13 Questions With… Babi a Fi

Next up in my ’13 Questions With…’ blogger series is the lovely Jess from Babu a Fi. See what she has to say…

1. When did you start up your blog and why? I started this blog in January 2015, after my daughter was born. I had been reading lots of parenting blogs while I was pregnant, but I was too superstitious to actually set a blog up until Marianna had arrived!

2. What is the most important thing you’ve learned since you started blogging and what advice would you give to a newbie blogger? I have learned so much about topics I had never really thought about before – SEO, marketing, etc. The most important thing I’ve learned though has been not to compare myself (or my blog!) to others. We’re all on our own journey. That would be my advice to newbie bloggers too; there is so much out there about what you should be doing, but if you aren’t enjoying it, what’s the point?

3. Which has been your most popular blog post? A post about the Titanic Switch Conspiracy theory – http://www.babiafi.co.uk/2015/12/titanic-switch-conspiracy.html

4. Do you blog as a hobby or as a job? It’s my hobby, though if one day I managed to earn enough to turn it into a job, I wouldn’t complain about it.

5. What do you do to stop getting blogging burn out? I actually took a few days off completely recently. I just didn’t feel like writing, promoting, etc, and decided it would be better to step back completely than push on and resent it.

6. Who are your favourite bloggers to read and vloggers to watch on YouTube? My all time favourite blog is The Toy Box Philosopher. I collect fashion dolls and miniatures, and this blog always has the best reviews.

7. What are your blogging pet peeves? Finding typos or broken formatting in my posts when it looked fine in preview. Spam comments. Server downtime. All the usual things.

8. What’s your biggest aspiration for your blog in 2016? To keep increasing my social media reach, and improving my stats. I would love to get into the top 100 on Tots by the end of the year too!

9. What were your career aspirations when you were at school? I always wanted to be a teacher. Then I did some classroom based work experience… I did go into youth work for a bit though, before moving on to pastures new.

10. Do you find balancing work / blog / family life a struggle? Sometimes, especially if it’s a busy week at work. There just aren’t enough hours in the day (or night) to get everything done.

11. How do you get exposure for your blog, and what is your favourite social media site? They say that content is king, but publicity is life blood – if you want people to read what you write, you need to get it out there. I use most of the big social media sites to promote my posts, as well as running competitions, working on specific ‘how to’ guides, and other things which will get people onto the blog.

My favourite social media site is Tumblr. I don’t really use it for the blog as much as my other accounts, but it’s much less effort than networks like Twitter where it feels like you always need to be engaging.

12. If you had £1000 to spend on yourself, what would you buy? Some new clothes. I haven’t bought any since before Marianna was born.

13. Which 3 famous people (dead or alive) would you invite to a dinner party? I always find this kind of question really difficult to answer because, well, what if your hero(ine) turned out to be a total jerk? Still, I’d go for Walt Disney, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie. I’d love to hear how they brought their creations to life.

Thanks to Jess for taking part, if you want to learn more about her the check out her fab blog Babi a Fi or find her on social media.

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