Archive for: PR

The ‘number 1 dad’ badge goes to Dad Blog UK’s John Adams, our top dad blogger in the UK. Working for change when it comes to getting more men involved in childcare, John has been selected to work with LinkedIn as a Changemaker, and has been getting up at 5am every day since lockdown started to keep up with his childcare and blogging responsibilities.

John shares how he sees the longer-term impact of COVID-19 changing work and parental labour patterns and how else the pandemic has impacted his own schedule, beyond the early alarm calls.

How did you originally get started with writing about parenting?
When I started Dad Blog UK back in 2012, it was to highlight the casual sexism I faced as a man who had given up a career to concentrate on family and home. Unfortunately, I found myself having issues with some healthcare professionals and being accepted by mums was a challenge.

Over time I decided to broaden what I wrote about. Fatherhood and parenting are very much at the core of what I do, but I also write about motoring, men’s grooming, do occasional recipe posts, days out and so on. As time goes on, I am increasingly producing video content as well.

What’s your favourite thing to post about and why?
I really enjoy doing the Q&A series that I introduced last year. This is when I get someone with some interest in family or parenting to answer around ten questions on their specialist subject. A highlight of this series was when I interviewed Ziauddin Yousafzai, better known as ’Malala’s dad’. He’s such a nice man who has dedicated his life to improving educational outcomes for girls. It’s no surprise he raised such a fearless daughter. Ziauddin even sent my daughter a special WhatsApp message when he discovered she was studying Malala’s life at school.

I also like to write about issues that go under the radar. One of my best performing blog posts is one I wrote a couple of years ago about, I kid you not, male thrush. Inspired by this I recently did an interview with a sexual and reproductive health specialist about erectile dysfunction and that, too, has performed well.

How have you had to change your approach to blogging, or your content, during the COVID-19 crisis?
Oh, my word – I have had to change my approach hugely! Firstly, like many mums and dads I have been homeschooling my kids while also working. To fit in content creation, I am having to get up at about 5am every day. I don’t mind admitting that we’re now into month three of living like this and it has become tough.
Secondly, I would usually attend events or meet with people face to face to produce content. All those opportunities vanished overnight so I was left with some significant holes in my editorial schedule.

That said, with two school-aged children, COVID-19 has provided me with plenty of inspiration to write about issues such as schooling, how we have coped with lockdown and also our eldest child’s return to school.

That said, I have noticed that people don’t want to read a constant stream of COVID-related content. That’s quite understandable; I think people want a break from it. One thing I did that’s been enormously successful is to re-introduce a weekly photography blog post. I stopped doing this last year but while on my daily family walks, I would take my camera and post the resulting images to Instagram and my blog. I was reluctant to do this as it felt very retrograde but my visitor stats and feedback from my followers has been so positive the weekly photo post is here to stay for a while longer!

Will we see more men embracing being stay at home dads in the wake of necessary changes to co-parenting schedules during lockdown?
I do not believe we are going to see an increase in the number of stay at home dads because of the COVID-19 crisis. That said, we will almost certainly see a huge upswing in dads working from home and making a greater contribution to childcare and domestic chores. In a very short space of time, flexible and remote working has become normalised.

In addition to this, staff at all levels are having to homeschool and work from home. This has forced employers to wake up and accept the fact many of their employees have caring responsibilities away from the workplace.

We are probably not going to see people working from home five days a week forever. I suspect and hope most people will work from home two or three days a week or in some cases, the office may be a place they visit every fortnight or so. Tech enables us to work this way.

If we can cement these changes, it will hopefully lead to greater gender equality on the home front. The Fatherhood Institute is reporting the amount of childcare men do has rocketed up by almost 60% in just two months. That demonstrates how outdated and rigid our working culture was.

The great thing about being an influencer is that you can use your presence to effect change. I was recently selected to work with LinkedIn as a Changemaker. There are seven of us and we are all working to change the workforce for the better. There’s a mental health Changemaker, diversity and inclusion Changemaker, disability Changemaker and so on.

The focus of my Changemaker campaign is to make flexible working available to all mums, dads and people with caring responsibilities. I’m really proud to be a part of this campaign and I hope it leads to change.

How would you recommend parents currently struggling with working from home with their family duties deal with the difficulties?
First things first – do not even bother trying to replicate what happens at school. You can’t, especially if you are working as well.
As I said previously, I am feeling jaded after almost three months of this. If you need to just take a day off and go to the countryside with the kids for the day, do it.

There is also a point to be made here. This generation of kids are going through something no other generation has done. There’s quite rightly been discussion about the negative mental health impact and their education suffering.

These are all valid points, but these kids are going to have picked up all manner of soft skills and relationship skills. Their formal education may suffer, but informally, they are having a unique and possibly amazing experience. It’ll be interesting to see what the long-term impact is on them.

Best no-fuss stress-free family meal for busy times?
Erm, you’d be surprised how often my kids have been given super noodles for lunch on homeschool days. With fruit to make it balanced, obviously. Perhaps best move on to the next question…

How do you collaborate with brands and which kind of brands do you really like working with?
I collaborate with brands in many ways. I recently started producing content for flexible working website DaddyJobs.co.uk and carer community site FamilyCarersNet.

Sometimes I am asked to produce Instagram Story videos. Other times it may be a detailed blog post, although usually it’s a package of blog post and social media promotion. I have previously acted as a media spokesperson, doing radio days.

As for who I like working with – wow, that’s so hard to answer! As a parenting, family and lifestyle blogger I have broad interests from family tech and flexible working to grocery shopping and family cars. If it’s relevant to me and my audience, I’m interested in it.

For PRs looking to work with you and your blog/website, how would you prefer they approach you and with what kind of content?
Either email me or my agents Leigh Rodda or Kaye Freeman.

So long as the content you want is suitable for a family audience or of interest to parents or carers, then please get in touch. I am very experienced producing written, photographic and video content.

What other blogs do you check out regularly (whether parenting-related or not)?
I hate answering this question! There are so many I want to list but I’m going to draw a line. These are the people whose content I looked at over the past couple of days.

I do enjoy reading fellow Vuelio Top 10 daddy blog Slouching Towards Thatcham, plus Daddy & Dad and Dad’s Delicious Dinners. The Music Fatherhood Football guys are also doing amazing things. From the mums, Jo Middleton’s Slummy Single Mummy is as good as ever.

Over on Instagram, I don’t usually do inspirational stuff, but Adam Cam is brilliant. And TV presenter Nigel Clarke is doing interesting things with his weekly Dadvenger Instagram Lives.

If you have plans for the pub coming up (while staying safely-socially-distanced, of course), grab some quick recommendations for beverages to sup and sample from Beer Insider blogger Glynn Davis – ‘There’s always something new and exciting around the corner, especially now. Beer has never been so interesting and vibrant’.

How did you originally get started with writing about beer/the beer industry?
For ten years, I judged the annual pub awards for The Publican magazine and was then finally asked by the editor that maybe I should write some pieces for them!

What’s your favourite thing to post about and why?
Interviews with people who have an opinion and put forward interesting insights.

Any particular pubs or bars you’re really missing during the lockdown?
The Great Northern Railway Tavern in Hornsey, North London, and the Bohem Tap Room (I co-own Bohem Brewery).

What’s the first beer you ever tried, and do you still drink it occasionally?
Timothy Taylor’s Landlord Bitter. And the first album I bought was Never Mind the Bollocks by the Sex Pistols. Sometimes you just hit the bullseye with the first dart.

Any beers or breweries that have stopped being produced/producing that you wish were still around?
No. There’s always something new and exciting around the corner, especially now. Beer has never been so interesting and vibrant. No need to look back.

For people who don’t drink, can you recommend a good non-alcoholic beer that still comes close to the taste of the alcoholic version?
None. It’s not my cup of tea. Actually, I’d rather have a cup of tea, or coffee.

For PRs looking to work with you and your blog/website, how would you prefer they approach you and with what kind of content?
Email is fine.

What other blogs do you check out regularly (whether beer-related or not)?
None with any great zeal. Certainly no other beer blogs. I spend more time looking at blogs about retail as this is the main subject that I write about. The sister site to Beer Insider is Retail Insider.

Jeremy Williams has been writing about the environment from the age of eight, making him ideally experienced to blog about the topic for The Earthbound Report, one of our top ten Green blogs in the UK.

Read on for more about Jeremy’s focus on ‘solutions journalism’ and how for him, going green isn’t ‘just a lifestyle choice’ but about being on the right side of history.

How did you originally get started with writing about green issues?
I grew up in Madagascar, which is one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. 80% of the country’s plants and animals are unique, lemurs being the most famous. It also had deforestation, pollution, wildfires and erosion all up-front and very visible. From an early age, I saw wonders and disasters side by side. I remember writing about the environment from about the age of eight.

What’s your favourite thing to post about and why?
I’m part of a movement called ‘solutions journalism’, which aims to report on how people respond to problems as well as the problems themselves – something that’s easily overlooked in the news. If I want to write about an issue, I’ll try to find a person or project that’s solving it and use that as a way in. My favourite things to post are profiles of people or businesses that are doing something extraordinary to solve the world’s biggest problems.

How have you had to change your approach to blogging during the COVID-19 crisis?
I actually asked my readers about this, and their general opinion was that I should carry on as before. They could read about COVID-19 in plenty of other places! I haven’t ignored it, but I haven’t made any great changes to the kind of thing I was posting. It has rather dominated conversation, so it’s been good to set it to one side on the blog.

What are some of the environmental stories/issues happening at the moment that you’d wish more people knew about?
There’s been this explosion of interest in climate change in the last year, which is really exciting. What’s still missing for me is that most people still have it categorised mainly as an environmental issue in their minds. It is, but climate change is caused by the world’s richest people and affects the poorest first, so it’s also a massive injustice. And since the world’s poorest are mainly people of colour, it’s also a racial injustice. It can be hard to talk about sometimes, but ‘going green’ isn’t a lifestyle choice, it’s about being on the right side of history. I wish more people recognised that – and a growing number of people are.

For those who are just getting into greener living, what are three small changes you would recommend people start with?
The two things that will make the biggest difference to our carbon footprints are to eat less meat and fly less. If you can’t imagine giving those things up completely, start with a smaller step – a meat free day, or one flight less a year. Don’t stop there, though! Ramp it up as you gain confidence and discover alternatives. And as a third change, talk about it. There’s a social silence around climate change. It often makes people uncomfortable and defensive, and we need to be brave and have those conversations about how we want to live and what matters to us.

Will the growth of veganism continue?
I think the decline of meat eating will continue, for sure. Full vegan is a high bar and it will never appeal to everybody, so that’s going to plateau at some point. I applaud everyone that makes the choice, but I wouldn’t want people to think that because they couldn’t go 100% vegan, they shouldn’t bother going halfway.

Do you think the ‘VSCO girl’ trend has ultimately been a good or bad thing for the awareness of green issues?
I wore Birkenstocks before they were cool, jus’sayin. I’m wearing some right now. But I am male, in my thirties and bald, so that’s where the overlap between me and the VCSO girls both begins and ends… I suppose there’s a risk that these kinds of trends make green issues into a consumer choice, where we do the right thing when it makes us feel good, and don’t really challenge ourselves on the harder stuff. But it is probably making certain ethical choices normal and aspirational, and that’s a useful contribution.

How do you collaborate with brands and which kind of brands do you really like working with?
The themes of the blog don’t really lend themselves to brand collaborations very well, but I do occasionally run posts on green energy or products. I do lots of book reviews. I don’t run ads or do sponsored posts on the blog, because I value editorial independence. Unfortunately, that means I basically turn away free money on an almost daily basis, which is kind of painful!

For PRs looking to work with you and your blog/website, how would you prefer they approach you and with what kind of content?
Email is easiest. The content I’m most likely to use is new scientific research, campaign launches, innovative green technologies and projects. Other people in the top ten green blogs are covering the lifestyle stuff better than I ever will, so I’m less likely to write about products and services unless they’re doing something groundbreaking.

What other blogs do you check out regularly (whether green-related or not)?
One of my favourites is the Greenpeace investigative blog UnEarthed, and I recently discovered the business facing Future Net Zero. In another life I’d have been an architect, so I love to check out beautiful and ingenious buildings on Inhabitat or ArchDaily.

Sharing hidden gem rides you haven’t heard about, and new roads to the places you have, Epic Road Rides’ Clare Dewey is looking forward to getting back on the bike blogging saddle now that she’s seeing ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ for the tourism and trips-out industry.

If you’re planning for your next trip, sort out your itinerary and pick which horizon you’ll head for by checking out today’s cycling spotlight.

How did you originally get started with writing about cycling?
I’ve always loved cycling and travel. I spend hours and hours planning trips, reading through guidebooks and magazines, poring over maps and combing online forums to glean information on the best places to cycle abroad. Often information is scarce, as cycling tour operators are reluctant to share their information online.

For years before I set up Epic Road Rides, I’d idly wonder why there was no authoritative resource with the information I was looking for.

After my second maternity leave, I had a ‘now or never’ moment and decided that now was the time to create the website I’d always been looking for… So Epic Road Rides was born!

What’s your favourite thing to post about and why?
I love writing about anything cycling and travel related, but my favourite topic is places people probably haven’t heard too much about; the undiscovered parts of the world that are amazing for cycling that people don’t tend to go to.

In a similar vein, I love to write about the secret gems in the places that lots of people visit. For example, everyone knows about visiting the Alps to ride Alpe d’Huez, but do they also know about riding the Pas de la Confession halfway up Alpe d’Huez? What about the Col de Sarenne, which is the much less known but very beautiful route up the Alpe? Have they tried the road out to La Bérarde, which feels like you’re riding to the end of the world?

Sharing information on great cycling-friendly bars/restaurants/cafe stops is also really fun, because it’s the sort of local knowledge that’s really difficult to find elsewhere but which can make a big difference to your trip.

I love to get people excited about riding new routes and trying out new destinations. There’s so much to discover out there!

How have you had to change your approach to blogging during the COVID-19 crisis?
Travel is obviously one of the areas that’s been hardest hit by the pandemic.

Initially, I flexed our content to provide inspiration and interest while cyclists were spending more time at home. Articles on things like the best cycling films, documentaries and books were popular.

Now it feels that the light is starting to appear at the end of the tunnel, there’s been a definite return to people planning holidays and our articles on cycling within the UK and ferry-drive destinations have been shared a lot on social media. I’m also working with brands to ensure that their destinations and services are top of mind as people start to book and re-book their trips.

What kit/equipment would you recommend people put together and take with them when cycling while social distancing?
I don’t think the kit you need to take has changed too much – for a day ride, you’d want to take all the usual essentials like phone, money, tools sufficient to change a puncture and a jacket (in case of a change of weather). You can find our day-ride and holiday packing list here, if it helps!

That said, it’s probably more important to think about how you’d get home in case of a major mechanical breakdown that you couldn’t fix. Also, if you might want to stop at a shop while out, you could consider taking a face mask.

Do you think the Tour De France will still be able to go ahead without any issues this year?
This is the million-dollar question at the moment!

The French government has banned all sporting events until the end of August, but I guess the Tour may be getting special dispensation since its revised start date is 29 August. There’s a huge amount of speculation going on as to whether it will be feasible to run the event, given the number of riders and support crew and the proximity they have to live in with one another during the Tour.

If it does go ahead, I wonder if it will happen behind closed doors or with limited numbers of spectators and journalists.

Can you remember your first ever bike?
Good question! I do remember learning to ride my first bike without stabilisers around a car park in the little village we used to live in. The feeling of finally ‘getting it and being able to ride alone was amazing. I must have been about eight or nine years old. Can that really have been my first bike?!

If you could cycle anywhere right now, where would it be?
We should be on a press trip in Austria with roadbike-holidays.com at the moment, and I wish we were there now! I was really excited about the opportunity to explore the Tannheimer Tal region and share it with the Epic Road Rides community. Fortunately, the trip has been postponed rather than cancelled, and I can’t wait to get there very soon.

How do you collaborate with brands and which kind of brands do you really like working with?
I collaborate with brands to showcase their products and services within our inspiring photos and SEO optimised written content. I can provide anything from an advert in one of our guides, to mail shots to our email list, social media promotion and full brand partnerships.

I really enjoy running interviews and in-depth features with brands to explain their products and services to our community of 70k+ avid road cyclists. Where it’s a brand that provides a service in a particular destination, I love to draw out their local tips and knowledge that I know our community will love and which will help showcase the brand’s expertise.

I love to work with brands that are passionate about quality and customer service, and who provide a product or service I would want to buy and use myself.

For PRs looking to work with you and your blog/website, how would you prefer they approach you and with what kind of content?
I like to receive a friendly email that introduces them, their brand and what they’re looking for. It’s always nice when this introduction makes it clear that they know Epic Road Rides and what we do. Generally, we will then exchange some emails and, if it sounds like there’s potential to work together, we can get on the telephone and talk about the details.

My favourite way of working with brands is by way of longer-term partnerships over months and even years. This could be through a series of articles and social media posts or by an all-encompassing brand partnership that includes things like promotion within our highly Google-ranked destination guides, email newsletters and social media. I find longer term collaborations much better than one off articles/posts for building the kind of trust and engagement that brings the best return on investment.

By way of example, I’ve been working with the cycling kit company Stolen Goat for the last two years and have developed excellent brand trust and loyalty for the brand within the Epic Road Rides community.

What other blogs do you check out regularly (whether cycling-related or not)?
I like National Geographic’s travel section for its general travel-related inspiration, the TrainingPeaks blog for training advice and DC Rainmaker for cycling tech reviews. During winter, when I tend to do a bit more running, I also like to check out Man v Miles.