Seattle is usually gray, gray and more gray but then we will get the random day that is so super sunny and bright. We had just gotten our new feather coats in that day (it’s always an exciting day when we get our latest designs in!) so my assistant and I went out to take advantage of the beautiful day and I ended up just loving the light of these photos.
Oh yes we got it in pink too! I couldn’t decide which one I liked better so I brought both along but I think I like the gray. What do you think?
I spent most of the weekend at home taking care of a sick toddler and a husband who was just getting over a cold. Last week everyone at the office was sick. I somehow have manged to dodge the illness going around and hopefully I’m not jinxing myself by saying that, I really hope I don’t get sick next!
If you are wondering about this $8 dress, yes it’s totally worth it! I got a lot of compliments on it when I wore it that day. The material is a bit thin but with the jacket it worked fine even in this weather. Seattle is cold but not that cold and I spend most of my time indoors so even though it might not seem like a winter-y dress, it totally still worked fine for me. It’s just a cute basic dress but I love the lace up detail on the front. And these boots – man they were a good buy this winter, I wear them all the time. I recently just cleaned them with a suede cleaner/suede brush and they look great even after all the rain/puddles I’ve walked through in them.
I sometimes am not able to keep up with my blog but I’m usually pretty active on instagram. My sister is also the same and we agree that instagram is our favorite social media app. And you probably know that we own t+j Designs and our business is everything to us. We are always working on our business and finding new ways to grow it.
GROWING OUR BUSINESS THROUGH INSTAGRAM
We really decided to grow our instagram this year based upon what we were seeing in the social media world and how it was translating to our business based on brand awareness, more visitors to our site, more customers and more sales. As with all our business decisions, we had put together a strategy before we launched into growing our instagram accounts and found that in a short time, we had stellar results! Before we knew it, each of our accounts (my sister’s account, my personal account and our business account) had increased by 20,000 followers in less than 6 months!
When we weren’t concentrating on it as much it took us nearly a year just to get 5,000 followers so to see this kind of growth made us very excited. In the recent months, we’ve gotten questions from lots of people asking us about the growth of our business, the growth of our instagram accounts and just general “how did you do it” type of questions. SO… we put our heads together and decided to write an ebook!
THE IDEA FOR THE EBOOK
I do have to give credit to my good friend Tasha, who is not only an amazing coach to small business owners but who has written several very good, very informative ebooks for the small business owner. Because of her, I’d always been interested in writing an ebook but had no idea what to write about. We took a trip to Vegas together this summer and after a conversation about my instagram growth and what it has done for my business, she urged me to write an ebook about it. Her motivation really pushed me to really think about pulling my thoughts down and so on the plane ride home, the first draft was done! I sent it off to my sister and after a series of drafts and changes, we are so happy to finally be able to launch it.
HOW WE GAINED 20,000 INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS
This information is mainly geared towards brands and growing your business as that was the main goal of why we decided to work on our accounts. The reason why we concentrated on our personal accounts as well as our business account is because in the four years that we have been running t+j Designs, we’ve found that our customers love getting to know us, the owners, rather than just following the brand.
UPDATE: This book was written in 2015 and instagram has updated a few things – mainly algorithm changes and how photos show up in our feeds. I have deeply discounted the price due to that fact, however most of the advice in this book is still very applicable on how to find your target audience and grow with the right followers.
We’ve been able to connect with our customers on a more personal level than if we were just a brand to them. So in doing so, our brand has grown and we found that instagram was a really great place to find our target market and connect with them there. We often get asked how important is the personal account vs a brand account and to me, I think it really depends on your situation and your business. Obviously I could go on and on about instagram marketing and growing your business, but that may be another ebook for another day. 🙂 Let’s move onto what is covered in this book!
THE 8 SIMPLE STEPS TO INSTAGRAM GROWTH
We cover all of our tips and techniques about how we grew including, the exact ways on how we find our target audience, how we interact with them, how to use hashtags and also how to join loop giveaways and make them effective for you!
BONUS SECTION: INSTAGRAM SALES
We also wanted to include some extra info so our two bonus sections are things that many people have asked us about. Getting sales right through our instagram account has changed things for us. Our instagram sales make up for a big chunk of our monthly sales! Having an easy way for customers to purchase from us without asking them leave the app has been so effective and not only creates new customers but followers who are engaged and continue to follow us just to see our next sale. We share all that knowledge of how we do it in the first bonus section.
BONUS SECTION: LOOP GIVEAWAYS
And for those of you that are interested in joining loop giveaways – well we have the ultimate list for you! Jen and I have participated in many loop giveaways and we’ve been in lots of great ones and also some bad ones. We tell you what to look for, which ones are the best for you to join and we share a list of our very favorite loop giveaway hosts who are all very open to having you contact them to join their loops!
TIPS FOR BUSINESS OWNERS AND BLOGGERS
Although this is geared towards businesses, we had a few friends who read through the book all agree that a lot of the tips work really great for bloggers. I tend to think of bloggers as a brand anyway, so a lot of the tips really do apply. You may not have a physical product to sell but bloggers are definitely brands themselves so even if you don’t own a business but want to increase your instagram following, this ebook will still apply to you!
An important thing I wanted to mention is that this ebook is recommended for those of you that already have accounts and are familiar with instagram. If you are brand new to instagram this may not be the best ebook for you but will be great after you have established your account and have gotten a feel of how it all works.
It’s been CRAZY this past November and December. I haven’t been taking
many outfit photos so I thought I’d just combine a few of my recent outfits into
one post.
Obsessed with this leather jacket, it’s just the perfect piece for fall (sad that it’s getting too cold to wear it now!)
I love being a mom and am not ashamed to proclaim myself as a “Haute Mama”. LOL! I’m really loving this time of the year with my daughter
who is now 2, so this is her first Christmas where she’s able to understand a lot more of what’s going on. It’s so much fun. She
is talking up a storm and is hilarious with all the things she says now. We asked her what she wanted for Christmas
and out of nowhere she said “Pink Christmas Tree!” We actually went
hunting for a normal size pink Christmas tree but all we could find were
small tabletop ones. I didn’t want to order online as I wanted to make
sure it wasn’t super cheap and cheesy looking so we haven’t gotten it
just yet!
If you didn’t know, Target always carries amazing quality faux fur vests. I get one there every year and love them to death. I wear vests a lot more than I ever thought I would but they are perfect for wearing to the office when you have to be bundled up to go outside but once you are inside you don’t want to be too hot/too cold.
So me and everyone else on the internet is obsessed with this feather top. LOL! My sister and I actually designed this top back in the summer hoping that everyone would be into feathers for fall and winter and they were! We sold out of the black/red plaid version in about a week. My latest online girl crush, Olivia Rink wore it on her instagram here. I’m so obsessed with her and her account. She is the sweetest too!
Happiness for a short girl is finding the perfect over the knee boots! I’ve tried on so many over the knee boots only to discover that my legs are too short and the fit is just weird and it’s more of an over the thigh boots than just over the knee. Also these ones are super similar to the very popular Stuart Weitzman Highland boot (they even have the tie on the back!) which are $800. These ones are $150 and are FABULOUS.
I love to pair a graphic tee with blazer and this pink one I just got has been the perfect one for fall where I’ve been mostly wearing black and gray. This is such an easy outfit I’m sure you’ll be seeing me in different variations throughout the next few months. And if you don’t yet, I would love for you to follow me on instagram where I post my outfits way more often than I do here on the blog!
I really love taking something that’s supposed to be night time only like feathers and sequins and making it wearable for day. Even though I fancied it up a little with the pencil skirt, I’ve been wearing this top with distressed jeans for a more casual vibe.
I hope you had a great weekend! We had such a good one, Layla had her first visit to the pumpkin patch, we took lots of pics and then stopped by the nearby farm to see the animals which she loved. I also got to celebrate my birthday with my family. (a little early celebration as my birthday is this week!) I love family time and am so grateful to have my parents and my brother nearby so that we can always get together and Layla gets spoiled by all the attention she gets from them!
Since my sister and I started t+j Designs 4 years ago, my jewelry collection has grown to a ridiculous amount. I don’t keep all the jewelry from each collection that we do but I do keep a lot in my home office. I have to keep it organized somehow so that when I need to find a specific piece, it’s easy for me to find. I don’t like putting things in jewelry boxes because I find that things get lost or forgotten. I keep all of our current collection out in my office so I can see it and remember it and really when it comes to getting dressed and adding accessories, it’s a really great set up for me to be able to mix and match and grab whatever I need to match my outfit.
My latest video shows you a glimpse of my jewelry collection, a glimpse into my home office and I share how I organize and display my jewelry so that things are easily found and organized.
I actually love being organized, I even have a pinterest board full of organization inspiration! If I had more time, I would organize everything in my house. My husband and I are actually in the midst of reorganizing our pantry and trying to decide on new shelving. I’ll be so excited once I have an organized pantry!
I’m so excited the weather is cooling down a bit! I went shopping and got some great stuff that I will be wearing from the summer to fall transition so wanted to share! I actually filmed a new video for my youtube channel so you can watch it here but I will go through everything I bought below as well. I did some shopping at Nordstrom, Forever 21 and also wanted to show you some of my favorite fall pieces from my line, t+j Designs.
I ended up having to exchange this dress because one of the sleeves had a button missing but I still love it! They didn’t have my size in store so it’s in the mail on it’s way to me. That’s why I don’t have a photo of it on.
I just got back from our first large wholesale tradeshow in Las Vegas (MAGIC if you happen to know tradeshows). And we showed our fall collection which included this super cute and flattering set. Honestly, everyone that I’ve seen wearing this set looks fantastic.
Yes, I know a bit more of a summery top but it’s great for the transition to fall when it’s still warm during the day and you can wear it with shorts or a skirt and then just pair it with jeans when it cools down at night. I just love the pom pom detail!
I love our graphic tees but our newest ones are too darling I can’t handle it. The pink glitter of the rose all day and everyone has been loving our “you had me at merlot” tee!
There were a few more things that I mentioned in the video but I don’t have a photo of. Let me know if you have any suggestions/requests of any other videos you’d like me to make!
