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. 5 ESSENTIAL CAREER TIPS TO DRIVE SUCCESS . 

Success is something i’m always striving for, whether that be on my blog or in my career or generally just in life. I always like to know i’m doing my best & feel great satisfaction in achieving things like promotions at work, new readers on my blog, securing brand collaborations or even just little successes like delivering a great presentation or writing a great article on my blog!  Success to me is quite a subjective thing, and success should always be based on your own goals and ambitions and never related to someone else, so to that point your journey, targets and goals should all be bespoke and personal to you!

But as well as these personal milestones or goals, when it comes to careers I do think there are some more generic things which I think all people should master in order to have a successful career, they’re the common sense, essentials of being a successful career woman or man and in my opinion are the basics of driving success!

So today I thought i’d share my top 5 essential career tips … I hope you find them helpful!

5 TIPS FOR THE CAREER DRIVEN

#1 PROFESSIONALISM 

This should be obvious, but it’s truly one of the most important things when it comes to having a successful career. Being professional is of critical importance, and it covers a whole spectrum of things, from how you present yourself on a daily basis, to the tone in which you speak to clients, your teams and your seniors, your punctuality, your organisation, as well as your ability to manage expectation and deliver great work. Ensuring that you are always professional, and of course personable and yourself, really is an important factor in establishing yourself within a business and role, garnering respect and trust from your clients and naturally of course in making friends & supporters in your company.

It can be easy to let professionalism slip, particularly on days where you may be in a bad mood or tired, and even more so in social situations when you might be having a few drinks and letting go a little. But it’s important to ensure you never cross the line, have fun, be yourself & be personable, but always ensure you’re keeping a little professionalism at the heart of it all!

#2 PROACTIVE & ADD VALUE

To really go far in your career I personally believe you need to be proactive, in this day n age, it’s not enough to simply do your job and do it well, you need to go above and beyond call of duty, add value beyond just the day to day and really establish yourself as a person who’s willing to help drive the business you work for, as well as your own personal development. Going above and beyond can obviously be tricky as it requires additional commitment and time (which given how long we all work anyway, is a little hard), but is a key way in not only making a name and positive profile of yourself, but also in showcasing your skill set to the broader business outside of your specific team or discipline. In my industry pitches & projects are a great way of adding value beyond your day to day job and offer a great opportunity to work with new people, get senior exposure & generally showcase your ability.

#3 WORK LIFE BALANCE

Whilst I’ve said it’s important to go above and beyond, I also think it’s super super important to have a good work life balance, and the reason for this is twofold. Firstly for your own health & wellbeing, ensuring you have a good balance between work time and downtime is really important. Not only will ensuring you get sufficient down time help overall productivity, it’ll also help give you perspective, clarity & a renewed sense of motivation and inspiration (which is a critical factor in delivering great work). The second reason is more from a profile point of view, whilst people may think it’s great to be seen in the office 24 / 7, late at night, early mornings, emailing at weekend, actually it’s not. It takes a little while to accept this point, and force yourself to stop, but ultimately working all hours of the day just makes you look incapable of managing your work streams efficiently and in a timely manner, and it also doesn’t necessarily suggest you’re good at managing clients or internal business expectations (sometimes it’s good to say no, push back, challenge delivery deadlines etc). Of course the odd late night every so often is normal (christ in my industry we’re often working until  8pm due to heavy work loads & deliverables) but doing this everyday, with no real reason or critical projects to be delivered doesn’t make you look particularly good. most companies these days are very conscious of their corporate responsibility and employee health and wellbeing, so seeing employees continuously working all hours of the day does ring alarm bells, not only for their own personal health but also for the precedent it can set for the rest of the team or company. It’s terrible how a negative culture can be created if work life balance isn’t kept in check!

So my top tip, just monitor your own work life balance, and be critical. Do you need to be in the office that long, do you need to deliver all of that by tonight? And if not, well then make an executive decision to leave, even if it’s that you try and leave on time twice a week, or take a lunch break to go to the gym a couple of times … this is actually a really positive step & will help you for multiple reasons!

#4 TRAINING

Don’t stop learning, ever! If you want to succeed, grow and continue to be the best you can be, then you need to keep training, keep upskilling and keep learning more. Put yourself forward for industry talks, attend all training offered to you, seek out new training which you feel would up skill you in areas of weakness, be proactive & be willing. Even CEO’s have to continuously learn more, adapt their skillsets and adjust to ever changing industries … if you want to be the top of your game you have to be agile, and forever soaking up new information!

#5 MENTORS

This is a little tip which can easily be forgotten, but also one that really can be a huge help in having a successful career, and that’s to find yourself a mentor. Whether that be a senior person in your business who you aspire towards or who you believe has skills that you could learn from, a person from a completely different industry who you can trust to give sound advice and perspective, or simply a partner, friend or family member who can offer you valid feedback & career advice! I personally need to find myself a mentor, someone who is leading businesses in my industry and who can provide guidance and advice on progressing my own career into the business leadership realm which would be my next step and linear promotion, from business director, to a managing partner! Consulting with someone who knows you, your industry and your ambitions and who has been on the same journey can be a really great way of not only inspiring you but also helping you to achieve your goals!

So there you have it, my top 5 career tips! they’re by no means right, and in no way exclusive, but for me they’re the 5 things that I really help you establish a successful career and keep it blossoming year on year!

I’d love to hear if you have any career tips or whether you find any of these helpful for your own careers? Don’t forget to check out all my other career and blog tips posts here too.

. HOW TO BE A BETTER BLOGGER – WHAT I LEARNT FROM MY Q&A WITH DELICIOUSLY  ELLA .

As you will have noticed if you caught Wednesdays blog post, earlier this week I got the opportunity to attend a Q&A with Deliciously Ella. Whilst the session was predominantly about her healthy living & eating lifestyle, I did also ask a couple of questions more focussed on her incredible success and her blogging journey.  Ellas blog has been an unbelievably huge success, despite only starting it three years ago. Whilst the zeitgeist of heathy living definitely being on her side, i was keen to hear her thoughts on how she grew her blog, what she believes pushed her from blogger to brand and her journey making Deliciously Ella a successful business with a book, app, office and 4 man team to boot.

What I was really happy to hear was that Ella’s success was actually all organic, as I very firmly believe it should be, but she did however share a few specific things that she believed help really push the interest in her blog and kept readers coming back. I thought i’d share these things today, as i for one found them really interesting and helpful too.

#1 DON’T JUST POST, ENGAGE ON INSTAGRAM

One of the main outtakes I took from Ella and her own blog success was the importance of engaging with people who chose to engage with you. Ella mentioned that she spends quite a lot of time reading & responding to peoples comments on her instagrams, use of the Deliciously Ella hashtag and generally people who might be sharing dishes they’ve cooked from her recipes. I thought this was a great sentiment, and actually a really nice way of giving back. Whilst it does take a lot of time, she really credited this for helping grow her following.

#2 RESPOND TO READERS

And its not just followers on instagram, responding to your blog readers comments, tweets and Facebook comments was another thing Ella mentioned that she spends a lot of time doing. It’s actually something that takes a hell of a lot of time, and i’m not necessarily the best at, but Is something that I really want to start doing more. Spending the time to answer questions, thank people for comments and generally just start more of a two way relationship is really important in this day n age and something that clearly really helped Ella build a loyal following who are her biggest advocates. Word of mouth really does have a big impact on driving growth and success.

#3 THINK ABOUT WHAT YOUR READERS WANT

I’ve always talked about ‘blogging for you’ and writing about the things you personally are absolutely passionate about, and whilst I still fully believe in this, Ella did open my eyes to blogging for your readers too. Ella constantly reviews what readers are saying and asking for, and always tries to tailor her blog posts or recipes to suit what her readers are wanting. I think this is a really interesting way of doing things, and clearly can help drive the success of your blog, as ultimately you’re giving people exactly what they want to read (but still within your niche & passion points).

Whether that be listening to readers comments or tweets, or generally looking at google trends or  current zeitgeists within your niche, writing for yourself but also about topics or themes that your audience are really interested is definitely a key way to garner interest & hopefully expand your reader base.

#4 REMEMBER, QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

Another thing I learnt from the Q&A with Ella is the importance of quality over quantity. It’s something I talk about quite a lot, but don’t necessarily practice on my own blog, where I post daily still and have done for nearly 4 years. Ella posts around 2 -3 recipes a week, but when she does blog and post these recipes, there always features she’s taken a lot of thought and consideration to develop. From listening to what her readers want, to sourcing ingredients to testing the recipe and then shooting & developing the final feature.

The quality over quantity debate is something I am really thinking about more and more lately. With my own personal strive for success & quality features, plus of course the reality of a full time career to balance my time with, it’s probably a good idea for me to re-think about my blogging frequency & content flow.

#5 JOIN THE COMMUNITY 

Not necessarily a totally new point … but as I mentioned, the overall thing I took from Ella’s discussion on  her blogging success was really that she spends a lot of effort and time engaging and joining in with the community, whether that’s supporting and working with other food bloggers, simply creating a conversation with her readers or followers or taking part in industry talks and Q&As’. Really taking an active part in the community is a great way to introduce yourself to new people, genuinely add some value to your readers & provides a great platform to grow your following and reader base.

So there you have it, the 5 things I learnt from Deliciously Ella regarding blogging, which I think can massively help you become a better blogger. Ella really highlighted to me the importance of not just providing great content, but also about building relationships with your readers, the industry & most importantly the people that support you on your journey.