In this series, Instagram Icon, Entrepreneur speaks with the individuals behind popular Instagram accounts to find out the secrets of their success.
While Jess Hannah was studying graphic design at California Polytechnic State University, she took classes with a metalsmith on the side and had a workbench in her bedroom. She graduated in 2013 and spent a year as an apprentice, then started building her own jewelry brand. As Instagram gained popularity, she created an account and posted about what she was making.
“I was documenting the process of how I started building a brand,” Hannah says.
Back then, Hannah says, there was no “formula” or trendy way to post on Instagram. Many of her friends weren’t even using the platform. As Hannah began working on her first jewelry line, her brand, J. Hannah, began to develop via her posts, which reflected her inspiration, day-to-day life and minimalist personal style.
“It’s really important for us to show what I do and that it’s me, and that’s why I post selfies every now and then, or things that I’m wearing or things that I’m doing or eating,” Hannah says.
She began selling pieces to her Instagram followers, as well as those who discovered her through her website. Today, Hannah lives and has a studio in Los Angeles, has more than 212,000 followers @j.hannah and has doubled down on her business making “jewelry for how it should be worn: never taken off.” She mostly sells her custom-made, 14-karat gold pieces directly to consumers.
In addition to photos of her jewelry, she still posts a variety of other content to Instagram, from swatches of “flesh tones of Lucian Freud’s ex-wives as nail polish inspiration” (she recently launched a J. Hannah nail polish set) to photos of her cat to behind-the-scenes shots of her pop-up jewelry displays.
“My brand is my name. I’m not a faceless brand that’s not attached to the designer,” Hannah says. “My posts aren’t like, ‘This is the company’s pick of the week.’ It’s very much stuff that I’m inspired by, and it really tells a story to our customer that you don’t get if you just walk into a store and buy a piece. They feel connected in a way that’s much different.”
Read on for Hannah’s take on creating her brand and building a following on Instagram.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
1. How did you get your start with Instagram?
I went to school for graphic design and graduated, applied for a bunch of graphic design jobs that I wasn’t qualified for and then didn’t get a job. Then I was like, “OK, well this is what I actually want to do. I’m going to try it for a year and see what happens.”
Before I started the business, I was using Instagram to talk about how I was starting a brand. Previously I had sold rings on Etsy, and I had sold rings to my friends.
A couple of months before I actually started my line — I feel like saying “line” is so funny because when I look back at it now it was just random rings that I made — I was posting process photos to show that I was starting this brand. I would post my logo that I made. I did my whole website and logo, and looking back, it looks terrible, but I didn’t have any money. I did everything myself.
And then I remember posting a countdown a few days before I launched my website. I used Instagram in a promotional way and was gaining followers. Mostly how I started was just documenting literally what I was doing.
2. What other platforms do you use and what percentage of the time do you spend on them vs. Instagram?
I use Pinterest about once a week, mostly for personal fun. I just pin stuff that I like, really, and look for inspiration. Sometimes I syndicate @j.hannah posts to Facebook, but I don’t really use Facebook or Twitter. I also think it’s better to focus your energy on the one that you enjoy most. If you like doing it, you can build a community around it, and it’s better for your business, instead of doing everything with a little bit of effort.
3. How much of your time do you devote to Instagram?
I have help in deciding what goes on it, because it’s basically a full-time job otherwise. A fair amount of the content now is produced editorials, lookbook images, stuff like that and some of it is found imagery. My team and I search for inspiration images, and then a portion of it is stuff that I’m taking myself, jewelry on my hands, stuff that I see, stuff in my house. It’s hard to know how much time I spend, because my team produces some of it, as well as spends some…
