The Passion Behind the Blog

I tend to forget that not all of my followers have been around since the beginning. Well, most of my followers haven’t been around since the beginning. So yesterday I decided to ask a question on IG.

What questions do you have about my coaching?

The questions I have been getting are amazing and I have decided to share them here with you. I hope that this post is going to show you how much passion I have for what I do. I answered the questions on the IG post but here I will go into more detail about the answers to those questions.

Are you excited to get to learn a bit more about me?

QUESTIONS THAT MY FOLLOWERS ASKED ME

I love getting to know people. Hearing their stories and hearing the why of what they do brings me great joy. I didn’t really know what to expect when I posted the above question on my IG page but the questions that have been asked so far have been amazing.

I wanted to go into more detail than I could on Instagram so I am going to share the questions that have been asked and write out a longer version of the answer so that you can get insight into me as a blogger and as an Authentic Expression coach.

How can you help me repurpose my content across different platforms? I love this question because I am HUGE on repurposing content. Hello, this post is from an Instagram post. I love showing and teaching women that they can take a single blog post and turn it into multiple content pieces.

BUT…

It also goes the other way. You can take a Facebook post or an Instagram post and turn those into blog posts as well. By showing you how to add titles and a few more details, you can create blog posts from the content that you are already sharing with your audience. Here is a video of me turning a FB post into a blog post.

This is a service that I offer clients if they need help.

How did you get into this whole blogging thing? What’s your background? I love this question because it goes back to forgetting that not every one of my followers has been with me since the beginning. My start into blogging was in 2014. My sister-in-law had suggested that I start a blog. I have always been a writer but blogging had never even crossed my mind. I didn’t know anything about blogging and the extent of my blog reading was for recipes that I found on Pinterest.

It was sold to me as an online journal and that nobody would read it anyway. (That probably should have offended me, but it was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment in time.) So I hopped on Blogger and started my first free blogging website.

I titled it, The Original Samantha. It was going to document my story of trying to go back to the woman I was when I was 18 before my sexual assault. In the first post that I ever published, I shared my story of sexual assault. It was the first time that I had told that secret (besides my husband) and I had women messaging me, thanking me for sharing my story.

I was hooked. I was new to the area we were living and knew no one. These women showed me that I could have a community of support around me. So I started to share my journey to discover self-love.

In the beginning, I focused on writing for mental health, self-care and self-love. It wasn’t until 2019 that I had started to shift and add in writing about blogging as well. In 2020, I had finally decided to write ONLY about blogging and changed my branding and my website completely. At the end of 2020 though, I realized that something was missing and I needed to add the self-love, self-care and mental health pieces back into my writing.

Question and answer session with Samantha Laycock Blogging

I am curious if people can make a full-time income from blogging. My answer is yes. I currently do not make a full-time income from my blogging. I also do not teach beginners how to make money. I believe that you need to create a solid foundation and build a community that trusts you before you can sell to them. I help women create plans to monetize when we work on building a vision and goal setting.

I didn’t start focusing on making money with my blog until 2020. Before that, I had other businesses but I was still blogging to share my story mostly. I do not use ads because I do not like them on blogs but other bloggers do. When I teach women to blog, I have them focus on how they want to create an income that fits in their vision, in their goals and with their lifestyle.

Everyone has a different plan and reasons why they want to monetize. I have had clients become coaches after starting their blog. I have had clients create beautiful journals and digital products after starting their blog. I love being able to teach women that they can build a blog and a business from their story and expertise. A little bit of thinking outside of the box to create a plan that works for you.

Don't expect to make thousands of dollars from blogging in the first year. I am not saying that it doesn't happen but it isn't the norm. Blogging is a long-term game. You need to have a strong foundation and build upon that.

What kind of content do you write? My content has changed throughout the years. It is funny that I began writing in the self-love and self-care niche. It was all about documenting my story and showing women that it was okay for them to do the same.

It took my friend, Jody, to begin asking blogging questions before I realized that I could also write about blogging. So that is when I began to combine the two pieces of myself.

In 2019, I had been featured on a marketing podcast where I was told that in order to truly succeed, I needed to choose ONLY one of my niches. In 2020, after months of questioning myself, I had decided to finally listen and I rebranded my blog completely where I was ONLY talking about blogging.

It was great at first but I soon began to realize that something was missing. A whole piece of my identity was gone and I needed to find it again. It wasn’t until the end of 2020 when again, Jody, messaged me telling me that my writing had changed.

That was when I realized that I couldn’t separate the two pieces. I blog and I teach blogging because it helped me fall in love with myself. That was a piece of my why that I was trying to get rid of.

So I decided that I could do anything I wanted. I mean, it is my blog and my business after all. So I began again to add in self-care, storytelling, healing, self-love and blogging all into my blog posts.

I have been told that I have this magical ability to break down pieces of blogging so that anyone can understand them. I can connect to women and show them how to get from point A to point B in their own way and I don’t try to hide that anymore.

How long have you been blogging? How long have you been helping others? I started blogging in 2014. I never expected it to become such a huge part of my life. I am so incredibly blessed that it has been. Here is a more in-depth blog post about where my blogging story began.

Now for helping people, I hope that I have been helping people since 2014 when I started my blog. My business has changed throughout the years. In 2016, I had decided that I wanted to coach women to find self-love. I had 2 clients in my first six-week program. I then began a subscription box for self-care. I did that until 2019 when the passion fizzled out and life had a different plan.

I didn’t start blog coaching until February 2020 when a friend was willing to be my guinea pig. I created a weekend blogging intensive. Two eight-hour days of setting up a website and everything that goes along with starting a blog. Intensive was an understatement. By Sunday we were exhausted but she had published her very own website.

I then turned that into my coaching program. Throughout the year that I have been coaching, I have been playing around with my programs to see how they will benefit the women that I work with.

What is your favourite platform? I think she meant social media platform so that is how I answered. Pinterest is by far my favourite. Yes, it is a search engine but the things I have learned through Pinterest are amazing. I could spend hours and hours on there and feel like it was only a few minutes.

I love creating graphics for Pinterest as well. It is challenging to see what is going to work and what isn’t. Feel free to come and follow me on Pinterest. I love meeting new people.

What is the best idea for a lead magnet to give to an audience of parents? I answered this one with a question because I need to know more information. There are so many freebies that you can create. A few ideas are…

1. Family date night ideas

2. Ways to connect with your teenager

3. Practical life skills to teach your children before they turn 10

4. Ways to communicate with your children so they will listen

5. How to cut screen time down

Creating a freebie really comes down to the pain points of your ideal reader. Parenting is a broad topic so it is easier to know what age of children you are focusing on with your blog. In this previous blog post, I talk about building an email list as a blogger.

Do you have a favourite area of bloggers to work with? I do! I love working with women who are ready to share their stories but have no idea how to do that. Most of the clients that I have worked with have a traumatic experience in their past and they are ready to share their story. Blogging is a powerful way to create a community around yourself. That means my favourite areas are mental health, self-care and self-love.

I don’t want to help women just write technical blog posts. That isn’t what I enjoy. I enjoy watching and teaching women to step into the power of their past.

I hope you had as much fun as I did with the questions that were asked. If you have a question to ask me, comment on this post or head to the Instagram post and ask me there. I would love to answer it.

If you are ready to start your blog, the next round of Blogfluent starts May 9th. Save your spot today with the new pricing!