A lifestyle blog is a blog where you write about what you are experiencing in your life. It can be very broad or focused on a single aspect of your life. Anyone can start a blog but few can make it a successful blog. Malika Bowling is one of those few people who have created a lifestyle blog focusing on food and travel. I chat with her on how she does it.
Malika Bowling is a digital marketer and the Editor of Roamilicious. She’s the author of Culinary Atlanta: Guide to the Best Restaurants, Markets, Breweries and More! and Food Blogging 101. She has been featured on HGTV, Chowhound, Playboy, TravelGirl and has been a contributing writer to USA Today. Malika has also served as a judge at various culinary competitions and food festivals, including Taste of Atlanta. She is also co-founder of the Association of Bloggers.
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Website: https://roamilicious.com/
Association of Bloggers: https://associationofbloggers.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Roamilicious/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Roamilicious
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MalikaBowling
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Roamilicious
Malika is a published author, runs a lifestyle blog, and the co-founder for the Association of Bloggers. We talked about what it takes to create and run a food, travel, and lifestyle blog. Her insight into the world of media management, blogging, and PR is very impressive and it shows in how she manages her blogs.
When you’re starting your blog, focus on the “WHAT” rather than the “HOW”. Shut down that ‘analysis paralysis’ …
Here are a few points of what we talked about:
- Malika started about 10 years ago after being laid off from her job in marketing. From there, she started writing a blog.
- She started out as “date nights” and slowly morphed into reviews and photos and a lifestyle blog
- She wanted to help manage others social media and newsletters and evolved into blogging as a business
- Social media is primarily used to drive traffic to her blogs. From there, she get clients, companies, brands, etc to partner with her
- Recently changed to include travel about a year ago. Immediate feedback from locations who wanted to partner with her
- Her books!
- You grow your equipment with your business, flowers, etc
- Include multiple multi-media content into your blog
- Analytics to test and respond
- Instagram TV (IG TV) strategy for your brand. Vertical for IG TV and landscape for YouTube
- Business vs Hobby
- Market yourself. You have to put in that effort
- If people are included in post, use back-links, mention in post, and send a request to
- Media kit (canva.com for inspiration or resources)
- Consistency
- Advertisements, Affiliates, and Traffic help you build your revenues
- Influence Network helps bring traffic to you and partner with brands (https://associationofbloggers.com/)
- PERFECT turnkey solution to match influencers with brands
- ‘Exposure Bucks’
- Association of Bloggers
- Any level of bloggers can join the association
- You are now part of a network that will partner you with brands
- Exclusive resources for bloggers include help building a profile, private support group, and coaching sessions
- Is this a business or a hobby? If you want a business, treat it like a business!!
- If you’re looking to make money, you need to invest time, energy, and money into your blog
- You will grow there where you need to start spending money in investing in yourself
- Planning and scheduling is important!
- Be consistent with your lifestyle blog content and release!
- There is a lot of work when it comes to growing and building a blog. Partner up with other blogs and people to get help.
- Work on documenting your processes. You will grow and having things written down will be your blueprint on how to run your business
- Helps you focus on your lifestyle blog rather than getting down in the weeds
- Tools Malika uses
- SEM Rush – Used for Keyword advanced research and related keywords ($100/month)
- Keywords Everywhere – Basic keyword research (Chrome extension)
- Google Trends – Helps you find trends with relational keywords
- Yoast SEO – WordPress blog audit for SEO (Free)
- Content with Accessibility – 2 birds with one stone that can help with SEO tactics
- Use analytics to help guide you
- Social Media Tools:
- Hootsuite – Schedule you social media posts
- Missing Lettrs – Pulls in content, images, and information from your existing post and creates a drip campaign on social media
- Post Planner – Used for topic research and find content
- IfThisThenThat – Automate your life!
- Schedules on posting content should be consistent, but you don’t have to always hit exact dates
- Be mindful of the content that you create and use. You’re content is a reflection of you and your work
- Work on your craft and don’t be afraid to approach brands you want to work with
- Weave the product into a story revolving around you
- Grow and build your network by interacting and being involved
- Focus on the social media accounts that you are more comfortable with
- People want to know what is behind the blog – People want buy from a person and not a company
- Start a newsletter and use free giveaways to entice signups – Direct funnel to your audience
- Go to events and build connections
- Meetup.com to find like-minded people and groups
- Common mistakes when blogging
- Crafting your message
- Favorite places to visit (so far)
- Income from blogging?
- Any other topic you’d like to talk about
Quick Picks
Malika
- SnapSeed.com app lets you edit images on your phone to give your images a polished look
- Perspective change options, update color scale, make colors pop!
Marion
- Goodreads.com Book Challenge
- Goodreads is a digital library of what you’ve read or want to read. Get recommendations from other people and can connect to your Amazon.com and Audible.com accounts