Blogger, Wife, Mother, Author, and Founder at Beyond Your Blog; helping bloggers get published on sites beyond their personal blogs.
What led you to start working in digital/media publishing?
I started a blog in 2013 and quickly realized that in order to reach a wider audience my strategy needed to include publishing my writing on websites and ezines beyond my blog. This lead me to create the site Beyond Your Blog in 2014, which helps bloggers find writing opportunities outside of their personal blogs through interviews with editors, tips and tricks posts, inspirational articles, and writing opportunity announcements.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Beyond Your Blog is a part-time job for me, so while I spend a few hours during the day responding to email and managing social media, my schedule varies every day. I have kids, so in the summer I have a lot less time to work. I try to squeeze in the bulk of my work after they go to bed at night or on the weekends when my husband is watching them. Once school starts again I will have more time to spend during the day on things like coordinating Q&As with editors, publishing new content, and working on offerings like me ecourse and ebook.
What’s your work setup look like?
I love spreadsheets for my to-do list and keeping track of most things. I back it up using OneDrive. Other tools I use all the time are ProWritingAid for editing, PicMonkey and StockUnlimited for images, and HootSuite for social media scheduling. I have just started using a tool called RecurPost to create libraries of social media posts that can cycle through regularly to make the most of older content. My husband and I use Trello to collaborate on projects, which has been a good place to track things.
What do you do or go to get inspired?
I find that working anywhere outside of the house gets my creativity going — coffee shops or somewhere with lots of noise and people work best! Taking shorts breaks of a few days off also gets my creativity going.
What’s your favorite piece of writing or quote?
probably can’t pick only one, but something I share often for inspiration is a piece Marta Parlatore write for my site called 10 Questions To Determine Your Blog’s Success – Despite What The Numbers Say. A quote I love is “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” — Mark Twain.
What is the passionate problem you are tackling at the moment?
I took the summer off from publishing new content on Beyond Your Blog to focus on writing an ebook, creating a new newsletter offering and updating my ecourse. I wanted to provide more options to readers who want to learn more about publishing their writing, and I wanted to make sure to offer different price points so I don’t exclude anyone. I have followers who are just starting to write and get published and those who have been doing it for much longer than I have, so I am working on options to provide value to writers at various experience levels.
Is there a product, solution or tool that makes you think it is a good design for your digital publishing efforts?
I am currently loving Vellum for creating my ebook. It allows you to import a Word document and does all the heavy lifting of formatting and style consistency. You can edit inside the tool and see how it will look on various devices.
Any advice for ambitious digital publishing and media professionals just starting out?
Yes! I know a lot of people who struggle simply because they want the perfect plan and timing in order to get started. Don’t wait. Jump in and do something even if it is small and doesn’t wait for the perfect time because it will never come. You can always tweak and change things, but creating them (whether a website, service offerings products etc.) is the hardest part for a lot of us.
