Taken By Surprise: Tips From A Successful Beauty Blog
Jessica-Anne Lyons has been a maker since childhood, fascinated by the idea of creating something out of nothing. Her favorite ways to get creative have always been writing and photography, and after years of perfecting her art and teaching herself to code, she decided that blogging would be the perfect medium. She launched her blog, Taken By Surprise, in her college days as a journalism major, which has since proven to be a successful outlet for her beauty-driven work. Her engaging writing coupled with her amazing eye for photography are the perfect combination of skills for the blogging realm, and while on the hunt for an easy online photo editor for her workflow, she stumbled upon BeFunky.
“I needed a user-friendly and efficient image editing tool online while I was at university, because even though I had student licenses for Adobe programs, I needed something quicker and easier to use to get my blog posts up regularly and to standard. I found BeFunky online and it covered all of the bases I needed - it was so simple to use!”
About a year after starting Taken By Surprise, Lyons got her first big break into the beauty world, winning Girlfriend Magazine’s Rimmel London Beauty Insider Competition. She was interviewed in front of hundreds of beauty lovers and flown to Sydney, Australia for her very own photo and video shoot. With her online presence now larger than ever, Lyons is privileged to attend beauty branded events, where she gets to see all of the cutting edge products first hand, before they even launch.
Lyons tests and documents these makeup products on Taken By Surprise, so her followers can get a good feel for all the newest goods. In order to keep a cohesive look for her blog imagery as she blogs along, she relies on BeFunky’s Photo Editor to enhance her imagery and keep her visuals consistent. From tweaking colors and exposure to creating white backgrounds for photos, she finds that BeFunky has everything she needs for her blogging essentials.
“I use BeFunky for almost all image editing on my desktop! I mainly use it for editing the photos for my blog and Instagram, and whenever I’ve redesigned my blog over the years, I’ve used BeFunky to create pretty much all the assets, like my blog header and About Me sidebar image.”
In addition to creating assets for her blog, BeFunky has also proven to be helpful for her YouTube channel, which Lyons started earlier this year. To keep her brand cohesive, she created her YouTube Channel Art using the same fonts, color palette, and styling as Taken By Surprise. Her channel adds a dynamic dose of personality to her brand, featuring everything from makeup reviews and beauty tips to footage from events she attends. With videos sprinkled into blog posts with consistently attractive imagery, everything about Taken By Surprise is like eye candy.
“BeFunky is a huge help when it comes to editing individual components of my YouTube images like my Channel Art. Previously with other programs I’d have to open one program, edit a photo, export the photo, import it into another program for a different feature, etc. which would take too much time and jeopardise the quality of the image file. BeFunky has all of the features I need in one place.”
Jessica-Anne Lyons has been in the beauty blogging industry for years now and has gotten her workflow, branding, and content down to a science. Not only is she engaging and fantastic at what she does, she is purposeful in providing realistic beauty advice and entertaining her audience. By focusing on the quality of her content instead of numbers, she has built a dedicated readership and is known as a trusted source of beauty knowledge. This mentality has also led to some incredible opportunities, including real-life job offers due to her portfolio of blogging goodness. Her advice to aspiring bloggers out there?
“While it’s easy to get hung up on a number like follower count, what keeps readers coming back for more is quality writing, fantastic images, and a genuine and relatable online personality. Brands also look at your content over your numbers a lot of the time too, so treat your blog as a portfolio of your amazing talents!”
Want to make your blogging dreams a reality? With this wisdom from Jessica-Anne in your back pocket and the ease of BeFunky’s Photo Editor, you’ll be unstoppable. Follow the link below to start creating your own unique blog imagery, design social media assets, add text to photos and more!
