With our lives becoming increasingly virtual, Christy Laurence, Founder and CEO of Plann, believes that now more than ever businesses need to focus on their online presence – with Instagram a frequently overlooked sales channel.
The former advertising executive discovered the link between an aesthetically-pleasing Instagram feed and making more money while selling her artwork online back in 2015.
At the time, Christy had left her corporate job after suffering from a nasty flu which led to brain trauma and destroyed her vestibular system – the sensory system that controls balance and spatial skills. Unable to work, Christy re-discovered her love for illustration and shared her drawings with her online community. She soon discovered that the better her feed looked, the better her brand looked and more she could charge for her art.
This time-out not only brought about clarity around Christy’s desire for creative fulfillment, but led to what she calls her “light bulb moment.” Recognizing a need for businesses to be taught to use Instagram effectively, Christy made the decision to leave her office job and bootstrap Plann, an app to help talented people all over the world build their own successful brands.
Plann is now recognized as one of the leading Instagram scheduling tools and boasts over 2 million downloads across 160+ countries.
An app ever-evolving with the times
Plann was initially launched as an app for iOS but is now available on Android and Desktop. Christy and Plann’s product team are obsessed with ensuring the product makes the entire social media experience easier for businesses and creators to build influence and make sales.
To make the creation and scheduling of social posts even easier, Plann recently announced a new 3rd party integration with Canva – a powerful design software that helps millions of people around the world create beautiful graphics.
Given growing rates of engagement, Plann is growing from just Instagram and now also supports Facebook auto-posting, with easy cross-promotion between the two platforms to make it easier to get more views on social content for less work.
The company also boasts millions of royalty free stock image and video libraries,, aimed at removing the overwhelm of content creation to ensure users always have something to post.
Almost five years on, Christy has built a complete suite to supercharge individual and team social media publishing workflows – from planning, content creation, scheduling, right through to publishing and analytics.
The future of work & Instagram
The idea for Plann came to Christy while she was house-bound. She now feels her most productive whilst working from home. With a global team spanning over 10 countries, Plann has always been set up for success by working remotely.
With the entire world needing to be more flexible due to the COVID-19 crisis, there thankfully has been little to no effect on the way the Plann team works and rolls out new features. The right technology and fail-proof processes have enabled the company to continue working efficiently, including even fast-tracking improved Plann functionality to meet growing demand.
While the pandemic has had a devastating impact on many businesses, there’s also new opportunities for businesses to pivot and capitalize on the surge of people online. Online shopping and advertising on Instagram continues to be an effective way to reach a new audience and Christy and Plann continues to help businesses succeed.
