I thought I’d do something a little different for this episode. A couple of weeks ago, I took to my Instagram Stories to ask you what your biggest struggle with Instagram is. I had HUNDREDS of replies. So I thought I’d do a quick little episode on tackling the most recurring themes. So are you ready to discuss Insta struggles? LET’S GO…

Getting Annoyed With Follow/Unfollow

I had so many people tell me that they were being disheartened by people playing the follow and unfollow game. I urge you to turn this mindset around. Yes we want more numbers but what we don’t want is numbers who are there to just make up the numbers do you see what I mean? Rather than be sad that someone unfollows you, count your blessings that they’re not your people and you don’t have to spend any time engaging with them. They wouldn’t have provided you any value anyway so THANK U NEXT.

There’s No Logic With Instagram

I knoooow it can feel like this. How you can use the same hashtags, same time of posting, similar pictures, similar captions and get wildly difference results but honestly, the ONLY thing Instagram has is logic. That’s what the algorithm is. And yes it’s bloody frustrating when you think you’ve cracked it only for it to behave bizarrely again. Like that boyfriend you had at secondary school that would buy you a twirl from the snack shop, sign your homework diary and hold your hand in front of his mates, only to send you a day card during assembly that said, ‘you’re dumped’, soon after YES THIS HAPPENED TO ME OK.

But really there was logic there. That boy, wasn’t really that into me.

So you need to learn HOW to make Instagram into you.

By listening to what they say. I used to say this all the time when I wrote about dating. We never have to figure out what a man wants because THEY TELL YOU. That high school boyfriend called me names, sent me fake texts, cancelled my Snake score - he was telling me all along he wasn’t interested - why did the brutal day card dumping of 2000 need to be my wake up call?

So let’s look at what Instagram have told us EXPLICITLY that they’re algorithm looks for…

Relativeness - how related are your pictures to the rest, to your captions, to your niche, to your audience, to your hashtags. There’s no secret to why Mrs Hinch went viral. She posted her grey home solidly and cleaned consistently in her stories - and all she spoke about through captions, stories and hashtags was cleaning and her grey home. She was completely relative to her audience. Her audience are vastly, predominately women interested in cleaning. No random men from Portugal or girls there for the fashion content who aren’t interested when you post what you had for lunch.

Niche accounts grow so much more quickly because of this logic!

Next is timeliness - times of your posts. Sure there are apps that can tell you but honestly, you need to be looking at your ideal follower. When do they use the app? Mrs Hinch did well because she knows most of her audience are stay at home Mums or wives - so she could post throughout the day - not too early when trying to get the kids ready and not too late so they’re trying to entertain their kids and husbands, but during the day when these women had 5 minutes peace.

Again that’s completely logical!

And then engagement - put simply, the algorithm looks at how engaging you are - how much you comment, like and are on the app and how engaged your following is - likes, comments, saves, shares, shout outs, interactions, DMs and boosts you accordingly.

So if you’re out there engaging and creating opportunities to be engaged with - logically your reach will increase!

I know we all love to think the algorithm is out to get us - BEEN THERE and always slip back - but actually we need to focus more on learning it and kinda playing it rather than worrying about it!

Not Being Consistent Enough

One thing that is a pain, but an understandable pain with instagram, is that it does punish inconsistency. If you don’t post for a while, your reach is limited - because of what we’ve just spoken about.

So how do we get round this? Well, I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’m taking a few days off! I know I don’t have content that’s good enough to put out at the moment and that I don’t have enough of it to be consistent, so I’m just taking a few days off to get ahead, batch create some content, plan out my captions and hashtags so that when I’ve got a decent amount of content ready, I can consistently put it out - be engaging, be relative and be timely - in a planned way! Will let you know if it makes any difference, although I’m sure it will.

So could you try this? Get ahead of yourself so you can be consistent?

Not gaining followers

Again for me this needs to be a mindset shift. As soon as we all stop caring about follower growth and instead focus on engaging and being engaged with by ‘our people’ the better off we’ll all be. Stop seeing Instagram as a place to grow a following. Instead see it as somewhere to build relationships, create inspiring content and start discussions. When you do this, a following will naturally grow. But if you have the mindset of chasing growth, you’ll fall into the trap of trying to do what other people are doing instead of being yourself.

Let’s look at these styling videos for example. One person had the brainwave and went viral, now everyone’s doing them - even if fashion isn’t their niche. Therefore they’re turning off their followers who came for something else because they’re pursuing growth. It doesn’t work like that.

When you know your ideal follower, you’ll know what content to make for that person and when you make content for that person - more people like that person will follow!

Time

This is a big one. And I totally get it. When I was teaching 60 hours a week I could not be arsed at alllll to make decent Instagram content.

So what’s the solution? We can’t magic up more hours in a day, can we?

So we prioritise and batch - in my opinion.

Instagram might not be your priority as you try and grow your online platforms and that’s OK. Figure out what platforms drive the most traffic, best engagement and top comments and make that your priority. If, however, Instagram IS your top platform then you have to make time.

And you can do that by batch working! For example, spend 1 hour a week writing all your captions for the following week. Spend a couple of hours making up lists of hashtags and put them into your predictive text so you only type the word xtag and a whole list is quickly populated. Spend a couple of hours on a weekend taking the week ahead’s pictures and if you don’t get enough, use some stock photography or quotes. Then spend just 10-15 minutes a day commenting on other people’s posts - doesn’t seem so daunting now does it?

Not being interesting enough/having good enough content

This is the bit where I’m going to have to do some tough talking I’m afraid. And only because I totally get it too. On a daily basis I only leave the house to go to Starbucks. And I could definitely fall into the trap of feeling not interesting enough - but there are TONS of ways to share your day in an interesting way. Actually I’m going to write a whole blog post on this because I feel it deeeeeply so keep an eye out.

Also, I totally get it about content. My photos are shit. I’m not an Instagram model. I don’t have brand new clothes every week. I live In Streatham which is hardly the Peak District and I’m not visually creative or original AT ALL.

So then we compare ourselves to others who are all of those things.

ORRRRR we could look at what our USPs are and what our audience follows us for and do more of that.

For example, I used to worry all the time that I wasn’t slim or attractive enough to constantly post pictures of myself and my confidence held me back. Until I realised that tons of midsize and unconfident women followed me because they related. Now I know I can post pictures of myself without worrying about my appearance because for women, like me, that’s still inspirational - if you get what I mean?

Low engagement

By this I presume they meant their photos weren’t getting likes, their stories not being viewed and their captions not getting comments.

Which is really really defeating, I totally get it.

But again there needs to be a mindset shift.

You need to post photos that people are going to like - because they’re good photos, inspiring, interesting, thought-provoking or different. OR if they follow you for YOU then you’re showing YOU more.

You need to regularly post stories that are worth watching - they’re behind the scenes, funny, entertaining, interactive, relatable. The more you’re watched, the more you’ll be watched - so give people a reason to watch!

You need to write captions that are worth commenting on - there needs to be a call to action, or an open question, a discussion point, a relatable story - something that compels people to comment.

Are you doing all of these things and not seeing results? Or are you not being reflective enough? It’s harsh but I have to give myself a telling off regularly! When I post shit pictures and they get no likes, I know that it’s because it’s shit! So then I know I need to post better pictures. Same with captions, the ones that don’t get comments are the ones that aren’t entertaining, provoking or with clear calls to action!

There are a ton more but this is probs dragging on a bit so let’s leave it here shall we? Message me with more of your Instagram struggles and I’ll do a part two very soon!

Until next time, byeeeeee

I got a comment on my blog last week that equally fucked me off as it did make me laugh. It said, ‘stop writing all of this dry AF blogging content and get back to talking about anal and dating.’

Now if you’re new to me - this is in reference to the fact I used to blog more heavily about sex and dating.

It initially fucked me off because I was upset at someone giving me internet hate. And then I was upset at the thought I was losing readers and turning people off with my change in direction. I was frustrated. I thought, why can’t that person just bugger off and get a life? I probably went on a Twitter rant about it.

And another thing happened last week too. I turned down about £5,000 worth of brand collaborations, with huge, well known brands. They all seemed to come in at once and they all had one thing in common.

In today’s episode I’m going to talk to you about your people. And why they matter for growing your blog.

Right let’s go back to that shitty comment. It’s not the first one I’ve had like that. Since I’ve launched the podcast, offered blogger coaching and started writing more blogging content on my site, I’ve had a few. All disgruntled readers who followed me during my single days in 2016, engaged in my dating stories and silly listicles on sex and were hopefully entertained by the content I was putting out.

And they’re pissed off now. Pissed off because I don’t really do that any more. Sure, when the Inspo strikes, I like nothing more than rattling off a funny post - mainly to entertain myself nowadays. Of course they could just unfollow me or read someone else’s blog but I’ve learned something about these people. They feel entitled. They’ve supported me for so long and invested so much in my journey that they feel let down that I now have a fiancé, a business and a blogging focus because when they entered me (whaaaat) I was single, in a job I was miserable in and blogged about blow jobs.

And I kind of get it. I’m not serving them any more. The answer is that they should of course just unfollow me and be served elsewhere - sorry for all the innuendos but hey, it’s me. But perhaps they’re still holding out hope I’ll return to serving them with what they want.

And now let’s talk about those brand deals.

When I first went full time, I thought I had to take every collaboration offered to me because I was terrified about paying my rent. My previous approach to sponsored content - which was only excepting things I genuinely loved and could put my own creative spin on - went out the window a little bit because I was terrified I’d have to pick up a day or two supply teaching to cover my bills.

But as the year as gone on and I’m nearly at a year of being a full time blogger, I’m less concerned with worrying over whether I should take everything that’s offered JUST IN CASE and decided to focus on finding those brands that more closely align with me, my interests and my values.

The result of that is that I’m getting more and more repeat collaborations with brands, as opposed to boshing up the one offs and I can actually say no. And in some cases, I’m saying no to things I actually do really want to do, because I don’t see how it can help me serve my people. I’ll talk more about that in a sec.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to find your people online.

And to forget those who you don’t need to serve any more.

Going back to the previous episodes on finding your niche, working out your ideal reader and working out who you are online are really key for this.

Like I’ve mentioned before, my ideal reader/follower/coaching client is - a woman, in her mid twenties to mid thirties who is currently on a career path they don’t enjoy and they really want to carve out their online platforms into something they can take from a side hustle to a main income stream. They’re serious about growing their platforms and using their influence for good - I’m sorry but I’m not going to cater for wannabe Instagram models now am I? They understand that 5 minutes of fame on social media means nothing but establishing themselves as an expert in their niche will bring long lasting success.

Sure, that’s probably a small subset of people compared to the hundreds that google ‘fingering’ and come across my blog every day. But it doesn’t matter. I know that everything I do needs to cater for them.

So how do I do that? I create these podcasts! I write the blog posts which hopefully offer loads of value. I have the Facebook group where I’m on hand all the time for feedback and advice and I have my Membership.

And my membership is another area that has really hammered this lesson home for me. Because we’ve lost members along the way. And initially I was sad about it because I worried I wasn’t doing a good enough job, or being helpful enough. That’s my confidence issues coming in to play. But as time goes on, and I learn more about serving my people - I just realised that as much as I love those gals, they weren’t my ‘ideal’ coaching clients IYSWIM? Perhaps they weren’t ready to invest time, imagination or unable to invest the money - I don’t judge them at all, I think they’re fucking amazing but equally I’m not sad about it. Because it helps me hone my ideal client.

We’re full with the membership for now so there’s a waiting list - because as time goes on and I get more experienced, I’ve realised  again that I don’t need to accept anyone in because I want to be fully booked or make money - I’ve realised that I only really want to work with people who are my people. And I don’t care if that’s 5, 50 or 500!

Hopefully you can see the point I’m arriving at.

Finding your people isn’t about finding as many as possible. It’s serving those key few.

In a world where we’re obsessed with chasing followers and growing numbers, we forget actually that those who are key in our growth are the ones who’ve been there all along.

I recently joined The Coven which is a female entrepreneur membership/support group kinda thang and I had a chat with the amazing leader, Sapphire about all of this. She told me that all I need to focus on with my blog and my business is solving problems that my ideal audience face. And that’s it.

So yes, I’m creating more blog content based solely on what you guys tell me through email, Facebook and comments you need help with. And yes, I’m putting a waiting list out for the membership so that I can make sure when I open it again, I only accept people who are truly my people - to join the rest of my galled (wait I can’t get away with saying that, I’m not cool enough) and yes I’ll be posting more on instagram about my work and YES I’m only going to take on brand collaborations where I feel I can either entertain you or provide you with something you want to see.

And yes that may mean I lose old readers and followers who get the point that I’m not writing about blow jobs consistently any more. And I might lose Instagram followers who want to see what I had for lunch. And yes some of my members might fall away.

But what’s left is that core group of people - brands, followers, friends - who are with me on this ride because they trust I’m with them.

So what can you take away from this?

I really really urge you to dig deep on who your ideal reader is. I urge to create content for them. I urge you to go out of your way to engage with them and be grateful for them. I urge you to reflect on the brand partnerships you’re coveting or completing and truly see whether they serve your people.

And then I urge you to think about all of the ways you can serve your people! And feed back to me because I’m going to be doing an upcoming episode on all these ways very very soon!

What’s been your biggest thing you’re taking away from this episode? Please email me, DM me or post in the Facebook group because I think it’s so so so important!

Until next time, byeeee

Hello! I’d like to pretend that I’ve been away for a week and won the lottery or had some sort of mega exciting email but alas I’m still in the same pyjamas, on my second Diet Coke, recording this episode straight after the last one. I am on a Pinterest ROLL. Hope that’s OK with you!

I could also be like, ‘loving what you guys have added to the Facebook group, your boards are looking amazing.’ But yeah no time has passed since recording the last episode and for all I know you could be making boards about Mrs Brown’s boys or red chinos.

But let’s crack on shall we - I hope you’ve set up your profile, got it Businessified AF and have been pinning away. I hope some of you have seen success already with your monthly viewers going up. When I recorded this I was on 257k so hopefully I’ll have seen an improvement by the time this comes out!

I would also like to say that I almost gave up on Pinterest. I was getting loads more monthly views but it wasn’t translating into traffic. HOWEVER since doing all of the bits we spoke about last episode and more of what I’m going to discuss today, my traffic from Pinterest has grown by 2200%  which sounds MEGA impressive but actually I used to get 0-1 views a day from Pinterest and now I get on average, 23 a day.

Haha not massive at the moment BUT we are beginners right? And if that is the increase in a few weeks, imagine what it could be in another few weeks, amirite?

SO let’s talk more about how we can really optimise our Pinning game to drive as much traffic back to our blogs as possible… ya ready?

Let’s look at what makes a good pin. Good quality pictures are always a winner. No grainy and pixelated Instagram filtered bad boys are going to do the trick. It’s worth baring in mind that vertical pins do much better than square or landscape pictures. This is why all photos on my blog are now ‘portrait’ and I also ensure I use Canva and it’s Pinterest pin template to create my pin graphics.

Pinterest is also looking at developing it’s featuring of video pins. Again these should be filmed vertically - like stories (which are taking over, aren’t they) so definitely something to think about!

Best performing pins are often clear and inviting lifestyle looking pins and ones with attention grabbing text overlays do a great job too. In fact, what I’ll do is if you sign up to the Exciting Emails mailing list - which I’ll link in the show notes, I’ll send an email out this week with some examples of ‘best practise pins’ - would that be helpful?

You can also experiment with the images! You can have multiple pin images for one blog post. So say if you’ve got a banger of a guide on Bali then do some pins of your best Bali pictures and some with text overlayed to say it’s a Bali guide - you can then use your Business analytics to see which performs best!

One question that often gets asked is how many boards should you pin one piece of content to and that answer is unlimited really - as long as it’s relevant. So say if you have a chocolate cake recipe - you can pin it to desserts, chocolate, cakes etc but you wouldn’t pin it to Utility Jumpsuits. But that’s common sense right so sos for being a knob and pointing that out.

If you’re going to use video for pins make sure you have text overlay as I really, highly doubt anyone uses Pinterest with the sound on. I bloody don’t! Do you???

Last week I told you I’d go through with you a way to get your cover pins looking fancy. If you’ve got a sec and can head over to Pinterest and my profile which is Vix Meldrew, you’ll see that they all look super branded and cohesive. I actually only learnt how to do this at Pinterest HQ but here we are. Firstly I was creating branded pins for all of my content anyway but even if you don’t have this and you just want it to show all your travel pins, because you’re a travel blogger, or style pins because you’re a fashion blogger - this is how.

Go onto your profile and at the top right there should be a pen icon - click on it and it will say, ‘Pick some pins to feature in your profile cover’ - if you can’t find it, head to the show notes and I’ll do a screenshot. There you can select which board you can pull the pins from - remember to keep it branded to your niche if possible!

Alright, another thing I said I’d talk through with you is your featured boards. They are the boards that appear at the top of your profile in a carousel. Again if you look at mine, I’ve got my blog posts and podcast episodes as 2 boards and then 3 others directly related to my niche - blogging tips, marketing tips and Instagram tips! I should just do a potato board for the LOLs shouldn’t I? Or lifestyle images with Diet Coke?

Anyway, To do this you want to go back into your settings, go to your profile and scroll down to where it says ‘Featured Boards’ there you’ll have 5 slots with drop downs so you can choose your best boards! I defo recommend having one with your content in there and your other strong boards with lots of great pins.

Ok now let’s look at a basic pinning strategy.

Like I said, my babe Dani Tailwinds mine for me. Tailwind is an auto scheduler of pins to keep your account ticking over.

I then make sure I go into the app every day and personally pin 5 or more things I like from my home and following feed.

Reena at Pinterest said that you will see an improvement in your monthly views even if you just pin 5 a day. So those spare minutes on the bog, or those drawn out phone calls with your Auntie is the perfect time to absentmindedly pin a few new things each day.

Don’t forget to regularly pin your own content too! New blog posts, YT videos, Insta posts etc - make sure you physically pin them yourself, either from your camera roll or from your platforms - and make sure you edit those descriptions to make them search-worthy.

Ok, like I said, I’d come back to hashtags. You can absolutely put hashtags in your pin descriptions  - it’s a way to get discovered on Pinterest. The broad ones work really well like, travel, beauty, spring summer style etc but you can also pop a search term into the Pinterest search bar to see in what detail people are searching to make your hashtags and keywords even more specific - pale skin makeup, Bali travel for example

A note about descriptions - don’t keyword stuff. Pretty sure I’ve done that before. People read them in sentences so write them in sentences! Just be creative in getting those keywords in.

With regards to keywords - think about that when naming boards. I know it looks good to have M space A space C etc etc but it doesn’t help your boards get discovered! So think of naming your boards with words and phrases that WOULD be searched for. Again use Pinterest’s search bar to get ideas. Like now, if I type in ‘make up’ the results I get are ‘make up looks, tips, storage, tutorials’ - this means, if my blog was a beauty blog, I’d probably think about creating boards called all of these things.

Reena at Pinterest also told me that they love boards with 40+ pins on so perhaps keep em private until you’ve got them looking juicy and then set them public!

Another great tip is to make sure you categorise your boards, you get this option when you create a new one - it helps them get seen in the right places!

Another thing I learned to do at Pinterest is to organise my boards. I had a huge Interiors Inspo one with over 700 pins but they were bedroom, bathroom, living room and bar cart pins - all over the shop. Reena showed me how to go into a board, click on ‘Organise’, select pins of the same type, press ‘Move’ and put them into a section.

You could do this for your blog content too! Especially if you write across different categories. So you could have a board called, ‘Blog Posts’ and then sub sections for beauty, travel, lifestyle etc

Go and have a look at my Interior Inspiration board to see what I mean!

I keep saying ‘another another another’ but honestly I learned so many bloody useful tips at this meeting - like archiving boards. Rather than deleting your amazing boards of leopard print inspired outfits when it’s no longer a hot trend, archive them and bring them out again when it’s time. Really successful pinners have seasonal boards for V Day, Xmas, Halloween etc that they archive and unarchive in the lead up and when it’s relevant. Means you can keep adding to the boards each year rather than deleting and starting new ones!

Which brings me to board types - those are archived ones. You can have secret ones too that only you can see - these are handy if you’re working on projects you don’t want others to know about yet. Or for engagement rings when you’ve only been dating 2 months. Sos Ben but you did get me my dream ring any who.

Lastly there are group boards. These are ones that have tons of contributors and where you can all help each other out by repinning each other’s content. 

A new feature that has started gathering pace in the US but less here is the new Communities feature. Pinterest want to make the platform a bit more sociable so you can now have mini forums dedicated to chatting about your interests. These are currently invite only. I have made ones for Bloggers, Instagrammers and Tips so make sure you’re signed up to the Exciting Emails mailing list because I’ll send an invite to those communities out. This also means that once you’ve been invited to a community, you can create your own too.

I’m not quite sure on the best way to utilise this feature yet but I can imagine with all of the goodies I’ve seen that are coming up for Pinterest, we’ll be doing a follow up episode or blog post SOOOOOON

As you probably know there’s SO much to go into with Pinterest but I wanted to give as much simple info as possible to get us all up and running! I hope this has been helpful and you now feel like you know how to fully optimise your profile, boards and pins! What have I missed? I’d love to hear more tips so defo let me know.

Now let’s get onto some insider secrets that Reena let me know about!

Did you know that each December Pinterest release their 100 trends for the upcoming year? This is based on what is gaining traction and what more people are starting to search for and pin. Why is this useful to know? Well, if you happen to be a vegan blogger and you can see that a trend is vegan donuts - you should bloody make a vegan donut board and write a blog post on vegan donuts - the chance of your pin performing really well, massively increases.

I’ll link the Pinterest 100 in the show notes but I also want to draw your attention to the Pinterest UK blog. BECAUSE they also upload a blog post every month or so to let you know their ‘editorial themes’ or the themes they’re looking to feature. So you get ideas for new boards from the blog and then you can upload your boards to their link and if they love your board - they’ll feature it! The deadline has gone for Feb/March but soon they’ll release their themes for April/May and we can all go off and make boards relevant to the themes they’re spotlighting but also baring in mind they should be relevant to the content we make.

Regardless, even if you don’t have time for that, the Pinterest blog is FULL of helpful updates, news and tips so make sure you go and have a look. Again I’ll link in the show notes.

Whew, that was a LOT right? But again, I hope you’ve found it hopeful.

So what can you go away and do this episode? I’d like for you to share some pins that you think are best practise. I want to see you having a go at creating pins too! I also want you to go off and optimise those boards with keywords, hashtags, sections and categories so we can all see you mean business!

Don’t forget you can always chat with me on Insta or Twitter @vixmeldrew and we can carry on this convo in the Facebook group - Exciting Emails.

Until then though, I’ll leave you with this mountain of homework - alright it’s not actually that much and hopefully you’re inspired to go off and complete it, and I will see you next time! Byeeeee.

Hey guys! I’m back today with an episode alllll about the platform that lots of us have found very confusing - Pinterest. What are monthly viewers? How are people going viral? Why is it such a good traffic source for some and not for others and how the Jeff do we make it work for us.

Well, I sat down with Reena Rai, the UK Influencer Community Manager for Pinterest and she gave me the TOTAL 401 on Pinterest so I thought I’d share what I learned with you.

Currently over 250m people access Pinterest every month with around 50m of them hailing from the UK. They use it to essentially see what to do, what to buy and what to create. This means it’s an unbelievable tool to master for bloggers and online business owners a like - that’s a LOT of people seeing your content. And no silly, ‘let’s limit it to 6% of your followers’ business going on either.

Now I am NOT a Pinterest expert, so what I thought I’d do is kind of like a walkthrough episode for ya so that you can get your laptops or phones out and implement some tweaks and changes as we go through OR if you’re on the go, this episode might just lift the lid on what a GIFT Pinterest is for bloggers and online business owners a like. SO if you’re ready, let’s crack on.

First things first, a lot of you have come to me in the past and said, ‘oh Vix I know I should be on Pinterest but I just don’t know where to start’ or, you’ve been wondering how to generate traffic from it. TOTALLY been there myself. Now usually I would direct you to some Pinterest whizzes like Victoria from Apartment No 4, who wrote a great blog post for me all about Pinterest for bloggers - so defo go and read that. But I thought, seeing as I’ve just met with Pinterest, I can break it down for you like Reena did for me!

So you’ve probably heard this a thousand billion times but Pinterest is a visual search engine. It’s like Google’s better looking sister. The me, to my twin. Haha. Jokes.

What that means though is that is a platform that people go to to look for inspiration or guidance - a range of how tos, tutorials and tips. So in the same way that your brilliantly helpful and interesting content does well in Google search - that same content should also do well on Pinterest.

One HUGE benefit of Pinterest, unlike other social media apps *cough*INSTAGRAM*cough* is that your followers see your content and share it widely to people who AREN’T following you. Which again means so many eyes on your content!

Unlike other platforms too, Pinterest content hangs around for AGES with the average shelf life of a pin being 105 days. Imagine all the traffic rolling in from that!

Not all content is made for Pinterest however. Your 3am ramblings over boys not texting you back or that Payday Edit about the New Look purse you want may not pull in the results in comparison to a travel guide, beauty tutorial, fashion cookbook, recipe or guide.

This is probably why I haven’t utilised Pinterest before. I can’t seem many people looking to it for tips on snogging or what to say to fuckboys. But now I’m writing more lifestyle and blogging based content - it’s definitely something I want to utilise.

I’ll give you a bit of background on my Pinterest - it ain’t me. Haha I had the wonderful Lex from Talonted Lex manage it for a month or two and she helped optimise my boards. Then I had a couple of other pals help out with getting to grips with the Tailwind scheduler - but I’ll come back to that. So if you go on my profile and see a quarter of a million monthly views (as it stands) please don’t think that makes me good at Pinterest. Haha!

Anyway, now I have the wonderful Dani who works with me and she sets up my Tailwind pins BUT after my meeting with Reena, I came home and basically transformed my entire profile - and that’s what I’m going to work with you on today.

So, if you’re listening to this, I hope you have a Pinterest account already set up. BUT if it’s personal, you’re going to need to convert it to business. So go ahead and pause here because you MUST do it. Business accounts give you so much more access to analytics, rich pins (I’ll explain) and a whole host of goodies that Pinterest has coming up (which I got a sneak peek into and OMFG)

Once you’ve done that, I want us to walk through how to optimise your profile. GO ahead and click ‘Settings’ and your profile should come up.

Fill it in but there’s one area I really want you to focus on and that’s your profile name and description. This is where you need to get those keywords in that relate to your blog or business. So for example, because I blog about blogging and I’m a blogging coach - I want to make sure my profile name and description has keywords like - blogger, blogging tips, social media strategy etc in it. Your description is totally searchable so make sure you’ve got the terms in there that you want to be found for!

The next best bit about a business profile is that you get to ‘claim’ your other channels. To claim your website, you need to get a piece of code from Pinterest and then to put it into your website’s backend (that’s what she said). I’m on Wordpress so I downloaded a plugin called Headers and Footers which meant I could copy and paste the code into my header. There are tons of tutorials on how to do this for all web platforms if you get stuck.

Next, you can use the APIs of Instagram, Youtube and Etsy to claim those accounts too - definitely recommended. This means that if anyone wants to pin your banging Insta content into travel Inso, fashion ideas or beauty tutorials - it all attributes back to you. This could be a great way to gain new followers! You can also upload your Insta content directly to Pinterest too and direct people to your profile.

That’s the basics of your profile up and running. There are other ways to optimise it with the cover pins and featured boards but I think we’ll come back to that in another episode!

You’ll also want to ensure that your blog has the Pinterest ‘Pin It’ or ‘Save’ button installed. This is where people can hover over a picture from your post and a Pinterest logo comes up so that they can save it to their board. On Wordpress you just need to enable to Pinterest plugin and link it to your business account. Again there are tons of tutorials if you’re stuck or if you have a Pipdig theme like I do it comes pre installed - but go and hover over some images on your blog to check it works!

The next great thing you get with a business account is that you can enable, ‘Rich Pins’. All this means is that there are different pin types that will pull through information and look mega fancy. For example - recipe pins will show cooking time, ingredients and all the juicy diets on Pinterest. Mainly we’ll be making ‘article pins’ which is where Pinterest will give a viewer a snippet of what our blog posts are about and will encourage the Pinner to read it.

To get the most out of these pins, you should make sure that when you upload a photo for your post, that you write a description of the article in the description box as this is what Pinterest pulls through. For example, I will make the graphic for this podcast episode and write in the description box something like, ‘Here’s my latest podcast episode which is a beginner’s guide to Pinterest. I discuss how bloggers can use Pinterest and how we can get the most out of our business accounts.’ I will try and put those keywords like ‘beginner’s Pinterest guide’ and ‘bloggers Pinterest’ in there so that it can become searchable within Pinterest.

If you forget though, don’t panic, you can go into Pinterest and rewrite Pin descriptions to make them more searchable by including keywords and even hashtags but I’ll discuss that in a min.

A key benefit of Pinterest over other platforms is the myriad of ways you are discoverable. You can use hashtags - the broader the better as they are still relatively new in Pinterest world. But make sure you put them on fresh content. Some of Pinterests feeds are chronological so hashtags will only matter on fresh content really!

So, your content can be found on Pinterest in these ways - the home feed, the following feed and in related pins.

You will appear in someone’s home feed if Pinterest’s algorithm deems your content relevant to what people have been pinning. SO if I pin loads of gold wedding dresses, the next time I go to my home feed - loads more gold dresses will show up - and not just from people I’m already following.

Then you’ll appear in the feeds of people who follow you, when they click on the Following tab. Using the following tab is a great way to engage with people you follow by repining their stuff or commenting on their pins. GO and show the love!

You also have the chance of appearing in the ‘related pins’ section. If someone clicks on a pin to view it and decides it’s not what they’re looking for, further suggestions will appear at the bottom - that could be you!

I feel like there’s SO MUCH more we can cover and I already see this episode become too beefy, so let’s leave it here and I’ll continue it next week.

TO summarise though, and to give you homework…

• Go and change to a business account
• Claim your website and Insta etc
• Put your keywords related to your blog or business in your profile description
• Install the save button on your blog
• Enable rich pins
• Write descriptions on your blog images

And if you fancy a little challenge - why not create 5 new boards that are relevant to your content and pin at least 40 pins (mix in some of your content) and come and share them on the Facebook group - I’ll start a thread where we can give each other feedback on our profiles and boards.

You could also start a board that is specifically for your blog posts, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, Insta images etc!

I’ll come back next week and go into…

• What makes a good pin
• How to get the fancy profile cover art
• What the eff featured boards are and how to organise them
• A basic pinning strategy to get you started
• Some info on how to find keywords
• How to categorise and organise your boards
• Some info on the types of boards and what they’re useful for
• And then a few insider tips from Pinterest themselves!

If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the Facebook group - we’d love to have you, it’s Exciting Emails. Or come and say hi on Instagram or Twitter - @vixmeldrew

And go right ahead and follow me on Pinterest - I’m /vixmeldrew on there!

Until next time, BYEEEEEEE

Helllooooo, this is going to be a suuuuper short and sweet episode today as it really won’t be me waffling on about all of the thoughts swirling around my head, it’s going to be straight to the point. What makes a good, bad and UGLY social media bio, how to craft one that’s perfect for you and why it’s so important. So let’s crack on shall we?

I have had some CRACKING social media bios ‘ Puppies, Potatoes, Patridge’ I mean SO ON BRAND right? And I’ve had the classic, ‘I’m Vix, 30, I blog about dating.’ YAWNFEST but as I’ve been working with others and pivoting my blog throughout the years I’ve got a sense of what works and what doesn’t.

You probably think, ‘meh no one reads it,’ or, ‘it’s fine as it is’ and I’M SURE IT IS, but what if I told you that your bios can be make or break over who follows you? Or whether a brand wants to work with you or not? Not OK with it being fine now are we?

I’m going to give some examples of Instagram bios I’ve come across (names changed obvs) that just aren’t doing it for me and why. And then I’m going to give some examples of ones that are KILLING IT.

But first I suggest you go back and you think about those ‘words’ we collated that sum up our online personas.

If mine are honest, awkward, funny and my bio is ‘VIX, YOUR FAVOURITE BLOGGER’ FAVOURITE BLOGGER’ you’re going to have a reaction, EITHER you’re going to get the David Starr reference (holla at me if you get it) and see that it’s totally on brand with my funny/awkwardness ORRR you’re going to think, ‘wow what a jumped up prick’ which I HOPE is the opposite of my brand!

So if yours are ‘wellness, grateful, grounded’ a bio that says, ‘ASOS, pizza and partying’ isn’t going to cut it - do you see what I mean?

So let’s look at some examples…

Sharon

Twenty Something Northern Gal

World Traveller & Music Lover

You think - great, she sounds like me, I bet we have loads in common! But then you look at her content. It’s make up flat lays and she hasn’t been further than Barnsley since 2016. It doesn’t represent the content she’s offering people NOW. So why should they follow her? If they like music, they’ll want to see related content. And if it’s a travel brand looking for influencers to work with, they’ll want to see up to date and relevant examples of that type of content.

How about…

Frank, Fashion mad, Fake It Til You Make It

And there’s Frank wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Who is going to be interested in this content? And what the fuck does that cheesy quote mean?

I suppose what I’m getting at is that your bio must have PURPOSE. It’s purpose is to tell people just coming to your profile WHO YOU ARE and WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT and also WHAT CONTENT THEY CAN EXPECT.

It needs to be a mix of (just like your about page actually) of personal and ‘professional’ in a way.

And here’s a lil nugget I’m going to throw at you. As of January 2019, lots of Instagram users are reporting only being able to see the first 2 lines of someone’s bio - this could end up being rolled out across or not but it means we need to be as strategic as possible.

So here are some formulas that work…

Sarah, Style, Travel, Good London Food

Forever wearing pink and listening to Pink

First of all, she’s listed her main content types in the first line. If you’re interested in those, you’ll follow.

Then she’s given an idea of her personality, identity and interests - less important and not exactly Marmite but enough to get a personable sense.

Chloe, I write about life and I like nice clothes too - now this is actually Chloe Plumstead on instagram (I am obsessed) and that whole first line NAILS her brand. Her blog is full of brilliant life think pieces and her Instagram is mainly just her looking buff. It does what it says on the tin!

So let’s have a play with yours now.

And PS this isn’t just about Instagram, the same formula can be used on Twitter but instead of writing about the types of photos you post, it could be the types of tweets you send. SO for example, let’s go back to Sarah…

Sarah, Style, Travel, Good London Food

Forever wearing pink and listening to Pink

Becomes, Sarah, blogs about style and travel, tweets about the best burger places in London and if they play Pink - bonus

Do you see what I mean?

Anyway, back to Instagram. If you have a business profile you can choose a category, which comes up under your name - I went with ‘Blogger’.

But your name part can have a fair few characters, I changed mine to Vix Zero BS Blog BFF but I’ve seen others say Sarah, Style & Travel in their name parts. Stands out in bold too!

Then in your bio, you can write it as a paragraph OR you can do a bullet point or emoji bullet list.

I used to have, ‘Mid Size Clothes & Dicking About In Prose’ for the first sentence which showed I was mainly posting pictures of my size 14-16 assss and writing long captions. Now it says, ‘Blogger, Mentor & Podcast Host’ because I want people to know what I do. I might change this though when I’m making more regular types of content on Instagram because I’m pivoting (again looooolll).

Then in my next bullet point, I have the @exciting_emails handle - this probably isn’t the best so I’ll be changing it soon. And probably some more information about the types of things I post, so here you could put, ‘Style, Travel, Lunch’ or whatever.

Then in the last bullet point, I’d have something personal - this could be the thing that Instagram eventually cuts off so it doesn’t matter too much but it gives a new follower a more personable idea about you. I could put, ‘Puppies, Potatoes, Partridge’ here and hope for the best or you can put something like Chloe has, ‘Spotify Playlist extraordinaire’ - something funny, witty, personable AND ON BRAND - would work.

Technically to get those bullet points, I THINK you have to press return or enter and the end of each sentence rather than a space and then enter if you see what I mean? But it’s all trial and error! You could also write it in your Notes app and then copy and paste it?

Then to finish off I’d have a link to a landing page on your website and I’m going to go through how to create one of those in a blog post or summit, haven’t figured it out yet!

So there you have it - a new bio that tells the world who you are and what you do online.

Come over to the Facebook group to share yours and get feedback. Don’t forget to Insta Stories you listening and what you’ve learned - I’ll be reposting and yeah, please tell a few friends to listen in - it means the world!

Chat soon my deaaaaar

We’ve spoken previously about niches and ideal readers and all that fun stuff that gives our blog a bit of direction but today I want to bring you some exercises I’ve completed recently that have reaaaaallly helped me focus in. Those are - finding the words that sum up your brand, finding your sweet spot and then translating it to branding - and I’ll go more into that in another episode and then next week, we’ll move on to creating a mission statement to sum it all up.

Completing these exercises has REAAALLY gotten me motivated and now I’m using all my spare time creating content - and the results are showing in my traffic - because I’m not second guessing anything - everything feels like me! So let’s dive in shall we…

Right guys, you’re going to need to take notes - so hopefully you’ve got some bits to hand.

I want you to pause the podcast and spend a couple of minutes writing down words that excite you, that you love. Off ya go!

Ok, you’re back haha - or maybe you never went and you just want me to crack on because you’ve only got 15 minutes left in the bath before you need another Diet Coke or your fingers go crinkly - I’M ON IT!

I’ll share my words with you - funny, approachable, straight-talking, listen, inspire, strong, grow, learn, share, happy, honesty, trustworthy, awkward

When I sat back and analysed why I’d chosen these words - it made sense.

I like to think I’m funny. I’m always very approachable and I find that an important quality in others. I am SUPER straight-talking - I can’t stand fakeess and bullshit and I certainly don’t dish it out myself. I love to listen and learn and I also love to be listened to and to teach! I love the word strong because in everything that has happened to me over the last 2/3 years I’ve had to be very strong! And this year I really want to grow as a person and spend more time being happy. I’ve also got words like honesty and trustworthy - I am often too trusting and honest to a fault but these are characteristics I pride myself in and that I seek in others. And well, awkward, because I can be super awkward and awkward situations are the funniest to me!

Now I want you to nail down those words to what your blog represents. Because they totally should align! Your blog and your channels are an extension of you, so if the words that mean the most to you are, ‘integrity, love and real’ then maybe think twice about that sponsored post for skinny teas that make you hate your body and probably shit yourself. - Do you see what I mean?

With the episode show notes, I’m going to create a free downloadable resource where you can get some ideas for words if you’re stuck, plus an exercise in ‘packaging’ those words up to give you a clear brand message. So head there!

I think it’s so important that we’ve been doing the work, through the podcast here, in reeeeaally nailing down our niche and who and what we are online. Trust me, when you have that moment of clarity of, ‘oh, yeah, this feels good, this feels like me’ EVERYTHING will fall into place.

But now I’m going to bring you back to the episode I recorded with Cat from Gatto Web - make sure you listen to that one - where we talked a bit about sweet spots.

Cat opened me up to that term and then I went away and did lots of thinking on it. She said that your brand sweet spot is the place exactly between everything YOU love and everything your reader loves.

For example, your readers may be mid to late twenty something women who value honest reviews, straight talking advice and keeping it real BUT you may love everything whimsical, fantasy with a splash of magic. So how do you please both parties?

And I know a lot of people only want to blog for themselves - and I totally love that. Remember there is no right or wrong way to blog! So those people may not really give a shit about what their readers want, as long as they’re happy. And I do really respect that!

But as we’ve discussed over the last few episodes, and as I’m all about sharing my experiences with you - I know that way back when, when I was blogging about the guy who wouldn’t call me back, my Kylie Jenner lip kits and jeans - no one gave a shit. I’d have a few blogger pals read my stuff probably out of kindness and obligation, but it didn’t alight!

Fast forward a couple of years and I started to realise what my audience liked - straight talking, honest, bare all, to the point discussions on what others were too afraid to say or too tight to share. So that’s how I framed my content!

So think about that. You’ve got your words that mean the most to you - which of those would also mean the most to your readers?

And if you don’t have a flipping Scooby - go and listen to the episode on Identifying An Ideal Reader, because it will really help you!

I’d like for you to do another exercise now - on your phone notes or paper or whatever - and I want you to create two columns. One headed, ‘What I Love’ and the other headed, ‘What My Readers Love’ and I want you to make lists under each.

Under ‘What I Love’ for example might be - beauty reviews, travel guides, think pieces and dating posts - and that might be why you’re a bit all over the place. Because you love talking about what you love! But in the other column, I want you to go to your Analytics and look at your most popular posts. I want you to look at your comments and see which ones people most engaged with. I want you to check your social media and see which blog posts got people talking the most.

What do you notice? Because maybe your readers LOVE your travel posts but your beauty posts go unnoticed - you may like writing them but are you happy for them not to be as well received? Where’s the sweet spot?

Another tool you could use - and maybe this is just for the LOLs is a website called SpyFu.com - you can use it to spy on competitors keywords and what they perform best with BUT you can also use it to see which of your keywords are performing best and stick that in the ‘What my readers love’ column. And honestly you need to listen to the state of mine…. (Fast forward a few seconds if you’ve got an uneasy disposition) but mine are, Dream Phone, Wide On, Cum With Your Fingers and Fingering Techniques.

So you can see that my love of 90s nostalgia is a strong theme and you can also see that I used to NAIL the dating/sex blogging amirite.

But let’s bring it back because fuck my life.

We’ve got the key words that sum up our brand, we know who our ideal reader is, we know how to hit the sweet spot with our content - now what?

Next we’re going to discuss how we can present that visually through branding! So I’ve got some homework for ya!

I want you to create a Pinterest board called, ‘Exciting Emails Brand Vision Board’ and I want you to pin articles, pictures, colours, words, quotes - WHATEVER to represent what we’ve discussed today. Then come and share it in the Facebook group - www.facebook.com/groups/exciting_emails so we can give feedback!

I also want you to come and tell me what your words are and what your sweet spot is - I’m interested!

Until then though I’d love it if you could subscribe, leave a review and head over to my social channels - @vixmeldrew as I love a good natter. And I shall chat to you next time! Byeeee.

When I first started blogging, I wrote for myself as one big whole brain fart of thoughts, observations, musings and interests. It continued this way for a long time. Suddenly I started having regular readers who would chat to me about how they were feeling the same things and going through the same experiences and I loved the thought of connecting with people like that. What I didn’t realise at the time though was that I needed to be more aware of who these people were so that I could better help them through my content.

In this episode, I’m going to talk about what an ideal reader is, why it’s important to know who yours is, how to find out who they are and then how to implement that knowledge into your blog! BEEEEFY right?

Let’s get to it.

So your ‘ideal reader profile’ is basically creating an image of a person in your mind. It’s the person who reads every posts, retweets you, DMs you on Instagram - they’re so bought in to who you are and what you’re about that they want to support everything you do.

They do that because they relate HARD to you. Maybe they’re also roast potato aficionados HOLLAAA, or they’re buying a house like you, going through a break up like you. Or they have the same background as you.

Now I’m not saying this is a real person who’s stalking you like Joe Goldberg in ‘You’ - there could be just one of them or there could be 500 - but it’s key to know who they are.

It’s important to know who they are for tons of reasons. So let’s go through them now with some examples.

So say, you suddenly blogged your trip to a 5 star hotel in Dubai - if your ‘ideal reader’ can only afford low budget, European travel, they’re not going to connect with those posts. Or maybe you’re a first-time Mum and your ‘ideal readers’ are young and not parents themselves yet, you’ll find a disconnect when you start blogging about babies.

Whereas, if you knew your readers had a low budget for travel and you wanted to write about your Dubai trip, you could write it from the angle of, ‘here’s what I did in Dubai, but here are some low cost/cheaper ways to do it to suit all budgets’. Or, as a new Mum, you could write the posts from the angle of, ‘you guys might not get this yet BUT HERE’S WHAT’S COMING TO YA.’ Do you see what I mean?

When you know who your ideal reader is, you can cater each post, story, caption, tweet, WHATEVER to that person so that they feel like you’re speaking directly to them. Not that you’re trying to pee into the wind.

When a reader feels like content has been written especially for them, to help them solve a problem, or to give them specific inspiration, the bond between you is closer - this means they are more influenced by you.

And I don’t mean any of this in a cynical, gross, marketing way at all. I actually mean it the opposite! How much more would you enjoy writing your blog if you truly knew that what you were writing resonated with the people who support you the most? It’s the best feeling to be THAT reciprocal!

So how do you work out who this person is? If you’re an Exciting Emails Member (for £!5 a month guys and you get A LOT) you’ll have received your very first in-depth lesson on finding your ideal reader, with an enclosed work book to go through that will help you nail down who it is.

If you’re not a member, first of all, seriously GET ON THAT, but anywaaaaay, here’s roughly what you need to do. You need to check your analytics to see what your demographic is. Gender? Age? Type of device?

And then you need to make some serious generalisations. If your core audience is 18-21 year olds, the tone of voice and content you’re making needs to be a hell of a lot different than for an audience of early to mid twenties, and again for late twenties/early thirties and so on. As much as I, in my early thirties, would love to think of herself as hip and down with the kids, if your blog posts are littered with references to High School Musical, it’s probably going over my head.

Just like when I litter 90/00s pop culture references in my blog posts about like Zack Morris and low slung jeans and the odd 20 year old that reads it goes ‘what the actual fleck are you talking about?

Anyway, back to figuring out who that person is - GENERALISE. In all normal walks of life, generalising and stereotyping is the worst thing anyone can do. And it’s super non-inclusive because OF COURSE your ideal blog reader may be a career driven, 25 year old perfectionist with a boyfriend, her first home and a puppy called Carl and there might be 500 of her, but you might also have the odd one or two Keith’s, 45 who work in IT that feel a bit left out when you start banging on about which shade of pink Vaspar paint to do your home office in.

But that’s where we go back to niches and things like that - trying to please everyone and be everything to everyone, means you appeal to no one.

But when you understand your ideal reader, what their needs are, what they’re interested in, which references you can make in jokes about, you’ll get so much more engagement.

Hopefully you’ve paused the podcast to go and sign up to be a member, to get the workbook OR you’re furiously making notes on who that person is. Come to the Exciting Emails Facebook group and tell us - who is your ideal reader?

Once you’ve done that, you’re probably then thinking about how to best serve that person with your content.

Well I’ve got ya! Told you this episode was a beefy one.

Firstly, you create content that hits their pain points and interests.

What I mean by pain points, for example is, if your ideal reader is Miss Sally that I previously mentioned, you know, just buying a house with a boyfriend and new puppy, she’s going to be Googling things like - how to buy a house, how to save money, where to buy Vaspar paint, H&M Home sale etc - well if you’ve also just bought a house, or are saving for one, or are interested in interiors - there are some blog posts you can write that will answer those questions!

Similarly, that same person might be interested in Love Island, how to shop sustainably, how to read 52 books a year and show them off on Goodreads - there are content ideas there too.

Then once the content is created, you speak directly to that person throughout it. You litter it with references that they’ll get. Like my Zack Morris one above - leave me a review if you also loved Saved By The Bell because I KNOW YOU DID> You make in jokes of the things you know you both like. You make them feel like you’re writing solely for them.

And then you share your content where they are and what time they’re there. Are they more interested in visual content? Then Instagram is your jam. Are they more about memes and opinions? Then Twitter is where they’ll be lurking. Or are they obsessed with catching up with friends on Facebook? Make sure you keep up a page and add your posts to it!

Once you’ve envisaged who your ideal reader is, creating content that engages a wider audience becomes much more enjoyable and easy to create. So tell me who your ideal reader is and how you’re going to be serving them - I’d love to know!

Please also let me know any other thoughts you have on this and we’ll be chatting about it on the Facebook group. Don’t forget to follow me @vixmeldrew on Twitter and Instagram and also @exciting_emails for daily Blog tips and inspiration and I will see you next time!

 

Ok so you’ve designed your website and branding to match your niche. You’ve written your about page to tell everyone who and what you’re about. Now you just need to fill your blog with content. Easy right? Well... not always.

Creating content can be really frigging tough. When the ideas aren’t flowing. Or they’ve been done before. Or no one will be interested. We can get bogged down with these negative thoughts sometimes, right?

Also there is a LOT of content in here that I could probably spread out to 86 podcasts, 4 ebooks and 17 courses BUT once you guys have fed back your thoughts I might go into things in more detail later on. So let me know!

Anyway, What if I was to tell you, you just need to approach content creating differently? What if I can tell you how? Keep listening!

Do you ever ask yourself what questions when you’re creating?

I often don’t. I think, ‘ooh I want to write a post about The Hills today,’ I write it and then... air.

Oh sure, then I’ll ask myself questions. Like - did I not promote this well enough? Was my SEO not good? Was it rubbish? Why isn’t anyone reading?

But we really should ask ourselves questions before hitting publish. And this is what we should be asking.

I’m almost flow charting it up in here so take some notes if you feel like it!

At the top of my flowchart I’m going to think to myself...

Who is this for?

Then under that I’m going to branch off with a ‘for me’ label and a ‘for others’ label.

In fact, head over to VixMeldrew.com because I’m going to make a graphic to help illustrate what I mean here!

Ok right back to ‘for me’.

If I want to write a blog post that’s for me, I’m going to ask myself why and these are often my answers - you can jot em down.

Is it cathartic? Am I trying to express something? Get something off my chest through writing?

Or Is it fun? Is it a topic I And probably I alone want to write about?

Often when we’re writing for ourselves it’s just because we want to. We want to express a thought. Have a discussion with ourselves. Write about a passion that we love to show our love for it.

And of course that’s absolutely fine!

As long as we’re fine for it to get not much traffic, not many social shares and not much engagement.

As long as we know it won’t be a great ‘performer’ we’re just happy to have it out there.

But if we’re not OK with that, we might want to revisit that branch about it being for others.

Then we might want some sub branches where we ask ourselves, why should people read this?

These branches are questions like:

Is it helpful? Does it answer a question or solve a problem?

Is it entertaining? Does it make people feel good?

Has it been said before?

Is it well researched?

And also, soz guys, but we need to ask ourselves - is it any good?

I’m going to go through these questions and why they’re important we ask ourselves them.

And I want you to tell me too - we’ll have a chat in the Facebook group about it - what questions do you or do you not ask yourself?

Firstly, ‘is it helpful?’

If you have a piece of content that’s helpful to others they will engage. They will share it. They will see you as an authority. It will drive them to almost like, help you back for helping them.

And these pieces of content could be tips, guides or advice or they could be pieces from the heart that others relate to - that helps them see a situation in a new way.

They could also be reviews where you’ve helped them make a purchasing decision or book a flight or try a new product.

But ask yourself, have they left with more than what they came with?

Maybe your content isn’t helpful. So is it entertaining?

Does it give people a laugh? Does it challenge them? Do they immediately want to tell their friends to read it so that they feel like they’re the ones making the witty observations? Does it take people on a journey?

Or is it dull? Dry? A slog to read?

Here you want to ask yourself, have I changed someone’s mood with this piece?

You also want to ask yourself if you’re just adding to noise or if you have a unique stance.

I don’t know about you but there’s nothing worse for me than reading 4 blog posts by different bloggers all in reaction to the same topic with all of the same viewpoints.

But it’s OK to add your voice to a topic that is widely spoken about.

But here you need to ask yourself, ‘am I saying anything different?’, ‘am I adding to the discussion?’ Or ‘am I repeating what has already been said with no new or original thoughts?’

If so, you probably don’t need to join that discussion.

This is where research comes in.

Which blog post on body positivity are you more likely to read and engage with? The one that says, ‘oh yeah all bodies are good bodies guys, let’s learn to love ourselves and sacrifice our femininity at the altar of Jameela,’ OR the one that details the originality of the movement, how it started, who started it, when it became mainstream, who pioneered that, who bastardised it and what it looks like today?

Writing content on a topic that you have thoroughly researched and have a lot to add and discuss makes you look like the dogs bollocks to be quite honest. Poorly researched, wafer thin waffle makes it seem pointless.

By all means, like I’ve always said, write whatever you want to write about - just bear these questions in mind!

Which brings us to asking ourselves if it’s any good.

Is it as entertaining as it could be? Is it as helpful as it should be? Does it need more thought? Does it need justice doing to the topic?

And if you’re wavering over any of these questions - do you really need to post it?

Could it be a Twitter thread? Or an Instagram caption? What purpose is it serving?

There’s so much more we could talk about when it comes to content - and I’m going to tell you a bit about how you can get even more help with my own ‘Content Strategy’ in a sec.

I want to share with you a study that was undertaken by Bloomly who surveyed 1,000 bloggers across a variety of niches.

Before I do though I just want to take 5 secs to talk to you about becoming a member of Exciting Emails.

If you got my announcement email then you’ll know all about the 4 different tiers and how I offer a range of affordable and bespoke coaching options.

But I want to offer something more to you too. The top 3 tiers are gone, there’s a waiting list but why not sign up for an Excited Membershio? For £15 a month (cheaper than chippy tea mate) you’ll get an exclusive Facebook group, huge discounts on the shop resources - including new Presets that are out soon, the courses and the events I’ll be running next year. Not only that though, you’ll receive a monthly email with an in-depth lesson on an aspect that the podcast goes in to - but waaaaay more in-depth. For example - members will get my full content strategy, detailing how to plan and think of different types of content that will grow your audience relationships, get you more brand deals and yelp you tip those Google searches. Pretty good deal right? For the info and the application form, just go to vixmeldrew.com/membership and join me for the ride that 2019 is going to be!

Anyway, back to the Bloomly survey which I’ll link in the show notes. The results showed reports that content performed so much better when it was long form (so well thought out), when it was well researched and when it was well written.

So those points about us auditing ourselves and asking ourselves if it’s any good or if we’ve added enough research, thought and reflection in, really do need to be listened to.

Like I’ve said before, I’ll never tell you that you can’t write a post on The Hills or your Aldi truffle addiction or that you’re not funny enough or enlightened enough. Your blog is your blog to do whatever you want with.

However, if you want to be consistently creating content that converts (oh hi check me out with the alliteration) then it’s time to start asking yourself these questions.

Don’t forget to get signed up for a Membership today!

Right I’ll stop bugging you now, and I shall chat to you next time! Bye!

In this episode, I’m going to walk you through how to write an about page that screams ‘you’ and tells whoever stumbles across it - whether that’s a brand, a new follower or a potential loyal reader, exactly who you are and what your blog is about.

 

As ever, there’s a practical element so make sure you’ve got a Diet Coke, cup of tea, a snack - whatever you need and something to write on as we get cracking.

 

Let’s go!

 

Sooo many people abandon their about pages.

 

I’ll turn on to someone’s blog, thinking I’m there for fashion advice but their bio tells me they love writing about beauty.

 

It’s a page that we often forget to update. I’ve seen newly married bloggers talking about being single and their exploits on their about pages! Or parenting bloggers who have information about their single, independent lives.

 

You might be thinking that it doesn’t matter, that no one reads it anyway but you’re totally wrong!

 

I’m going to hit you with some stats…

 

I looked at my average page visits for the last 6 months and can tell you that 446 INDIVIDUAL people (again on average) read my about page per month.

 

For you it might be 5 people, or 105, or 105,000 but if it’s more than zero - IT MATTERS.

 

Like I mentioned in the intro - people are visiting your about page for a reason.

 

Perhaps it’s a brand who wants to know what you stand for and whether it aligns with their message.

 

Maybe it’s someone who found you on Instagram and wants to know if your blog is worth following too.

 

Or maybe it’s a new reader who’s fallen completely in love with your content and wants to get to know you better.

 

It could of course just be someone being nosey (hi that’s me, yep).

 

Whoever it is, they want to leave that page feeling like they know you better. But also feeling like they completely get what you and your blog is about. And if they’re also about it, they’re going to want to stick around.

 

So other than neglecting our about pages and not keeping them updated, what other mistakes do we make?

 

We’re Too Generic

 

Sometimes we write our about pages in a way that the internet or our favourite blogger has told us or shown us how to write them.

 

We want to follow the same formula because if it’s worked for others, then it’ll work for us, right? WRONG.

 

Because if you’re copying what others are doing, you’re telling a potential audience what they’re about - not what you’re about.

 

Maybe if we think we should mention what everyone else mentions then we’ll appeal to more people - but that’s the wrong way to go about things.

 

We need to use our about pages to really get a sense of who we are as individuals across because that’s what’s going to make us stand out!

 

We’re Too Niche

 

Alright soz for being one big ball of contradiction but there is an element of playing the game here.

 

If our audience come to our blog for beauty reviews but we decide to tell the world about our love for 12 hour sessions playing Risk and bingeing on medieval history documentaries - we could alienate those we’re trying to appeal to.

 

So if I’ve completely messed your head up - don’t worry, later on I’ll go into how we can get the balance right!

 

We Don’t Say What Our Blog Is About

 

I’ve seen sooo many about pages that are like, ‘Hi I’m Becky, 22, I like cats and cupcakes, if you want to work with me, email me.’

 

OK hun but why should we? Why should a brand work with you? Or read your blog? Or click on another page? You haven’t told them to!

 

You haven’t piqued their interests by describing the type of content you make and are passionate about. So if you’re not interested in what your blog is actually about - why should anyone reading it?

 

We Don’t Make The Most Of It

 

Hands up if you say in your about page that you love talking about beauty, lifestyle, fashion and travel but don’t link to your best beauty, fashion, lifestyle and travel posts!!!

 

Yeah me too!

 

What a wasted opportunity!

 

We’re Too Formal

 

Nothing irks me more than seeing a blog with posts and pictures that scream, ‘light-hearted, relatable and fun’ yet an about page that is drier than my vagina after looking at pictures of Nigel Farage.

 

Alright irked is probably not the right word, I’m overselling it - but whatever your brand voice is - knowledgeable, witty, positive, serious, intelligent, carefree - your about page needs to be written in that style too!

 

And we’re coming on to writing styles and finding our voices soon so it might be that you go away and zzzssh your about page up and then in a couple of months come back and add your extra sauce to it - THAT’S GOOD

 

So there are a few of my about page hang ups - are you ready to get to the juicy bit? Where we talk about how to write a banging one?

 

Before we start, I’m not going to profess that mine is amazing. But at least it’s updated! And I’m not going to name and shame anyone doing it well or badly, I’ll just use examples so here we go…

 

Great About Pages have…

 

A headline

 

And it could be written in third person if you’re cringe like me and hate blowing smoke up your own arse. Starting with something like, ‘Vix Meldrew is an award-winning lifestyle and mental health blogger who lives in London’ is a great way to get across the nitty gritty of details like name, blog niche and location.

 

Or you could greet people with a, ‘Hi, I’m Vix Meldrew, I’m an xyz blogger who lives in London’

 

A structure

 

My favourite about page structure goes something like this…

 

You’ll find posts on this blog on a range of topics such as; blah blah blah

 

I have previously worked with some incredible brands on content like; blah blah blah

 

You’ll find me;

 

Now the ‘you’ll find me’ bit is the key bit to getting your individual personality across. And not in a niche way like, ‘sitting alone in my cupboard knitting Harry Styles scarves’ and not in a fakely generic way like, ‘eating Nandos with my besties whilst we all wear ASOS’ but something that is true to you, whilst also being relatable to your audience.

 

So for example, if you’re a solo travel blog, yours might say, ‘You’ll find me either strolling alone across a far away beach with sand between my toes, a cocktail in one hand and me documenting it all via Instagram in my other or sat at home in London dreaming about my next solo adventure.’

 

Or if you’re a beauty blog, it might say, ‘you’ll find me obsessively refreshing Sephora’s new in section or trialling out that new glitter brow tutorial that’s just gone viral’ - do you get what I mean?

 

Have a go now! Write a 3 paragraph about page with a headline, followed by a ‘the blog posts you’ll find’ bit, a ‘brands I’ve worked with’ bit and the ‘you’ll find me…’ bit.

 

And make sure you come and post them on the Exciting Emails Facebook group so we can all marvel at your fantastic work.

 

Now here’s how to make them even better!

 

In the bit where you say about the types of posts you write LINK TO YOUR BEST ONES.

 

And in the bit where you mention the brands you’ve worked for LINK TO THOSE POSTS.

 

If you haven’t worked with anyone yet, don’t worry - these about pages need to be updated constantly so you can always come back and add that in once the brand work starts rolling in.

 

You can also use your about page to tell people to come and find you on social media.

 

If they found your blog before they found your Twitter - tell them to follow you there and let them know the type of stuff you talk about - whether it’s activism or reality TV. IF they’re your people, they’ll want to find you!

 

Likewise with Instagram - perhaps you post more of your real life over there. If people fall in love with your writing, they’ll fall in love with you and want to see more - so tell them where they can find more!

 

Another fun way to make your about page more unique is putting up a funny picture, or one from your childhood with a personal story - this gives people an even better insight into who you are!

 

Or if you’ve had any accomplishments like awards, recognition or great comments - why not put a few here for other people to see too!

 

Essentially your about page is a window into who you are as a person and who you are as a blogger and you want it to almost ‘advertise’ all of your best bits in a succinct and informative way.

 

Don’t go overboard and turn it into a 1000 word essay - keep it short and sweet - by following the structure I mentioned and just make sure you update it any time your interests, lives or topics change.

 

If you have any ‘About page’ questions, feel free to hit me up on Twitter or Instagram @vixmeldrew and don’t forget to come and tell me about how you’ve switched things up - I can’t wait to hear about it.

 

Until then, please leave me a review and a rating - it means the world and don’t forget to subscribe!

 

Speak to you all super soon, byeeeee.

Joined by the brilliant Cat, from Gatto Web, we discuss what goes into your blog design and why it's so important.

As two women with our own businesses, we discuss everything from Instagram, finances, workload and blogging as well as Cat giving us the run down on some actionable things we can all do today to improve our blog design and make it more US.