Content Ideas From One of Instagram's Original Creators

0:00Hey, business festies. Welcome back to Female Founder World. I'm Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the person behind all things Female Founder World. Today, I'm chatting with Elise Spokes. She is the Senior Evangelist of Adobe Express at Adobe. Welcome to the show. Hi, how you doing? Tell me what you do at Adobe. Let's start there. Of course. Well, I am a Senior Adobe Express Evangelist. Basically, most of my job is social demos and half of it is community advocacy. So I just make sure that the people are heard and our products are performing perfectly for them. You have the most interesting story and I'm really excited to get into everything.

0:34Some of the stuff that we're going to talk about on the show today, you were one of the original Instagram artists and creators, and we're going to talk about the early days of the platform and then what's changed and how you've evolved and how you see creators growing as these platforms are changing and how people can really make an impact there. We're going to talk about creativity, nurturing it, protecting it. And we're also going to talk about some really helpful tactical tools and how to use them for people who are showing up and creating content on the internet, which is all of us. You know, one of the things that we talk about a lot on the show is if you're building a business in 2025, you are also a content machine and a media company because that is just the reality of what it takes to build something right now.

1:19Absolutely. Yeah. Sometimes in the beginning of my demos to my audience, I ask them, who's a graphic designer? Who's a social media manager? who's also a founder and I get hands raised for everybody because everyone's got to be everything right now. 100%. Everyone is a creator slash founder business owner. Absolutely. That's why I wanted to chat with you today with some of the things I wanted to get into. But let's start with the early days of your career. Take me back. Oh my gosh, how far back can we go is the question. I've been a designer since I was a child. I got started on one of those old blue Apple iMac computers.

1:55I was homeschooled, so I would learn on the computer. But then when I got my time off, I would just go on and just edit. And I taught myself how to design websites. I taught myself graphic design. And I just was obsessed with the ability to teach myself and not have to wait for anyone else to teach me. And from there on, throughout middle school and high school, even throughout college, I was just creating graphics for friends and things like that. But It wasn't until like my first semester of college where I realized I kind of wanted to do my own thing. So I dropped out my first semester and found this thing called Instagram and signed up and just everything kind of went crazy from there.

2:36And what year was that? That was in 2011. Okay, so super, super early for Instagram. I'm going to ask you more about those days because I am fascinated. I was also like a pretty early internet creator, not as prolific as you, but I remember the early days of the internet and what those platforms were like. But first I want to share some milestones, like some of the stuff that you've done throughout your career that I think people should know at the beginning of this conversation. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, some of the most important milestones I'd say is one, Instagram, of course, becoming a suggested user was a really big thing for me.

3:09I was a broke college dropout with literally nothing but an iPhone 4 that I bought on Craigslist. And I just started posting on Instagram and they loved my creative artwork that they decided I should be a suggested user. And at that time, that was a really big deal because that meant that people who signed up for Instagram, and this is millions of people at once who are finding out what Instagram even is, are following me to get inspiration. And so I'm basically being called the insta goddess in Chicago, which was really fun. But I'd say the next biggest step was definitely getting more brand partnerships.

3:42I was one of the first influencers to work with Apple, with Nike, one of their first influencers doing a crazy trip in San Francisco. We were on a helicopter ride and we went underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and it was just incredible. And of course, working with Adobe was always fantastic. Over the last decade, I was freelancing before I was even an employee doing an incredible amount of things from Adobe Lives to just product testing to social influencer work. So there's a very long relationship there as well. But there's just an incredible amount of stories from George Clooney liking my work.

4:16No, let's start with George Clooney liking your work. What do you mean? Yeah. So I was reached out to by his team when he started Casamigos and I was one of their first influencers ever to take over their Instagram. That's his tequila brand, right? Yeah. It's a tequila brand. And so they wanted to send me 12 tequila bottles for a couple of photos. And I said, sure. Amazing. So if you go back way back when to their few first social posts, that was the first social influencers with them. And George Clooney liked my work. So he thought it'd be a good fit. That's incredible. And like explain to me what your work is for people who don't follow you on Instagram.

4:49Like you have a pretty big audience there now. What do you do? Yeah. So I am one of the first iPhone creators ever. and I would just take photos with my phone and edit them with different apps and just very surrealistic ways. And I just, I mean, I loved taking like a cityscape and adding a waterfall to it or adding a giraffe or just adding different cool, beautiful elements to it to kind of make it my own. So yeah, it's very unique. And talk me through 2021 on Instagram as you're building this audience for yourself and building this brand for yourself really what was it like on the platform then well uh when i first started it was very different i'd say that the biggest difference was the algorithm so when you're posting there was this one page that you wanted to be on which was called the popular page and the popular page was very unique because it was the one page it's not like how it is today where everyone gets a different like screen on the on the the trend that was chronological it was very chronological it was also everyone saw the same thing and so if you got a certain amount of likes in a certain amount of time you would get on the popular page and that meant millions would people of people would see your work at once and that meant I would get a lot of engagement and a lot of followers and that was really big for me and I think a part of that too was making sure that your community was also supporting you in that realm So the best part about the early days of Instagram was that we all kind of started at the same time.

6:24There was like other photographers like Cole Rise, who's if you look on Instagram, there's a filter called Rise that's named after him. Oh, wow. And so we all kind of were like taking photos with our iPhones, doing fun stuff. But the thing about that was is that we all kind of knew what it took to get to the popular page. And so we would support each other. We do collaborations. It's a ton of different things. And it was at that point, and it still is, at least to this day, which I'm sure we'll talk about, is just community first is making sure you have your tribe of people who kind of know where you began, where you're going, and you kind of all believe the same kind of thing in essence.

6:58That's so interesting. Let's talk about that community building and having those people that kind of have your back. Because when I, you know, when I also started Female Founder World, I had this group of other founders and we would do something very similar. We had kind of had a WhatsApp group and when we would have a partnership or when we had a, something that we just posted, we would share it in that group and we'd say, Hey, can you support this? Like, can you share it to your stories? Or can you like tell your, you know, your partner, your contact here that we've done like, and that is that little seed of like eight people is such a big reason of why we've been able to build this into a full media brand.

7:37And it's, I found it so valuable to have those people. I'd love to know your thoughts on that. No, yeah, I believe in that wholeheartedly. I think that one most important aspect of that is like sometimes, especially in the realm of posting content with brands and collaborations, you definitely want to look good to that brand and you want to make sure that things are being positively seen in the perspective of success in that. But like that means that you have to people have to understand what that actually means. So I remember like when I would post some of my first hashtag ads at that time, we got to put a hashtag ad.

8:18You got to do all the different things. People would like kind of get upset at me because they didn't understand what influencership was. But on the other end of that, I had to help educate a lot of people about like that's my job. and that if you engage with that, that means I can continue creating and continue providing inspiration for you for free. Whereas I don't require anyone to pay me for my social or the inspiration or the art that I'm creating, but I do require you to at least engage with me so I can make a living and I can continue providing you with the inspiration you're looking for.

8:50So that, and that, I think around like 2013, I would post a lot of those educational kind of tips to people about how, like, what even influencership was? Like, what did that mean and why it's important for you to comment on people's stuff and engage with it when they have those hashtag ad kind of things. Community is everything in so many different ways. But I think you're right on the nose, for sure. I find that so interesting, especially as, you know, we see so many founders now, like, building in public on these social channels. And it's the explaining to people, like, what it is that you're doing, giving that education piece so that then they can like buy in and support you and explaining like we just launched in this retailer I need like go and support us at this retailer so I can continue to like do this business and create this stuff that you love and like why it's important and these platforms have just made that so much more that like that ability to be able to bridge that gap in education has been so so powerful absolutely you know it's sometimes you get lost in the things that you're doing and you expect people to understand those intricacies but you still have to remind yourself that those intricacies can be very unique to a lot of other people so making sure you're taking a step back explaining exactly what you're doing why you're doing it why it's important to your business and people will understand and always try to support that so our community we call we call each other business besties we're out here on the internet like building brands, building communities, showing up online all the time.

10:22And from your experience as someone who has been doing this since like the beginning, I want to know what some of those, I guess like the watchouts, like some of the stuff, like the challenges that you've come up against and some of the things that you think people need to just be aware of. Well, first and foremost, just protecting your mental health, social media. I mean, I've been on social since I was a kid from Zynga to Myspace to now Instagram and beyond. I could probably throw in a few more in there that have failed or been successful. But I think mental health is super crucial because you're in some ways allowing people to dictate your emotions for you just simply by the amount of likes or engagements or things like that you're getting.

11:01So having a sense of peace. And I say peace really intently because I know a lot of people chase happiness to an extent. But happiness is somewhat of a fleeting emotion, just like sadness or anger or whatever else we feel. Right. But peace is really based on like your actions of which you perform. So how you behave to yourself, how you treat other people, the things that you're doing intentionally for yourself and your dreams. So just chasing peace rather than happiness because, again, happiness is fleeting. And so that means like meditation, working out, drinking enough water, making good decisions for yourself and the others around you, becoming a ripple effect, you know, in that sense.

11:40And it's not about perfection. It's just about wellness, right? and on the other end as far as it becomes like as far as it involves social specifically just being authentic man like just I'll be honest and say I've if I've ever gotten to a point where I may have gone viral I have almost wanted to delete the post I'm not gonna lie because that that almost opened me up to people who one didn't know me or didn't understand me and I felt like sure it'd get me a lot of engagement or a lot of new followers but like it's not the people who have been there for a reason so for me it's it's it's all about expression more than anything how can I express my ideas how can I express what I'm doing how can I express what I'm trying to do and that doesn't always get the highest engagement but what I have realized is in many cases when I've gotten a brand partnership, I always ask them, you know, like, why did you reach out?

12:41And then they'd show me a post that got like the least likes. But that was something I was just trying and ideating on and thinking about. And so they saw themselves in that ideation, which was really important. So it's not always about being the most engaged with or the most popular or the most likes or whatever. It's just about creating a representation of yourself that is easy to be seen and acknowledged that people can see that you're one, you're trustworthy. You have ideas that you know what you're doing. What you just said before about going viral and wanting to delete the post, I completely, like, I completely get that.

13:13And because you lose the context with the people who don't follow you. And it's the same for brands as well. Like you lose the context of the people that like don't know your product and don't love the brand. And also the stuff that goes viral can be so weird and random and like maybe not the best representation of who you are and what you stand for. But that's one of the reasons I think about the podcast. Like I love having a podcast because no one hate listens to a podcast in the same way that they might hate follow you on social media. And everyone has this like deep context of who you are and what you're doing and comes to it from such a good place.

13:43But like these social channels that are prone to virality, like it's a double-edged sword with that. God bless them. For real. Have you had situations where you have, and I'm saying this for everyone who was like showing up as the face of their brands and is forward-facing have you had moments where you've received that like criticism or pushback or like the hate comments and like how have you dealt with that of course yeah especially in those early days of instagram when i first started doing those brand posts people would call me a sellout you know all kinds of different stuff what do you mean to do like you gotta eat well you know what i'm saying like no one's buying my prints so what do you want me to do you know what i mean but i don't i think because i started on instagram when i was 20 i'm 35 yes so So, you know, as you age, you become a little bit more confident in yourself.

14:32And you also realize that responding to or at least reacting to a lot of those things isn't worth it. So when I was younger in my 20s, I would respond quite a bit to things. And I'd be like, you know, I'd kind of combat them and get in arguments. But as I've aged and grown through it, I just block and I just ignore and I delete. Like, see you later. Because this is my space. This is my literal space where I'm curating. I own this space. And sure, it may be owned by whoever is running it, but, you know, it's curated by us and we can really make it what we want it to be. So sure. And also I'm human too.

15:10Like I can get a thousand positive comments and I get one negative one and I'm like, why? But if it's helpful, I'll consider. sometimes feedback can be useful and and negative feedback can be useful in some ways but at the same time yeah I just I've learned to ignore it a lot of it is not helpful though yeah you know it is not helpful for sure I've gotten some there's some few ones that'll be like like oh you used to do like this kind of thing I miss when you did that you've like done some and I'm like you know what you're probably right let me try that again yeah yeah the only reason why I continue to do giraffe edits is because people would say, why haven't you posted a giraffe in a while?

15:53And now I have giraffes all over my house. I'm really curious. Like you said, you started when you were 20. I also started when I was in my 20s as well. I was working for a media company, so it was different, but still like creating content, showing up, being the person who is like infusing themselves in their work in like a really public way. And then now I'm also in my 30s as well and I sometimes find it difficult to like show up in the way that maybe the people who started following me in the beginning expect how do you think about evolving and adapting yourself as a brand when like brands are static and humans aren't yes yes it's an interesting thing and something I've I've known about my whole career and my life is that there is no separation between my job and myself I've never because my art is me I am me you know my business This is me.

16:42It's sort of like porous though to like. It is. But that at the same time, it means that I'm not the 20 year old that I was when I first started. So it's, there's a, there's a good amount of people who still, who have followed me for this long, like the whole 15 years, which has been incredible. And they've seen my growth. They'll send me DMs and like, we're so proud of you. I can't believe you work at Adobe now. This is crazy. Like to see how you've like just evolved over time. and that to me is is so incredible because sometimes in our steps of of life we forget to kind of acknowledge the big changes and evolutions that we've had so they keep me they keep me grateful and I think gratitude is a really important thing now is there people who have unfollowed me and left me in the dust you know because I haven't done the same things or Maybe I post a little bit differently now.

17:34Sure. But, you know, for me, it's about keeping the integrity for myself. And if people are there for a reason, then that's the best for me. But I don't want to beg anyone to be around me. And that's the last thing I want to do. Because if my work and my life are completely intertwined, I've got to be at peace with that. How do you protect and practice creativity? And what advice do you have for someone who's trying to do that? Because as people who are like leading businesses, leading brands, creating content, you have to like protect that magic of what makes you special as a creative person.

18:11What do you do like intentionally? Yeah. Well, I'd say the first intentional thing that I do is I always acknowledge the old work that I had and what I wish I did differently. Especially with my artwork in general. I will go back to like some of the edits that I I would like post to Instagram and then I would go back to that post and I'd be like that's not how I would do it now so I'm going to actually redo it and change it and like have a different rendition of it now of what I've learned throughout this time of of what I would you know how I would update it now and so that to me has kept me consistent in some ways.

18:52And I guess that's that kind of intertwines with like a lot of other things. Just reiterating, like making sure that you're OK with like second guessing why you did something. Yeah. And I love that. I love using myself as a test subject. I love using myself as the basis because that means there's consistency there and I'm not necessarily having to go outside of myself to look for that inspiration. I know there's a lot of trends and a lot of things I should be doing or could be doing but I would rather reassess who I've been and where I'm and with where I'm going then have to reassess based on what other people are doing if that makes sense I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about you mentioned a few times some of the amazing brands you've worked with the partnerships that you've had and for people who want to go out there and find partners whether it is like B2B partners that they can work with in their businesses or like sponsors, or I'm just curious about how those opportunities have come to you and advice for negotiating those, finding those.

19:53Yes. Now for a quick word from our sponsor, Adobe Express. Adobe believes that creativity is a superpower for entrepreneurs and Adobe Express is all about making that power accessible for small businesses and founders. You know, the ones that wear a million hats. Built with founders in mind, Adobe Express features ready-to-go templates for everything from product mock-ups to pitch decks and Instagram stories. It works on mobile and desktop, so you can literally design from anywhere, anytime, even in between meetings or on your way to a pop-up. Adobe Express, the quick and easy create-anything app.

20:28Get started for free at adobe.com forward slash express, in the App Store or Google Play Store. So I think that I may have been blessed a little bit in some ways. I hardly ever, if not ever, had to reach out to a brand and find a partnership. But that means your work is a magnet for the right people. Absolutely. And I think that there's something to be said about how you express yourself on socials, but it's also a part of building relationships with people enough so that they know who you are and what you do and there's enough word of mouth or sharing and things like that to make it easier for people to reach out.

21:07I've worked with so many agencies, so many brands, tons of different people over the last 15 years. And I have never once had to pitch myself, but that I believe that has everything to do with how much I've said no to things that weren't for me and allowed more room to say yes for the stuff that worked, right? Maybe at some points I felt like I was denying certain opportunities, but I was really writing the foundation of what I wanted for myself. And sometimes I would feel some regret back then, but I'm realizing that a lot of those were perfection, like perfecting exactly where I was headed. So yeah, it's hard to say exactly, but I do believe it's just about being intentional about what you want for yourself, expressing that for yourself, again, leaving room for the yes.

22:05And also remembering most importantly, and this is something that I've been very, very, very adamant about with even a lot of people that I've mentored is that if you're working with someone, you have to realize who else they're reporting to. The thing about a lot of my brand partnerships was that I would like, for example, I did something with like MasterCard or something like that. And I would study like their past advertising. I'd study their colors of their logo. I'd study like a lot of different things before I went to them with my pitch. And then when it finally got approved, I'd add like some of those elements in my content.

22:43And knowing that at some point when they show that content to someone on their team, they're going to say, oh, that's the color of our logo. And that's the thing that, you know, aligns with our brand. And it makes them look good to whoever they're reporting to, because they're shelling out money to you. You want to make sure that that money that they're spending and the report that they're sending to their boss is going to look good. So just realizing the humanity in your process, I think is going to be really, really important as well. And that's why people keep kept coming back. I think that's so clever.

23:12And it speaks to this, like this broader thing of like the people that you want to work with, they have goals that they need to achieve. They have people that they need to impress. It's the same. I don't care if you're like pitching an editor or you are pitching a retailer or you are pitching a partnership all of those people have a boss that they need to look good to and how can working with you help them look better to that person and achieve their goals and that is like you need to speak to them in that language and that's what I think you spoke so like well to just then absolutely 100 % yeah and something else that you said that I wanted to call out so you were talking about the things that you said no to and the thing that just kept going over my head when you're saying that is like when you're building a brand whether it's like personal brand or a brand that's outside of you it's like the stuff that you say no to is actually what strengthens that brand like if you had said yes to all of the things all of the people that offered you paid partnerships or whatever opportunities in the beginning it dilutes the brand and it's like what do you stand for if you're doing all of these things exactly if you're not going to write your own story someone else is going to write it for you so to to to make those decisions now dictates it really dictates the future we've talked a lot about the partnerships that you've had and and how you got those i want to talk about how you started working with adobe how did this come about oh my gosh so it's really crazy to think about the fact that i'm even working at adobe i would visit the offices sometimes and i would think in the back of my mind if i ever worked anywhere in the entire world it would be at Adobe.

24:44Oh, amazing. Because I've been a freelancer for 14 plus years. I never thought about having a real job, so to speak. I've never had one except working at the mall when I was like 60. That's a big adjustment. Oh, it was a big adjustment. There was a I had a whole pros and cons sheet where I wrote out, you know, like, what's the pros and what's the cons of having this job? And the pros outweighed the cons exponentially. The cons were really just ego driven things. I don't want to listen to someone. I don't want to wake up in the morning. I don't boss. You know what I mean? But it's been the complete opposite of any of those cons that I even imagined.

25:17It's been so freeing, so fun. I love the fact that I can create content and I don't need anyone to approve it or look at it, which is one of my favorite things. There's a lot of trust in evangelism. There's a lot of ability to have our ideas and own them and show up for them, which I think is super exciting. And that's why I'm in this position. I've just got the experience and it's fantastic. Good for you. I want to talk about specific tools that you recommend and how people can use them. Let's get really tactical here. A lot of people listen to the show for that stuff where they can go and like take notes and download the thing and actually execute it in their business and their lives.

25:55Talk us through some of the tools that are the go-tos. Yeah, well, I am an evangelist for Adobe Express, so I have to start there, but I also think it's just the most perfect audience for this. In Adobe Express, we've got brand kits, which are incredible. You can add your logos, your colors, all different types of things, like templates that you even build in Express. I personally have an Instagram live show that I host every other week. And it's super easy for me to change out the images of people, change out the text, do all the same things and make it really easy to post on my Instagram directly from Express.

26:30Oh yeah, because they've actually got like a scheduler this is this is the crazy thing that i was looking at actually yesterday before we had this conversation one of them is that you can have your brand kit and then you can just apply it to the templates in adobe so you can have your colors and your fonts and all of that open up a template and then just like click a button and it'll all be in your colors and which is crazy that's with any template too and it could be your it could be something you've made in photoshop it could be something illustrator you can pull it directly into adobe express tap that little button and all your colors all your goodies are there and then the other thing is this scheduling tool where you can like build out your calendar and then post directly which when i think about collaborating with like you know we have a team of people that create content for female founder world and being able to see it all there and then like click and approve and schedule all of that stuff is amazing absolutely i didn't realize you could do this yeah you can have shared calendars and it'll be in your projects which is great and then you can include your brand kit in the project as well incredible you can lock templates so if you've got a team and you say, I don't want you to touch this font or this color, lock, lock, lock.

27:32There's a ton of ability to collaborate. And also to touch on the scheduler, we also have the generate caption feature, which I think is pretty cool. Sometimes I have no idea what I want to say in my caption. Oh, it writes the caption to you? Like an AI thing? Yeah. So sometimes I'll be like, like, for example, I had a post about a giraffe and I was like, type in or give me a giraffe fact and it put a fun draft back. So, you know, and it just pulls it and gets it right. It's really nice. I love that. Yeah, I feel like everyone's talking right now about how you incorporate AI in your business as well.

28:03And you don't actually have to necessarily be an AI expert. A lot of these tools have AI embedded in them. You just need to know how to use them. Absolutely, for sure. Yeah, and also we just added Enhanced Speech, which is also from Adobe Podcast and that's within Adobe Express now. So if you have a video, you have audio, you can click on that audio, click on that video. And on the left-hand side, you'll see that it's going to have enhanced speech, and that's where you're going to adjust your audio. So you can have wind blowing. You can have – I mean, we're in New York right now. You're going to hear, like, construction outside.

28:33Like, that's going to get rid of all of that. Oh, wow. Okay, so if I – for example, if I was recording, like, a reel or something and I'm speaking to the camera, I can upload it there and change. Absolutely. That is so clever. Yeah. We also have background remover, which is really helpful, especially for people who are showing something behind them. it's really great for images as well I will say that one of my favorite features that we just added is the clip maker and that's going to be in the quick actions and I use that for my Instagram live show to break up certain clips to post to like Twitter or threads just to hype up the show we should use that for the podcast you should absolutely use that for the podcast because it's going to pull the information that you're talking about and give you titles it's going to give you descriptions it's going to give you captions all the good stuff right in the clip maker.