Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Darla Slade. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Darla thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I mainly learned social media by researching online, reading articles, googling things, asking others, and LOTS of trial and error to find out what works best.

Looking back on where I am now, one thing I could have done to speed up my learning process is to focus more on what the big social media accounts that I aspired to be like were doing.

For instance, what kind of content are they posting?

Who follows them? Which of their followers should I start to follow?

What lessons can I learn about the way they lay out their posts? ie What do their headlines look like? Do they use text overlays? Do they use trending music?

What can I learn about their captions? What questions do they ask to encourage engagement?

What hashtags do they use? Which of their hashtags should I try to use to encourage better engagement?

The most essential skills were – and still are – perseverance, patience and consistency. Whether I have a good week or a bad one, I keep showing up and over time I grow.

As far as obstacles that stand in the way, my biggest obstacle has been time. There is so much more I’d love to do, but as a busy mom with a marketing day job, there is no time for it all. I have to prioritize what I think is the most important thing to learn and what will provide the most value to helping me grow and monetize.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started out by creating a blog with a mission to inspire happy, healthy, active families by sharing local and travel experiences as well as fitness and wellness tips.

From there, I created a social media presence and have focused most heavily on my Instagram account because it allows me to interact with my audience in real-time.

I came up with the idea by merging my experience as a fitness instructor and former gym manager with my passion for travel and my professional experience as a marketing manager to create FunFitnessFamily.com.

I love sharing information about places my family and I have traveled to and inspiring other families to take the trip.

I am most proud of how far I have come. I started with nothing. I did not know a thing about how to create a WordPress based blog, how to find readers, and how to develop and grow a social media account. Now, I have published almost 60 articles and have grown to over 16,200 instagram followers.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

In my early days, I discovered some bloggers that claimed that I could make $100k blogging even if I did not know anything. I tried affiliate marketing and puhing content out, but I was not getting anywhere.

That is when I realized that those bloggers were just trying to sell me their courses. I began to ask why they were selling courses if they were truly making the hundreds of thousands they claimed they were.

I stopped focusing on monetizing and started putting my head down and creating valuable content. I also started building relationships with my audience and that is when I truly started to grow.

Now, four years later, I am finally starting to turn a small profit. However, it is still a side hustle and not a full-time income.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

In my early days, I spent A LOT of time randomly following accounts rather than building a community and getting to know other like-minded accounts.

Followers are just a vanity statistic. If you focus on the number and not the quality of your followers, it will be a huge waste of time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://funfitnessfamily.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/funfitnessfam
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/funfitnessfamily
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darlaslade/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/funfitnessfam
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FunFitnessFamilycom/
• Other: https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdUQXasF/

Image Credits
@funfitnessfam