Sophie Mitchell

I write blog posts about everything and anything, whatever interests me at that moment — career topics, social-media algorithms, beauty, etc. I had just finished my degree in marketing in DIT, in 2016, when I started my blog. I thought it would be a good addition to my CV.

I work freelance at the moment. I am really passionate about my career, and I enjoy working in an office with people, working on projects. I feel I am quite young, and I have so much more to learn. I don’t want to go out on my own until I have few more years under my belt. I think the best way to learn in marketing is with other people.

In my first job out of college, I learned coding, how to build a website and social-media marketing.

I thought it would be good to have extra experience in the area I’m interested in, and it may help me to get a job in that field.

I don’t get too many paid blog posts. There are agencies who contact me with a client and they will give me the brief. I always ask to try the product before agreeing to talk about it. And I say no to brands way more than I say yes, because I get a lot of emails about random things that I have no interest in, and my readers will know I have no interest in them.

I have to think of a way to integrate the product into what I would be doing anyway, so it has to make sense. I would usually go back to them with an idea or a plan. They might like it or they might not. I need to have a lot of say in the post.

At the moment, I am going steady and continuing the way I am. I don’t want it to be a business, it has to be very authentic and very me. I feel sometimes that the bigger you get as a blogger, the lower your engagement [with followers]. I am happy to be a micro-blogger. I think that when the people that read your stuff are really engaged, they will come back. I would talk to a lot of my readers on different types of social media, like Instagram.

I love and hate Instagram. I think there have been a lot of changes that I’m unsure about for my type of blog. I think Facebook, which owns Instagram, has created the new changes on Instagram to help the bigger bloggers with loads of followers. It’s harder for the people who are growing [their followers]. They favour the people with more followers, because the advertisers will go for the bigger people. I miss the time when it was not all about advertisements.

I think it’s important to be unique in some way and stand out. I think the best strategic way to go about a blog is to create content that actually gives something back and makes the readers feel like they have come away having learned something.

I have strong views on accounts such as Bloggers Unveiled [a now-defunct anonymous Instagram account that purported to ‘call out’ bloggers and influencers it alleged were posting misleading or false posts]. I think it’s because I work in the industry anyway, and a lot of the stuff [Bloggers Unveiled highlighted] I already knew. I knew about particular people who used Photoshop and editing, so I never followed those people. Nothing was ‘unveiled’ to me. A lot of bloggers have a lot to learn, yet I do sympathise with them to some extent. Traditional marketing, such as ads and billboards, have Photoshop and editing. It isn’t new, it has always been there, but I think because bloggers are more relatable than a model in an ad, people get more annoyed at them.

A lot of people have learned things in the last year, and it’s interesting to see where people will go with this. I think the successful bloggers and influencers will be the ones who are authentic and real.