#027: How to Start a Blog with a Friend with Cara Newhart and C.J. Oldenkamp
Today I’m doing my first two-on-one interview with Cara Newhart and C.J. Oldenkamp, founders of My Haute Society, a community for bloggers, and are both bloggers in their own right. We talk about how to start a blog with a friend.
We delve into balancing a shared business and a personal blog, plus how they dealt with the growing pains of working together in a new venture.
Cara and C.J. are Instagram pros and share their Instagram strategies. You’ll want to learn this!
Resources:
Table of Contents
Transcript: How to Start a Blog with a Friend with Cara Newhart and C.J. Oldenkamp
Host:[00:00:03] Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.
Jillian: [00:00:10] Hey everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today I have two guests. I have Cara and C.J. from My Haute Society. So guys, welcome to the show.
C.J. : [00:00:25] Thank you. Thanks for having us. We’re excited to be here today.
Jillian: [00:00:29] This is my first time with two guests so this is like all new, and you guys are so much fun. So I’m super psyched you’re here and we just did a recording where I’m going to be on their podcast. And so now we’re going to do it where you guys are on mine.
Jillian: [00:00:48] So explain My Haute Society.
What is Haute Society?
Cara: [00:00:52] Yes. We are a community for bloggers and influencers. We are based online but we have a lot of in-person events and workshops and then we have a ton of different resources like guides and workbooks and E-courses to help you grow your following, build your blog, and learn how to monetize your influence.
Jillian: [00:01:12] Now you guys are both entrepreneurs, bloggers that kind of thing. Do you mind sharing your stories and then how you guys have hooked up?
C.J. : [00:01:21] Yeah, so I’ll go first. This is C.J. and I run my own personal blog, Everyday Chiffon, which is a fashion, travel, lifestyle blog and I’m just a new mama to be. I’m also really having a lot of fun kind of adding that family orientation part into my blog.
Starting a lifestyle blog with a love of fashion
C.J. : [00:01:41] But I started in corporate, right when I first moved out to Denver, right after graduating college and I was kind of the first of my friends to do so.
C.J. : [00:01:52] I used to take the random mirror selfies, and as much as I don’t love this I did that. I did random weird selfies of like my corporate outfits and everything, just because I was kind of the first of my friends to be in there and I had a girlfriend that recommended I start a blog.
C.J. : [00:02:13] Being a very non techie side, I didn’t know what a blog technically was. So I just kind of went ahead and started an Instagram page.
How a blog evolves
C.J. : [00:02:22] And I just had a separate place to kind of post my outfits and give inspiration to some of the girls that were just entering corporate, or thinking about entering corporate. And then it’s just really evolved into this blog and a brand that I’ve kind of run with.
C.J. : [00:02:37] It didn’t even start as Everyday Chiffon. It was like Professionista or something that I cringe at. But it was just something super random and a place for me to be inspirational with my fashion.
C.J. : [00:02:49] I’ve always loved fashion my entire life. It’s been something I have such funny pictures of me as a kid like dressing up multiple outfits. So it really just evolved into something that I had no idea could be a business.
C.J. : [00:03:03] I didn’t know about blogging and now I’ve really brought in like the biggest thing for me and my blog that’s made it a part of my soul and from me is my positivity post.
C.J. : [00:03:13] And that’s been like the main thing that I like to push on through everything if you look at my page I’m always smiling, I’m always laughing, and I really try and bring happiness as a mindset, it’s kind of like my blog motto.
C.J. : [00:03:26] So that’s like a big big thing for me that’s made it more like a space for me to connect with people alongside of connecting through fashion and through my travels and through everything else like lifestyle.
C.J. : [00:03:37] But that’s been like the portion that’s kind of a part of everything that I do. So that’s really taken off and really evolved and really helped me make Everyday Chiffon what it is today.
Jillian: [00:03:49] And they’re super cute photos of you pregnant.
C.J. : [00:03:52] Oh thank you, it’s been crazy getting used to these curves. But I’m having fun dressing them up.
Jillian: [00:04:00] Are you more of like tight pregnancy maternity clothes or more of the loose maternity clothes?
C.J. : [00:04:07] You know I’m finding I really thought it because I’m a big Boho kind of dresser and so I love Free People and those types of brands, and I would have thought that I would have gone towards wearing a lot of Free People but with these added curves that I’ve never had before. I’ve always been very flat up top. I’ve always been pretty tiny.
C.J. : [00:04:27] I found that some of the bigger looser clothes kind of make me feel bigger and make me feel less sexy or as into like myself as I normally and so I’ve actually leaned towards wearing tighter clothes just because I can show that like yes I’m pregnant, I’m not just eating a pizza over and over again.
Jillian: [00:04:51] Well you look adorable.
C.J. : [00:04:54] I feel lucky to be pregnant during the summer so I don’t have to wear tons of like jeans and sweaters I can just kind of be in dresses most of my life.
Jillian: [00:05:05] Kara what about you?
Cara: [00:05:07] Yeah, so I started out in corporate as well. I always kind of had a blog on the side, like it started in college with an art blog and then I did like a DIY blog, and then I kind of got into having my own online boutique so I designed different leggings and t shirts and stuff with my artwork.
Starting a blog because brands were reaching out
Cara: [00:05:27] Then I started to have brands reach out to me and offer to like put their products on my blog because I was blogging as part of my boutique. And at that point I didn’t really know what blogging was or what influencers were. So I was like, “This is weird like this is my business. Why would I want to promote your product?”
Cara: [00:05:44] So now looking back like they probably just thought I was a fashion blogger because I was featuring different people I was like styling my t shirts and showing different looks so they were just reaching out.
Cara: [00:05:55] It’s like a brand wanting to work with a blogger. But I was like a business and didn’t even know what the whole world was so then I kind of decided like hey, maybe I should have an outlet where I could do this. And then I could say yes to these collaborations because they were like products I liked and brands I was interested in working with.
Cara: [00:06:13] So I started a fashion blog and it’s called Never Skip Brunch. I like love brunch. I always said I love snacks and sleeping. It’s kind of a joke.
Cara: [00:06:29] I just recently rebranded at the beginning of this year. And it’s called Brighter Bold, and it’s basically like a movement towards helping women to turn up the volume on their inner voice and kind of find their boldness.
Cara: [00:06:44] And so I’ve kind of expanded out of fashion and now I have like recipes and some DIY projects. And it’s a little more lifestyle oriented. So that’s been really fun.
Cara: [00:06:53] And that decision was kind of just because I realized this is what my audience wanted, like they liked fashion but they kind of wanted a little more in on my lifestyle, and all the little projects that I constantly had going on. So that’s been really fun.
Jillian: [00:07:08] That’s cool. OK so how do you guys then monetize separately and then I guess together?
Monetizing blogs through sponsored content, affiliates, and membership
Cara: [00:07:19] Yeah. So for our own blogs. We both do like brand collaborations and then affiliate links. I would say for me personally brand collaborations are probably my primary source of income. I do have some affiliate links from people shopping products that I recommend, and all of that stuff but I primarily work with brands.
C.J. : [00:07:39] Mine is kind of the same wa,y working with brands through sponsored or ad posts definitely like the biggest thing that I found.
C.J. : [00:07:48] I know my affiliate links have definitely started to take off now this past six months, as I’ve been able to grow more of a connection with my following so I’m definitely seeing more growth there than I have before.
C.J. : [00:08:00] But I would definitely still say that like sponsored and you know ads are working with specific brands and trying to kind of grow that long term relationship has been the biggest benefit for me on my personal blog.
C.J. : [00:08:13] And with My Haute Society we have so many different ways of monetizing still through affiliate links and then obviously jumping a lot into products and resources that we give out to bloggers, that’s like the biggest thing we want to be is obviously a resource.
C.J. : [00:08:29] So creating those and being able to help through that has been helpful for us as a business as we try and grow and everything like that.
Cara: [00:08:38] Yes I think our biggest thing is like our monthly membership which is just nine bucks a month and you get access to all of our courses all of our guides and then like monthly events whether that’s like happy hours or meet ups. And then you get workshops.
Cara: [00:08:55] And then you get our big Ecourses are super discounted so that it’s kind of amazing.
Working on your blog as a team
Jillian: [00:09:01] How do you guys… Because my husband and I we run Catch My Party and MiloTree together but those are really different businesses. But again we do it as a team. Now you guys have your own separate businesses. Then you have this together. So how do you manage that?
C.J. : [00:09:20] It’s been a lot of learning, to be honest. We started in September of 2017. We hit the ground running. We both were super excited about what we were doing that we just kind of ran with it. It was exhausting.
C.J. : [00:09:37] We found a lot of times we were trying to work on our own blogs and we had to take away from something so we didn’t focus as much on our own blogs as we wanted to.
C.J. : [00:09:50] But we just like really couldn’t because we just had too much going on in the holiday season and so the beginning of January and the end of December were a huge kind of sit back and take it all in and see where we really want to push our focus to what was most important in growing My Haute Society. And what was most important for like mental health.
C.J. : [00:10:11] Because obviously if you look at our blogs, both of them are huge focusing on you know mental health and really being the best person you can be. And so stretching ourselves so thin was the opposite of what we were trying to put out through My Haute Society. So it was a huge moment.
C.J. : [00:10:28] We had, I wouldn’t say arguments, but we had you know really deep conversations of trying to figure out what was going to be best for both of us because Cara has a little girl and a husband, and I have a husband and had just found out I was pregnant.
C.J. : [00:10:42] So it was like we had totally different lives and entirely different things we had to push our emotions into, aside from even just having our personal blogs. So we really did have to re-evaluate what was going on and to make it work.
The importance of content calendars for bloggers
C.J. : [00:10:57] I think the things you see for every blogger is that content calendars are huge. And we really had to figure out what to do and then when we kind of figured out a strict schedule of like who was doing what.
C.J. : [00:11:11] I run all of the social, and deal with our Monday blogger moments, and then Cara does a lot of like the podcast edits as well as like some of the main resource or blog posts that we do and then we do like a little side by side of everything else.
C.J. : [00:11:26] So once we really honed in and figure that out we’ve been able to streamline a lot of things and been able to have certain days where we specifically work on My Haute Society and then have certain days we’re basically just working on our own blogs or living our own lives.
Cara: [00:11:48] Yeah it’s funny because like a lot of people that go into business together have years and years of a friendship or a relationship to kind of go off of. So they already really know the other person.
The importance of defined roles as bloggers
Cara: [00:12:02] And for us, we were really new friends when we decided to start. Yeah we had to learn who each other was like what our strengths and weaknesses were and kind of how we work together.
Cara: [00:12:17] And then also kind of develop the business and define our roles and all of that all at once. So it was definitely a process but I think it was something we needed to go through to be able to be where we are now, where we’re kind of like more efficient and we have a system and have more clear communication.
Cara: [00:12:35] Like at first you know I would be building the website and putting out all these guides and I’m used to just working with myself and going rogue and like cranking things out.
C.J. : [00:12:44] I’m like an over communicator. So I was like “Why are you leaving me in the dark?” type thing and she’s just not really like that. So it was kind of me having to learn to pull things out of her as well as you know her just having to learn to like communicate better.
C.J. : [00:13:01] So I think that’s a good way of putting that though because we did just kind of fall into it, and the benefit of this is that we both tend to jump into change really well in our own personal lives. And I think that made it possible for us to do it. It was just kind of learning how to do it together.
Jillian: [00:13:19] Wow what it is like. I mean it’s a relationship, it’s like a marriage in many ways.
Cara: [00:13:25] So I call it business marriage.
Jillian: [00:13:30] It’s like how people have like a work spouse or you know like a work husband or a work wife you guys are each other’s wives. That’s terrific.
Jillian: [00:13:41] How many hours a week are you guys working and how much of that time, this is if you can quantify it, would you say is working on each of your businesses and then together?
Managing your time as a blogger
C.J. : [00:13:52] I know I kind of laughed at this question because my answer is all the time. Some weeks are better organized than others but right now with doing a move and you know moving states and doing all this.
C.J. : [00:14:09] We’ve had to be a little bit more scheduled out than normal because like my weekends are completely packed with packing or something like that or going to parties. But I mean as a social influencers I think anyone listening that does that can know that it isn’t all the time thing.
C.J. : [00:14:26] Like even if you’re an entrepreneur and not just a social influencer even if you’re not working on something on your web site for instance, I post twice a day on my Instagram almost every day so that’s work in itself.
C.J. : [00:14:38] You’re waking up Saturday morning or Sunday morning and still having to post and then engage with people and then you might like to have brunch and kind of hang out with your husband or take some time off Saturday or Sunday.
C.J. : [00:14:47] But then there’s other Sundays right up until 11:30 doing something for My Haute Society for Monday, or something so I don’t know. I mean it’s really hard for me to know. Cara may have a better answer but it’s really all over the place.
C.J. : [00:15:01] Most of the days during the week are really well scheduled out because we have certain things for our personal blogs and certain things from My Haute Society that go live on specific days. So it’s a lot easier to allocate those things out.
C.J. : [00:15:13] But the weekend is totally a crapshoot. Sometimes I’m free and living my life, sometimes I’m like doing two hours of shooting and then writing posts and everything like that so it’s just really up in the air.
Cara: [00:15:26] Yeah it’s also weird because it doesn’t feel like work. To have to say, “I’m working these hours and these hours I’m free, like it’s all just kind of living life and doing what I like doing alongside of the other stuff.
Cara: [00:15:40] So if I had to put a number on it, nap time is definitely my go get it time. My daughter is almost 2 and she sleeps for a solid two and a half hours still which like I don’t know how long that’s going to last.
Cara: [00:15:54] That’s like my go time and I just knock everything out and then I’m kind of a night owl. So if there’s stuff outside of that that I really need to do, I can stay up all night doing it and I love that. I’m at my best at like 12am.
C.J. : [00:16:16] Now with being pregnant, for me, I’ve found that I’ll stay up later but then I don’t have the energy to get up like I usually did at 7:00 a.m. and kind of started doing things.
C.J. : [00:16:26] I’m taking my mornings you know maybe catch up on my phone but like I have to eat breakfast. I have to do certain things, I have to stretch, like all these new things I didn’t have to do before is becoming this additive into my days.
C.J. : [00:16:42] So I’m learning to schedule around that, but that’s like the huge benefit of not having to go to a 9 to 5 job. You can do mornings where sometimes I’ll get up at 7:30am and be doing e-mails by 8:00 a.m. you know getting through things.
C.J. : [00:16:55] And then other mornings I start working at 9:15am but I might take an hour to work out and then be working until like 8:30pm or something. So it’s just kind of all over the place. Which I love because it doesn’t stress you out as much because you can do it whenever you want to make time.
Jillian: [00:17:11] Right, the funniest thing that I would say is trying to educate your family, like your parents, about what you do. Because we will go on vacation and visit my parents and to explain that the internet doesn’t shut down, you know, that you can’t put a like “We’re on vacation and come back in a week.” It just doesn’t work that way.
Jillian: [00:17:40] They’re like, “You work all the time!” and I’m like, well, kind of.
C.J. : [00:17:44] It’s like what my dad said when we went to Europe. I was obviously making travel blogs and everything through it and taking images, or my husband would be like behind me with the camera and stuff. And my dad’s like, “This world is just so different these days.”
C.J. : [00:18:00] You know you laugh and he’s a super successful businessman so I can get where he looks at it but now that he’s starting to learn the success you get from it’s just connecting the dots and seeing the success just for being different.
C.J. : [00:18:15] But then it’s funny because he’s like, “You’re always on your phone” and I’m like, “Well, if you got paid money to be on your phone maybe you would do it too.”
C.J. : [00:18:25] My siblings are trained now when we are planning vacations or over holidays, they’ll be like, “oOh we could go here, that would be really good place to take blog pictures.” I’m like “Now you get it.”
Ways of using Instagram as a blogger to grow your business
Jillian: [00:18:36] Can we talk about social media? You guys are very active on Instagram. It sounds like Instagram is your jam. Can you share a little bit about how you use it? What do you think the best ways are to connect on it. Like what do you love about Instagram?
Cara: [00:18:56] Yes. I think it’s kind of like the current go-to platform for influencers just because that’s where a lot of brands want to collaborate with you, because it’s the hot platform so that’s probably why it’s our go-to.
Cara: [00:19:12] And C.J. probably has a lot of really good tips for you as far as how to really engage with your followers and connect. She’s kind of always full of amazing pointers and I’m like, “Why didn’t I know that?”
C.J. : [00:19:26] Well the biggest thing with Instagram, because I run My Haute Society’s and mine as well, and it is really just truly engagement which can be absolutely exhausting to be honest. I think trying to be on there all the time is what’s hard for a lot of people.
C.J. : [00:19:42] But I think building the most important thing like the one tip I can give with it is, we love our IG Lives on My Haute Society and sometimes there won’t be 30 people on there every single time we do it or anything like that.
C.J. : [00:19:58] We do a playback and just having that live and making that connection of being real with your followers is the biggest thing people are looking for on Instagram these days.
C.J. : [00:20:07] They do love to see your perfectly curated feed. I don’t think that’s going away anywhere time any time soon because people love beautiful images and they love placing themselves in places that they haven’t been and beautiful scenes that they’ve never been into. So I think people love that.
C.J. : [00:20:20] But being through your Stories I think is the easiest way like IG lives and stories because people are yearning for that connection through real life. And once I started like really doing that, aside from still engaging and consistency and posting is a huge thing.
C.J. : [00:20:39] I know a ton of people want to take like a week or two off and you need to understand that that’s going to hurt your engagement. I think that’s like a big thing but really just being consistent with doing Stories and connecting your face to people not just putting your curated image in your story or random things.
C.J. : [00:20:56] That is what people want to see, they want to know what you’re doing, they want to know your side of yourself that’s not perfect. They want to know what you’re eating.
C.J. : [00:21:04] I think just things like that really makes people want to follow and connect with you and stay around, at least that’s what I’ve found through My Haute Society and my own blog.
C.J. : [00:21:14] It’s just being consistent with posting engaging and really being active on my stories even though I might not look gorgeous in the morning or still just get used to kind of being on there and people love it. They love the realness is what I have found.
Jillian: [00:21:29] So you’re posting two images a day on your feed and how often are you popping in to do Stories?
C.J. : [00:21:39] You know, some days are different than others, if I have a super busy day wanting to get multiple posts done I won’t be on there as often and just because I need to focus like on any other kind of business.
C.J. : [00:21:50] But most days I can do 10 to 15+ stories depending on what’s going on. Yesterday, I went through my morning moisturizer routine because my face has been insane with this pregnancy. Hormones are on fleek at an all time high and so I kind of just went through some of the products I was using. And some like the face masks I just received from a different brand and I mean that alone was probably 10 to 15 stories right there.
C.J. : [00:22:19] And then like I go through sometimes what I’m eating, because being pregnant people are really curious and that kind of started connecting with all these new moms to be. How you eat and everything and so even something like that.
C.J. : [00:22:32] And then if I put on an outfit I’ll do like what I’m doing that day and the like tonight I have like a blogger event so I’ll be kind of storying throughout that whole thing. So it really just depends.
C.J. : [00:22:43] But I try and pop on there as much as I can. Some people really focus on creating the perfect story. And it can take them a long time to get it out there. I just kind of go with it throw it up there and it is what it is.
C.J. : [00:22:58] And then I found it to be really easy to just do a Story of like here’s my breakfast and then I’m typing away at my post five minutes later, it’s not like a 30 minute thing to get a few stories up for me.
C.J. : [00:23:11] I’m a very real person so I just have turned my stories into like literally what I’m doing.
Jillian: [00:23:17] Cara what about you? How often are you posting on your feed and what about your Stories?
Cara: [00:23:23] So I post like once a day on my feed. I don’t do weekends and occasionally I just take a string of random days off if I just don’t feel like doing it.
Cara: [00:23:32] I’m not as outgoing as CJ. So like all the engaging stuff drains me. It’s not something that energizes me. So I love engaging with my followers, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes I have to mentally prepare.
Cara: [00:23:50] If I’m not in the mood to like really connect with people. I don’t want to post because I don’t want to be just throwing up a piece of content that’s something to be looked at, I want it to be engaging and kind of like a starting point for those conversations.
Cara: [00:24:05] Sometimes I just take a few days off and recharge and so I think it can go either way. And then Stories, so I kind of like creating graphics. I still do a bunch of different ones of things I’m doing. I do sneak peeks of, like I just re-did my powder bath, so I did like a little sneak peek video about that.
Cara: [00:24:29] But I also like to do graphics little videos or moving things or like swipe ups that tell people there’s a new post on the blog. So I try to involve my real life and what I’m doing but I would say it’s a little bit more of graphic design type stuff because that’s what I really enjoy doing.
Jillian: [00:24:48] OK so given that you guys have been at this for a while. What is the one piece of advice you wish somebody had told you when you guys were both just starting out.
ADVICE: Create a brand around yourself as a blogger
C.J. : [00:25:03] For me personally I didn’t know the blogging world existed. So I just kind of wish that I had known that was even a big thing and known it was like this business that people were really trying to do curated photos for.
C.J. : [00:25:19] I guess I wish I would have known and would have been told to create a brand around yourself before just pushing content out. I was just posting, I was enjoying it and everything, but I would still have that same stress that I do today. But I didn’t have like a why or brand behind it.
C.J. : [00:25:37] So I think knowing your “why” and really creating what your brand is and who you are behind your brand is the most important thing to do before starting out.
C.J. : [00:25:47] Because without that you’re just going to go on a circle of posting things and trying to figure out what you want out of it. Each post in changing things up and if you keep changing things up it’s going to be extremely hard to grow a following.
C.J. : [00:26:01] Instead of knowing your “why” and knowing your brand and running with that and then you’re down the road you know if you want to add something or take something away you can play with that because you’ve had this connection.
C.J. : [00:26:11] But without knowing that, that’s a huge thing. I wish I would have because not knowing the blogging world and then not knowing my brand. It took me twice as long to get to a following that other people can get to maybe in six months just because I had no idea what I was doing and what was behind what I was posting.
Jillian: [00:26:32] Interesting. OK so really having a point of view.
C.J. : [00:26:35] Totally and knowing what you want people to get from your content instead of just like ,”Here’s my outfit,” which is great but like what do you what do you hope they get, and how does it help them?
C.J. : [00:26:46] And so without that it took me a while and then once I started figuring that out that’s when I really became Everyday Chiffon and what I wanted from it and was able to play around with things and became fun instead of what the heck am I gonna do.
Jillian: [00:27:00] And what about you?
Cara: [00:27:03] So I would say, I wish I knew the importance and value of community which sounds funny but as an introvert I really didn’t know how valuable it was to really have people to surround yourself with and support you and bounce ideas off of.
Cara: [00:27:20] And I am kind of a competitive person just naturally, so in my mind for a while, community and success were kind of mutually exclusive. It was like I had to go do it on my own and be successful.
Cara: [00:27:36] But really what I’ve learned through the whole process of what goes into My Haute Society and our community, is that community is a competitive strategy. To be successful you need others to support you and help you along the way.
ADVICE: Don’t compare yourself to other bloggers
Cara: [00:27:52] And then kind of a second piece of that is not comparing yourself, realizing that the community means that you can look at other people’s success and you can celebrate with them and be excited, but that success for them isn’t what successes look like for you.
Cara: [00:28:08] So trying to achieve that by looking like what they’re doing is going to be really unfulfilling and it’s going to lead to burnout and you’re not going to find your best way of doing things in your best type of success unless you really dig in and define that phrase like that.
Jillian: [00:28:26] I like that. I think that the same themes keep coming through my interviews on The Blogger Genius which is, it is about helping each other grow.
Jillian: [00:28:40] And it is also about working hard not to compare yourself, like those are two themes, because when you work together all of a sudden the Internet can feel really small.
Jillian: [00:28:51] Like the internet consists of the six other people that I work with and we all kind of help each other grow. But it’s really hard not to compare yourself to these people and you lose sight of the scale at which you work. You know that the Internet is a very big place.
Jillian: [00:29:10] So what is the one tool that you guys use that you couldn’t live without?
Blogger tools you can’t live without
C.J. : [00:29:20] This one is really hard to choose one tool. I can let Cara talk more about Canva. We both love love love Canva for our personal blogs with creating like Pinterest images and that kind of stuff. But I don’t think she could live without Canva for My Haute Society.
C.J. : [00:29:35] And then for me for My Haute Society and still my personal blogs I couldn’t live without Planoly or Social Pilot. They’re kind of different apps totally but like, they do some of the same things are scheduling for social media.
C.J. : [00:29:57] Planoly really lets you help see your feed. And like for My Haute Society with running my own social media I have been in the great habit of planning every caption and every photo out Monday morning or Sunday night and have that on auto post so I can still go on there and engage with everyone. But it’s more about like when I want to do that instead of having to have a specific high point to do it as well as my own blog.
C.J. : [00:30:23] So planning for my own while I don’t do auto piloting but I am able to kind of like figure out my feed from there which really helps my weeks go by a lot easier if I’ve already had like an image and a caption kind of ready.
C.J. : [00:30:36] And then Social Pilot is huge because we try and reach people on LinkedIn, Twitter like the Denver blogger page, our My Haute Society page. Then we also have our own personal ones hooked up to that. And so as a business you know Cara can go ahead and create these super cute things on Canva like videos and everything and these really cute graphics.
C.J. : [00:30:55] And then I’ll just go in there being the community person and make a really fun caption for it and then I’ll actually go ahead and schedule everything out for like weeks and months and that’s sort consistently posting on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
C.J. : [00:31:11] Every single day if not you know two or three times a day with different things so all of our things are constantly being pushed out there without us having to do a ton of work and people can continue to see us as a resource.
C.J. : [00:31:25] So those would be the two that like I cannot live without with social media just because with how much scheduling it goes and behind two different platforms it’s huge to be able to have things to be scheduled now and really only use an hour or two out of my Mondays to kind of get it all set. And then just have to poke around and fix things as I go.
Jillian: [00:31:44] OK so how about you Cara?
Cara: [00:31:50] Oh yeah Canva is my number one. I can do all the design in Photoshop and InDesign but Canva is just so easy. We have templates set up where we make, for example Pinterest images for every single blog post so that at the bottom there’s like a couple images that people can pin to save the post.
Cara: [00:32:11] So having templates set up for those or I also use them a lot to make Instagram stories like swipe ups or little like moving video gifs so just having like a template and then I make a bunch of different copies and move stuff around and they’re so easy. It’s amazing.
Cara: [00:32:29] I have it for my personal blog where my fonts are uploaded and my colors are uploaded so that I could use my actual like font. That is my branding and everything is ready to go.
Jillian: [00:32:45] How can people connect with you? How can they learn more about My Haute Society and also your individual sites?
C.J. : [00:32:58] We’re all over social. As My Haute Society so like Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter Instagram.
Cara: [00:33:08] And Haute means like classy fashionable. That’s kind of why we chose that name.
Cara: [00:33:14] I like thought it was “hot” for the longest time, even when we named it that. Staring at me I thought CJ was just saying Haute because she’s from like the Midwest. Like that’s how you say it yeah. Yeah.
Cara: [00:33:28] And then our website is My Haute Society.com and we have like a ton of blog, posts that’s where you can find our podcast.
Cara: [00:33:35] All our resources if you’re interested in like looking into membership you can just go to like MyHauteSociety.com/join and learn all about that.
Cara: [00:33:44] And then my own blog is NeverSkipBrunch.com.
C.J. : [00:34:01] And then mine is Everyday Chiffon, and for chiffon I get asked out a lot and it’s like a type of material. My favorite one that I found I wear the most. That’s why I named it that.
C.J. : [00:34:12] But I am all over everything as well Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook probably more that I don’t even know that I’m still on somewhere. And that is EverydayChiffon.com for my website.
Jillian: [00:34:27] Cara and C.J., thank you guys so much for being on the show.
Get more Instagram followers fast and free with MiloTree!
Jillian: [00:34:37] Are you trying to grow your social media followers and e-mail subscribers? Well if you’ve got two minutes I’ve got a product for you. It’s MiloTree.
Jillian: [00:34:46] MiloTree is a smart pop up slider. You install on your site and it pops up and asks visitors to follow you on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest or subscribe to your list.
Jillian: [00:35:01] It takes two minutes to install. We offer a WordPress plugin or a simple line of code and it’s Google friendly on mobile and desktop so we know where your traffic is coming from.
Jillian: [00:35:14] We show a Google friendly pop up on desktop and a smaller Google friendly pop up on mobile. Check it out. Sign up today and get your first 30 days free.
Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!
