☆ Our Instagram blueprint, Sara Blakely's new biz, content camp

Do you have your ticket to Female Founder World LA?

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Female Founder World
August 19, 2024

☁️ Hi Business Bestie. Here’s what you need to know today. ☁️

  • Resource roundup

  • Skim the headlines

  • Get your tickets to Content Camp by Female Founder World in LA

  • The new rules of Instagram marketing

  • Only a few more weeks until Female Founder World LA. Our speaker lineup is unmatched—we just added Beatrice Dixon, founder of The Honeypot Co, to the lineup! 🔗Tell me more

  • Come to our group business coaching call with Heaven Mayhem founder, Pia Mance, in the Female Founder World group chat. 🔗Tell me more (if you’re not in our free group chat yet, sign up here first)

  • Apparently social media marketing is moving away from storytelling to “vibes”. 🔗Tell me more

  • Founders building in the '“future of women at work” space are eligible to enter this $10k grant. 🔗Tell me more

  • Save a ton of time with the AI reading tool our editorial team won’t shut-up about. 🔗Tell me more

  • You could land a free trip to Singapore and $20k. 🔗Tell me more

  • Dragon’s Den (Canada’s Shark Tank) is open for applications. 🔗Tell me more

  • MONDAY Haircare’s founder shared some of their top performing ads. 🔗Tell me more

  • Black founders can apply to this award-winning accelerator. 🔗Tell me more

  • Faire has a new perk—you can offer new retailers to the platform a 50% discount to your product catalogue, paid for by Faire. Use this in your next stockist pitch. 🔗Tell me more

  • 5 winners will score $200k via this grant. 🔗Tell me more

  • Xero is giving $450k+ in prizes to multiple winners. 🔗Tell me more

  • YCombinator is open for applications. 🔗Tell me more

  • Female Founder World’s giving away $15,000 to one brand in our community, thanks to VistaPrint! 🔗Tell me more 

SARA BLAKELY’S NEW BIZ: After building her first billion-dollar business, SPANX founder Sara Blakely is releasing a new invention: a comfortable high heel called ‘Sneex’ priced between $395-$595. The brand officially launches tomorrow, but the designs we’ve seen so far are not getting a lot of love from fashion girls.

SPORT <> FEMALE FOUNDERS: Beauty brands and fertility clinics haven’t typically been associated with sports. Now they’re taking over game nights as the draw of top women’s athletes attracts new kinds of sponsors, including a wave of female founded brands. Is there an opportunity here for you brand, too?

EMMA CHAMBERLAIN TAKES OVER: After bringing in a reported $20M in revenue last year, influencer and founder Emma Chamberlain is stepping into a new role as the co-CEO of her coffee startup, Chamberlain Coffee

POPPI PROMOTIONS: Poppi reportedly spent $43M from January-April on advertising—more than Gatorade and Dr. Pepper. With a SuperBowl ad, Coachella Alix Earle house, and stepping out to TV ads, this tracks. 

WE’RE OVER AI: A Washington State University study found that people are less likely to buy products with AI in the product description. When faced with a choice between an AI-powered product or a “dumb” version, we all mostly want the “dumber” versions.

NEW CELEB BRANDS: Dolly Parton launched a lipstick collection and model Brooke Shields just launched Commence, a haircare line focused on women over 40. Before launching, Commence’s team built an online community called Beginning Is Now for women over 40. It reached 100,000 Instagram followers before Commence launched and took over the account.

ELF IS KILLING IT: E.l.f’s net sales increased 50% in the last quarter. They’ve been investing in unique collabs and marketing moments (remember their partnerships with Liquid Death and Mean Girls?), and a stack of new product launches.

LAUNCHES TO KNOW:

You’re invited to Content Camp by Female Founder World in Los Angeles

Immerse yourself in a one-day experience that will finally unlock the content and community marketing tactics to drive your brand to the next level—organically.

We have handpicked speakers leading the way in this space, including the women behind The Honeypot Co., Bala, SET Active, LiveTinted, and more. These are genuinely the founders creating the future of content and community-led marketing.

PLUS: you’ll get stunning Female Founder World merch, have the opportunity to get professional product photography and headshots, and create gorgeous UGC alongside our team of high-converting creators.

A handful of tickets are left, please don’t miss it!

The new rules of Instagram marketing

Female Founder World reached over 11 million people on Instagram in the last year and IG really is driving a lot of sales and partnership opportunities for our business. It’s kind of wild, actually.

I spoke about it on the podcast recently, and I’m going to share exactly what’s working for us here. These are the big takeaways (forward this email to your business besties and social media team):

TIP 1: Content buckets that work for us right now are: a) anything that makes our very niche audience feel seen, heard and understood; and b) very in-depth educational posts.

  • Sit down and brainstorm random and relatable (frustrating, funny, fun) moments in your ideal audience's life, and drop it into a spreadsheet. If you’re a skincare brand this could be the puddle around their sink after washing their face at night, or as a mom when you finally get 30 seconds of alone time in the bathroom. For us, it looks like this. Then, turn those ideas into multiple video skits or messaging to add as captions and text overlay to more generic video content (like yourself working at your desk, packing orders, etc.)

  • Educational content is extremely niche and in-depth—we never create a post with the intention of sending people to another platform to get the full story. The Instagram post is a complete experience in itself. Always make sure the images and headlines are scroll-stopping and your text is large enough. 

TIP 2: Find distribution partners and use the collab feature to build your reach.

  • Collab posts are an awesome way to find new audiences. Work with a creator or another brand with a similar audience and cross promote the post using the collab feature.

TIP 3: Use Instagram Stories to tell start-to-end stories, not to share your feed posts.

  • Your most engaged followers are watching your Stories–this is a powerful tool to build trust, community and your brand tone.

TIP 4: Instagram is shifting the dimensions of the photos you see on a profile from square or 1:1 to a rectangular 4:5 dimension. We’ve already updated all of our carousel and still imagery posts to the new dimensions—1080 x 1350 pixel dimensions.

🎧 New podcasts