“Be
worth knowing, not just well-known.”
Melissa
Bolton
*This
is Part Three of a Four Part Series being published daily
You
can read Part One: https://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2024/04/how-to-increase-your-blogs-audience-tip.html
Part
Two: https://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2024/04/how-to-increase-your-blogs-audience-tip.html
*
Originally on thinking of this blog post, I was so sure that I would have written something like this before that I went right through my content archive! I found a ton of posts that will be really useful in referring back to in this post; but nothing even remotely similar to everything I’m hoping that this one will be. Upon making this discovery, I started to wonder why I hadn’t written something like this before. I didn’t have to think on it for too long though, before the self-doubt and fear of judgment surrounded my head and, before I knew it, I was questioning what right I had to write a post like this. I mean, who do I think I am telling others how to do something like this?! But I’ll be honest; I just keep coming back to the fact that I’m NOT Disordered has over 1.3 million readers now and shouldn’t that count for something? So, I’m swallowing the low self-esteem, pushing away the nerves, and desperately hoping people will deem this piece to be genuinely helpful and a useful resource… Here goes nothing…
I think
it’d be fair to say that it didn’t take me long in my blogging career, to
recognise the power and potential that comes from networking in this industry,
especially as a result of the previous tip in me always striving to better I’m
NOT Disordered’s content. I mean, in all honesty; my first collaborations with
YoungMinds (you can read the first one here)? I genuinely can’t remember
how they came about – but I was a sectioned psychiatric hospital inpatient at
the time so… I also can’t remember how I started talking to one of the senior
staff – Angela Slater (who has actually written a guest post for the blog once,
you can read it here – at Time To Change (but that
also happened during my time in hospital) and did the training so that I could
volunteer at my very first event just over one year since I started blogging
(you can read the informative blog post with details of the event here, and then the post about the
actual event is here)! Not being able to recall how
I met Angela is kind of annoying(!) because I came to think of her as the first
sort of external person to really believe in, I’m NOT Disordered and its
potential – which is why we’re actually still friends over ten years later!
Working
with Angela and having her support and confidence in my abilities, actually ended
up turning into a really special and popular partnership with Time To Change in
a more general way that resulted in numerous collaborations – particularly for their
Time To Talk Day across quite a few years. I also found that the event and
subsequent collaborations really bolstered my confidence in terms of meeting new
people and reaching out to others to request guest posts. If I had to choose, I
think my favourite three from around 2014 – 2015 were: Being Brave - A guest blog by
Ian Callaghan | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk) and 'Days worth of filming had to be
cut down into 45mins' - A guest post by Becky Thompson | I'm NOT Disordered
(imnotdisordered.co.uk)
and ''This award just shows that the
work I'm doing is making a difference" - A guest blog by Jack Wilson | I'm
NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk).
I also made one of the most important and one of my absolute favourites of connections,
John Lawlor! At the time (2015) he was the Chief Executive of my local mental
health NHS Trust and we met through me tagging along on a radio interview, you
can read more about it: Mentally Sound interview John
Lawlor | 'Ad' | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk).
Then,
in September 2015 – exactly one year after being discharged from the
psychiatric hospital – I was asked to give my very first speech, and it was at
a Time To Change event which had been branded Story Camp. Through my
collaborations with them from the event in 2014 until then, I’d connected with
other staff there and so one of their Digital Officers got in touch to ask if
I’d do some Consultancy work on a lot of the pre-event promotional material and
press releases etc. Then, a few weeks before the actual event (which was being
held in London), I was asked to give the closing speech at it! I honestly could
not have been more honoured – or more terrified! At that point, I had no
experience of public-speaking and with it being all the way down the country in
London, it meant that I couldn’t just take my Mum or a friend to have someone
there who I knew. It meant that when I got to the event and everyone seemed to
know each other, I called my Mum and told her over and over that I didn’t think
I could go through with it. Eventually, I got the encouragement and confidence
I needed and made the speech (you can read about it and the entire event here)… I remember being so nervous that
I had to rest my iPad (which contained the notes for my speech) on the lectern
so that people couldn’t see my hands shaking while I was holding it!
You
know, I talked earlier about Victoria Magrath and the inspiration she’s had on
me and my blogging career? Well, building connections has been another area
she’s impacted to be honest, because I watched her go from working with small,
high street fashion stores to now collaborating with very highly regarded,
designer brands such as Louis Vuitton and Armani. Seeing this huge rise in her
seniority and ranking in the industry inspired me to consider the mental health
version of high street stores and designer brands… Like, which organisations or
people did I consider a step-up from collaborating with other charities or
small companies? It felt like a really useful and creative method to look at
things in a way which added to that previous tip in bettering I’m NOT
Disordered’s content.
So, two
other fairly powerful and influential contacts I also built relationships with around
that time, were the Police Liaison Lead from my local mental health NHS Trust (who
completed a Q&A Guest Post here) and an Inspector and Mental
Health Lead from my local Police force (who also completed a Q&A Guest Post
here). Initially, we were working
together to facilitate one day of training for numerous cohorts of new recruits
in the Police force, but we made such a good team that they invited me to speak,
blog about (the blog post about the morning of the event is here and the afternoon post is here), and create the social media
for a very huge and important event; Enhancing Multi-Agency Partnerships.
I’ll
never forget when the Police’s Twitter guy asked me to film a quick video for
their Twitter account and I just looked around myself – I looked at the
incredible location (the Discovery Museum in Newcastle Upon Tyne), I looked to
the Police and Crime Commissioner Dame Vera Baird, I saw the Chief Executive of
our local NHS mental health Trust, I looked to the little press area where
there were several reporters and filming crew who had already interviewed me, and
I felt the respect I was being shown – and I couldn’t help but feel like the
entire thing was completely surreal! I couldn’t quite accept that I was in that
position after all the very poor and horrible experiences with various Police
Officers in the years before the specialist psychiatric hospital admission; I
actually ended up writing an entire blog post about it: FROM CELLS TO CONFERENCES | MY
MENTAL HEALTH RECOVERY WITH NORTHUMBRIA POLICE | I'm NOT Disordered
(imnotdisordered.co.uk)!
Unfortunately
– and this is actually something I’ve genuinely never talked about online – there
was a huge incident with someone and the Police in a mental health crisis and
the Police weren’t exactly the epitome of professional, empathetic, kind, or even
helpful. Their many failures led to the death of a young person, and I couldn’t
bring myself to think past it in a way that would mean I could continue working
with them through I’m NOT Disordered, events, and training sessions. I knew
that if I were to mention them on my social media or my blog, it had the
potential to open me up to a whole lot of backlashes and criticisms. I mean, by
that point my blog had really taken off in terms of its popularity and I
worried that if I were to collaborate with an organisation who had failed in
such an enormous way, it could seriously tarnish my blog’s reputation and I
wasn’t willing to risk that.
Another
massive local organisation I developed a really good working relationship or
connection with from around 2021, was the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS). And
it’s actually another partnership where I genuinely can’t recall how it all
kicked off, but I worked closely with the Service’s Communications Director and
their Mental Health Lead to produce this blog post: THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES WHEN
YOU’RE CALLING AN AMBULANCE | IN COLLABORATION WITH NORTH EAST AMBULANCE
SERVICE | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk). I think that my favourite and
most special part of the post and the rest of our work together was when I was
asked to do the photoshoot! I mean, I couldn’t help but think that it was
seriously a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because I thought it likely that I
wouldn’t get the chance to do something like that ever again.
Standing
by the Ambulances parked at my local Police Station with the NEAS
Communications Director suggesting poses, the Mental Health Lead coming into
the photos, and a Photographer shouting out cues, I had a similar experience to
that of the Police in that it felt so surreal. I mean, to think of my sort of
journey with NEAS and all the occasions where they’ve basically saved my life,
and to then be stood doing a photoshoot with two incredibly important staff?
Well, not only did it feel so strange, but it also felt like a huge achievement
because it meant I’ve survived every instance that they’d worked hard to make
sure that I came through.
Ok, so
two more large organisations I’ve connected with…
In
2019, the travel company; London North Eastern Railway (LNER) actually ended up
contacting me after I posted something on social media about their amazing
service and they offered me some complimentary first-class tickets! Having then
built a working relationship with their Communications Team, I pitched several
more collaboration ideas and, in the end, we worked together on four posts:
I
really loved working with LNER because I felt it really challenged my
creativity because it’s an organisation that would probably easily be
considered as having nothing to do with mental health in any way, shape, or
form. In fairness, I can quite easily see a relevance, so it was really about
trying to get that across to I’m NOT Disordered’s audience in a way that would
encourage a sensation in them of becoming more insightful and empathetic.
Alongside
testing my capacity for thinking up some creative ideas for angles to use in
our collaboration posts, LNER was also the first organisation where I was asked
to provide statistics as to the number of readers our posts had gained. With
the first two having over 9,000, the company were obviously bolstered into
continuing our partnership and so our third piece had over 10,000 and the
fourth had around 15,000. Initially, with providing the figures being a new thing
for me to have to do, I was genuinely nervous because I was convinced, they
were going to reply with, “that’s not enough;” and I’d be forgotten about and left
feeling insulted and insignificant. Fortunately, not only were the reader
levels good enough for LNER, but I also found it to be a bit of a lesson in
recognising the importance of statistics and that they could be incredibly relevant
and helpful if I were to mention them in collaboration pitches and briefs, and my
media kit. And lo and behold, I found that I secured more collaborations when I
began referencing the statistics that they could expect from working with
me/I’m NOT Disordered. Learning this – and even more over the years, has
resulted in a number of posts with tips and advice, especially regarding to landing
a collaboration and how it could be successful…
HOW TO LAND A COLLABORATION |
FOUR TOP TIPS | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk)
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW
ABOUT COLLABORATIONS | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk)
The
final organisation I’ve built a connection with and who I’m actually most in
touch with to this day, is Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne, and Wear NHS
Foundation Trust (CNTW) who are basically the NHS Trust responsible for all my
local mental health services which varies from the Crisis Team to Psychiatric
Hospitals. I actually first made a connection with them in 2015 – which I
talked about earlier in this part where I mentioned their Chief Executive at
the time; John Lawlor and that I met him through being asked to blog about a
radio interview a mental health radio station was conducting with him.
From
then, I feel that my relationship with the Trust has gone from strength to
strength and has included literally around – and actually, maybe over – 20
collaborations (don’t worry; I’m not about to list them all!)! I do, however,
want to tell you my two favourite posts:
The
first was a Q&A with the newly appointed Chief Executive James Duncan (you
can read it here). Fortunately, I’ve spent a
great deal of time with James since this post and one of my most favourite bit
from a chat we were having on the way to an event was when I asked him if it
felt like a massive achievement to have been promoted from Deputy to CEO. He
said “no” and I was like ‘well this is awkward!’ because I’d obviously expected
a ‘yes,’ but then he added – and I still get goosebumps when I quote him: “the
achievement for me is when I find out we’ve helped someone.” Now, to me, this
is the most perfect attitude you could want from a mental health Trust Chief
Executive! I mean, can you get anyone more genuine, dedicated, determined, or
passionate?!
His
comment really filled me with a sense of reassurance that someone like him was
‘in charge’ and in all honesty, it has really helped me for when I’ve faced the
prospect of deciding whether to speak up after being treat poorly by CNTW staff.
Knowing James is there – at the head of it all – brings me confidence that any recommendations
made in response to a complaint won’t just be a false-promise in it being put
into action and made a reality; it will be followed through, and it will truly
be given the opportunity to make a real difference to other service users.
So, I
think there are two big difficulties and challenges that come with networking
and creating connections and relationships in your blogging career:
1. Doubting
your own worth:
It can be all too easy – and incredibly understandable – to begin questioning
your own skills and qualities when you see your collaborative content to be
excelling and proving far more popular than posts which are completely your
responsibility. It means that there’s actually been numerous times where I’ve
had to remind myself of the fact that collaboration posts are pretty much
guaranteed to be more popular because you should be doubling the publicity of
it. It technically and fundamentally should be attracting both your own, usual
audience as well as those followers of your collaboration partner.
2.
Is
it ok to name drop? I
debated moving this bit to the next tip because it’s actually quite relevant
there too; but it was this tip about networking which inspired the thought so I
thought I’d keep it all together… This challenge in connections is something
which I actually personally struggle with too; and I’ve come to the conclusion
that it’s a situational thing – there are times and places when it’s completely
justified and appropriate to mention you know some by name, but there are also
many other instances where it’s quite frankly rude, cocky, and a bit arrogant.
