Why I Started Happy Mum Happy Child
I often get asked this a lot, and a few years a go I did write a post, but now I’m going to do it again – here’s why I started Happy Mum Happy Child.
When my daughter was 2 years old, and my son was born (in 2014), I had to think of things to do to keep her amused, so I looked to Pinterest for ideas. Thus, I started me down the “activity ideas” path.
Then, as I was sharing my photos with my unsuspecting Facebook friends, and fielding their requests on how to do these activities, my mate Tracey (amazing person and owner of August Boutique) kept saying “you should start a Facebook page to share these ideas”. So, lil old nervous me, took her advice and started the page.
July 2014 – Happy Mum Happy Child was born.
How to make coloured rice, magic coloured milk, and cheerio stackers are just some of the many activities I’ve documented on my website.
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After a few months of running Happy Mum Happy Child, I think I had about 2,000 followers. Tracey (August Boutique) asked me to review a couple of her products, to see what I genuinely thought. Through this experience, I got a lot more requests to do product reviews, which I graciously accepted. What a gift – to be able to review someone’s product for them! So far, all the products I’ve reviewed have been great, so I haven’t had anything negative to say.
There were a couple that Tracey asked me to review and when I gave my honest opinion, we decided together it was best not to post the review and she has since pulled the products from her collection. So I am honest in what I do ? And if you were ever to ask me about the products (specifically), then I would tell you what I thought of them.
You guys seemed to appreciate my honesty and who I was, so my audience grew quite considerably over the year.
After one year, I had 10,000 followers on Facebook – which was huge for me.
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Then I started being approached by PR companies (because my audience was growing) and they wanted me to work with them to talk about products.
I was very open and honest with you guys about this because I didn’t want the page overrun by ads. Sometimes I say yes, and sometimes I say no. As most of you know, I like to keep my FB posts at an 80/20 ratio – 80% me, 20% other.
So along with the gift of product reviews, I was also being sent products to just talk about on my social media accounts – what a bizarre situation I had found myself in. Not quite where I had started out!
Then I opened up about my Post Natal Depression, and things changed.
It was a huge thing for me to admit this to you guys, not only because of how public it was, but because of how many friends followed who didn’t know I suffered.
So I continued to share the activities I did with my kids, plus recipes, plus my journey with depression, PLUS a huge amount of giveaways thanks to PR companies …
Suddenly after TWO years, I had 100,000 followers on Facebook.
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Now we are here. 2017. I have New Zealand’s top parenting blog (for now) and have made SO many friends. I have won a Food Blog award (which totally blows my mind), I have been on TV several times (still can’t believe that), and am a part of the Netflix Streamteam – I’ve even have been flown to different parts of the country (and the world) for various events.
After three years I have 150,000 followers on Facebook, 38,000 on Instagram and more than 5,000 on Snapchat (happymumnz).
I am beyond grateful for the position I am in, and even more so that I feel like I am connecting with parents.
Feeling alone in parenting is one thing I certainly suffered a lot, and I truly hope to bridge that gap: to help make us all feel a little less alone.
I do get a lot of people asking me “how do I do what you do” and my answer is: you don’t. What you do is do something you love and have passion for (mine happened to be creating activities for kids) and whatever happens happens.
Bullshit answer haha but it is what it is …
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