Project Update
Hello! We are Ladyspike Media, an all-female and LGBTQ comedy platform. Our goal for this grant was to bring awareness to our website and mission, attract a wider audience and develop our new website on WordPress, using the Coil plugin. And we are happy to report, all is going well! Since the beginning of the grant, our social media accounts have grown by over 5k and our daily viewership on the website has nearly doubled. We have been able to produce more articles daily due to our funding for writer pay, allowing us to generate more content to share with the world. Because of our new exposure, we've been able to lock down interviews with famous comedians Jen Kirkman and Melinda Hill, and have even had Instagram shout outs from Jameela Jamil.
Progress on objectives
Starting out this project, our main objectives were to increase the amount of daily content, increase more viewership, and develop more video content. Unfortunately due to the pandemic, the video content has been more difficult than anticipated. However, we refocused and were able to put our energy into interviews with higher profile comedians for exposure, and the development of our website. Our social media following has grown significantly, and as a result, we are experiencing more daily viewership on the website as a whole. Originally, we had projected producing 10 articles per day at this point, which was definitely higher than necessary and more than we can handle at our current staff capacity. However, being able to pay writers has helped our site so much. We've been able to accept more articles than ever before, publish more content, and have more experienced writers with large web followings.
Key activities
As said above, our key activity that did not work out was our video content. This was mostly due to safety precautions during Covid, and something we definitely plan to pursue in the future. Despite our difficulties, we were able to produce a few episodes of a new show headed by comedian Anastasia Washington, called The Woke Report, which will premiere next month. In terms of our other activities, our marketing and publishing have been going well! We have implemented several new marketing tactics such as boosted posts, influencer marketing, interactive graphics, and web ads. We are on track to meet our goal of 10k followers on Instagram by the end of the project. We have also significantly revamped our WordPress website using video and blogging plugins, and becoming more knowledgeable about the site overall. Our writing team has grown by about 10 writers, allowing us to have more diverse content.
Communications and marketing
Marketing was a large part of our proposed budget, and what we have focused the majority of our energy on. As stated above, we have implemented many new tactics with our funding including boosted posts, influencer marketing, interactive graphics, and web ads. Influencer marketing has definitely been our biggest success, so we are extremely grateful to have had the budget to pursue it. Influencer posts have increased our following by about 200-300 Instagram followers per post. Web ads, specifically Facebook and Twitter, have been helpful in expanding our viewership on a national level.
What’s next?
Well, we definitely want to create more video content! But until we can do that safely, we will continue with our marketing tactics and hopefully continue to produce quality humor content on a daily basis. We plan to keep on all of our new writers and focus on generating more income from the website to support this. This will include the implementation of sponsored posts and ad placement, encouraging Coil memberships and more premium content.
What community support would benefit your project?
I would love to hear about similar websites' Coil experience and how they have successfully encouraged readers to sign up for premium content.
Relevant links/resources
https://www.ladyspikemedia.com/woman-who-yells-eat-the-rich-getting-really-into-bridgerton/
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