Welcome to the second of our Featured Blogger series. This will be a space that showcases all of you awesome bloggers in Manchester and the North-West.
Interested in being featured? Get in touch!
FEATURED BLOGGER OF THE WEEK – Eleanor Graceful
Name: Ellie Dixon-Smith
Blog URL: www.eleanorgraceful.
Twitter followers: 1.3K
Instagram followers: 900
Other social stat: Facebook page – 110
How long have you been blogging?
I've been blogging on and off since 2011, my second year of university. I started my original blog as part of my Social Media Marketing module, but the host site closed down about a year later. I joined blogger in 2014 and have been blogging on there ever since!
Why did you decide to start your blog?
I re-started my blog because I felt as though I couldn't write everything I wanted to on Twitter, and at the time, was following a lot of blogs on beauty, fashion and travel, and thought, I can do that too!
At the time of starting my blog, I was suffering from quite bad anxiety and blogging was a great place to open up and write down my thoughts even though half the time I didn't publish the posts. I started gaining more confidence when people gave me positive feedback and were actually reading them (which was always a big worry of mine) and now I post on a wide range of subjects.
What do you hope to achieve for your blog in 2017?
One of the main things I would love to achieve in the next year is to be nominated (and hopefully win!) a blogging award!
I've had the chance to work with some great brands already on my blog, and in 2017 I would love to do this more - hopefully travel, fashion and beauty. I also want to up my photography game and create some beautiful imagery for my blog and hopefully travel to some interesting new places along the way! Following on from this, I also really want to put more effort into my Instagram (@elenorgraceful) and increase my following on there.
I'm hoping to start a YouTube channel too - so watch this space!
What is your favourite social media channel & why?
This is a really tough one because I'm addicted to them all; but I'd have to say Instragram because I'm a very visual person. I love that you can portray different sides of your personality through imagery and I can easily spend hours just scrolling through and getting lost in all the different accounts I follow. It's also great for getting inspiration from other bloggers, and promoting your latest posts.
Who is your blogging inspiration?
Hannah Gale - I admire how down to earth she is on her blog and her YouTube channel, and I feel like she's a really good friend of mine even though I've never met her; and her cats are adorable too! She writes a really good mixture of list posts, beauty, fashion for real girls and lifestyle, and her personality always shines through. She seems like such a lovely, bubbly person, but doesn't pretend her life is perfect and shy away from the fact that she suffers from mental health problems and openly blogs about it. I really love the fact that her blog blew up because of a post that went viral and was picked up from The Guardian - so maybe there is hope for all of us!
What is the one piece of advice you’d give other bloggers & aspiring bloggers?
'Always believe in yourself, because if you don't, then who will sweetie?'
Thanks for that one, Marilyn!
Fun/Random fact about you:
I'm a quarter Australian.
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