126: The IF App + Reaching an International Audience with Jennie Brandon

Are you struggling with balancing too many social media platforms? What about monetizing your site to its fullest extent - so there's a chance to earn something from every single visitor? Jennie Brandon, our very first guest from the UK walks us through loads of great tips on how to use the IF app to leverage our presence on social media. She then goes beyond a handy app to teach us all the ways we can make sure our site is ready for an international audience. (The stats she shares are staggering, so you definitely don't want to ignore this huge demographic who could fall in love with your content!)

On the Podcast

01:26 - Jennie's Two Blogs03:29 - How Learning Creates Opportunity06:57 - What is the "IF" App?11:30 - Build Leverage Across Social Media Platforms14:38 - How to Start Using IFTTT20:37 - How to Monetize your Site for International Customers28:52 - Why your Amazon Affiliate Links Aren't Making you Money35:25 - How to be Inclusive of an International Audience47:10 - Jennie's Hilarious Mom Moment

Press Play on the Podcast Player Below to Hear Great Tips from our Favorite Brit, Jennie Brandon Jennie’s Two Blogs

Jennie lives in Cambridge with her husband of 10 years and two small children Sophie and Joe. She has two blogs, The Errant Sock, and Laundry in the Temple. Laundry in the Temple is where Jennie shares how she teaches her children about her faith and The Errant Sock is a lifestyle blog with parenting hacks, books, and lots of recipes. All of Jennie's friends call her the “slow cooker whisperer” so she shares plenty of tips to help out other mums! Running two blogs and being a mum of 2 means that Jennie has limited time to invest in social media and sharing her content.

How Learning Creates Opportunity

When Jennie first reached out to us it was to share a story of how the Brilliant Business Moms podcast had helped her business and landed her a new job. Years ago, Jennie created her first blog where she focused on slow cooker recipes. Later when she tried to get back into blogging as a way of bringing in more income, she found that the blogging world was very different. In order to get caught up quickly she began listening to the podcast and it was Episode 53, Everything Twitter with Kelli Miller, that made the biggest impact on Jennie's blog and life.

Jennie had never been very comfortable with Twitter before listening to the episode, but by the end of the podcast, she felt ready to give it another try. Jennie dug into Twitter and got 600% more views to her blogs by focusing on the platform!

While Jennie still works on growing her blogs, she knew that she needed to take on a traditional job for now to make ends meet for her family. The podcast helped her with that goal too! A local pastor approached Jennie with a job opportunity, and it was her social media knowledge and web design expertise that set her apart from the other candidates! Jennie's new job lets her use her new skills in social media and website development, and it fits around her schedule and life as mum.

What a great example of how learning creates opportunity!

What is the “IF” App?

IFTTT (If This, Then That - now called the IF App) is an app that allows you to connect other apps and websites to each other for completing an array of different tasks.

Each app, program, or website you can connect is called a channel, and you can create "recipes" between the channels.The title really explains it all: If you do something on one channel, then something else will automatically happen on another channel.

There are hundreds of suggested recipes to help you get started, but almost any way of connecting two apps that you can imagine can be created to make your business and personal life more convenient.

The IF app currently has over 250 different channel options, which include Ebay, Etsy, Twitter, Evernote, Fitbit, Spotify, Feedly, Youtube, Trello, Reddit, and they just recently added Pinterest!

 

Here are a few examples of how the app works: Jennie has set up the IF app so that IF she takes a photo on her android phone, that photo is automatically saved to her Google drive. If she tweets something, that tweet is automatically saved to Evernote. If you leave the office, you could even set up a recipe to turn on your heat if you have a smart heater! There are so many possibilities!

Our heads were spinning when we heard that Pinterest was just recently added: You could automatically pin items that you just added to your etsy store, Pin instagram photos to a board, or Tweet every time you add a pin.

Build Leverage Across Social Media Platforms

In running two blogs Jennie really didn’t have time to devote t...