Blogger Spotlight: Steph Savill, FOXY Lady Drivers Club

After her step-daughter had a “bad garage experience”, Steph set up FOXY Lady Drivers Club to promote the need for improving motoring services for female drivers. Whether you’re a member or not, The FOXY LADY DRIVERS CLUB blog offers advice and research on purchasing, leasing, car reviews, safety and regulations, and insight on FOXY Lady approved businesses. In this spotlight Steph chats to us about what why how she uses FOXY Lady Drivers Club as a platform to influence the number of women working in the automotive industry, using her blog to make a difference, and what being listed on our latest automotive blog ranking means to her.  

Why should people read your blog? What makes it different? I write a unique automotive blog with attitude. The main difference being that it’s written by a woman who isn’t a petrolhead or mechanically-minded but is still passionate about the freedom, practical convenience and travelling safety her car provides. I write about motoring matters to inform and empower other women. I am critical of many areas within the automotive industry and am determined to influence standards upwards, with women in mind, but ultimately to benefit men too. For example, UK garages aren’t regulated and car mechanics don’t have to be licensed to service or repair our cars. This is a truly scary thought – that shoddy and neglected garage workmanship can result in a dangerous car without your knowledge. Which is what happened to my step-daughter and why I started FOXY to make a difference here, some twelve years ago.

How do you measure the success of your website? To begin with I measure unique visits so I know which content works best and where. Our 2016 content is now spread over a formal blog area plus new Information and News sections. We run a network of some 500 FOXY Lady Approved partner garages, car dealers and tyre centres across the UK and allow them to share our content at their websites, adding female appeal to their business whilst helping us to spread the word about ‘better motoring services for women.’ Our business relies on supporting a female fan club for our industry partners whereby we measure their performance levels through female feedback, rewarding ladies with a thank you gift membership of the Club including monthly promotions. In this way we are forever growing our mailing list, using the latest website content to feed monthly membership newsletters and so on. Finally, a measure of business success comes from genuine business awards from recognised and independent authorities. For example last year we received an unexpected award from the Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI) for our contribution to motoring service standards for women drivers and last month we received another from the Tyresafe charity for our online and social media work here. Professional awards mean that website visitors tend to take you more seriously than they do others.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a blog? If you want to write a blog, if you have something to say and if you enjoy writing, just do it. But if you need it to pay for your time, you’ll need some measurable objectives because it’s so easy to lose sight of your business focus. Your content probably needs to be better than others or just different in some way. Have your target market in mind at all times and try to stick to the knitting. Don’t be put off by those that say it’s all about videos today. Videos are wonderful of course but, depending on your product or service, words are just as important when it comes to search listings.

How do you work with marketers and PRs? We have an agency that looks after our social media, a monthly calendar of topics so we all pull together, and we have in-house PR expertise as well as external resources to call on where need be. I don’t understand why so few female magazines include any motoring content when women are poised to exceed the number of male drivers on UK roads and we influence some 80%+ of all automotive purchases. We keep on reminding their magazine editors about the potential advertising opportunities and of course FOXY can write exclusive motoring content to suit.

How do you use social media to promote and share content? What are the challenges? We segment our female audience and business messages via social media channels. LinkedIn takes us to career-minded business women and motor industry decision makers. Twitter is excellent for sharing locally hashtagged female feedback re trusted motoring services. Our challenge is probably Facebook because motoring isn’t a sexy product for many females in its own right.  We counter this by being as visible and available as possible at partner Facebook Pages where Mums, business women and female singletons may need help or advice with their motoring.

What can PRs do in working better with you? Whenever it’s to do with motoring, we’re interested in motoring-related content including genuine gender highlights, perspective and photos of females ‘like us’. Too many PRs still try to ‘sell’ at us  and to my eternal surprise, women drivers are often totally ignored by car manufacturers and big dealership groups. But there are better motoring blogs and more women writing them than ever before so I predict there will come a time when FOXY’s voice won’t be needed for the same messages in future.

What has been your blogging highlight? I have two very different blogging highlights. One was the response after I wrote about meeting Dragons Den’s Theo Paphitis at a business conference in Birmingham. This blog proved the power of popular celebrity culture, especially one with such a huge personal and #SBS forum following. The other blogging highlight, without any doubt, is being chosen as one of the prestigious Top 10 UK Automotive blogs for the second year running!

What will be big in your blogosphere in the coming months? I am keen to influence the number of women working in the automotive industry by writing more about female role models, exciting motor career choices and female friendly employers. In 2016 a woeful 2% of the retail motor industry workforce is female so this area needs some help. I’ll also be adding content about learning to drive in the next few months as we’re launching a FOXY Lady Approved register of approved driving instructors soon. This is a huge area for us because parental driving influence, early learning, the right choice of driving instructor and the new driving test regime will all make for safer and more confident novice drivers on our roads.

What has the Vuelio Blog ranking mean to you? The Vuelio Blog ranking means a great deal to me because I didn’t expect this. It’s a professional accolade from an influential body that recognises and endorses the best blogs in a range of industries as ranked by a panel of experts. Whilst other blog awards require businesses to nominate themselves, this ranking is based on a methodology that includes sharing, topic focus and posting frequency. For this reason it’s a more independent process – the equivalent of a gold medal in an Olympian blog contest even.