Over 450 Hair Salon #hashtags in 2024

#HairSalon Hashtags Instagram & TikTok Marketing in 2024

Overview

Instagram is one of the most effective platforms available for a successful hair salon to reach its target audience… when done properly. Let’s focus on strategy and practical tips on “how to” market on Instagram to reach the largest possible audience and visibility.  

Our focus here is Salons. If you were sent here by a friend and have a different niche business, I encourage you to contact me. We have prepared Instagram Hashtag profiles for many different types of businesses! 

2024 update

The big update in the past year is the number of hashtags that are recommended. In past years, you would be well advised to have at least 8-9 hashtags on every post. 

Now, you really want just a few hyper-relevant hashtags. You’re much better off with a few that signal the value of the post rather than a buckshot approach. 

That may change again but that’s where we are right now – we’ll keep you updated as IG changes their algorithm. 

Goals

The first part of this guide is focused on strategy and execution. 

The second half is a collection of hashtags that will generate relevant traffic to your IG feed (and business!)

I recommend you read through the strategy and execution; the hashtag section will provide a lot more value if you take the time to do that. 

1. How to plan your Instagram campaigns
2. Hashtags… and the best way to use hashtags in your marketing
3. Taking advantage of popular “non salon” stories (and bringing that traffic to your salon!)
4. Off-topic On-Topic 

The early drafts of this guide were 180+ pages… I have edited out as much as possible to give you the most relevant, specific information so you can use this on-the-fly every day in your business. Even in the few minutes you have to publish your latest IG story! 

1. 1 – Planning

As a salon, you have your own Instagram channel. We’ll assume you already have achieved the basics like linking to your website and embedding your IG feed on your website (easy to do if you have a WordPress website). 

There are a lot of “website designers” in the world but only a few that consistently get top results for hair salon marketing. We truly understand the real purpose of your website and social pages: to convert casual visitors into clients, get the phone to ring and book appointments with top services and top paying clients… 

Do your stylists each have a channel as well? If so, there is an opportunity to coordinate your marketing efforts so the salon benefits and your individual partners do as well. 

Zero in on the RIGHT hashtags for each of your stories. For example, don’t feel like every IG story needs your salon hashtag; it has your feed attached to it anyway so it’s just not needed. 

In fact, any more than 10-11 hashtags is TOO MANY. I don’t recommend more than that on any IG story. Stay focused with the hashtags and you’ll get a LOT more reach with your hashtags! On the other hand — use at least 8 hashtags. 

There is a narrow sweet spot to gain maximum traction with your hashtags. Generally speaking… 

9 to 11 hashtags is the optimal number 

When you use hashtags, you’re expanding the reach of your posts because people outside your own followers will see your stories. They pick up your posts on the pages of the hashtags they follow. The benefit is not only from gaining new followers but getting greater traction with your existing followers; your stories are seen more often by your existing followers if you hashtag the story with hashtags they follow.

Don’t copy other people’s hashtags… Really think about each hashtag you’re using to tag your story. Is it completely relevant to your story? Really focus on what problem you’re solving, what service you’re offering, what location you are in… BE SPECIFIC to the end user’s perspective. Who would your story appeal to? What tag would they be following to see your story and think, “that’s relevant to me” AND CLICK ON IT? Those are your best hashtags for each IG story you create. 

If you haven’t already, look at your own Instagram and develop a sense of what hashtags are performing the best amongst all your stories. Over time, you’ll see a definite pattern… Now let’s say that pattern is NOT where you want to be in terms of attracting the right clients… You can move the dial on that by substituting hashtags for more affluent products and services. Over time, you’ll see a real shift in terms of who’s interacting with your feed and who is buying your products, calling your salon for appointments, etc. 

If you are not familiar with how to see the metrics of your posts on Instagram, just click on the Insights tab. It opens up your performance metrics and gives you just the right amount of information to decide if that tag is a good one or “bad” (ineffective) one for your intended market. 

As a very clear example, consider the hashtag #haircut. It’s one of the most popular hashtags on Insta… but one of the least effective for salons to use. Sure it will give you general traffic for hairstyle-types… But it won’t give you the specific high-end clients clicking and calling to book in. 

Said another way — it may give you some traffic but it won’t grow your business. 

Related to that, consider hashtag competition. The more general a hashtag is, generally speaking, the more competitive it will be to rank for that tag. It’s much easier to rank for a specific service like #stlouisbalayage (especially if it’s location-specific like the example) than it would be to rank for #beauty with millions of competing pages.

TIERS NOT TEARS

You might consider the hashtags you create for a story in layers or tiers. The first tier is generally what is the topic. Again, not general like “hair” but general like “balayage.” Even “hair color” is almost too general. 

So on one level, you have #balayage and related hashtags. 

On the next level, you can bring in where this is. Your town, Your town + keyword (for example, #stlouisbalayage)

On the bottom level, #salon or #hairsalon. Again, you don’t need to hashtag your brand because it’s in your profile link. That would be essentially a repeat of the keyword and as we know, repetition is dilution. You repeat a word, you cancel the value by 50% of each hashtag. 

I’m using 50% as a figure of speech, not literally taking a .5 penalty… We’re not doing math today, don’t worry. 

BE SPECIFIC. FOCUS ON BUYER INTENT. 

This also provides another useful illustration about relevance in your hashtags. #beauty is not really relevant to a story where #stlouisbalayage would be relevant. 

If you have a story where #stlouisbalayage is perfectly relevant, then you can see how #beauty is only relevant in the most general sense — and therefore, of such little relevance that it has no real value as a hashtag for that story. 

Said another way: Don’t use overly general hashtags — it will diminish your overall reach and kill it. 

Okay I think we’ve covered that point. 😉 

The thing about Insta stories and reach is that they have their own reach and they have their collective reach for the channel. So if you start over-generalizing your tags, your individual story reach will suffer… and so will your entire channel. 

Another big mistake is using the same hashtags over & over. DON’T. It will severely diminish your overall reach and effectiveness and place you in a hole that will take a while to dig out of. One salon owner “solved” this problem by switching around the order of the tags… Insta bots don’t see it that way; it’s still the same hashtags that you’re wearing out from one story to the next. 

Bluntly speaking, using the same hashtags in every one of your stories is spam. It’s overly redundant and brings up the question, If every story is the same topic (i.e. has the same hashtags), then how is it possibly relevant to the overall conversation? How is the channel relevant? You can probably guess how the A.I. would answer that. No bueno for your rankings — diversify your hashtags and make them RELEVANT and FOCUSED.  

And finally, there are two types of traffic on Instagram: 

1. IG’ers searching for inspiration and ideas to take to their own stylist
2. Local IG’ers in your market searching for their next stylist who can execute what they found in #1 

Ideally, each of your stories appeals to both… but if there is a clear winner, it’s the client traffic you really want!

2 – News Stories & Capitalizing on that Traffic

Every market has news stories that offer opportunities to capitalize on the intense search volume occurring around those events. 

For example, in California every year, we have the Santa Ana winds. In 2019, the big story was PG&E and Southern California Edison shutting down power stations preemptively as a way to reduce the risk to widespread wildfire damage. 

This preemptive action may or may not have helped the fire damage situation. But it did cause widespread panic of people buying commodities like gasoline and ice (to place in their refrigerators and freezers) ahead of their planned power outage. 

It also created a highly relevant search tag for #SantaAnas (the intense winds that blow seasonally every year in California). 

Every market has these types of annual “event” stories that appeal to a wide cross-section of your market. In other words, a large volume of people is searching for the same thing at the same time. ANY time this happens, find a way to make it relevant to YOUR business! 

The purpose of this type of traffic is not conversions. It’s unlikely that a large percentage of people who are searching for the weather event topic will be simultaneously looking for a salon… 

But rather, the purpose is to divert some of that traffic to a relevant news story of your own — a helpful article (or video) on how to control your hair in high winds… or perhaps a specific product that will reduce the frizzies… or how to care for your hair when the humidity drops to nothing. There WILL be relevant traffic for that. 

But more importantly, what it creates is a large spike in your otherwise single-level traffic… it signals RELEVANCE to Google that will help you increase the relevance of other pages, keywords, and stories… on both your Instagram feed but also your other social media, YouTube and website! 

Capitalizing on trends is very helpful to your overall business model. Use it but always find relevance to your business as it pertains to the general population. 

Here’s a more ‘seasonal’ newsworthy cycle – and HINT, you can add this to a social media calendar to refer to during the course of the year. (Ask me for my social media calendar if you don’t already have one.) 

Valentine’s Day, Wedding Hair, Anniversary salon treatments, his & hers packages (with photos)… Add #LOVE hashtags with variations. 

Halloween – #SPOOKY #SCARY etc

Summer – #HOT, #BEACHHAIR etc

It’s topical but more important, RELEVANT and brings the traffic. 

3 – Off-Topic On-Topic

This is similar to the news event strategy but here you’re grabbing a portion of the population based on their interest. 

Let’s take an example – driving in convertibles. Again there is a relevance to salons and hair care that can be applied with a few simple tweaks. But I don’t recommend the general topic of driving in convertibles — instead, tie in the latest test drive with the world’s fastest convertible supercar, the Hennessey Venom Spyder. What you’re looking to do here is tie a luxury brand to your own salon; this adds excitement and upscales your brand and emotionally / subconsciously creates an associated level of exhilaration that a prospective client associates with your salon. You are stating without stating, that WE are the Hennessey Venom Spyder of salons in our area; visit us for an equal experience. 

4 – The Hashtag Collection

When thinking about hashtags for your IG story, you should mainly consider two kinds of hashtags — the general, low-converting but high volume hashtags… and the specific, high-converting but lower volume hashtags. You absolutely need the latter on every story; if you have to get rid of hashtags on a story, get rid of the general ones first. 

General Hair Stylist hashtags (TRY TO AVOID USING THESE… OKAY MAYBE SPARINGLY): 

#hairdresser #hair #hairstylist #hairstyle #haircolor #haircut #hairstyles #balayage #hairsalon #beauty #instahair #hairgoals #behindthechair #salon #hairdo #blondehair #olaplex #barber #modernsalon #blonde #makeup #longhair #fashion #highlights #hairoftheday #hairdressing #hairfashion #haircolorist #style

#hairstyling #hairlove #ombre #hairinspo #barbershop #color #haircolour #love #hairextensions #hairdressermagic #fris #hairart #instagood #stylist #hairbrained #hairofinstagram #balayageombre #hairdresserlife #r #babylights #beautifulhair #hairideas #hairtrends #beautiful #beforeandafter #like #hairtransformation #naturalhair #makeupartist #wella

#beautician #massage #beautyblogger #beautytime #eyebrows #fashion #treatyourself #beautytherapist #beautytips #girlboss #lashlift #keratin #balayage #skin #sa #photooftheday #facials #brows #cosmetics #lashartist #herspotsalon #highlights #love #nailsbali #barbershop #bridalmakeup #schoonheidssalon #baku #nailbar #microblading

#hairdressermagic #hairdressers #hairdresserlife #hairdressersofinsta #hairdresserslife #hairdressersjournal #hairdressersofinstagram #hairdressersthatslay #hairdresserproblems #hairdresserworld

#beautysalons

Color of hair specific (too general)

#brunette #blonde

MOST POPULAR SALON HASHTAGS RIGHT NOW – THESE ARE MOSTLY TOO GENERAL WITH A COUPLE EXCEPTIONS:

#balayage #hairstudio #hairstyles #haircolorist #bestsalon #haircolorspecialist #hairstylist #haircolor #hairsalon #salonlife

#colorchallenge #make #makeuplover #beauty #salon 

#beautiful #hair #haircut #makeover #haircolor #shorthair #photography

HASHTAGS THAT ARE RECOMMENDED: 

Following are all the mid- to low-competition hashtags that I have found will add reach to your Insta feed. This is an ongoing and changing list, please check back from time to time for updated recommendations. 

Location-specific hashtags like #hairdresserstlouis #hairdresserstl and yes you can get VERY specific like #yoursuburb especially for event-based stories in your salon or in the community where your salon is participating. 

Replace StLouis with your location 😉 

#stlouisbalayagespecialist #stlouisbalayage #stlouishair #stlouishairsalon #stlouisstylist #stlouiscolourist #stlouishaircolour #stlouissalon #stlouisMUA #stlouisbeauty #stlouismicroblading #microbladingstlouis #stlouismakeup #stlouisbeautysalon #stlouislashes #stlouisbrows #stlouisbride #stlouisweddingphotographer #stlouisweddings #ontarioweddings #stlouisspa #stlouisweddingplanner #stlouisphotographer #stlouisstyle #nailsstlouis #lashesstlouis

#stlbalayagespecialist #stlbalayage #stlhair #stlhairsalon #stlstylist #stlcolourist #stlhaircolour #stlsalon #stlMUA #stlbeauty #stlmicroblading #microbladingstl #stlmakeup #stlbeautysalon #stllashes #stlbrows #stlbride #stlweddingphotographer #stlweddings #ontarioweddings #stlspa #stlweddingplanner #stlphotographer #stlstyle #nailsstl #lashesstl

Type / Style of hair specific 

#longhair #bobs #blackhairstyles #curlyhair #wavyhair #curls #braidstyles #blondebraids #hairstyler #instahairstyle #instastyles #prettyhair #upstyle #haircut #hairstylist #curlyhair #perfectcurls #hairart #beforeafter #straighthair #longhair #hairgoals #hairoftheday #hairinspo #hairenvy #hairgoals #hairdresser #hairinspiration #hairlove #hairideas #hairoftheday #hairtransformation #longhairstyles #beachwave #beachhair #longcurls

Problem specific

#healthyhair #beachhair #curlyhair #frizzyhair #dryhair #oilyhair

Service specific 

Hair coloring

#balayage #balayageombre #balayagehighlights #brownbalayage #balayageandhandpainted #bestofbalayage #blondehair #ombre #ombrehair #colormelt #hairofinstagram #bronde #brunette #blondehair #hairpainting #balayagehighlights #babylights #icyblonde #rosegoldhair #pinkhair #mermaidhair #haircolorspecialist #haircolor #haircolorexpert #fromdarktolight

Other Services 

Hair Removal 

#brazilianwax #brazilianwaxing #noshaving #waxonwaxoff #waxing #bikiniwax #underarmwax #wax #hairless #laserhairremoval 

Tanning

#uvfree #airbrushtan #weddingtan #spraydontlay #sunlesstan #healthytan #spraytan #spraytans #spraytansolution #tanning #sunlesstanning #airbrushtanning #sunlesstan #sunlessindustry #mobiletanning #gosunless #bronzebeauty #spraytanexpert #glow #tanningsalon

Lashes

#lashesfordays #semipermanenteyelashextensions #eyelashextensions #lashlove #lashesonfleek #healthylashes #lashgamestrong #beautygoals #lashesonpoint #falsies #falselashes #volumelashes #perfectlashes #wispylashes #lashextensions #russianvolume #lashtech #lashartist #lashlift #lashstylist

Eyebrows

#Microblading #phibrows #hairbyhair #hairstroke #permanentmakeup #pmu #microblading #microbladingworld #afterprocedure #eyebrows #brows #tattoo #spmu #browsonfleek #browsonpoint #threading #microbladingbrows #browshaping #microbladingartist #3dbrows #eyebrowtattoo #archaddicts #eyebrowshaping #perfectbrows #boldbrows #archoholic #browlife #browspecialist #browsonpoint #browguru #browgame #browporn #semipermanentmakeup

Skincare

#beautifulskin #smoothskin #healthyskin #loveyourskin #skincareproducts #skincareobsessed #skincareaddict #igskincare #luxuryskincare #moisturizing #radiance #dayspa #beautybar #healthyskincare #healthyskinbeautifulskin #facials #skintreatment #pampering #over40beauty #beautyessentials #glowyskin #skincareroutine #facemask #igskincare #skincareproducts #skincarejunkie #naturalskincare #beautyregime #organicskincare #selfcare #cleanbeauty #waxing

Makeup

#wakeupandmakeup #muanation #makeupaddict #makeupjunkie #makeupartistsworldwide #makeupgoals #makeupporn #makeupartist #makeupcollection #instabeauty #bblogger #makeupcollector #beautyaddict #ilovemakeup #bridalmakeup #makeupbyme #cosmeticslovers #makeuplover #colorcosmetics #crueltyfree #motd #instamakeup #makeupgirl #makeuplook #makeupslaves #makeupideas #makeuplife #dailymakeup #makeupartistsworldwide #undiscovered_muas #makeupmafia #highlighting #smokeyeye #contouring #makeuptutorial

Nails

#acrylicnails #nailextensions #ombrenails #nailart #nailsofinstagram #instanails #naillove #almondnails #nailtechnician #nailsbyme #nails2inspire #nailsaddict #notd #lookloudandvarnish #nailsoohlala #nailitdaily #showmynails #nailjunkie #nailartwow #thenailartstory #stamping #naillove #naillook #naildesign #livelovepolish #ilovenails #laquer #npa #nailpolishaddict #ignails #manicure #iridescentnails #beautifulnails #nailstagram #nailporn

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