Why I Block 30% Of My “Followers” & How To “Hack” The Direct Messaging Feature on Instagram

Hairstylist Tribe’s Top Strategies For Instagram Growth

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Yes, I do these on the daily.

The Tribe’s surge in growth in the last few months led to the same questions being posed by many of you:

“How do I build up my Instagram profile?”

I felt it was about time I shared some of the daily things I do to grow the attention base of our community.

I’ve tried all the shortcuts — they didn’t work the way I wanted them to work.

In fact, the two strategies I’m about to explain quickly IS “the work.”

They’re far from shortcuts, but now that I look back on it, I would’ve probably quit had I kept looking for easy alternatives.

Starting social media work is like the first 10 minutes of a workout — once you break a sweat and warm up, you’re ready to go :).

DISCLAIMER: If you have a social media account and don’t see the value in (social platforms) for your business then it will feel like another job.

There is no point in reading the rest of this article because it will not help you.

The truth is, the time it takes to build up a legit and engaging account is a part-time job kind of undertaking (4–6 hours a day).

The only thing left to do?

Learn and double-down on it.

I would encourage you to think about Instagram as the one place online where you must adopt a long-term view alongside a long-term strategy and DO the work because you know what?…

If you want your followers to care about your profile, you must show them you care about them more than you care about how many “followers” you have.

Here are the first two of-of the many ways I show the Tribe that I care and respect their attention and time.

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I Block 30% Of My Followers

(Wait, what?)

It might come as a surprise to you, but I spend a good part of my morning blocking members who are not in the “ecosystem” of what I envision Hairstylist Tribe to be.

In other words, spammy bot accounts, hair extension distributors, as well as whatever other non-beauty pages happen to follow our account are all removed daily, without fail.

If I do nothing else (some days I may not post anything), I still do this.

That’s how I roll.

There are a few reasons as to why I do it, the first one, being that I want a certain level of mental organization and clarity for myself but more importantly…

…The Instagram algorithm (the system that ranks accounts on a second by second basis) does a better job exposing Hairstylist Tribe page to the 8,000 real followers I have otherwise it would have to show the content to the real fans AND the bots.

If there are thousands of foreign accounts following Hairstylist Tribe and I’m acutely aware of it and don’t do anything about it, and the report sucks — it’s my fault.

But by manually going in and blocking every irrelevant account, I instead set Hairstylist Tribe up for long term attention success because why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of a feature where you can censor your stuff from people who won’t benefit from your page content anyway?

That’s the beauty of the Internet.

You might not be able to control who sees your stuff in any other medium like TV or billboards but on the Internet, the publisher of information RULES!

That’s why you’ll hear me say followers don’t matter, the quality of your fan base matters a lot more.

The more people I block, the more RELEVANT accounts follow Hairstylist Tribe — simple as that.

I go into greater detail in my upcoming e-book “How To Build Your Online Beauty Tribe” but one thing I would recommend you start doing if you want to improve the quality of your followers, is to block useless members like bots and irrelevant accounts.

Taking some time to do so will increase the exposure of your profile to your audience over time as well as rank you higher for suggested and popular pages (that way you can be seen a lot more locally as well — duh ).

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I Take Advantage of Direct Messaging Feature & I Message All My Followers

(Seriously)

This second strategy is why I follow the first approach, to begin with where I block foreign accounts.

It’s a lot of work, but the reason why I stick a lot of those accounts is so I can better organize my list of people who will now actually have a chance to read my direct messages as I message every single person who follows our page and stays on.

Not everyone who I message responds back, but you will know how many people responded because it reflects the number of individuals Hairstylist Tribe also follows on Instagram. (As of today, we are following 5,000).

If I receive a response to my welcome message — you get a follow, and you stay there.

You see, I don’t use the numbers of followers and following to pump up my brand by bragging about it always.

There’s no sexiness in trying to run a popularity contest and use that as the only anchor to promote my page.

That’s a by-product of the work I’ve put in, and even if popularity isn’t your goal, you’ll still get it by default.

Kind of like muscles is the by-product of proper nutrition and exercise.

To me, “followers/following ”are numbers that tell me how many people I have messaged (followers) and how many of those have messaged me back (how many I am following ).

These two numbers just so happen to be the metrics that the rest of the Tribe can see (and then I can explain to you how I use them) and I happen to use them in different ways (and it works).

Obviously, I don’t look at 5,000 accounts regularly — that would be insane and impossible in a day’s timeframe.

As a byproduct of my messaging each and every person over time, the people who care for Hairstylist Tribe and enjoy the content are the people who tag me in their photos and over time become advocates and promoters of the Tribe.

They primarily generate and offer their artwork which I repurpose as “content” for people to see, admire, enjoy and provide feedback and of course, give them credit.

If you check the hashtags #Hairstylisttribe and #hairstylist_tribe, you will find up to 6,000 posts, and some of those don’t even include the photos that we get tagged in the actual photo.

In other words, I care to interact with my followers, and they care enough to share their work and engage and contribute to the community as it grows BECAUSE I’m not a robot.

To give you some perspective.

I spend an average of 3–5 minutes (per person) interacting with, scoping out and observing every single account that follows the Tribe.

I then message the person with a welcome personalized welcome note which usually indicates to them that I’m not a bot.

(Bots don’t call people by names or put emojis in the messages — I do)

About 30% of the interactions turn into a longer conversation sometimes spanning over a few days.

These interactions are crucial because they separate our page from the rest of the pages.

Why?

None of them do it — so you might as well.

When I started doing it, I started creating relationships by establishing rapport and chatting back and forth — something other pages, again, don’t do.

If I could give you a taste of the results of me doing this over the last 12–14 months, I would have to say there is a kind of personal satisfaction that comes from receiving messages back.

They all say more or less the same thing: “You’re the first person on Instagram to send me a welcome message, I appreciate it, you now have my attention.”

That drives me and fuels me daily — it could do the same for you if you’re the kind of person who needs a kick in the butt once in a while.

If you did this to your followers, especially clients and potential clients, what would THAT do to your personal satisfaction, growth and long-term business, ya think?

I guess you’ll never know unless you try it;)

My advice?

Try it.

Melissa.

P.P.S. If you go to www.HairstylistTribe.com and sign up for FREE for the Tribe Newsletter, you receive a free Kindle copy of my upcoming book “How To Build Your Online Beauty Tribe (And Other Truths They Don’t Tell You About Social Media)