Blogger Spotlights: Katy Horwood, All Sweetness and Life

All Sweetness and Life takes an open and honest approach, presenting readers with realistic conversations around dating, sex and relationships. Founded by Katy Horwood, a freelance writer who contributes for the Metro and Huffington Post, All Sweetness and Life gives readers advice on what to do and what not to do when dating. In this spotlight, Katy who featured on our relationship and dating blogs UK Top 10 chats to us about what inspired her to start blogging, why she has been labelled the Simon Cowell of the dating world and why she see’s herself as an old school blogger.  

Relationships can be a complicated topic, what encouraged you to start a blogging about this? I’ve always been fascinated with dating and the way people communicate and connect with each other – plus, I was going on quite a few disastrous/funny/great dates myself so dating felt like the natural thing to write about!

Do you find that writing a dating blog encourages people to come to you for advice? Yes, I’ve become renowned for telling it like it is, and have even been called the Simon Cowell of the dating world so, they do but I do, think people tentative with their dating advice requests!

What do you think makes your blog different to your competitors? See above. I’m not interested in sugar coating things, but prefer a bit of brutal honesty when it comes to dating. It’s also not, strictly speaking, a personal dating blog like many of them are, but somewhere I comment on current affairs, celebrities, women’s issues and even a bit of politics – I guess, after writing for so many years, I’ve grown up, as has my blog! And that might appeal to people.

How do you define the success of your blog? Do you do this through the level of engagement with your audience or unique visits? Definitely the level of engagement. Unique visits don’t matter too much to me as I have always written my blog in order to converse, discuss and engage with people rather than to turn it into a platform to generate hits. Fortunately, it’s reached a level where I do have a high number of unique hits, however an interesting debate about a post or inspiring comment will always give me more satisfaction than high hits.

How much planning, research and preparation do you need to execute your content marketing plan? My blog is less about marketing and more about a platform to voice my opinions and interact with other people – I guess I really am what you’d call an old school blogger!

How do you keep your content fresh and up to date with current dating trends? Through my blog I’m very involved with the dating industry – currently being a judge on both the UK dating awards and the European dating awards, through this, I’m pretty up to speed with trends within the dating world. That and just having an ingrained fascination in the world of dating!

What kinds of PRs or campaigns are you interested in working with/on in the future? Those who spell check a press release before they send it out!

What are your thoughts on media databases, such as Vuelio? I really like them; I think they are a great tool in today’s digital world.

Do you have a funny dating story you could share with us? Many!! Err how about the one where a guy started chatting to me online and didn’t realise we’d dated for a few months a couple of years previously (yes, really!).