When I was planning my editorial calendar for 2015 late last year, I knew that I wanted to involve my readers more on the blog this year. It was a long thinking process as I wondered how I could showcase my readers in a way that would be interesting to us all. I was doing a bout of cleaning of my bag and its contents and that’s when it hit me. Let’s take a look in what’s in my readers’ bags!

I don’t know about you but I’m such a voyeur when it comes to seeing what’s inside other people’s bags. I would actually scour Flickr to satisfy my curiosity as they have tens of thousands of photos and many groups dedicated to “what’s in my bag” photos. There are thousands of videos on YouTube on this topic. I can’t help it; I’m a real sticky beak when it comes to what people carry with them in their bags.

Since I can’t show you what’s in my bag every month (I don’t switch things out often), I thought I’d reach out to my readers to see if they’d share what’s in their bags. Here are 3 lovely readers who willingly shared their bag contents (thank you!) and they answered 3 questions I asked them. 🙂

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Up to a few months ago, Pinterest had been a major stumbling block for me. I didn’t understand why people were obsessed with that social media platform up to the point of wasting hours on end on pinning images. It seems like such first world blogging problems but it really was a struggle for me. I had zero idea on how to use the platform to my advantage. Yes they are pretty pictures but, erm, what else do they do other than allow people to pin them to their boards? How do I use it to drive traffic back to my blog without selfishly pinning only my images?

I had so many questions but I had no answers.

Early last year, I was quite a lucky duck to win a spot in the Secret Bloggers’ Business Bootcamp course that was (still is!) run by Kate McKibbin who is the founder of Drop Dead Gorgeous Daily. It’s a comprehensive blogging course in which Kate shares her tips, tricks and secrets to creating a smashing blog. In one of her modules, she delved into the subject of growing your social media following and one tip stood out to me: in order to grow your social media followers, focus on just one platform at a time for 1-3 months. Don’t multi-task and split your focus. If you want to grow your Instagram followers organically, concentrate on just Instagram and post frequently. So on and so forth.

I decided to try that out on Pinterest. It was time I found out how the platform works and how I could really use it to drive traffic to my blog. For the next month, I concentrated on Pinterest. I placed daily reminders in my planner to “pin images on Pinterest”. I couldn’t do it during the morning and afternoon because as many of you know, Pinterest can be such a productivity killer so I only did my pinning in the evenings when Tim and I are on the couch watching TV.

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I’m not a huge movie buff but I do enjoy a movie or two every now and then. There are some movies that I’d watch for the action scenes only, for the main actors only (Hugh Jackman. Benedict Cumberbatch. Yummm!) and for the laughter (not so much tears; I don’t do tearjerkers). But there are some shows that I would watch repeatedly for the fashion and makeup.

Sometimes the fashion and makeup are so good that if I had the DVD or the downloaded movie/TV show, I’d rewind and pause just to take it all in. I know I know, better things to do with my time and all that, but sometimes, you just gotta appreciate the pretty things in life, y’know? 😛

I thought I’d share a few of the movies and TV shows in which I’ve really enjoyed the fashion and makeup. You’d have heard of most of them as they’re famous for the outfits and makeup. On the other hand, you may be surprised to find a gem or two that you haven’t thought of before.

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