Tag Archives: blogger

Creating a Manual Pinning Strategy on Pinterest

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Disclosure: some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission should you click through and make a purchase.

One of my big blogging regrets is the number of years that I avoided using Pinterest to help bring referrals to my posts. Pinterest is my favourite part of my daily checklist and is now the primary resource of traffic referrals, bringing in tens of thousands of views with minimal effort. I’ve even been able to expand this further and incorporate it into my Social Media Management Services – growing and developing the Pinterest accounts of others.

This is nothing in comparison to Pinterest Queen Elena Peters, who has harnessed the power of Pinterest to gain over 100,000 views a month, grow her followers in her first year alone on Pinterest from 0 to 12,000 (she now has over 23,000) and increasing her impressions to almost 3 million a month. In her first year she was able to reach one million total views on her blog and quit her job to blog full-time, continuing to earn a steady income from ads due to the high volume of traffic that Pinterest sends her every single month!

I’ve learned a lot from both her blog and in discussions with her about what she does, and now she can help you too! Continue reading →

Boost Your Blog or Products with my Advertising, Consultation and Photography Services!

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Social Media Management Services

Want to boost your blog, engagement, subscribers and stats? Do you need beautiful images to enhance your blog posts, or professional photographs of your recipes or products?

I offer lots of different opportunities for fellow bloggers, authors and business owners to gain extra promotion.

  • Social Media Management – Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook
  • Blog of the Day opportunities
  • Hour Blog Consultation Slots
  • Canva images for your blog posts – created for any area of social media
  • Food, Product and Flat Lay Photography

Stats

At the time of publishing, Suzie Speaks has received over 1,200,000 views. Here are my readership stats:

  • WordPress: 11,000 +
  • Twitter: 8,900
  • Facebook: 800 +
  • Pinterest: 10,300 +

Of all of the blogging regrets that I have, my lack of knowledge when developing my blog and hesitation when setting up my social media accounts are the biggest. Why? Continue reading →

How Blogging Has Changed My Life

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By 2014, I don’t feel arrogant by stating that I had achieved every goal that I had set myself. I had a well-paid job, a home, a relationship, good friends and three cats that had been with me for years. From an outsider’s perspective, things seemed set.

However, I was struggling both physically and mentally. I couldn’t cope with my workload, my family relationships were strained (and in some cases, non-existent), The Bloke had lost both his father and best friend to cancer within five months of each other, my beloved cat died, we had moved house twice in six months because we were duped by a charlatan landlady and I had been hospitalised for nearly a week after ignoring a kidney infection. I was comfort eating to try and make myself feel better, and I was bloated, lethargic and had gained even more weight than I had over the previous few years. I didn’t want to go anywhere, do anything or see anyone. I existed from day to day, praying for the weekends and the holidays.

I had started the blog the year before. Things had been tough, and as I had taken to writing angry words in notebook after notebook, only to then store them in a cupboard afterwards, The Bloke suggested that I start writing online. Admittedly, I knew nothing about blogging, but within the week of creating my very first account I was hooked, churning out post after post of nonsensical rubbish that had been floating around my mind for a long time (most of which I have now deleted). I gained new followers, and started to build a community. I was extremely paranoid about people within my real life discovering what I was writing, so I kept information about myself to a minimum, but I started to feel safe in the anonymity that the computer screen provided, and enjoyed the feedback and interaction that I received from people taking the time to leave comments on my posts. Continue reading →

Half. A Million. Views.

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Today I got my 500,000th view. Holy sh*tballs.

I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you for all the support I have received since I started Suzie Speaks. It’s truly been a life-changing project and (yes, I’ll say it again) has been the best form of therapy I’ve ever had. I’ve been lucky enough to meet new people from all over the world, some who I now consider to be friends, it’s allowed me the chance to experience things I never thought possible, and better still, it’s given me the confidence to alter the areas of my life that were desperately bringing me down.

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Thank you for helping me through the journey, and for sharing yours with me.

Here’s to the next half million!

You can also find me on Twitter and Tumblr @suzie81blog, and don’t forget to check out my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/suzie81speaks, my Pinterest page http://www.pinterest.com/suzie81speaks and my Instagram page http://www.instagram.com/suzie81speaks.

Blog of The Day: Meet Nancy Roman!

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Meet Nancy Roman! 

Nancy is a published author, blogger and all-round glamorous lady. Her blog, ‘Not Quite Old’ is a new-found favourite of mine and I have enjoyed getting to know Nancy through her witty and beautifully written observations on her life and those around her. She’s hilarious, and her posts have had me in stitches!

Her ‘About’ page is short and succinct:

I’m Nancy Roman.

I’m sixty-four, and I’m looking (sometimes desperately) for that sweet balance between growing old gracefully and staying as young as possible.

An English Major with an M.B.A., I’m a financial executive who likes my day job. I live in Connecticut with my husband and several well-nourished cats.

My novel, JUST WHAT I ALWAYS WANTED, is available on Amazon.

 

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Clearly, just looking at her picture alone, Nancy has obviously discovered the secret to eternal youth as I think she looks fantastic! She started blogging at 60, she has recently celebrated her birthday and every year shares the same selfie, both for affirmation and defiance against Mother Nature. I like that – she’s a self-assured and confident woman with a great sense of humour and I think you’ll absolutely love her blog!

Want to find out more? You can find her blog by clicking on this link:

Tweet with Nancy @NancyERoman

Find her on Facebook here: 

Nancy has recently published her first Novel, ‘Just What I Always Wanted,’ which you can find on Amazon here:  

Don’t forget that this is my week of #bloglove and I’d love you to share the love and for you all to check out her blog – I’ll be reblogging one of her posts later in the day too and I’m sure you’ll find it as great as I do!

 

Want to have to opportunity to be featured as ‘Blog of The Day’  to over 10,000 followers at Suzie81 Speaks? For a selection of offers and pricing, email me at suzie81blog@hotmail.co.uk

 

Santa Hats and a Sober Tree

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imageI think I enjoy the build up to the festive season more than the actual day itself. The German Market arrives in the city centre, encouraging us to consume enormous sausages (!!),  hot gluhwein, crepes and pofferjies covered in Nutella, and endless craft based crap that we didn’t realise that we wanted until we saw it. Carols and festive songs appear in all the stores and on every television advert. I get to buy presents for everyone and celebrate with my favourite people. Work finishes for a few weeks. I love it. I love the excitement, the decorations that appear, the atmosphere. Aside from the occasional hot, sunny days that the UK receives every summer, this is absolutely my favourite time of year.

I decided to join in the festive spirit and decorate our tree. The Bloke and I bought a fake one (due to the fact that the cats would attempt to eat a real one) about five years ago from Argos, and each year we diligently take it out of it’s box and joke about the fact that it looks drunk. He set it up and put the lights on it while I was away at my mother’s house ready for my return on Sunday, but as I was feeling rough I didn’t tackle it until yesterday evening. Amidst the box of random decorations that we have collected over the years I discovered something that would provide me with hours of entertainment…

I found the Santa hats.

Two years ago I purchased three small Santa hats for the cats, and I consider the fact that I was able to get a photograph of all three of them sitting together and wearing them to be one of my greatest achievements of that year. Sadly, I lost one of the cats earlier in the year at the age of nineteen, so I decided that The Bloke needed to take her place instead (with an adult sized one, of course – we wouldn’t want him looking stupid, would we?). On went the hats, and out came the camera.

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All of them were less than impressed, particularly Daisy when I decided to double my fun.

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I eventually stopped laughing, The Bloke stopped rolling his eyes and I got my decorating on. I tried to spend a little more time on it than in previous years, attempting to space them all equally, colour coordinating etc, and after a few catastrophes with bits of tinsel and standing on a few stray decorations that had fallen on the floor, I stepped back to admire my masterpiece.

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“What do you think?” I asked The Bloke. He turned his head to one side.

“Yup.”

Cheers for that dear. Upon closer inspection, it actually wasn’t too bad – for once my little tree seemed to be… Sober!

Win!

 

What about you guys? Have you got any silly traditions within your family during the holiday season?

You can also find my on Twitter and Tumblr @suzie81blog and don’t forget to check out my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/suzie81speaks

 

Professional or Hobbyist?

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A few years ago, during a night out, I was introduced to a man in his early twenties that was the school acquaintance of a friend. During the general polite conversation that followed I asked him what he did for a living, to which he replied, “I’m a photographer.” I immediately found the subject interesting (I love photography) and started asking him lots of questions – what his main points of interest were, who he worked for, how he got into it – and after a few minutes it became evident that he wasn’t a photographer at all. In truth, he was a barman with a good camera who liked taking photographs. I was a little confused (and slightly insulted) by the fact that this man had ‘bent the truth’ in an attempt to appear more successful or creative – I’ve done plenty of bar work over the years and in my experience it is a physically and mentally exhausting job that requires lots of patience, particularly when dealing with drunken, aggressive members of the general public. It’s a shame that he felt that he had to hide a profession that he should have been very proud of. Continue reading →