blogging Archives | Rachael Phillips

YES, influencers should declare paid for or gifted posts

I’m super late posting this. I have no excuses other than I’ve been channeling my inner Marie Kondo and decluttering like a maniac.

But I wanted to do a short post on the competition and markets authority (CMA) clamping down on influencers and micro-influencers not disclosing whether they’ve been paid for a post or received a product as a gift when mentioning it on social media, their blogs, vlogs, podcasts etc.

If you want to hear my opinions along with a panel of influencers, you can listen to me talking all about the new CMA regulations on 5Live – link here. Fast forward to approx 2 hours 35 mins to hear the segment.

But as a brief summary of what I said, I’m pleased that the CMA are going to clamp down. New rules could see fines or even a spell in prison.

Fake it until you make it…

During my health coach training I’ve come across so many amazing people who want to blog and share their message but are held back by the fear that they don’t know what they’re doing or don’t think they’re good enough. Usually those are the people that have something really important to say too. Take Tanya of Tanya’s Healthy Living for example, her lack of technical knowledge had been putting her off starting her blog. However, we worked together and go her site up and running in no time at all. Now she’s on her third blog post and there’s no stopping her!

image credit

I think the fear of just having a go is most definitely a creative thing, whether it’s writing, painting, acting, speaking, blogging etc the fear of people not thinking they are good enough means they fail to take action.
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5 reasons why I won’t read your blog…

When I started this blog, one thing I wanted to do was to share my experience about blogging. I’ve been blogging since 2006 and I’ve made some pretty crap decisions, I’ve made some pretty good decisions and I’ve been lucky enough to have been able to carve a career change out of it and well, make money.

But one thing I didn’t want to do is to become all preachy. I didn’t want to tell people what to and what not to do because you know what? No one is an expert on blogging or social media – no one. We can share our experiences and opinions for sure but can we call ourselves gurus? I don’t think so.

So rather than this post being a “how not to blog” I wanted to share with you 5 reasons why your blog will turn me off (i.e. things that make me click the close button before even finishing the title…)

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How to blog: Starting a blog

I’ve been blogging since 2006 which means I get asked a lot about how to blog; how to get started, what to write about, which platform to use etc. Since time restraints mean that I often can’t respond to these questions individually (or at least not as in depth as I’d like) I thought a series on how to blog would work well. Eventually, I’d like to dip my toe in to vlogging so if you’ve got any blogging questions you’d like to ask then please email me.

How to start a blog…

First up let’s just start by saying that no one is a real expert in this field yet, sure there are people out there who can set you up, design your site, try to show you how to make money blogging etc but there are no hard and fast rules. Your blog is your blog, if you want to post once a week or every day that’s entirely up to you. This series of posts are based on my experience of how to create a blog, what I’ve done and tips that I find useful. They’re in no way preachy or a definitive guide of what’s right and wrong because it’s a constantly evolving process.

How to Build a Blog

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