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Brand Strategy | Content Writing | SEO | Graphic Design | Web Design

The Challenge: Not so much a challenge, but a passion project. I considered 2016 to be a year of rebirth in my life, after enduring a series of traumas in my first two years as a college student. That was the year that I turned 21 and became determined to create a beautiful, fun, joy-filled life. That’s when Hennessy and Happiness was born.  I wanted to create a healthy outlet for sharing my life experiences and build a community of like-minded college aged women. After wrestling with which medium would be best for this endeavor, I finally landed on starting a blog. The Approach: I didn’t anticipate how much would go into turning this idea into a reality, but I dove right in and figured things out as I embarked on this journey.
Nov 2016

Begin Brand Development

I started brain dumping ideas as far as what my content focus will be (beauty tips, stories about my mental health experiences and just general lifestyle posts), who I want to reach and how I can reach them. 

Dec 2016

Designing Brand Assets

This is where I began developing my brand identity. I started thinking about color schemes (pink, of course), designed my primary and sub-logo and created any other necessary graphics that I would need before moving onto the web design phase.

Jan 2017

Web Design

Here is where I began staging and building out my blog’s website. I was a total newbie to WordPress (although I had some light experience with coding), so this felt like the longest part of the process. I took my time researching and testing various drag and drop builders for WordPress and found that Elementor worked best for my needs (it’s what I still use for web design today). 

Jan 2017

Brand Strategy

Since I was completely new to the blogging world, I primarily relied on three things to raise brand awareness and reach the right people:

  • Facebook groups (those specific to blogging)
  • Pinterest organic marketing (via Tailwinds)
  • SEO (via Yoast)
Feb 2017

Content Writing | Content Strategy

With all of the back-end stuff in place, I was able to get to the actual star of the show: the blog posts! Before putting any pen to paper and actually writing, I used Trello to build out my content strategy and keep track of my post ideas. Trello also allowed me to set up a posting schedule; beauty related posts were uploaded on Fridays, while my mental health posts were saved for Mondays.

I had a lot to say, but wanted to ensure that I was sharing it the right way. As I drafted and edited out my posts, I began to discover my brand voice; funny and informal, yet insightful. Like venting to your best friend on FaceTime. 

Feb 2017

Launch Day!

I finally launched Hennessy and Happiness in February of 2017, earning over 500+ monthly visitors in its’ first month live. While I have dreams of reaching more monthly visitors, I was beyond proud of that milestone for someone who started a blog completely from scratch. 

Feel free to check out the final product here!