From flagship stores in London to helping small local businesses, Anna Jones, founder of Your AJency, is a creative marketing expert. She uses her commercial retail experience, marketing knowledge and global perspective to connect her clients to the right people to elevate their business.
Your AJency works with ambitious female-founded small businesses run by brave disruptors and innovators. With strategic marketing tools, Anna has used the power of Plann to support her clients’ growth and connect them to a community of loyal supporters.
We sat down with Anna to talk about all things social media, how she navigated starting a business mid-pandemic and how using a scheduling suite (like Plann) has made her social media experience a total dream.
Let’s dive into her story below!
Navigating professional life mid-pandemic
“I started Your AJency mid-pandemic – September 2020. I have grown my business and have used it to position myself as an expert who helps business owners, typically female founders, exponentially grow their businesses through the power of strategic storytelling (marketing). I have loved seeing businesses flourish through consistent and on-brand social marketing.
Plann was the first scheduler I had properly used for Instagram, as I had tried others but didn’t love them. Although I had it, little was planned in advance, and the platform wasn’t being used to its potential.
This is when we embraced Plann and started to schedule the wonderful event footage along with on-brand styling inspiration, we found talented stylists to inspire future event hosts. One of my client’s accounts has grown by over 600% and has become a go-to party venue, particularly for baby showers.”
Connecting with people around the world
“My favorite thing about social media is the huge network it opens you up to and the new connections. This network would be far harder and take a lot more time to reach and build without these platforms, particularly when we take the last few years when meeting anyone in real life was tricky, and for some people, that remains the same.
Social media makes the world smaller, and for the last few years, that has been particularly important. I have built a business during a pandemic, and without social, I don’t think I would be in the position I am in today. So it opens up opportunities that would be harder to seek out in the traditional way!”
Life before and after Plann
“Life before scheduling and auto posting: how did we survive?! Well, we didn’t. I felt like social was so much more time-consuming and I was never off my phone. I also felt really behind and never on top of social. It allows us to be more strategic too!
It was harder to batch-create content, which has been game-changing for me as an agency owner as it has saved valuable time that I could spend on more value-adding work that has ultimately supported the growth of my brand.”
Connecting with other like-minded people
“Social media has been game-changing in growing a community. It’s what I love most, even if I do think real-life events can never be beaten for connection and a fully immersive brand experience. I really missed them during the pandemic, but despite that, I was able to use social to grow a community of like-minded individuals and have some exciting plans for my business.
Being a female founder can be lonely, but with social media you don’t feel like doing it alone. I use it to connect with experts, seek out my target audience and have fun with like-minded people who have similar interests, great tastes and styles who inspire my creativity and become supporters and friends.
These people are just as important and help with your motivation, especially when you are just having one of those days.”
How Plann simplifies content creation for business owners
“I love how visual Plann is; it made it much easier for me to showcase the vision and story my clients have entrusted me to tell them when I am taken on for full social media management.
I am easily able to share the content I create with my clients to tell their unique stories. Plann is a great collaborative tool when you are working with multiple clients. My clients can go in at any time and see what we have planned and perhaps can build additional stories around that or realize they have more they can add.
We have been able to create a system around our content creation, which has meant both me as an agency owner and my client as a business owner can free up time to work on other projects to support their growth.
Plus, the insights are amazing on this platform and allow us to get into detailed discussions on what is working and what we need to change. I particularly love the best-performing hashtags. The Instagram insights aren’t enough, so I have tried some other quite costly options, but the fact that all the insights are in one place makes it a whole lot easier and more efficient.
This allows us to be strategic when it comes to planning and getting organized so we are able to be ahead of the game and produce the highest quality we can.
Using Plann has saved me soo much time, brings the planned grid to life visually and allows me to focus on quality storytelling content rather than mundane tasks such as posting. Auto post is game-changing as when one of us knows we have a holiday or a huge project, we can ensure we already have the content ready to go. “
And Anna’s favorite Plann feature?
“Content pillars – the fact that even when you don’t have the right image, you can use one of the blocks to capture your idea and notes and then when the client goes in to check, for example, they might have the perfect image or idea, and we actually leave each other notes on there to support each other and discuss on our weekly calls.”
How to find social media success with Plann
“Video and reels are not a trend and are here to stay. If you are going to invest time in anything, it is video. It is a powerful way to connect to your audience. You need to be showing up consistently.
But it is a long-term strategy, not something that will make you an overnight success, so keep going. But the hard work will pay off when reels and videos are done right. Schedules such as Plann also include this on their tools, which means you can batch create content and sprinkle it between other content formats such as carousels.”
Top tips for brands looking to rise on social media in 2022
“My top tip is to use a visual planner such as Plann, and ensure you regularly check on your insights to adapt the content according to what your target audience wants more of.
I also love the feature where they show you the colour palette and its success. I also suggest that all clients use a professional photographer to capture brand images of the highest quality, as first impressions count, and Instagram will reward you for quality images.
The final place, if perhaps you don’t have lots of great images yet, check out free sites for images such as Unsplash. The other great resource to get the right colour aesthetic is Pinterest – for example, for my own brand, I may search beige aesthetic and see if any good images come up. You can download the images and just don’t forget to tag/credit the owner of the image.”
What’s next for Anna?
“It’s exciting times for Your AJency. Having launched mid-pandemic in Chicago and successfully grown all our clients in 2021, we are expanding to the UK. In 2022 we plan to expand our team, launch some exciting new products (including something to help with video) and further build our network globally. Exciting times!”
Ready to supercharge your success on social media?
Looking for an all-in-one content creation suite that allows you to manage your social media channels effortlessly? From mapping out your strategy and designing your graphics to saving plug-and-play hashtag sets, you’ll find everything you need inside Plann.
Go on, redeem your 7-day free trial of Plann Plus. If you don’t like it, keep using Plann for free!
