Authenticity before professionalism

Female empowerment on Instagram – Enita Ramaj, Editor-in-Chief of Brand Development at cosmopolitan.de, madame.de and männersache.de, provides some answers.

A post by Joelle Wörtche and Vanessa Kokoschka

Thursday, 17 December 2020

Entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs – women are still under-represented in leadership roles. We’ve noticed that women, in particular, are active on social media platforms such as Instagram, using them to foster a new kind of community engagement and share their own messages. There, they typically present themselves in a multifaceted way: both professionally and personally. We investigate whether digitalisation is a driving force for female empowerment and ask the question: what does a confident social media presence depend on? Enita Ramaj from Cosmopolitan provides the answers.

In our research, we focus on the topic of female empowerment on Instagram. To this end, we have selected three Instagram accounts run by women who are professionally successful and present themselves on the platform in both a professional and personal capacity. In our research, we aim to use a triangulation of methods. In practice, this means that we first examine the selected accounts using content analysis. At the same time, we conduct expert interviews with the account owners. In addition, we incorporate the perspectives of other users (user interviews) and examine the impact of the selected accounts.

One of our interviewees is digital expert Enita Ramaj. She is Editor-in-Chief of Brand Development at cosmopolitan.de, madame.de and männersache.de. As well as offering her personal views as a private individual, she is able to assess the media impact and targeting of social media accounts from a professional perspective. In this article, we summarise the five key takeaways for you:

1. It’s no longer about empowerment, but about engagement. According to Enita Ramaj, women are now strong enough. It’s now more about showing ways forward and engaging in an open exchange. Women should inspire one another and can become role models on Instagram.
2. The trend is moving away from perfectionism and towards authenticity. “I think it’s more important to embody a message to the outside world. To show your community what you stand for,” says Enita Ramaj. In terms of content, it’s no longer about perfectly retouched photos, but about real stories that are truly personal.
3. The message determines success. This formula applies to both digital and analogue campaigns on female empowerment. The advantage of social media is that the message spreads faster and the interaction with users is direct and ongoing. Offline, success depends more on media coverage.
4. For Enita Ramaj, authentic and successful storytelling on Instagram is all about telling personal stories and sharing them with the community. The content can also be more daring or have a touch of humour to appeal to the target audience. Varied and regular formats also work well on Instagram to engage the community more. Important: “Users should promote their message, not themselves.”
5. The concept of community is absolutely vital – the common thread is always the story and the message: to network with other profiles, with people who share similar messages. Cosmopolitan runs the ‘supporther’ format, a cross-media initiative that has been supporting the women’s empowerment movement for three years.

Curious now? More information and the final results of our research project will be available here on this blog soon.