We recently connected with Shelby Leigh and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Shelby thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

As a mental health author, my mission is helping others feel less alone and reducing the stigma of mental health concerns and support. My poetry delves into many mental health topics, from anxiety to self-doubt and more. It’s incredibly meaningful to me because I have felt alone in my past, and turned to writing to cope, so to be able to support others and help them feel less alone is incredible.

What I didn’t realize, is that when I then launched Marketing by Shelby, a company that helps creatives sell more of their work through social media, that mission would actually carry over. I found myself talking about mental health with my clients, the importance of community, and how social media can impact our mental health. A lot of the clients I work with tend to be really hard on themselves (as do I!) and so I’ve been able to apply my work and mission as an author to both of my businesses, which I love.

Shelby, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Absolutely! I’m Shelby Leigh, and I write poetry books about mental health and relationships as both as a healing process for myself and to help others navigate their own mental health concerns. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, but I started publishing books in 2016. I didn’t expect to get into poetry – I always wrote short stories and fiction growing up – but I fell in love with poetry in my early college days and didn’t look back. It quickly became a tool for me to explore my own life changes, my mental health and to revisit the past in a healing way.

Since 2016, I’ve published a few books, my bestseller being “changing with the tides,” which has touched tens of thousands of readers around the world, and my 4th book is coming out later this year. They all have a mental health focus, but touch on different themes, from change to self-doubt to time and overthinking. I am most proud that I am able to be vulnerable and help people through writing, which is something I always dreamed of and didn’t think would be possible for me.

As I grew my own brand as an author to more than half a million followers, and learned how to sell my books through social media, I became very passionate about helping others do the same, who want to make an impact with their work. That’s when Marketing by Shelby was born, which has now helped over 4000 creatives and authors sell their work on social media and make a greater impact, too!

How did you build your audience on social media?

Definitely! I love chatting about social media because it’s the main sales driver for me. If you are just starting to build your social media presence, taking the time to truly understand your target audience is absolutely key to social media and applies to every aspect, from the content you post, to what you say in the caption, to the music you use in your videos, to the colors. If you understand who you want to reach, and more than that, what their challenges and problems are, and how you help them, coming up with content that you can post consistently becomes so much easier.

The other aspect that I think is so beneficial is collaborations. Finding others in your niche, or who would have an aligned audience to you, and collaborating in some way, can help you both increase your reach and audience. Again, this makes marketing easier when you aren’t starting from zero, and you get great relationships out of it too that continue to grow over the years.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Every creative will experience rejection in their journey, and often, more rejections than successes! In my case, I look back on my journey of being an author with pride, because even though there were times I “failed” like launching my first book and getting very few sales, or submitting my books to publishers and getting rejections, I took those as learning experiences instead of giving up. I learned how to market and improve my next book launch so that I got thousands of sales instead of a few. I tried other routes, like self-publishing (which is an amazing alternative!) and did that for multiple books before getting attention from traditional publishers.

Resiliency is so key in any career, but especially a creative career where we are often being vulnerable and facing rejections of work that we hold very close to our hearts. Being able to keep going and pivot will bring you so much closer to your goals.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shelbyleigh.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shelbyleighpoetry/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@marketingbyshelby

Image Credits
The magazine cover is credited to https://www.khaleejtimes.com/ No credits needed for the other photos