When entrepreneur Jo Tutchener-Sharp was hospitalised and separated from her children in 2016, she dreamed up a way of comforting kids when apart from their loved ones by filling them with superpowers. She founded Scamp & Dude, a fast-growing British clothing brand whose aim is to build a kinder world, one garment at a time.

Here, Tutchener-Sharp shares how Instagram has helped her build community and grow her business.

I studied fashion at university and then worked in public relations for 20 years, the last 8 running my own PR agency. It was when selling my shares in my agency in 2016 that I suffered a brain haemorrhage which changed my life forever. Facing death made me determined to give back and help others.

When I was in the hospital post brain surgery and unable to see my kids, I wished I could have given them a superhero to watch over them. That’s why out slogan is, “A Superhero has my back.” We embroider a neon lightning bolt ‘Superpower Button’ onto all of our clothes so kids can press it when they need a burst of superpowers. We offer a comforter we call a “Superhero Sleep Buddy”, and for every one sold, we donate another to a child who has lost a parent or is seriously ill themselves (we’ve donated over 1500 so far). We’ve also donated over 1250 Super Scarves to women who are battling cancer.

Instagram has been absolutely integral. It’s my number one marketing and PR tool. It’s everything — even customer service.

When I was working in PR, I used to put launch strategies together, but getting 3 pages in a magazine and two pages in a newspaper doesn’t sell products anymore. What sells now is an Instagram campaign. It’s where our customers hang out.

At the beginning, I only had my personal account on Instagram which had a reasonable following. I would talk about Scamp & Dude and encourage people to visit the brand profile.

I also followed all the right kind of mummy bloggers and mummy influencers. I made a real effort to get to know them all and to go to events where I could meet people, because it was a new industry for me.

Now on Instagram I have 142,000 followers but I prefer to call them my community. It's almost like I've got 142,000 mates! They're friends who are supporting us and what we are trying to do.

People in our community really love helping other people, so I do various initiatives where I’ll say, “It’s world kindness today, so every sweatshirt sold today, I’m going to donate another to a mother of a child at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.”

I also ask the community for advice. I love the Instagram Stories polling sticker, where you can get people to vote on a question. For instance, we've got a new palm tree print and I couldn't decide whether to have the palm tree on the front of our tops or not. So I put a poll up on Instagram. It's brilliant because you get an answer straight away.

When the pandemic hit, we donated 440 sweatshirts to frontline NHS workers. We also launched a Create a Superhero competition where we invited kids to design a new superhero character for us. We have printed the winning designs — a rainbow superhero and a star superhero — on pencil cases and all money raised will go to the NHS.

Yes, we started running ads before Christmas. We've had absolutely brilliant results. For every £1 we spend in advertising, we get £30.40 back but for us it’s not just the return that’s important, it is also reaching new customers as we are keen to fill as many people with superpowers as we possibly can!

It’s important that you're really passionate about whatever you’re doing because you’re going to live and breathe it and you’ll work harder than you’ve ever worked in your life.

With everything that’s going on in the world at the moment, my favourite accounts are ones that make laugh.

I love Louise Boyce @mamastillgotit_. She’s hilarious.

Another is Rosie Ramsey @rosemarinoramsey. She has a podcast with her husband, called “Sh**ged, Married, and Annoyed” that is brilliant.

Model and author Chrissy Teigen @chrissyteigen is another person who makes me laugh out loud.