Personal Brand Feature: A Chat with Blogger - BennieBooming
I recently had an awesome chat with my friend - Bennie Osafo-Darko. She is a Millennial mama juggling a full time career in public health, a doctoral program and some side hustles! I was excited about the opportunity to dive into her personal brand and learn more about how she has built and continues to maintain such a dynamic blogger brand! I am really inspired by Bennie’s positive energy, and her desire to build a purposeful brand that can support and impact other women and I love how she has creatively incorporated all of her favorite things!
Check out our chat - I hope you’re able to collect a few informative nuggets and insight for your personal brand.
Q: First of all I absolutely LOVE your IG and the amazing photos - I feel like you take me to a different place with every image!!
A. Thank you so much! I take a lot of my photos when I’m traveling, so I’m glad to hear that I’m able to bring you along with me to some amazing places I’ve been to, through my photos.
Q: So tell me a little bit about your brand, your blog and the inspiration for it all? Tell me about the integration of fashion, lifestyle, travel and food.
A. I changed my IG handle from @msbennieboom to @BennieBooming to align with the phase in life where I am now and also to reflect what I am hoping that my audience will get from engaging with my content.
“Despite living through a pandemic and dealing with so many challenges, I am experiencing so much growth and prosperity in all aspects of my life and I wanted that to be the focus of my brand - that there can be joy even in the midst of uncertainty, hope in the midst of fear, and growth in the midst of challenges. ”
I know that people complain that bloggers only share the good parts of their lives on social media and I get that that is not always authentic, but I feel like there is so much negativity in the world that I really want to focus on positivity and good vibes, and so I will only share a challenge I am experiencing if I can also share some positivity or hope or inspiration with it. My purpose for this brand is to help other women learn that it is possible to have a family, a career, travel the world and look and feel good while doing all of these things.
You’ve probably noticed that I love to dress up, so through my IG account and also through an app called LiketoKnowit I share links to my outfits and suggest links to products that my followers can use to achieve similar looks. I know there are people who don’t want others to know where they shop and whatnot, but I don’t mind at all. I’m hoping to create a sisterhood by doing this. I try to share items that are mostly on sale and I share discount codes whenever I can. I also share other items such as kids’ outfits, beauty and home decor.
I also have a small business called Prem N Proper (this is also the name for our YouTube Channel). I sell stylish women’s accessories (clutch purses, jewelry and fascinators predominantly) and also provide personal shopping and styling services through that.
The integration of fashion, lifestyle, travel, family and food highlights all of my favorite things. I’ve always had a keen interest in fashion. For as long as I can remember, I have been putting outfits together for myself, my friends and my family, and it makes me so happy to see people wearing cute outfits that I’ve put together for them. I grew up admiring my parents’ sense of style and now I get to put outfits together for my mum, so that’s pretty exciting!
I love to travel and discover new places. I travel with my friends a lot and one of my favorite things to do for our trips is to plan our outfits for the whole trip! I usually research the location for picturesque spots and plan our outfits. I pick themes for our outfits to go with the location and will my friends to put outfits together. I love how travel and fashion brings us together.
In terms of food, I come from a culture where food brings us together and symbolizes love when we eat together. I’m from Ghana and I feel like good food is the same thing as a good time or a party! Lol! I mostly taught myself to cook because when I was growing up, my mum was a single parent and worked a lot, and I tried to cook so that she wouldn’t have to when she came home from work. I like looking up and experimenting with recipes, and sharing them. Anytime I eat food prepared by someone I know that is really good, I always ask questions about how they prepared the food.
Finally, my love for cooking is one of the main reasons I survived the early part of the pandemic and the lock down. I was anxious and cooking was the only thing that took my mind off everything.
I’m always happy when I am cooking and really escape during the process. Sometimes, I don’t even eat the food when I am done, but I am always so happy with the finished product. I have a friend who had encouraged me in the past to start a YouTube channel to share recipes, but I was hesitant because I was already so busy and did not want to put another thing on my plate. After thinking about it for a month or so, I decided to do it. Prior to starting my YouTube, my friends always contacted me for tips and recipes so I decided to do that more broadly through my YouTube channel. And since, my kids have been asking for a YouTube channel for a few years now, I decided to make it a family channel and involve my kids. The kids love making videos so I am thinking of content ideas to involve them more.
Q. What made you decide to start the brand/blog?
A. Although I don’t currently have a website, I feel like I have been blogging via many social media platforms going as far back as MySpace through Hi5, then Facebook, and now Instagram, YouTube and others. I used to call myself a “pseudoblogger”, mostly because I was scared of the commitment. I was already involved in so many things-- 3 kids, a full-time job, a graduate student, a wife, a small business and I really did not want to commit to one more thing that would require a lot of effort. But I realized that I was already blogging without the title, and if there was one thing that I gained from living through this pandemic, it is that I need to use my talents and follow my dreams, so I decided to do it!
Q. I see you also have started a YouTube channel, which I love the interaction with your little ones - they seem like a lot of fun! What was the inspiration for that?
A. One of my favorite things to do is to cook. I love to cook as much as I love good food, so for the last couple of years, I had been sharing videos of food recipes on my Snapchat with my family and friends. In the beginning of the pandemic I realized that the only thing that helped me cope with my anxiety was cooking, so I was cooking everyday and I was snapping a lot of it. (Please see the earlier question where I talk about our YouTube channel).
Q. Do you have a physical blogsite for people to visit or is it mainly just your IG and YouTube?
A. I currently don’t have a website, and I’m not sure if I’m going to have one in the future. If I do, I will probably want to make sure that I have really established myself well on the other platforms before I add a website, so that I know that I am giving my audience additional content they would benefit from.
Q. Now...this IG page of yours that I’ve been ranting and raving about is so refreshing. I notice there is a flow of colors with the imagery, and the captions are always on point. So how do you create content - do you have a theme for the month? And..how far out do you plan content?
A. I’ve gone back and forth with the kind of look I want for my page but I love color so it’s always part of my theme. Sometimes, I have a few weeks where I focus on a particular color for my posts. Because of the three post grid that Instagram uses, I always think about the other two posts that will be placed next to a particular post, and I don’t always use posts with the same colors but I try to make them compliment each other. I use an app called Planoly to help me visually plan my posts, when I’m not sure how to organize my posts.
In terms of content, I focus them around fashion, lifestyle, family, food and travel. I try to come up with content focused on these areas that educate, inspire, engage and entertain my audience. My goal is to tell stories with my photos and caption, and it’s very important to me that I put positive and motivational messages out there so I share a lot of inspirational quotes. A lot of times, I need to hear those inspirational quotes and I hope that others benefit from them too.
Sometimes, when I run out of ideas, I use the National Calendar App, which has “national” days of the year and gives me ideas on what to post on social media. Other times, I get inspiration from social media, things happening at home, conversations with friends, etc.
Q. Do you have a photographer for your photos - I mean really, they are gorgeous!
A. I don’t have a professional photographer. Most of my photos have actually been taken on my iPhone XS Max. Although in the last few weeks, I have been using my Canon EOS Rebel T5 for some of my photos, which I actually won on Instagram through a blogger giveaway. Since, I decide to take blogging more seriously, I have been having my cousin take a lot of my photos, so I schedule time with him one a week or so to have photos taken when I am able to. I don’t have a strict schedule for taking photos because I don’t really have the time, but luckily I have a lot of content that I have been hoarding and did not share over the years, so I am using some of that content now when I am not able to take new photos. Most of the time, my photos are taken by my husband, my kids, my friends or anyone who’s around to do it.
Q. What systems, or tools do you use to help manage your content? Like how do you stay organized? You have a family, a career and your in school, wait excuse me, not just school...a doctoral program - Ma’am, how do you do it all?
A. To help me stay focused with my career and school, I only create content on the weekends. For example, if I know that I am going to cook something that I want to record for YouTube, then I give myself some more time and feed my kids before starting because making videos take time, and it means that it will take a little bit longer for the food to be ready, and the kids don’t behave when they’re hungry lol. Making videos take a lot of time, especially when you’re filming with kids, so you need a lot of patience to be able to do that --I’m still working on my patience.
Also, whenever I have a little break from school or work, I try to create a lot of content so that if I’m a little busy later, I still have a lot of content I can put out. To be honest, because it took a while before I “officially” considered myself a blogger, I have so much content that I never shared, so I probably have enough content for the next couple of months if I am not able to create any new content.
I’m not really using any systems or tools to manage my content currently, but I think what has been helpful is having a great support system. I have been lucky to have my mum staying with us since before the pandemic started, and having her around has helped me to be able to shoot without my kids. She also helps out with the kids at home and sometimes even shoots our YouTube videos! I also have other family around who help out, so it is really taking a village to help me build my brand and I don’t take it lightly. I feel really blessed.
There really isn’t enough time to do it all, and sometimes there are sleepless nights, but I know that this is just going to be for a little while and I am looking forward to enjoying the fruits of my labor when all of the work is done.
Q. Can you share any challenges that you’ve faced as you’re building your brand?
A. I think the biggest challenge so far has been finding time to shoot. I actually have so many ideas and just need to make time to do the work. I know that I have to put it work to get the results I desire so I am trying to spend a little bit more time developing content. I also don’t have any high expectations for myself, this is something I really enjoy doing so I am making it fun for myself as much as I can.
Q. Any advice, tips or tricks you can share with the people on how to start a blogger brand?
A. There is no one size fits all to blogging just like with everything else. If you’re passionate about blogging just start small and build on it as time goes on and make sure you bring your authentic self. By authentic self, I mean, you don’t have to try to be like other bloggers. Try to focus on something about you that other bloggers don’t have. For example, even though I don’t have a large audience or brand collaborations yet, I focus on parts of me that other bloggers may not have and highlight that in my content. I’m not sure that there is another blogger out there who has three kids, is in a doctoral program, loves to cook and travel etc. so I focus on those unique aspects of my life. If you’re good at making others smile, then make sure you share that aspect of you with your audience because not a lot of people can do that.
I’ve heard a lot of people say pick one area to focus on, and for me that was unrealistic because my life doesn’t have one area of focus, so for me to be able to bring my authentic self, it meant that I had to share key aspects of my life that I am juggling. And that isn’t always easy to do because I still want to maintain some privacy for myself and my family while I am doing all of this.
You also don’t need a fancy camera to start blogging. All you need is a good phone and at least one photo editing app. I use Adobe Lightroom to edit my photos. Finally, don’t overthink your content. I noticed that my posts that have had the highest engagement were ones that I didn’t spend too much time coming up with because they were just part of my everyday life and people sometimes love to see things about your life they can either relate to or appreciate. As much as every blogger wants their audience to engage on their posts, it’s important that you are also engaging with your audience and getting to know them. Pay attention to what excites them about you and share more of that with them.
