Sophie Davies is the brains behind The Private Life Of A Girl, a lifestyle blog that focuses on everything minimal and chic. Her blog is clean and reflects her personal style, she has 17,000 followers on Bloglovin’ and regularly blogs alongside her full-time job.
I’ve been wondering how to juggle a personal blog with a business, so I picked her brain on her blog, jewellery business and everything in between.
Why did you start a blog?
My blog started as a bit of a joke between friends; I suggested I might start a beauty blog and my friends encouraged me to do it . . . so I did. Since then it’s transformed several times from pure beauty content to creative lifestyle advice, to what it is now: a minimal lifestyle blog heavy on slow fashion and minimal living posts. It’s important for a blog to grow, it’s a sign of authenticity and a true reflection of the person behind the blog. Things would get a little stale if we stuck to writing about a very narrow field of topics.
What’s your favorite part of blogging?
I really love engaging with the blogging community but especially my readers. I love receiving comments, getting to know people, and sharing what we’ve learned about ethical shopping and living a minimal lifestyle. It’s a really important aspect of blogging that I think bloggers tend to overlook but shouldn’t. Readers can teach us a lot about what we’re doing right (and wrong!) and how we can improve the content we write to make it more interesting.
How often do you post, do you think it’s important to have strategies for blogging?
For a couple of years I posted daily but now I post four times a week and I post specific content on different days. I definitely believe having a “blogging strategy” and an editorial calendar is crucial for maintaining consistency and a regular stream of content. I also think it’s crucial that we reassess that strategy regularly to make certain it’s working; I stopped posting daily because it’s tough to write quality content at such a fast pace. I decided to reduce the amount of posts I publish on a weekly basis so I could focus on creating more useful, informative content that goes more in-depth on the subjects I’m writing about.
Do you have any tips for aspiring bloggers?
Patience and confidence, those are two things you need in abundance when it comes to blogging. You have to be confident and proud of the content you’re writing otherwise you’ll fall into the trap of comparing your blog to all the others out there. You really have to believe in what you’re doing and the content you’re writing. Building a readership and growing a blog takes patience and perseverance, you have to go all-in to see results; having the confidence to share what you create online and being proud of what you do is key to achieving that.
How did you grow your following?
I invested a lot of time in reading other blogs, engaging with bloggers, and sharing my content on social media to build my readership. It takes a lot of promotion to get a blog noticed, something people often shy away from but it’s super important to share content, making use of hashtags, Twitter chats, and networking opportunities. If we’re engaged it follows that other people will engage with us.
How do you manage work with blogging and keep yourself motivated and inspired?
I’m a self-employed jewellery designer and business owner; my full-time job is running a jewellery brand called Oh My Clumsy Heart. Blogging is a huge part of my life and plays a key role in my business. Blogging is so important it’s technically a second job, the amount of work it requires means I split my time between the two fairly evenly. Balancing the shop and blog requires a lot of hard work to make sure I’m not neglecting one or the other; I plan my weeks out dedicating specific days for creating content for both for the blog and the shop.
What’s the best blogging advice you’ve ever received?
“Write the blog you want to read.” It’s so important to be proud of your blog and the content you create, if you’re not, then how can you expect anyone else to be interested in what you’re doing? Writing a blog you would want to read is a great way to stay passionate and driven.
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