Lauren Kay grew her email list from 500 to 25k using social media and Kit together, and because of those efforts, she was able to go all in on her new business in less than a year. This is how she did it.
The challenge: How to turn a social media following into a business model
From running a babysitting agency in college to founding a dating startup via Y Combinator, Lauren has always been a creator. But when serial entrepreneurship burnt her out, she got a 9-5 job. No longer working nights and weekends to build her businesses, she finally had time to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a writer. She started writing in 2017, got an agent in 2020, got a book deal in 2021, and her book, We Ship It, came out in 2023.
The idea for her next business started when Lauren asked her publisher what she should do to promote her book. Their answer: “get on social media.”
She was hesitant at first.
I’m in my mid thirties. I have a toddler. And everything I saw on TikTok was very young, beautiful people. It just seemed incredibly cringe to put myself out there.
I also thought no one is ever going to follow me. What value do I have to provide? I’m not hilarious. I’m not 19. I’m not a supermodel. It was very scary to put myself out there and think all my friends and family are going to see this.
I felt like I was going to get laughed at.
But she needed to promote her book, and she was being told social media was the only way. So she started posting in March 2023, repurposing Pedro Pascal memes that were popular at the time.
I wasn’t putting my face out there. And those meme posts failed, not surprisingly.
Next, inspired by reels she was seeing in the author space, she decided to try short talking-head reels where she gave writing advice. Since she used to be a tutor, that felt more accessible than trying to be funny. And she found she had a lot to say about what she’d learned so far as a writer.
I studied everything I could find to learn how to write and get published—it was a really overwhelming and opaque process. So I decided to explain all of the steps I took to try to make that process less opaque for other writers.
I wrote down the ideas, and started filming videos of myself talking awkwardly in front of my kitchen cabinet. Almost immediately the talking-head videos started taking off, and I realized, wow, people are actually really interested in this kind of advice.
Lauren gave advice on things like how to land a literary agent, why she uses Scrivener instead of Google Docs, and the best tools and resources she used to become a published author. Lauren was encouraged by the potential book sales this could open up, but, ever the serial entrepreneur, she saw an even bigger opportunity.
I realized there was huge potential to start a business that provided a lot of free information and resources to help writers.
It was really exciting to me that I could start something that already had an audience and provide services that people were asking me for every day of the week.
Her first challenge, however, was figuring out how to turn her growing social media following into a sustainable and valuable business.
The solution: Use Kit to give away helpful resources on your reels
To answer this question, Lauren watched every YouTube video she could find on the subject.
Over and over again, creators were mentioning Kit.
And it was all about not just trying to immediately sell people something. It’s that you provide value, and you get them on your email list because you never know when a platform might shut down or drastically change the algorithm.
So you provide them with free content that has high enough value that they are going to want to join your list, and the best way to do that, every creator was saying, was through Kit.
Lauren did have an email list on another platform with about 500 subscribers, but she hadn’t really done anything with it yet. It also didn’t have the capabilities she wanted to really grow her list, like having multiple opt-in forms to provide the high-value free content she wanted to create to move people from her social media accounts to her email list.
I wanted a really easy way to integrate forms, to offer free content and materials, and to constantly create new forms and new freebies and have a really simple and professional looking flow. And Kit, hands down, seemed to be the best service to use for that.
She switched to Kit in August 2023.
Then I started putting out legitimate freebies and having a pop up on my site and my list just started growing very quickly.
The strategy – Send a high-value newsletter sharing products and services without being salesy
These are the exact steps Lauren followed to turn her social media following into a business.
1. Do SEO research on your target audience
When Lauren first started offering free resources to her social media followers, she just guessed what people might like.
I would have a hypothesis about a freebie I was sure people would want, and then I would be wrong about it. I did a lot of worksheets because my account is pretty educational, but I found people just didn’t necessarily want to fill out worksheets.
Before her next freebie, she decided to do some research: SEO research. Using SEMRush, she researched what keywords and phrases writers were most interested in, and found that “Save the Cat beat sheet” and “Save the Cat calculator” came up a lot. Save the Cat is a popular book on screenwriting and plotting, and it turned out a lot of writers were looking for more help to implement those ideas in their own plots and stories.
Lauren researched what resources already existed, and couldn’t find any helpful and visually appealing spreadsheets that would make it easier for writers to map out their plots using the Save the Cat principles. She decided she would create one.
2. Create a simple free resource
She used Canva to create a simple but highly valuable resource for writers based on the research.
3. Add that free resource to a Kit form
Then, she went into her Kit account, duplicated her last free resource form, and uploaded her new free resource.
4. Add the Kit form to your link in bio or use ManyChat
Lauren then added that new Kit form to her website and linked it in her social media bios.
She then connected the form to ManyChat, where social media followers can comment a particular word and to get a link automatically DM’d to them.
5. Create social media content talking about that free resource
Next Lauren created a reel based on that content and told people within the reel something like “comment BEATSHEET for my free spreadsheet”. Because of her ManyChat setup they were automatically sent the link to the Kit form.
6. Send those subscribers a welcome sequence and a high-value newsletter
But it’s not just about getting people onto her email list. For Lauren, it’s also about serving them well once they’re there.
It’s first and foremost about providing value and free resources to the community. I know that 99% of my followers will never buy from me, and I am happy about that.
I’m so happy they’re supporting me. Social media and Kit and all these systems make it so you get to provide so much free value and really help people. So I do a weekly newsletter where I either share a free resource or share a mini writing lesson.
She also has a welcome sequence set up to ensure everyone gets a lot of value and gets to know her more right away, and tells them about her products and services like her online course about writing query letters and her editing agency service.
She also does free monthly live events where people can ask questions, and hosts panels like “How I Got My Agent” where she brings on other writers to share their stories and advice.
Once they’re on that list they’re able to get to know you and you can provide much more in-depth information, education, and advice than you can in a bite-sized social media post.
Then, when a writer is at the point in their journey where they’re looking for an editor, they’ve seen my name and my face, and ideally they think that I’m a helpful, trustworthy source.
Then they sign up for a free consultation with me to learn more about our editors and our agency and how things work. And then from there, the majority of them turn into paying customers.
7. Use tags and segments to personalize sales pitches
Through listening to her subscribers and followers, Lauren realized that she could monetize her email list by offering editing services and an online course about query letters.
Anytime she mentions her course in an email she uses Kit to create a tag so anyone who ever clicks to learn more about her course is put into a separate group. When she launches the course every three months, instead of emailing her whole list, she can send the launch specifically to those who have already indicated they were interested.
The result: 25,000+ subscribers and a sustainable high-value revenue stream from social media that allows her to help writers
In less than a year of using social media and Kit together, Lauren was able to focus on her creator business full-time.
She was especially grateful she’d set up this system before one of her reels went viral. Millions of people viewed that reel, but nothing much would have come from it, she says, had she not already had this system set up so that viewers had an easy way to join her email list to get the free resource. She gained thousands of new email subscribers from that viral post and many new paying customers.
But most of all, she’s grateful for how she’s been able to help and support so many writers, hoping it instills in them more confidence, something she once lost.
My confidence was totally shattered in myself and my business abilities when my dating startup failed in my mid twenties.
I took it really personally. I just thought, “I am bad at this. I need to hide. I shouldn’t do it.”
So in the early weeks of my reels getting a lot of views and people saying such kind things, and then just launching my online course in November with Kit and seeing that I had a sustainable, scalable business–it just completely changed my identity and what I thought of myself, and it really was healing.
This is why I’m constantly telling people about Kit. Even if it’s a small list. You can have an entire business with 100 email subscribers if they’re the right ones.
I wouldn’t have a business without Kit.
If you found this case study helpful, please support Lauren by grabbing her free writer toolkit. She also just launched a second business teaching creators how she grew her account and monetized her audience and you can also grab her free guide on that here.
