the third thing you want to do is ask better questions. At a trial, it can be so almost robotic for us to be like, hey, what kind of look are you going for? And then you just kind of like go into it. No. My consults, when I stopped going from like a 2-minute consult into like building in 20 extra minutes just so I could pull out all of that information from her, not only did it give me a goldmine of content, but it also created better hairstyles for my brides. So it was like a win-win. So what you want to do instead of just like, hey, what do you want to do today? I want you to ask more in-depth questions. So you could say something like, hey, can you show me a time where you were a bridesmaid and you didn't love your hair? Like, if you have a visual of that, it would be really helpful. So then if she pulls this up and has a photo of it, one, you're able to pull that out. So now you can see all the things, one, not to do on her with a clear visual, but also you see those things that she didn't love, right? And then you can create content around that. So you're pulling out her fears and you're asking those better, more in-depth questions so you can create better content. So let's just say during one of your trial consultations, your bride says, I really want Glam Waves, but I don't know if it'll work with my short, fine hair. I'm really nervous. This isn't just something to note. This is literally— she hand-delivered you the best piece of content. And here's how we're going to 3 pieces of content from that one statement. So you're going to create a Reel. So this can be an easy 7-second B-roll style Reel with trending audio. Again, this is going to get more brides to know you exist. Maybe a visual of you working with your bride would be even better. And then you're going to take her words that she said and use that as your hook. So your hook could be when your bride says, I really want glam waves, but I don't know if it'll work with my short hair, end quote. And then it's you giving her the best glam waves ever, the transformation that's going to sell. Now let's turn that into a carousel. This can be 5 to 7 slides of you styling your bride, the before, the after, maybe add in some video clips of you working with your bride and creating that hairstyle. And the first one, you want it to be a hook on that first carousel slide. So you're literally gonna take that same hook you used in your reel and put that as the first slide of your carousel. The bride reads this, she sees the visuals, and she sees herself. This is selling your services in the softest way possible. And the third one, my personal favorite, we're gonna take that carousel, repurpose it into an An Instagram Story that sells. Now you could literally take the exact same visuals and turn it into Instagram Story slides. If you do this in Canva, you can literally just resize it there. For your first slide, what you want it to be is like opening up the story. So it could be something like, my client said to me, I really want glam waves, but I don't know if it's going to work with my short, fine hair, with a visual of the before of her hair. That's important. Or before of the makeup if you're doing makeup. And then you put underneath that text, here's how it went. Because what this is going to do is open up a curiosity loop in her brain and she wants to close that loop. She wants to see what that looks like because she sees the before and she's like, oh my God, what is that actually going to look like? Is it going to work? She's curious, right? So we're creating that curiosity, one of my fave sales psych methods. And then in the next slides, you're just going to take everything you use in your carousel and create more slides like that showing the after, showing the transition. So you have one trial consult, you have one objection, and you create 3 pieces of content that sells your services on autopilot. And the beauty of this is you're not overthinking it. You're using real brides. You're not scrolling endlessly for inspiration. You're pulling direct conversations from real brides that are happening in your inbox so you can attract more of them because nothing is gonna attract more brides who are ready to buy from you than using her own words. We dramatically overthink our content. It literally can be that easy. And Yes, I would post the same hook on a reel, on a carousel, in an Instagram story. Yes, I would post the same bride back to back. You're spending too much time scrolling other people's feeds when you don't know what their inbox looks like or what their bank account looks like. Okay, so let's focus on us. We're not here to always get a ton of views. We need some brides to know we exist so we can fill our calendar, and that's what the viral content's for. But I'm telling you, with this consideration content, This is where the money lives, my girl. Okay, so I have best practices for you after I got 40 million Reels views from my bridal hairstyle content, knowing some little things that work that you can tweak in your content like ASAP. But first, I wanna do a little check-in with you. I love to do this with my clients. So if you have a pen or paper, let's do a little audit. Okay, let's find where you're at right now in your business. So tell me which one of these sound like you: not enough inquiries getting inquiries but not enough of them are booking, or you're inconsistent across the board with posting, responding back to brides, showing up in your business feels inconsistent. Which one feels like you? And also in the comments, let me know down below, are you number 1, not enough inquiries, number 2, not enough booking, or number 3, struggling with consistency? So not enough inquiries tells me that you have a visibility problem. Either you're not posting enough, the types of content you're posting isn't attracting brides, and you're likely not asking for brides to inquire within your content, or we're only posting trends and we're not posting conversion content. If you're number 2, you got inquiries, not enough of them are booking, you're missing that conversion content, the consideration phase. You're likely stuck in the awareness, only posting trends. You have a sales problem. So maybe there's friction in your process. You're not following up. You're sending the same copy and paste email to every single bride. Your content isn't priming them to say yes before they land in your inbox. And honestly, this is the most easy fix that I see. If you're struggling with showing up consistently, that's a systems problem. So you're going to want to focus on batching your content, having some stuff ready to go, not posting within the same day because that might be stressful for you. Have some content batched out so you can just post on the go. And you likely just need some structure within your business and you've likely been avoiding it because structure might feel like rules for you or limiting, but what it's actually going to do is allow you to show up better and more consistently in your business. Without using so much brain power all the time. Okay, so here's some best practices with content that I found after reviewing the 25 reels that I had pop off and hit a million views, leading to 40 million reels views. So for us, timing matters more than you think. And honestly, I'm so excited for you because right now is the best time to post as a bridal hairstylist or makeup artist to get visible in front of more brides. So after analyzing all of my viral posts, posts, I found that majority of them went super viral in July and October. So if you're seeing this video in between that timeframe, here's what you need to know. Posting volume is down, but search volume for our industry is up because what's happening, this is wedding season. People are bridesmaids, brides are doing trials. So what are they doing? They're online and they're searching for inspiration. They're on Pinterest, they're on TikTok, they're on Instagram, they're searching up bridal makeup looks for blue eyes, blonde hair, they're searching up short hair ideas as a bridesmaid. And July is where most people go on vacation. So a lot of people aren't posting, but people are still watching, they're still scrolling. So again, this is also in your favor to consistently show up because if not a lot of people are posting, the volume goes down, which means your post is more likely to get visible simply because the volume is down. So demand goes up. So Instagram will likely push out your content. So you post, you get more seen. A win-win for you. Also, what I found was majority of my viral posts went viral on Wednesdays and Sundays. Do I want you to overthink this and spiral and say, oh my God, I have to post on Wednesdays and Sundays? Absolutely not. But I want you to think about the underlying reason of why that likely happened, which is what I already did for you. More specifically, Sundays. So the reason why I think majority of my posts that I went and posted on Sundays went viral was because a lot of people are are scrolling, but they're not posting. Again, you have that odd in your favor of there's less people posting, so Instagram is more likely to push your content out if you are posting. Again, does this mean that you should stop what you're doing and post on Sundays if you don't want to? No, it doesn't mean that. But if you have the time, you have content ready, I would post and see how it performs for you. And Wednesdays hit a sweet spot because it's midweek. And last best practice is know what performs specifically for you. So when I analyze all those pieces of content, they— there was a clear pattern in the hairstyle styles and the hair colors and the types of content that I was posting. So I was able to pull out those patterns. So for you, I would look at your 3 top performing reels over the past year. And I would look to see what the patterns are. Is it a similar hairstyle, a similar makeup look, a similar kind of bride? Like, does she have blue eyes? Is it somebody with dark hair, blonde hair? Pull out those specific patterns. And that's what your audience likes to see from you. Is there a way that you can serve that kind of content again and again and again in a repeatable way? So what I did was when I at those performers that were always performing for me, my viral content, it was the same hairstyle. It was a clean low bun. Those were my love language. So I was like, cool, I'll post more of those. And I was more likely to always go viral when I posted a clean low bun versus if I posted a ponytail, people were like, no thank you. And I would barely get views. Those are gonna be like your viral outliers. And then if you see like, oh, I was kind of doing the same thing in these 3 reels and they performed really well, how can I rinse and repeat that? So that's That's what I did for my signature series. So we basically just covered an entire content strategy for content that books you out versus content that doesn't. Save this, rewatch it later, and then make sure you get into Dying to Book. This is where I'll literally hand you over the systems, the methods, everything to turn your Instagram into a bridal booking machine. I'll hand you over everything you need to go from left on read to brides dying to work with you and deposits paid faster. No more slow to book brides. So I have the link down below for you. Check it out and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye.