Tag: Content Creators

4 Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before Deciding to Collab with a Brand

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Hello readers! It’s been a little over a month since I shared my last post (sorry!) I know y/all probably get sick of me and my excuses, but this semester has been a wild one. Virtual law school did not come to play with us this Fall 2020, okay?! So much has happened since then but two super exciting things that have happened include me ending my recording hiatus for my podcast, Handle Your Scandal. You can find my most recent episodes here and here. Additionally, I landed my first paid Instagram post with a company! I knew I wanted to land one by the end of 2020 so landing one two months before the year ended has made me so happy. I’m hopeful to have more paid opportunities in the future.

My paid post led to one my friends and fellow creative to ask to write a post on how I decide what brands to work with. I think this is such an important question. When it comes to being an online content creator who is either paid or gifted products to post, you have a responsibility to be super selective about what companies you decide to promote. In order to help you do that, I will give you a few questions I ask to navigate that decision-making process.  

1. Does this company align with who I am as a person?

If a company does not align with me as an individual, then I won’t work with them. Period. There isn’t really much more to add to that. Hopefully you know who you are and what you stand for. Don’t work with companies that conflict with that, no matter how much they are offering.

2. Does this company fit with my online brand?

Being clear on your brand is so important before you start working with companies, especially if there are certain aspects of yourself that don’t necessarily fit with your brand. For example, my brand is all about motivating millennials and gen z to live a well-balanced life. What I consider a well-balanced life includes making time for school/work, our own wellness, fitness goals, and personal development while I also run a blog. I also have other things that help me achieve this like drinking coffee/matcha, working out, and more. There are certain parts of my life that don’t really align with my brand. If I was to suddenly talking about being the perfect girlfriend or something like that, my followers would be confused. I keep this in mind and won’t really do anything related to relationships in my content because that’s not what my brand currently is. I could easily change that in the future, but for now, it’s not that. This means I maybe wouldn’t collab with a dating app UNLESS I felt that it would be useful to my audience, which leads to the next question I ask myself.

3. Does this company/product align with my audience and help them?

While it’s good to be clear on your brand, sometimes things outside of your brand could potentially help your audience as well. My audience (on instagram and my podcast) is made up of mostly women who are between the ages of 20-35. While a company might not align with my personal brand, it still might be something that could potentially help my audience. If something does not align with my brand at all, it would have to help me audience in a tremendous way in order for me to even consider working with them.

4. Would I use this product if I wasn’t getting paid to do so?

When it comes to gifted products, I’m a little less strict because I feel more comfortable telling my followers “This company sent me this and I tried it out, here’s what I think” as opposed to “You should definitely try this product!” If I know that I could not see myself using something if I wasn’t getting paid or something in return for it, then it I will not work with that company. Being authentic with my audience is extremely important to me and one of my top priorities as a content creator. I will not promote something to them that I know I don’t like/wouldn’t use.

These are some of the questions I ask myself before I decide to work with a company. If you struggle answering any of these questions because of lack of clarity in your own brand, then you definitely need to get clear on that before you want to get paid to post anything. Lacking clarity in these areas means that your brand needs some more work before you get to that stage of being an online content creator. You gotta crawl before you walk and walk before you run. If you are able to figure these things out, you will have no trouble knowing what companies you want to work with (and what companies you want to avoid.)

I hope this post helps you figure out exactly how to determine what companies to work with. When I was offered my first paid post, I was so excited! However, it’s important to remember your values and integrity as you navigate the influencer marketing world.

Do you have any more questions about deciding which brands to work with? Would you like to see more posts like this? Let me know in the comments.

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Lessons I Learned From Blogging Every Weekday For A Month

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Hey readers! It’s been a while (compared to blogging every weekend)! I hope you are doing as well as can be given everything going on. As I’ve mentioned many times (here, here, and here), last month I participated in Mattie James’ Consistency Challenge for blogging. We had to blog every Mon-Fri and I talked about how hard it was on my last post. However, I did say that I learned a lot about blogging on that post as well and I figured I might as well share these things with my readers.

Before I tell you the lessons I learned, I want to l talk a little bit more about the challenge (just a little, I promise). The grand prize was $1,000 and while I didn’t win the money, I did have some other personal wins! My analytics improved across the board and it really helped me re-discover myself as a blogger. Here are some before and after of my analytics.

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Isn’t that wild? My monthly views went from 397 to 598. My visitors went from 234 to 397 (also kinda strange that number appears twice). My likes went from 9 all the way to 65 and my comments went from 4 a month to 17! Now, I would like to increase these numbers, but I also know where I fell short as well. I’m going to talk about that on the next part of the blog.

I know many of you are have started your own blogs or are interested in starting one. The rest of this post will have some lessons I learned along the way during my 4-week blogging challenge. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and improve your own blog as well!

Lesson #1: Writing a blog post every day is not sustainable (not for me, at least)

I love writing blogs. I actually enjoy writing blogs more than I enjoy writing most things these days. Even though they’re longer writing blogs is even easier than writing Instagram captions for me. All of that being said, writing a blog every day because I failed to plan a head was draining! This was especially true when I had a particularly busy week at work that was loaded with dense legal research. I definitely do not recommend trying to write a blog every day. I knew this already and even talked about “batch work” in a previous post, but this challenge really hammered in on that point for me. NEVER AGAIN!

Lesson #2: Promoting your blog posts is just as important as writing it!

This sound so obvious but there was a point towards the end of the challenge when I was barely finishing the posts at 11:50pm and promoting my posts on Instagram just fell to the wayside. What was the point? It was already midnight and by the next day I had a different post to write. I honestly slacked on my entire Instagram the entire month of July but that’s a whole different blog post for another day (actually no, but you get my point). I also realized that I should have been promoting on ALL of my social media platforms, not just Instagram. My blog posts actually started to get quite a few RTs on Twitter which really helped me reach a wider audience. I definitely want to start incorporating Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram when I promote my blog posts. More things I have to learn, yay!

Lesson #3: I learned what type of posts I enjoy writing

You probably raised your eyebrow when you read this but surprise surprise, prior to this challenge I had a rough idea about the type of content I thought I should make (it hasn’t really changed) but this challenge helped me realize which content is actually the easiest for me to write/which content I enjoy writing about the most. The content I had the easiest time writing was all related to helping other bloggers, law students, and wellness related topics (most of the time). Now that I know this, I can plan these posts super in advance and get as many of them written as possible when I’m feeling inspired or on a roll. It certainly doesn’t hurt to know what kind of content you enjoy writing for your blog.

Lesson #4: I also learned which content I struggle with writing (even though I enjoy it)

During the challenge, I decided to make each day a different theme and kept those post on those days just so I wouldn’t get too overwhelmed. Mondays were blogging/content creation, Tuesdays were law school posts, Wednesday were wellness posts, Thursday were fitness posts, and Friday were personal development posts. It never failed….every Thursday and Friday I struggled on deciding what freaking fitness and personal development topics I wanted to blog about. It was actually so annoying. However, now that I know that sometimes I struggle with this type of content, I can be sure to brainstorm for those specific posts way in advance so that I’m not stuck when it comes time to write about them. I just have to work harder if I want to keep writing about those topics, which is fine! I actually have some ideas already planned for the next few weeks. Win!

Blogging every week day was a little too much for me but I DO want to start blogging 3x a week. I feel that doing this will help me grow my audience and ultimately help me reach more people and thus help more people! While the challenge did kick my ass, I’m so glad I participated in it! I recommend any aspiring blogger try it and see what you learn about yourself and your blogging style at the end of 4 weeks. Try it!\

Did you enjoy this article? Share it with an aspiring blogger you know!

 

3 Tips for Getting Out of a Creative Funk

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I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I can’t remember the last time I left my house or what but the last few weeks I have been struggling with deciding what content to put out on both my blog and my Instagram. My podcast has been a tad bit easier just because I usually do interviews and for my solo episodes, I always have something that’s easier to talk about than to write about for a blog or put in an Instagram caption. Whatever the case may be, I have definitely been going through my own version of writer’s block…taken a step further and an overall creatives block. As I mentioned on the most recent episode of my podcast (listen here), I started Mattie James’ #ConsistencyChallenge for my Instagram feed. Long story short the challenge consists of posting a picture on your Instagram feed every day, preferably ones that represent your brand and such. I have actually enjoyed it and will probably write more about it at some point in the future. However, after a few perfectly planned pictures and captions, I started to draw a blank. That carried over into my blog and finals season being in full effect didn’t help me. This led to me not having much to blog about and having to figure that out and how the hell I was going to post for the rest of the month. I would like to say I somewhat figured it out and decided that I should share this process with all of you.

Do a Brain Dump

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The first thing I do when I’m not sure what I want to create is to have a brain dump session. A brain dump session consists of me getting a blank piece of paper, setting a timer (usually for 5 mins or so), and just dumping all of my thought onto the page. The fact that I already know what the purpose for the brain dump is probably helps my mind focus on thinking about content, my assignment, or whatever it is I’m trying to garner creativity from. I feel that 5 mins in the perfect amount of time to force yourself to just get everything out and then figure out what to do with it later. After I brain dump, I sift through the words on the page and see if anything sounds like something I can expand on and usually I have at least 1 or 2 good ideas to run with.

Research What Other People in Your Niche are Creating

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I’m not saying that it’s entirely impossible to create never before thought of content or posts or whatever it is you need to create but let’s be real, many things have been talked about before and THAT IS OKAY. As a lifestyle blogger the topics aren’t necessarily what make me unique. What makes me unique is my perspective and experience with a topic. When I’m particularly stumped on what to create or write, I google “lifestyle blog ideas” or whatever topic I’m interested in writing about, whether that be “fitness blog posts”, “law school blog posts”, you get the idea. It’s okay to get inspo from other content creators. If the topic is entirely too specific, be sure to give that person credit and link back to their blog. The same goes for Instagram content as well. Creatives deserve credit, which I’ve made my thoughts on such known on my podcast as well (listen here).

Ask Your Audience What They Want to See

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Don’t get me wrong, this may not be the best approach depending on your audience and/or your relationship with them but it doesn’t hurt to try. I remember when I was not entirely new to blogging but also still figuring it out I used to come up with ideas and conduct polls on my Instagram stories to see what kind of content my audience wanted to see. After all, they are going to be the ones reading and/or engaging with it. You might as well see if they have any suggestions for topics they’d like your opinion or help with. Definitely don’t do this one too often or your audience will wonder why the hell are you a content creator if you can’t think of any content. I would say this is good to do once every few months or so. When done properly, it can be extremely help. The reason I even thought to write this blog was due to a suggestion from one of my mutuals on twitter. Thanks Della girl!

These are some of the ways that I deal when I can’t for the life of me think of what kind of content I want to create. Usually if I do one or all of these 3 things, I can get out of my creative funk and figure out what it is I want to write about or create. Hopefully these tips can help you if you are having a similar block.

Did I forget a suggestion that has helped you? How do you deal with writer’s block or get out of creative funk? Let me know in the comments below!

If you enjoyed this article and found it helpful, please share it on your social media or with a fellow creative!