{"id":109044,"date":"2017-10-26T14:17:48","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T14:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=109044"},"modified":"2017-10-26T14:17:48","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T14:17:48","slug":"blogger-spotlight-harriet-shearsmith-toby-roo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/blogger-spotlight-harriet-shearsmith-toby-roo\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogger Spotlight: Harriet Shearsmith, Toby & Roo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harriet Shearsmith<\/a> is the author of Toby & Roo<\/a>, a Top 10 UK Parenting Blog<\/a>. Harriet is mother to two boys and a girl and uses her blog to document their adventures and her parental experiences. We caught up with Harriet to talk being a good parent, working hard to be a blogger and developing good relationships with PRs.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

How would you describe your blog?<\/span>
\n<\/strong>I describe my blog as a parenting and lifestyle blog aimed at sharing the wins and woes of parenting. I\u2019m a chronic oversharer, so I tend to share everything on there \u2013 from family moments to parental trials!<\/p>\n

Why did you start your blog?<\/span>
\n<\/strong>I fell in love with a well-known blog called Babyccino Kids and I felt inspired by what they were doing. I wanted to share my own finds and parental experiences. I also wanted to stay at home with my children and this seemed like a really cool way to do that!<\/p>\n

\"HarrietWhat\u2019s the best thing about being a parent?<\/span>
\n<\/strong>That\u2019s a tough one. There is so much I love about being a parent \u2013 from the proud moments to the loving cuddles in the wee hours. I think there are so many moments that are special and it\u2019s not really one thing that defines parenthood as being great.<\/p>\n

What advice would you give new parents?<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Trust yourself and try to drown out the noise of everyone else\u2019s opinion. You also aren\u2019t a bad parent if some days you really regret having kids or wish you could take it all back \u2013 that\u2019s normal for a lot of people!<\/p>\n

What advice would you give new bloggers?<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Don\u2019t expect anything to come over night. It is something that you need to be prepared to WORK at. Blogging is work \u2013 it\u2019s hard work, if you\u2019re doing it correctly.<\/p>\n

What makes your blog successful?<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Dedication I think and treating this like a job, even before it was. I try to write from the heart but from the other side I try to deliver the very best I can for clients and treat them with professionalism. I want to go that extra mile \u2013 be great for my clients and my readers. After all, without the readers, there are no clients \u2013 without the clients, there is probably no job!<\/p>\n

How do you like to work with PRs?<\/span>
\n<\/strong>In the last year or so I have built wonderful relationships with PRs \u2013 I really like to feel a personality behind my screen. We\u2019re both in jobs where a lot of our time is spent on a computer and, especially as a blogger, it\u2019s awesome to create a relationship with a PR. I want to make their middle-man style job as fun and easy as possible and I want them to at the very least have looked at my name and the blog to know if their campaign will work for me.<\/p>\n

I also love big campaigns where, ok there is a brief, but I can feel confident enough to go back to the PR and say \u2018Hey, I had this idea, it fits loosely with the brief but do you like this idea instead\u2019. Honestly and truthfulness (on both sides of course) are intensely important to me.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s one of your favourite collaborations?<\/span>
\n<\/strong>I work a lot with Birds Eye and I have worked with two agencies with them now \u2013 Inkling and Reci.pe \u2013 and both have been a delight to work with. From the creative I\u2019ve been given to the way that I know I can bounce ideas off the really awesome people that work at those agencies… even down to the lovely feedback from the brand themselves. I keep working with them because I truly believe their products are fab and I really enjoy their campaigns. They really encouraged me to get into video content and I have loved doing that!<\/p>\n

What one thing should PRs know about you?<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Honestly \u2013 I\u2019m a normal person. I\u2019m so passionate about our industry and I don\u2019t work with clients that I don\u2019t think are great, but I\u2019m also keenly aware that I\u2019m not performing open heart surgery so I don\u2019t have any pretention or illusions of grandeur. Essentially I want the very best for my readers and followers, but I also want to deliver the best for the brand. I try to reply to every email and if I don\u2019t think that I am the blogger for you or you have the brand for me I will say, but I\u2019m always delighted to make that contact because you never know who will come along next time.<\/p>\n

What other blogs do you read?<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Oh gosh, I\u2019m a dreadful blogger in that I don\u2019t really get time to read too many different blogs! I rather love Hannah from Hi Baby Blog<\/a> and some of Kerry from All About a Mini Norris<\/a>\u2019s posts bring me to tears.<\/p>\n

Harriet and Toby & Roo<\/strong> feature on the leading\u00a0Vuelio Influencer Database<\/a>\u00a0along with thousands of other bloggers, influencers and journalists.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harriet Shearsmith is the author of Toby & Roo, a Top 10 UK Parenting Blog. Harriet is mother to two boys and a girl and uses her blog to document their adventures and her parental experiences. We caught up with Harriet to talk being a good parent, working hard to be a blogger and developing good relationships with PRs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":109047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7272,4038,6980],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109044"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109044"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109051,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109044\/revisions\/109051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}