Member Spotlight: Carly Crawford, Copy Editor & Blogger

So Carly, Tell us about what you do?

I’m a copy-editor and blogger who along the way has learnt a number of new skills such as SEO, Pinterest, Social Media etc.

I currently have two blogs that I run, one is an established Parenting and Family Travel blog https://momoftwolittlegirls.com/ , the other is a brand new one which is focused on my journey to live a more intentional life – https://amoreintentionallife.com/

How did you get into that?

I sort of fell into blogging. I didn’t really know much about it at first, but my sister suggested I try it. I was in a bit of a dark place at the time, my daughters were very young, and I had recently moved away from my parents to an isolated part of South Africa where I didn’t know anyone and struggled with the language barrier. I turned to blogging as a way of venting my frustrations. In time I found a community of online friends, I discovered that blogging could actually be a business as well as a creative outlet and started to take it more seriously. After a while I became quite well known in the South African blogging community. People would come and ask me for advice, and tips etc. I decided to set myself up as a freelancer so that I could turn ‘giving free advice’ into a training and service provider. Along with the advice I began offering workshops, 1-2-1 training and wrote several blog posts (as you do when you’re a blogger). I even wrote a book which is a guide to getting set up on Pinterest and how to use it for your business. 

In the middle of all this, my family and I immigrated back to the UK after being gone for 8 years. The transition for my blog and rebuilding my audience to be more relevant to my new day-to-day life was a challenge, and it forced me to take SEO (Search Engine Optimisation – aka how to be found online) more seriously, to learn how to target local audiences for local content, and how to target a wider audience for the more general content. After spending a lot of time learning as much as I could about it online, sharing my knowledge etc, I recently decided to take this one step further. I’ve just started studying an MSc at York St John University on Digital Marketing and Data Analytics. Returning to studying is a challenge. Having to balance that with family life, lockdown life, and blogging, is a challenge, but I’m excited by all the things I’m already learning.