Ask Amanda: Modern Girl, Modern Advice
Amanda Holstein of “Advice from a 20 Something” has built a brand around giving advice. She covers a range of topics from career to fashion towellness. In an interview, Bloglovin’ sat down with Amanda to learn all about her life as a digital influencer and all around giver of advice.
At A Glance
Amanda Holstein of
Advice from a 20 Something
Stats: 22k followers on Pinterest 33.9k followers on Instagram
As seen in Better Homes and Gardens, Buzzfeed, and Popsugar.
Bloglovin’: What is Advice from a 20 Something? How would you describe it to our readers who don’t know?
Amanda Holstein: Advice from a 20 Something is a combination between an old school advice column and a modern day lifestyle blog. You’ll find similar imagery, styling, and topics that you might see on a lifestyle blog but it’s all from the perspective of offering useful advice. There actually is an advice column on the blog as well, Ask Amanda, where readers can write in any sort of questions whether it’s more personal or more general. I answer them via email and I also feature some of them on the blog as well.
BL: How does the Advice from a 20 Something story begin? What inspired you to create it?
AH: When I first graduated from college, I got a job at an advertising agency. I remember being really bored sitting at the computer all day at the receptionist’s desk away from all my other coworkers. That’s when I started to discover blogs. I spent a year exploring that space, launched my first blog, and learned about photography, web design, just kind of familiarizing myself with that whole world. A few months after I started it, I came across a company called Federated Media, a digital media agency that ran marketing campaigns with brands and bloggers. I started working there and was lucky enough to get a lot of insight into what brands were looking for and what successful bloggers were doing. That’s kind of what lead me to scratch my old blog and start again with Advice From a 20 Something. I started it with a little more knowledge of the space, and with more of a specific voice and a specific angle. I slowly started working with brands, but that wasn’t really my focus. It was more about getting this new blog up and running, get a clear sense of my voice, and really nail down the Advice from a 20 Something brand.
BL: How did you come to find that voice?
AH: I think it’s something that you develop overtime as you blog. A lot of people want to go into their blog knowing exactly what they’re going to talk about, exactly what the categories are going to be. What I always tell people is to first look at yourself as an individual and what makes you unique as a person. When I did that I noticed that my role in life for my friends and family has always been to offer advice. So I kind of took that as, well that’s something that makes me unique as an individual so maybe that will make my blog and my brand unique.
Finding what makes you unique and then blowing that out and making that the main focus of your brand can help you figure out your voice and your focus.
BL: How would you describe your audience now, and how do you use your voice to target and speak to your loyal readers?
AH: [My] audience is definitely majority 20 somethings. I also get teenagers and 30 and 40 somethings, so it ranges. But I would definitely say that the majority are women in their mid twenties, out of college, figuring out what they want to do with their careers. They’re kind of in that phase where a lot of change is happening. The one thing that I really try to do when I speak to them through a blog post, through the computer screen, is to step back and speak as if I’m talking to them in person. I’ll think, how would I say this to a friend? I try to make sure that comes through in my voice so they feel like there’s a real person behind the screen. I also try to make sure that I share experiences that I’ve been through and what they’ve taught me. I try my best to relate to them in that way and make it feel like we’re all figuring it out together.
BL: When you’re working with a brand on sponsored content, how do you approach maintaining your voice and your style?
AH: It’s important for me to make sure that my sponsored content is as high quality — if not even more high quality — than the rest of my content. I don’t want readers to get the impression that this post was just up there because it was sponsored and there’s no other value to it. I want to make sure that it gives value to my readers. So what I try to do is usually I’ll have a lot of ideas on topics that I want to talk about and if I get a sponsorship opportunity, I’ll think about which one of those ideas would fit really well with that brand. So most of the time I’m not necessarily coming up with it from scratch. I definitely don’t like trying to force a brand into a topic.
BL: Do you target brands that you want to work with or do they generally reach out to you?
AH: It’s definitely a mix. Most of my sponsorships come from the brand reaching out to my influencer network and then reaching out to me. When that happens I usually just have ideas under certain topics that I want to cover at some point or they’re already on the editorial calendar. Then I’ll see if that topic goes with their campaign theme. I also definitely pitch brands directly as well and try to build those relationships more directly because I think there’s something invaluable about having those relationships directly with brands.
BL: Tell us a little bit about how you pitch brands directly, and the value in that.
AH: I think from a brand’s perspective, if they know you as a person, understand what your blog is all about, what your personality is like, how you are to work with, they just keep you more top of mind, as opposed to seeing you as just another website. When I approach brands, I think it’s important to approach them with specific ideas. Marketers are so busy with their day to day, so if you do the work for them and say this is what I can offer that you can’t get from doing a campaign with 20+ bloggers, this is specific to my site, this is a list of specific ideas ready to go, and these are some numbers that show you my stats, my following, my engagement, you just kind of make it as easy as possible for them to say yes. That’s the best approach that I’ve found.
BL: You mentioned that sometimes you get your brand partnerships through an influencer marketing platform or network. Can you tell us about any pros or cons associated with that?
AH: It’s great working with influencer networks. It’s important to find the right one — there are so many out there! You want to know what brands they work with so that you have an idea if the brands match your content. Knowing how they approach each campaign is also important. Some companies have websites where you have to log in and pitch, some present you to the client and then they email you if you were chosen. There’s a lot of different ones and they all work in different ways. It’s also important to meet with those influencer networks in person because it helps keep you top of mind as campaigns come up. They work with so many people, so if you get coffee with them, catch up on life and updates with your blog, you keep building that relationship. They then think of you as a person, not just an Instagram handle. It’s so important to be proactive with influencer networks!
BL: On your blog, you cover a lot of categories: fashion, beauty, career, food, etc. Was it your intention to cover a wide range of topics or was that something that just happened organically?
AH: I definitely did that intentionally. Working on the brand side, I saw how many different categories of brands there were. If I was just relying on fashion brands, I would really limit where I could go with my blog. So I wanted to make sure that I was versatile enough to work with a variety of brands. That really has honestly helped a lot. I’ve been able to work with TurboTax, for example, and posted about tax tips for bloggers. If I was just doing outfits, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. But I think you have to make sure that it doesn’t feel random or overwhelming like there’s too much content. I focus my perspective on giving advice. What all these posts have in common — from fashion to finance — is that they all have the same voice and the same message, which is giving you useful, easy, step-by-step tips to improve your life as a 20 something. That’s how I unite all of those categories.
BL: As the title of your blog suggests, your content is very much centered on advice for people in their 20s. So as you approach your 30s, how are thinking about your blog and its future with you as a 30 something?
AH: I actually get this question a lot [laughter]. When I bought the domain name Advice from a 20 Something, I also bought the domain Advice from a 30 Something. That was my dad’s advice [laughter]. So I have that waiting in the wings. I would ideally like to run both sites. As I’ve gone into my late 20s, I’ve definitely noticed my topics changing a bit. I’m talking more about home, interior stuff, finances, and less about beauty tutorials and graduating from college. I don’t want to lose sight of that though because there are still plenty of 20 somethings who are about to graduate college and going through all that. So to have both sites and separate those types of content would be ideal.
BL: Does it seem overwhelming to be running two sites one day?
AH: Yes [laughter]. Ideally, I would have a team. My goal this year is to start building that up and start bringing in more writers that can work beneath me. It’s tricky bringing in other voices because I’d like to think that I have a very specific voice so it’s definitely hard finding someone with the same thought process and same perspective on life. I’ve been lucky enough to find one so far. She’s been helping write about two posts a week. We sort of brainstorm the topics together. She’s definitely one in a million!
BL: Your blog seems to be the focal point of your brand, but we’re also curious about how you’re communicating with your audience beyond your blog. Tell us about that.
AH: Instagram is my favorite platform for engaging readers. People are more talkative there. You can comment and converse very easily. It’s also just a very active platform where more of my readers are. I also enjoy it the most because I can mix my love of aesthetics with my love writing. People can read the captions and get advice but they also look at the photos. So it’s a good balance there.
BL: Can you tell us if anything comes to mind like a brand collaboration where content was distributed on Instagram that was super successful for you?
AH: One that I did with Urban Outfitters for holiday. I styled a cozy holiday home set up with a lot of their products. It did well on my blog but there was one post I put on Instagram and it got thousands of likes. People shared it all over Instagram. It was somewhat of a viral image. The campaign did well in general but the Instagram post was what ended up boosting it.
BL: Then to kind of flip that, have there been any collaborations that weren’t that successful?
AH: I’ve definitely had that and that sucks. Usually I’ve found that happens a lot when you have to post product packaging. I did one and it featured the brand’s logo in the photo so loudly that it didn’t perform so well. It kind of turns some people off. Readers get a negative feeling if it’s so clearly sponsored and they don’t get any value out of it.
BL: So, what’s next?? Are there any upcoming projects that you’re excited about?
AH: This year, I’m focused on bringing more people onto my team so that I can focus on bigger ideas. I have all these big ideas that I want to do but when you have to make sure the site is up and running everyday, you don’t have time to execute. This year, I’m also trying to really focus on my reader engagement. Ironically, most of my readers come from SEO, which is the goal, but I need my readers to be recurring and constant because that’s when you get the engagement and that’s when your campaigns do better. One of the ways I’m doing that is through answering Ask Amanda questions through video. I think that will work because people will see me answering questions instead of just reading it in a paragraph. I think having more face to face time with my audience will really help. It’s more relatable. I think video has to be done the right way to be effective but I do think video is kind of where everything is going for sure.
Many thanks to Samone Wheeler for her contributions to this article.
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