Business

The Truth About Instagram: Advice on Hashtags, Shadowban & Engagement

June 13, 2017

You can breeze past this post if you’re using Instagram purely as a social outlet to keep up with friends and what not (it’s intended purpose). I’m writing this post for anyone who is currently scratching their head about hashtags, the shadowban, and engagement if you’re using Instagram as part of your business. I’ve spent the last couple months confused, frustrated, discouraged and in the depths of the internet searching for answers to why the sudden drop off in likes and just visibility in general on Instagram. Like everything shared in this space, I am by no means an expert. I’m just purely sharing what I know from my own experience in hopes that it might make you feel less alone if you’ve been contemplating throwing your phone out the window and deleting Instagram entirely.

June 5, 2017

One of my main motivators in starting Household was to build community and I believe that often times that comes through connecting over the harder moments, not just the bright and shiny highlight reel that we call Instagram. After such a heartwarming response to my honest thoughts on traveling the world, one month in post I decided I would make more of an effort to dig deeper into those tougher emotions we all struggle with. More importantly the emotions that I struggle with so that I can (hopefully) shed some light and be helpful after working through it (although I’m not expert).

May 22, 2017

We’ve received countless questions about our photos since we started our travels. If you’ve been following us since the beginning or even just in the last few months you know that Amy of Amy Frances Photography took all of our photos up until just a few weeks ago. We were nervous to take the photography on ourselves when we left NYC and anticipated some growing pains, but to be totally honest Amy really set us up for success. Amy has taught Zack and I the majority of what we know about our cameras, how to get a better shot and has even helped us with editing. When the questions started coming in I reached out to her and asked if she could put some tips together for you guys who are interested in improving your photography!

April 25, 2017

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Over the past year I’ve had the opportunity to work with brands like Google, Gap, Thirdlove, TurboTax, Noosa, Origins and then some in partnership with the influencer agency, Collectively. As I’ve built my relationship with Collectively, I’ve learned so much about navigating partnerships with brands and since this is a topic I get so many questions about I thought I would share my tips and tricks for working with brands as an influencer. I admit that because influencer marketing is still such a new concept, there is still so much for even me to learn. For those of you who don’t know what influencer marketing is here’s the gist, it’s “a form of marketing in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole.” To break it down a bit more, brands hire people like myself with an audience on social media or readership on their blogs to share about products or services in an authentic way that highlights their experience. Since this business is something that I honestly stumbled into after having Owen, I’ve experienced quite a learning curve and I’d love to make the process easier for those of you just getting started. I’m here to answer any questions you might have so feel free to leave them in the comments, and for those of you in the same field I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject and anything you’ve learned along the way. Here are my top ten tricks for navigating partnerships with brands as an influencer!