Episode 46 – How a fashion blog led to a dream job in social media, with Tamara McCleary

July 17, 2016 Podcast

In episode 46 of the Graduate Job Podcast, I am joined by award winning fashion blogger and social media manager Tamara McCleary, who shares her inspirational story of how she landed her dream job with the help of her fashion blog. In this half hour Tamara details the background to her fashion blog Bonafide Supernova, how it has grown, top tips for starting your own blog, and how it led to her current job as a social media manager. It’s an inspiring story, and no matter where you are on your job search, this is an episode you will not want to miss. As always, all links to everything we discuss and a full transcript are available in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/supernova.  Before we start a quick request from me, your feedback helps me to create the episodes you want to hear, so I’ve set up a super simple and very quick survey, as I want the show to best serve your needs. It’s got 5 questions and will take you just a minute, so if the podcast is helping you, please show your appreciation and check it out at http://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/survey/ . I look forward to hearing your thoughts. But in the meantime, let’s crack on with the show.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • Top tips to starting your own blog
  • The importance of choosing a blog topic you are passionate about
  • Why experience trumps everything when it comes to your jobsearch
  • How to create content so that recruiters come to you
  • Why you should think about partnering with someone to kickstart your blog
  • The importance of networking and promoting your blog
  • Why it’s not a question of quitting, but about stepping up your game

SELECTED SHOW NOTES:

    • Check out the ‘How to Get a Graduate Job’ step-by-step online course at https://howtogetagraduatejob.com/
    • Don’t even think about applying for graduate jobs until you’ve read my free guide, ‘The 5 steps you must take before applying for graduate jobs’. Click here NOW. It will completely change the way you apply for jobs!
    • Would you like a free 30-minute video coaching call? Simply select a time that works here https://calendly.com/gradjob/ We can go over your CV, application, or anything that you are struggling with.
    • Assessment Day – One of the top providers of psychometric tests. Click HERE and support the show
    • Career Gym – Use code GJP to get 20% off all of their tests!
    • Job Test Prep – One of the top providers of psychometric tests. Click HERE and support the show
    • Bonafide Supernova – Tamara’s award winning fashion blog
    • Tamara on Twitter
    • Tamara on Instagram
    • Tamara’s webiste recommendation – Makelight.io

Transcript – Episode 46 – How a fashion blog led to a dream job in social media, with Tamara McCleary 

Announcer: Welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, your home for weekly information and inspiration to help you get the graduate job of your dreams.

James: Welcome everyone to the Graduate Job Podcast, with your host James Curran. The Graduate Job Podcast is your weekly home for all things related to helping you on your journey to finding that amazing job. Each week I bring together the best minds in the industry, speaking to leading authors, entrepreneurs, coaches and bloggers who bring decades of experience into a byte size weekly 30 minute show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had a decade ago when I graduated.

James: I’m very pleased to welcome Tamara McCleary to the show. Tamara is a social media and marketing guru, she works at Yawn London and BuroCreative and, more importantly for today, managing director of award winning fashion blog, Bonafide Supernova. Tamara, welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast.

Tamara: Thank you for having me.

James: It’s great to have you on the show. And, at the end of each of my episodes I ask each of my guests one tip that graduates can implement today, and two of my recent guests, Chris Marr and Matt Hearnden, both said that their tip was to start a blog. And now you did just that, and today we’re going to explore your brilliant, awarding winning fashion blog, Bonafide Supernova. So, to kick us off Tamara, would you like to tell us more about the blog and what it is that you do?

Tamara: So, yes, my 9 to 5 job, I work as a social media manager and then on the side me and my friend, Sam, run a blog together. And within that blog we have different contributing writers, different contributing photographers and stuff who all have their creative input. So, we like to think of it as a collective, but me and Sam are the, kind of, the main ones that run it, but we have all different people that contribute to it as well, so it’s a nice team effort.

James: Super, and how long has the blog been going now?

Tamara: I think it’s since October 2013, so it’s been going, it’s been going for quite a while. It’s been going for a long while because it originally started when me and Sam went to the same Uni. We both went to Birmingham City University, originally, and that’s where we met. So it’s been going for a while. I know a lot of people start blogs now, but I suppose blogging has been around for many years now, so it feels like a while to us, but some people started blogs 10 years ago so I suppose it’s not that long ago.

James: Yeah, good point. As you said, lots of people, there’s blogs going up all the time, so it’s consistency that really gets you noticed. So, why did you start the blog in the first place?

Tamara: So what happened was, Sam started the blog because it was like a Uni project, that was the original reason, and then afterwards, so Sam is a bit older than me, and then afterwards I came to Birmingham City University and joined and it originally started as like a Uni thing, and then it just really rocketed from there. And it was something that we both decided to keep up because, after Uni finished, it made sense to not just do it as, you know, a piece of coursework. It made sense to just keep it.

James: And, back in the early days, how often were you putting content out there?

Tamara: Probably, well, because it’s all different people that contribute, I’d say we would have posts up, at least, minimum, once a week. And we try, we definitely, we definitely now would have at least two a month. So it’s very, I would say it’s very consistent. I think that’s really important if you’re going to start a blog, to be consistent.

James: And would you have described yourself as tech-savvy when you started the blog? Or is it something that you’ve learned as you’ve gone along with Sam?

Tamara: Well, it was definitely learning as I go along. So, I’ve always really been, kind of, brand focused, good at brand relationships and out kinda posts and Sam’s a lot more technical. She’s a lot more like, she’s good at the coding and, like, putting things together in terms of like, the layout and the widgets and stuff. But as we’ve gone along she’s taught me things and I’ve taught her things. So, I’d say not necessarily completely tech-savvy, but we’ve definitely learned it as we’ve gone along because visually it’s so important, but what we’ve been quite lucky is had a really good team. So we’ve had really good graphic designers and photographers and other people that have really helped us along to make it look really nice. So, I think definitely, you should try and be tech-savvy, but if you can’t do certain things then build a strong team around you that can help contribute to making it a success.

James: And that’s great advice. And has the blog always, has the sort of nature it evolved over time or has always stayed consistent to its fashion origins?

Tamara: So, yes, the main, I suppose, the main part of the blog is fashion. That’s something that me and Sam are both interested in, but we each have different, we both have different interests. Sam’s really businessy, she’s really into that kind of, that side of things, so like business, enterprise. I’m really into fashion. We have other bloggers on there who are into beauty. So it’s like a mix of things, but the main theme is fashion, but there’s all different, there’s all different stems of it because it was originally, the original concept was the idea that it’s a collective so it’s not just, it’s not just centered on fashion, but that is definitely a main part for it.

James: How is, so the blogs been going for over three, coming to three years now, and you said you started at Uni. When did you really start to get traction and the readers coming to the blog?

Tamara: Well, the hits have continuously gone up as we’ve gotten more exposure. Cause, originally, so when the blog first started up, things like Instagram and that kind of thing, people weren’t really, now it’s a bit different because that Instagram is kind of a lot bigger than what it was originally. So, what we used to focus on was really getting people, getting hits on the blog. Whereas now it’s a bit more about trying to build a social media following and then, and then using the social media platforms to kind of get more and more hits. But I suppose it’s just, sometimes I do wonder where people find out about it, is where it all comes from, because we didn’t really, it’s only now where we’ve really implemented, like, a proper social media strategy. We didn’t really used to have one before but people seem to be going on the blog, but both me and Sam we lived in different cities. Like Nottingham, Derby, Birmingham. Sam moved to Africa, I move to London. So we’re very, we’re not just online people, we’re very active offline, so we’ll go to events, we’ll meet people, we’ll talk to people, and we’ll get the word out that way so I suppose that’s definitely helped the hits go up. It’s not just about hiding behind a computer screen. You have to go out and be the face, and talk to people, and network outside of an online platform.

James: Has is it been continuous or have there been any big events where there have been really big spikes and you suddenly seen massive interest in the site?

Tamara: London Fashion Week always. We always get more hits around there because it’s quite exclusive and it’s live so, obviously, people can’t just, it’s not one of those things that you kind of go anywhere to get that information. So, we do see a spike around those times because obviously people want to know about the exclusivity, they want to see what’s happening live, they want to hear what’s happening, so we’ve very, we’re very quick to publish posts very quickly around Fashion Week, so we definitely see a spike during those times.

James: Could you gives us an indication of just how many readers you tend to get for the blog?

Tamara: So, we’ve had, since the blogs been read in over 97 countries, and we usually get around 17,000 hits a month. So we get, we get a good-

James: Wow.

Tamara: Yeah, we get good traction to it.

James: Well, that’s amazing. That’s really good. And how many did you get back in the beginning when you first started out?

Tamara: So yeah, it’s definitely gradually, it’s definitely gradually built. So it’s probably gone from about 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, and it’s just kept going up. But the social media thing, because we’ve put in a proper strategy now, that’s definitely helped, having it in all our bios. It’s in my bio, it’s in Sam’s bio, it’s on the blog Instagram. You know, because we have different writers who are like, tweeting out articles, putting links into their blog, sending it out to their friends, putting it on their platforms. That’s definitely helped it build. It’s just about, it’s just about putting it out there. There’s no point doing blog posts if you’re not going to let people know that they’re there.

James: Yeah, and that’s a great plug. And you can find everything that we’re talking about today, including a full transcript, and link of course to Tamara’s blog at graduatejobpodcast.com/supernova and you’ll be able to find everything that we’ve talked about. So, having started at the beginning Tamara, where there any points when you weren’t getting the readers and you thought about quitting? Or where there any dips you went through? Or has it just been, you know, plain sailing all the way?

Tamara: No, no I think at one point, me and Sam felt a bit, like, because, like I said, I originally said 2013 but it was actually before then, I got a bit mixed up. So, when we originally started it, like I said, Instagram and stuff wasn’t, like, a thing, like it wasn’t the way it is now. It was more about getting readers onto your blog. So when things like Instagram and stuff came along, and there was all these people kind of hot on social media, that did make us think a bit, “Okay we need to step our game up a bit more now,” because there’s more, there’s more people blogging and there’s different platforms that people are using. But because, when we started, that wasn’t, that wasn’t like, one of the main platforms for bloggers so we had to adapt to the blogging landscape and change it. We never thought about quitting or we never thought like, “Oh no.” You know, we just thought, “Okay, we need to, we need to adapt to what’s going on around us.” So, no, definitely not quitting, more like stepping your game up and just being aware and moving, moving at the right pace.

James: Brilliant. And how important has it been that, you know, you’re blogging about a topic which is, which your passionate about?

Tamara: Oh really important. I think people can definitely tell if you’re just, if you’re just, you know, talking about something that you’re not really interested in. Like, we like to pride ourselves on kind of like, creating interesting content. So, it’s not just about, you know, make-up and fashion and stuff. We like to talk about, whether it’s sexism in the fashion industry, or like, body-image, race, just arts and culture, anything. So we, we don’t want to just kind of be a blog that just talks about stuff that we’re not interested in because I don’t think, I think then it shows as well in the writing, and to me that doesn’t really make sense.

James: Yup. And, you talk about, on your Twitter you talk about how your 9 to 5, and you know, during the day you’re a social media manager, and in the evening you’re, you know, an award winning blogger how has, how have you been able to juggle both of these two, two aspects?

Tamara: So, it’s not been that difficult because naturally I’m very, I’m like very like, go-go-go, very busy, very like to stay occupied, and quite hard working. So it’s not really been a juggle, it’s just been something that I’m quite used to and my job kind of merges in really nicely with being a blogger because at work I do a lot of blogger outreach, I do blogger events, and so I’m very much, and I write for the company blog as well, so I’m very much within the same kind of world, just more on client like company basis, whereas obviously when I’m blogging for myself it’s for me. So it doesn’t feel like as much as of juggle because it’s not like I’m doing something that’s completely, my job as a social media manager is very much similar to a lot of the stuff as I do for the blog. So, it doesn’t feel like much of a juggle. It just feels like one thing I’m doing for myself and the other thing I’m doing at work. If that makes sense?

James: And no, it completely makes sense. And, when you started the blog did you see it as a, as a means to ultimately helping you to get work in the field that you’re interested in? Or was it just initially a passion project which has, which has evolved and led onto the work you’re doing now?

Tamara:  Yeah so my initial, when I met Sam my initial thoughts, cause our course, we were on, Sam’s older than me but we were on, we did the same course at Uni and my initial reason, the one for wanting to join up with Sam was because I wanted to get a job in PR at the end of it. And I knew that by blogging and stuff you’re getting into that world, and you getting those contacts, and you’re getting that experience. So, my original reason was I knew that would help me get in PR, so that was my original, that was my original thought.

James: How did the blog help with getting you your current job? Did you, did they approach you? Or did you apply for it in the normal way, but just had this to as to be able to show them that, you know, this is what I can do and this is what I do on the side?

Tamara: So, it helped massively. It helped massively, and winning the awards helped a lot as well. But before that, when I was at Uni, I often had recruiters contact me and stuff. And that was all because of being out there. Having the blog, being out there, putting posts out there, being on social media, doing my LinkedIn, doing all that kind of stuff. That made recruiters and stuff contact me, and I did apply for this job, the job I have now. I applied it for it the normal way, but definitely, definitely 100% the blog helped so much. Especially for my field of work, because I do a lot of the brand relationships within the blog. And I do a lot of collaborations with brands. Anything that’s like client based, brands, advertising, PR, social media, a blog will help massively with kind of, trying to secure those kinds of jobs. It’s like having a portfolio of work, basically.

James: Yeah, and you look at the list of companies that you’ve worked with and you know, you’ve got press in, brand ambassador for Vice Magazine. And you’ve been in Vogue, Glamour, MTV Style, you know, you’ve worked with brands from Adidas, Nike, ASOS. Did you go out proactively looking for those companies or did those companies see the blog and then come to you?

Tamara: So, some of it was reactive, some of it was from just working really hard, and I think me and Sam are both really good at having a niche. Both of us are quite, well I think so, both of us in our personal style and just in general, in terms of the blogging landscape we can be quite niche and we’re both, we both have the media background and we’re quite creative so that meant a lot of brands wanted to work with us and kind of came to us, because brands like that like creative people. Some of it was reactive, some of it was proactive. I often pitched to brands that I like, but a lot of it came from just like, hard work, and then that got us noticed, and building the right relationships. When I, when I started working with Vice, then the Adidas opportunity came up, stuff like that. It’s just about building the right relationships and moving in the right circles, and just staying true to like, your brand message and your audience and making that really clear. And if the brand fits in with your blog then they will want to work with you.

James: I love that you said the main, the main thing is hard work, because people just expect you to say there’s just this magic, magic formula where if you just do this one thing, then you’re suddenly just going to go really big. But, just hearing that it just, you know, takes work and work and work and more work to get you there is, it’s reassuring to hear.

Tamara: Yeah, yeah.

James: So, what advice would you give people who wanted to start their own blog?

Tamar: So, practical tips, I would say choose the right platform. I think WordPress, Squarespace, those kind of platforms are quite good. And buy your own domain name if you can. It looks a lot more professional than whatever at BlogSpot or whatever.

James: Oh definitely.

Tamara: So, I’d say that as practical tips, and like just get on YouTube and have a look at how to do like, the basics of coding. Or if you don’t have someone, like, say I’m not as good at, I’m not as good at coding as Sam is, so if you’re going to partner up with someone then find someone who’s got different skills from you because then you can really merge them together. So yeah, do a few YouTube tutorials, get your head around the technical parts. They would be my practical skills. And, obviously just, if you’re going to do it you need to be consistent otherwise people won’t come back and you won’t get the readership.

James: Yeah, that’s a really good point. And, thank you, it’s the same with a podcast, you just need to try to, need to try to get episodes out as regularly as they can, which can be a challenge sometimes. So you talked about the different, having a social media strategy, what platforms do people need to be on to get their message out? What would you recommend? You talked about Instagram as one of them, what else, what other platforms would there be?

Tamara: I think if you’re going to be a blogger, you definitely need Instagram, that’s the first one. We have a Facebook page, but it’s a bit more difficult now because there is a lot of advertising, sponsor posts, etc. It’s a lot more expensive on Facebook. So, if you’re just starting out you should definitely get on Instagram and get on Twitter because they’re a lot more cost efficient and you can get your message out, you can get your message out. A lot of bloggers now use Snapchat as well. If you’re going to have that kind of younger audience, like our audience is 18 to 35, so that kind of platform will work well. If you’re a little bit older, Snapchat might not work as well. But definitely Instagram. If you’re going to get a blog it needs to be a nice, visual feed.

James: That’s actually really good advice. And where do you see the blog going over the next 5 years? Where would you like to take it?

Tamara: So, for me, there’s certain, there’s still a list of brands that I would like to work with. And I’d like, for me, the thing that I find most rewarding is working with, I like working with the small brands of course, but what I find rewarding is working with the big brands and kind of the brands that you grow up around and you either aspire to have or you follow. Or, for me, that’s kind of the direction that I’d like to see it going in. Sam is more, like I said, business based. So definitely, kind of, because we also do events as well so, kind of pushing it more into that direction, the collective and it kind of being a collective under an umbrella of different things and kind of pushing the PR side, and our kind of actual skills, and kind of making it more of a business base. So, yeah, that’s kind of the direction, the two directions I see it going in.

James: You talked a lot about working with Sam, would you recommend for people starting a blog to partner with somebody? Or is it something that you can just go off and do by yourself?

Tamara: You can do it by yourself definitely, but I think, I think that’s very particular, like because certain people you can work with and it can go totally wrong. You’ll either be in competition with each other or, you know, cause sometimes it just doesn’t work out, so I think finding the right partner, if you find the right partner then yeah, but sometimes it doesn’t work out like that. I think me and Sam are very lucky because we’re not, our skills match, like sort of like a jig-saw piece. We’re not exactly the same, but the skills that we do have, when they mesh together, it’s really really good. But suppose if you go with someone who kind of, and it’s not that scenario, then you might as well just do it on your own. But, it does definitely help having a partner, I think, because you get more, you get more done and I think that’s one of the reasons why the blogs been a success, is because we’re both working on different things for it. And we’re getting more work done and we’re getting more mileage out of it, because, well, we’re a bigger team, we’re two, two brains instead of one, basically.

James: Yeah, of course. And you talked about the team of people that you have contributing, do they tend to rotate? Or do you have the same people who contribute material all the time?

Tamara: So they rotate, usually, because we have a lot of people, we have a lot of students, like fashion students and it’s good for them because they get the experience. They get it for their CV, for their LinkedIn. It’s good experience for them. They get to go to events. And then a lot of them have gone onto get full time jobs and stuff. So then after that they may leave, and then we get new people in, but we’ve had a lot of people that have stayed with us for a while. So we have writers that have been with us for a few years, so it’s depends really. But it’s usually a rotation of different people coming in, which it nice because it’s different voices and whoever leaves always goes on to, I can definitely say, people that we’ve had, they’ve always gone on to do really great things, so.

James: What website would you recommend that our listeners should visit?

Tamara: So, recently I signed up to a website called makelight.io, which is, if you sign up to it, they send you like a free online course to your email, which is, “How to take beautiful photographs for Instagram and how to grow your online audience.” So, I did that about two days ago and I’ve just had a few of the emails come through. Recently I’ve been signing up to a lot of free online courses, and if you use Facebook, if you sign up to them, Facebook will then start to suggest more to you through their sponsored adds so you can see more relevant ones. So, I’d say yeah, if you want to be proactive, go to makelight.io and that’s good for like Instagram, learning how to take nice photos for Instagram.

James: Brilliant. And I’m going to have to check that one out myself. And finally what advice would you give listeners that they can implement today to help their job search?

Tamara: Get experience. Your degree and stuff is important but definitely get experience. I can’t stress it enough. So many people that wait until they’ve finished Uni and then think, “Oh I’m going to go and do this internship now,” or, “I’m going, I’m going to start a blog now,” or “I’m going to get work experience now.” Like as soon as you, as soon as you are able to, you know, start getting experience, do it, because that’s the thing that’s get you ahead. Don’t be waiting around and just thinking that your degree or your grade is going to get you where you need to be, you need to have experience as well, so I think, definitely do something. Start doing stuff straight away, as early as you can because, in the end, it will all pay off.

James: Thank you Tamara, thank you so much for appearing on the Graduate Job Podcast. Before we finish, what is the best way for people to get in touch with you and the work that you do?

Tamara: So you can follow me on Instagram, which is tamaratweetheart, or you can follow me on Twitter which is at @_TamaraMc. And then, obviously, if you visit the blog my contact details are on there as well.

James: Tamara, that you so much for appearing on the Graduate Job Podcast.

Tamara: Thank you for having me.

James: I hope you enjoyed that episode with the brilliant Tamara McCleary.  Lots of things stood out for me, I loved her comment when I asked if she ever wanted to quit, and she said no, it pushed her to up her game. As the late great Jim Rohn said, don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better! I also loved the fact that the blog was part of a concerted plan, she knew why she was doing it, the ultimate aim was to help her get a job in PR, and hasn’t it just. As she said recruiters were coming to her with jobs. Not bad ey.  If you have a why it will give you a reason to keep going when it gets hard. Check out my interview with Brad Burton in episode 20 who goes into detail on the importance of a why. I’ve a 3 min video on YouTube of it which I’ll link to in the show notes which is well worth a listen. My final point is on passion, if this has got you motivated to start a blog, podcast or whatever it might be.  Make sure you go for that topic which really inspires you, the one you get excited about, the one which you spend your time talking about with your friends until they start to roll their eyes. If it’s something you love writing or talking about, it won’t feel like work, which will really help when the going gets tough, as it always invariably will. So there you go, episode 46 finished. For everything that we’ve discussed today, all links and full transcript, go to the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/supernova, and don’t forget to say hello to Tamara on Twitter @_TamaraMc If fashion and writing is your thing get in touch and write for Bonafide Supernova, who knows where it will take you. As I mentioned check out my survey at graduatejobpodcast.com/survey, it will make me a happy man. I hope you enjoyed the episode today, but more importantly I hope you use it, and apply it, see you next week.