Heather Young of Growing Spaces on blogging about interiors

Thinking back, I think my career in interiors was probably inevitable. Many of my childhood memories involve DIY as my parents renovated our family homes (and we’re talking major renovations, not just a lick of paint here and there). In fact, my mum often jokes that I actually learnt to walk on floor joists as there were no floorboards down when I started to toddle.

For my 12th birthday present, I wanted to give my bedroom a makeover. I picked a colour scheme (navy blue), chose some bed linen, and my mum helped me to make new curtains and reupholster an old sofa bed. I felt so grown up, and I think from that moment on I was hooked on the idea of making a space my own.

I got interested in journalism after a work experience placement when I was 14 or 15 at a film magazine. It seemed fun, exciting, energetic, creative. From then on, I knew it was what I wanted to do, but I had no idea what area of journalism to head into until, by complete chance, I scored a work experience placement after university at a successful interiors magazine in London. Suddenly it all fell into place, and I recognised that interior design really was my passion, and that I could actually combine that passion with a career as a journalist. I think before that point, I didn’t really even know that there were interiors magazines out there.

Over twelve years later I still love anything home-related just as much as I ever did. An ideal day for me would be pottering around the house, working on some mini styling project, or rearranging the furniture for a bit of a change. Now I have a young family (my twins are nearing four years old), my pottering opportunities are rather limited, but when we relocated from London to leafy Berkshire a couple of years ago, I had a house that needed lots of work, and I saw an opportunity to start a blog about the project, as well as offer advice and inspiration along the way.

Growing Spaces wasn’t my first blog – I’ve been writing a blog about family life with the twins since 2010 – but it was my opportunity to start an interiors blog that was firmly focused on ideas that work in a family home, and that would address the challenges of family living and how to adapt your home and style to accommodate young children.

I’m still working as a freelance interiors journalist, so unfortunately I don’t get to blog as often as I’d like – one of my major frustrations is that the blog has to go at the bottom of the priority list, and I don’t have time to turn even half of my ideas into blog posts. The list of projects, how-tos and things I love that I want to blog about keeps growing longer, but the great thing about interiors is that a lot of these ideas won’t date.

My blog isn’t based on the latest trends in homeware, or the hottest home buys out there right to snap up right now. As well as offering some inspiration through our own renovation project, posts on Growing Spaces are more about home styling, or sharing clever storage ideas or a how to on a quick and simple decorating project.

There are a lot of amazing interiors blogs full of stunning photography that I love to read, but I hope my own blog offers something a bit more accessible and real – a lot of my readers have come to Growing Spaces from my parenting blog, so family-friendly ideas is really want I want to deliver.

My top three blogging tips would be:

1. Be passionate about what your blog’s about. If you don’t find your subject matter interesting, no-one else will either!

2, Make a note of any blog post ideas as soon as they come to you. I scribble things down on bits of paper, type them into Evernote on my phone or ipad, or send myself an email.

3. Be patient with your posts. I’m one of the most impatient people I know and once I’ve written something I want to click ‘publish’ straight away. But often I’ll write a few posts in the space of a few days, but then I won’t be able to blog again for a couple of weeks, so I schedule some of those posts to fill the gap.

Heather Young is a homes-obsessed interiors journalist and blogger. To find out more visit www.growingspaces.net.

Blogging into the great unknown by Bangers & Mash

When people ask me why I write a food blog, I never really know what to say. It’s a strange hobby really. It takes up an increasingly large chunk of my spare time and I make no money from it - yet. Although I do sometimes receive products to review, which is always rather nice.

I’m not what you’d describe as a natural cook. I only really started cooking properly when we had children and I was forced to pull my act together. Yet these days I frequently find myself obsessing about what new meals I can try out to feature on the blog, while it’s commonplace for my family to be waiting at the table while I snap “just one more!” photograph of a dish.

I’m always amazed whenever people ‘out there’ actually read my posts, cook my food and write such lovely comments. But they do. And I love it. That is, I suppose, why I keep doing it.

Just a couple of years ago, I’d have thought you were bonkers if you told me that, in the not-too-distant future, I’d be a fully signed up member of the blogging fraternity.

It all started when I realised I had to get my head around social media. I work as a freelance PR consultant and it dawned on me I was becoming a bit a dinosaur when it came to online communications. As I saw more and more of my PR peers throwing themselves headlong into social media, I decided I must do the same or get left behind.

Initially blogging provided me with content to experiment with. Blogging wasn’t the end in itself. You can’t tweet or post to Facebook without content. But what could I blog about?

One weekend I was telling a good friend how I’d started a weekly meal plan to keep our costs down. She was intrigued by the fact we were eating a much more varied, healthy and tasty diet as a result and I realised that here was the perfect material for a blog.

Normally when I start something new I prepare. I plan. I research. But not with the Bangers & Mash blog. Publishing my first post was like stepping out into a great, unknown blogosphere.

Unlike starting a new PR campaign, I really had no notion of my ‘target’ audience or my competitors. I simply knew what I wanted to write about and that I’d write in my own voice. If people liked it they could read it and follow me, and if they didn’t, well they could go elsewhere.

But I seem to have found an audience for Bangers & Mash. It’s not a big audience but it’s growing steadily. They’re people who, like me, want to cook simple family food which is still a little bit adventurous; want meals that don’t cost a fortune but still rely on good quality, seasonal ingredients.

Perhaps I was a little naive at first but it seems to have worked for me. I didn’t read a single food blog before I started out. Looking back, I remember being surprised to discover there were so many out there. Maybe if I’d known beforehand, I wouldn’t have started. However, I quickly discovered these other bloggers aren’t competitors. Instead I find myself part of an incredibly supportive community.

Vanesther lives in Somerset with her husband and two young daughters, where she tries to live the good life but yearns occasionally for the mayhem and bright lights of the city. You can find Vanesther’s blog Bangers & Mash at bangermashchat.wordpress.com and follow her on Twitter at @BangerMashChat.

How blogging enriched my life by Tammy Ryan

At the end of December 2011 I was depressed. Not in a clinical sense, just in a “is this all there is to life?” kind of way. I had just had my third miscarriage, and I was miserable.

At the time I was working in the office/sickbay at a local primary school, five days a week, eight hours a day. I enjoyed my job, (as much as you can enjoy plugging a child’s nosebleed) but I was lacking in some other areas of my life, namely almost everything else. At nights I would come home from work, cook tea, watch TV mindlessly for a few hours, eat more ice cream than I probably should, drink more wine than I definitely should, then go to bed, only to repeat it all over again the next day.

My weekends were even less exciting. Growing up my mother taught me by example that weekends should be set aside for cleaning. She would devote whole days to the pursuit, and so without even realising there were alternatives, I grew up and did the same. All Saturday I would wash/polish/vaccum/dust/mop/fold and wipe until finally, Saturday night, I could collapse on to the couch with a glass of red and smile with satisfaction at the sparkling cleanliness all around me.

This satisfaction would last right up until the next day, when my husband would eat his breakfast in front of the TV and drop crumbs all over the mat, then he would mow the lawns and traipse grass and other crap right across my pristine floors with his work boots. And after that, just in case I wasn’t already seething enough, he would shower and use his dirty towel to wipe the steam off my freshly polished mirror, leaving a dirty big fluffy smear right across its face. The bastard.

Come Sunday night, my clean house would be looking a little more jaded, a little less like a show home and more like an ordinary home again. Sigh.

So January 2012 rolled around and I decided I needed to stop these kinds of time wasting activities (i.e. cleaning), stop focusing on my fertility issues and find myself a project. By divine intervention (or maybe I just glanced at the bookshelf as I was walking past) I remembered a book I had purchased the year before but never read, ‘The Wonderful Weekend Book’ by Elspeth Thompson. The blurb on the back promised the book was packed with ideas that would help you ‘restore the balance to your life, reconnect you to the seasons and other people and – quite literally – not cost you the earth.’ This sounded right up my alley.

Now I am the first to admit that I am, ahem, technically not very good with computers and the like. In fact, my laptop has had to be repaired several times due to unfortunate incidents such as ‘liquid on the keyboard’, (snorting coffee out my nose while reading something funny on Facebook) and a stuck { key because I may or may not have bashed the keyboard out of frustration one too many times. (Disclaimer – am not actually admitting to any such thing here as my husband may read this. As far as he is concerned the fat cat sat on it, and that’s the story I’m sticking with, whether it sounds like a Dr Seuss excuse or not). My husband is also the proud owner of a very flash mobile phone whereas I am only allowed a great big brick of a thing because I have a tendency to drop it. Frequently. Within the first thirty seconds of purchasing the bloody thing in fact.

However, I mused, the whole point was to try something new and different, so technology challenged or not I headed to the first blogging website I could find and I made myself a blog. Which was crap. Really. So I deleted it and went to Wordpress instead. I am still, a year and a bit later, figuring out all the cool things I can do with Wordpress, mainly through trial and error – cue much hysteria when I occasionally do something I smugly think is clever and five seconds later it appears I have deleted the whole damn lot. Luckily hubby is a deft hand with all things technical and has thus far managed to fix or undo everything I’ve done. Phew.

The blog I created is called ‘The Year of Wonderful Weekends – reclaiming life’s simple pleasures.’ The aim was to do a new activity from the book every weekend and then blog about the experience. And I did this diligently for the first few months, including things far (like far, far) outside my comfort zone such as Sleeping Under the Stars on a farm, and a walk to hear the dawn chorus of the Kakapo birds, (which, funnily enough was at dawn, a previously unseen time of day). I made jam out of (stolen) rose petals, went beachcombing and fishing, had picnics at the lake with my family, explored the garden and its inhabitants with a magnifying glass, painted a painting, decluttered my bathroom cabinets and mailed New Zealand postcards to some lovely blog followers scattered about the world. And that was only in the first two months.

I became enthused about my weekends again. While I’d always looked forward to them, I now really looked forward to them, excited to try something new and to share it with people afterwards. I enjoyed making connections with people from other countries, letting them into my life and gaining glimpses into their worlds as well. I was nominated for Inspiring Blogger awards (and while let’s face it, who hasn’t been at one point or other, it was still a buzz for me to know that people were enjoying my blog).

Then I found out I was pregnant again, and while I was too scared to do any activity that could, in my mind at least, cause another miscarriage, I was also determined to stick with the blog. So I just did some of the tamer activities from the book, like mushroom hunting. Seriously. With weapons and everything. OK not really weapons as such…more like…oh just read the blog will you.

The book blurb was right. Over the course of the year I really did reclaim some of life’s simple pleasures; some I’d never even known existed. Like baking my own bread, (it’s so easy!)  and making time for the people you love. And all of it is recorded forever (or at least until machines take over the world) on the internet, complete with photos. I can go back through the archives on my blog anytime I want and remember the fun times I had, and the not so fun, like when I slept under the stars and my face and hands got eaten alive by mosquito’s and I puffed up and looked like I had gone ten rounds with Rocky in the ring. Really attractive. Not. Or when the dog got badly constipated and people at the local park thought we were bonkers for clapping every time she did her, you know, business.

Throughout the year I also shared updates of my baby bump and pregnancy news with my followers and enjoyed their well wishes, and at the end of October our daughter Holly arrived safely into this world. And even though she now consumes my every waking hour (also the ones traditionally known as ‘sleepy time’ like 1.00am, 3.00am and 5.00am - yawn) my year of wonderful weekends taught me that you must have balance in your life in order to be happy. So I make sure that I have still have a little time to myself occasionally to do something that recharges my soul. I’m much happier these days, and more in tune with the world around us. I stop and admire the flowers, feel the sun on my face, and smell the seasons in the air. When Holly is older I look forward to sharing some of the activities I experienced during that year with her.

This year I am still trying to add to the blog, although sadly not every weekend due to time constraints (also known as the baby), and I have a brand spanking new blog about my experiences in self publishing. Yep - I’ve fulfilled a dream and I’ve written and published a book ‘Charlie and Pearl’ available to purchase now on Amazon (please do).

My new blog, charlieandpearl.wordpress.com (known online as ‘Help me – Help Holly’) chronicles my writing/publishing highs and lows, and my efforts to help support Holly and my family through the odd sale of the book. I’d love to see you there!

How blogging and social media drive my business by Ravi Jay

One of the challenges anyone aspiring to run a lean startup is acquiring the ability to pose and answer two questions when faced with a business or technical requirement.

They are:
1. Is it really necessary?
2. At what cost?

In my case, I had to achieve three business objectives:

1. Give customers a chance to see myMzone's website and product  listings online.
2. Encourage them to click through and come to the listing page.
3. Create the best possible environment where a sale can occur.

I considered the requirements carefully and realised that the answers to the lean startup questions were 'yes' and 'minimal'. Challenging, yes?

Time is money - I agree. For sake of argument, I am only considering the amount of money spent - in pounds, pennies and shillings as 'cost'. But stay with me, it gets better.

What is the best way to attract customers to your website without spending money upfront? By the way, I can already feel the PPC experts cringing in their chairs mumbling that it does not cost anything to display an ad; you only pay when a customer clicks through. I agree with them and encourage readers to try PPC campaigns if you have a budget. Don't get me wrong; I had a budget. Unfortunately, it was £0.

So, what did I do on myMzone? I did 4 things.

1. Set up with a kickAss website (take a look at it, you'll like it ;) ).
2. More importantly, I built the website search engine friendly and made pages optimised for keywords that we wanted to target.
3. Just like all eCommerce websites, we had to face challenges around shallow content. So, to balance that out, I set up a blogging platform and leveraged the London Ambassador program to create an engaging environment for enthusiastic bloggers to submit content to the blog. This really strengthened the content on the domain and improved the domain rank, page rank for pages that we targetted. Additionally, it allowed to use rich content pages of the blog to bring browsers from the internet (landing on a blog post) and then give them an opportunity to click through to become visitors on myMzone increasing chances of them becomes shoppers and myMzone customers.
4. We paid equal attention to primary social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. The trick was to play to our strengths - the availability of quality multi-media collateral which had a better uptake from customers on Pinterest (who doesn't love good looking images?). Yes, we played to our core strengths. Additionally, we established a presence on Instagram and Tumblr.Take a look at our social media platforms and feel free to give me your take on how things are run.

By the way, I cannot stress this enough. Blogging and social media platforms are tools that you can use to announce you presence to your customers. Clearly, it increases your reach in the online world; allows you to reach customers in Sweden, Japan, US, Australia and tap into their social circle giving yourself a chance to get the word out there with the ripple effect. SEO and Social media acumen remain the most cost effective means to date but it is up to you to create and maintain a marketing environment within your website to facilitate sales.

To summarise, blog content and social media efforts are responsible for about 54% of myMzone traffic and account for about 70% of the sales. This has given us an opportunity to use the profits for paid marketing. Yes, we are still in the boot-strapping mode but it will not be long before we add paid marketing portfolio to our blogging and social media efforts.

Ravi Jay is one of the co-founders of myMzone.com, a platform where small businesses trading in local markets can sell their wares online. The website brings together hundreds of merchants from local markets in London like Camden Town, Portobello, Brick Lane, Greenwich and is soon listing sellers from other parts of UK. The website offers shoppers a chance to place an order for a listed item, use myMzone services (free) to look an unlisted item from the market or compare products from different merchants. There are segments for daily deals and offers from the markets on the website. You can follow Ravi on Twitter @mymzoneltd

Harry Potter and The Freelance Bloggart... By Jamie Williams

Harry Potter is nothing short of spiritual genius. Its insights into the themes of good and evil, choosing the right path over the easiest, and courage in one’s convictions have served me beautifully since I read the books nearly ten years ago. They have provided me with the answer to many of life’s questions and I have grown to see Professor Dumbledore as a total spiritual guru.

It was on Christmas Day 2012 when J.K. Rowling’s masterpiece offered me one of its most valuable pearls of wisdom. I was sitting with a friend watching The Prisoner of Azkaban for probably the millionth time when it came to the scene where Professor Lupin introduces Harry and his classmates to the boggart: a shape-shifting creature that takes on the form of its viewer's worst fear.

In the scene, the class is presented with a large wardrobe with something rattling inside it. One by one, each student approaches the wardrobe, opening its doors allowing the boggart to fly out and immediately manifest into whatever terrifies them most. I watched this scene unfold with a strange curiosity and resonance. Something in this situation seemed familiar to me.

I have recently decided to go freelance. For ages I have I longed for the freedom of self employment; being able to choose my own hours, be my own boss and work wherever I want; amazing benefits that have compelled me to finally taken the leap. Unfortunately however, this freedom has also come at a cost.

The freelance life lies at the extreme end of uncertainty. Financial insecurity, lone working and inconsistent employment are all pitfalls of self employment that can leave the average freelancer quaking with fear, projecting into a future of catastrophe and I am no exception to this.

My head constantly presents me with highly ‘sensible’ and believable reasons why I should ignore my dreams and stay ‘safe’. I am flooded with worst case scenarios that can leave me trembling with anxiety; phantoms that float around my mind until I am wracked with insecurity and doubt. It was then that I had a cosmic realisation that hit me like an Expelliarmus curse.

My head is a wardrobe with a boggart living in it.

Rattling away, it serves as a constant distraction to reality and sanity. Whenever I choose to open its doors, out it flies presenting itself as whatever I am most afraid of that day. Every morning, as soon as I open my eyes, there it is, hovering over me in the shape of whatever is freaking me out that day.

In the story, the boggart is defeated with laughter. Using the Riddikulus charm, it is forced to assume a shape that the spell caster will find comical. I think this idea is revolutionary.  Essentially, fear and insecurity are made up illusions that exist only in my mind. They have only the power I give them and I have a choice as to how much I choose to fan their flames.

In light of this, I have been practicing Harry’s strategy with the boggart in my own head. Every time I find myself in a freelance panic, I just take out my imaginary wand, summon up a strong and determined mind and shout Riddikulus. I have to say I feel a bit ridiculous doing this, but it seems to work. It calms me down and I end up laughing at myself which dispels the fear immediately. If this is what I have to do to have a serene life around self employment then so be it.

As a freelancer I have a dream and I am not going to let anything stand in the way of that dream. Worries around the potential success of my business and fear of the unknown are just crazy manifestations of the fear boggart in my head and it’s high time they buggered off. For all freelancers out there battling their own fears and insecurities I say this for you: Get thee behind me boggart and Riddikulus to you all. I have a vision to step into and not a moment to lose.

Jamie Williams is a professional copywriter and blogger. His blog resides at www.iamjamiewilliams.com

Why Bloggers Rule the Roost - our latest blog for The Huffington Post UK

In The Times' Saturday magazine last weekend, new fashion editor, Laura Craik squeezed into a designer dress, climbed into a pair of towering high heels and took centre stage in her own feature. These days, she said, fashion editors don't have much choice but to get in front of the camera and model the products themselves and this is thanks largely to fashion bloggers, who, "without a budget, created their own visual content" and made their blogs "all the more compelling for it."

Editors and traditional publishing outlets have been trying to harness the power of the blog for a while now - by forcing their writers to step into the limelight, by launching their own blogs and by inviting bloggers to write for them - but brands too are actively courting bloggers in their attempt to extend and add value to their publicity.

To read the full blog, visit The Huffington Post. And do feel free to share the article on your social media pages, or use the comments section to give your own views on the subject.

All Voices Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others

Technology has given each of us the opportunity to share our thoughts and feelings with a potential audience of millions, without the inconvenience of having to convince publishers or editors of the worth of our words. Our wise and witty screeds may be ignored, but at least we are expressing ourselves. Isn’t getting into our own grove what it has all come down to online? Mid flickr and blog, I will vodcast my barbaric yawp across the YouTubes of the world.

Whether on blog or social networking page, by user-generated text or image, our view, our take, our opinion is what moves us. Text in. Tweet. Phone in. Email. What do you think? Tell us your story. It may be that you tried a new recipe for shepherd’s pie for dinner last night that involved actual shepherds, or that you recently escaped, under gunfire, from a violent corner of the Maghreb. No matter. Each tale is equal, each teller equally equipped with the means to tell it.

What a load of Simon Cowell. Being witness to a drama doesn’t necessarily mean that we possess an ability to stage it. We each have a story to tell, of course, but it doesn’t automatically follow that we have an ability to tell it. Don’t get stuck with my grandmother whatever you do.

The idea of collective creative parity online is a romantic one, which fools us into believing that we are being listened to, that we matter now more than we ever have before. But the world remains a place in which some have and some have not, some will and some won’t, some can and some can’t. It is not flat, whatever Thomas Friedman and other professional exaggerators would have us believe. We are babbling away like never before, but some voices are more equal than others. The authorities, social, political, economic and cultural, still exist, and these authorities are being influenced by the new priestly caste, the evangelists for the democratic possibilities of technology. Power isn't being challenged. It is simply learning to pretend that it is just like you.