I've known Brankica Underwood from Live-Your-Life blog for several months and during that time I have watched her position herself for success in the blogosphere. She is building a powerful social network and leaving a lasting impression everywhere she goes. Brankica is focused on helping her readers and she's a master of networking and social engagement. She recently launched a Facebook fan page and tweaked the design on her blog Live-Your-Love, making it easy to navigate and visually appealing. I was fortunate enough to get her to agree to this interview. Thanks Brankica!
The Brankica Underwood Interview
Bio: A 29 year old practical shooter, shooting trainer, traveler and dog lover. Happens to be a blogger as well. Addicted to cherry coke, crotch rockets, tattoos and social media. Sharing life with a blue eyed prince charming and a crazy Amstaff puppy.
Brankica: I have started this blog in September, but haven't got around to working on it till mid November. I wanted a place where I can give people some tips about cool places to travel to, talk about my shooting successes (or failures, lol) and just mention a tip or two I learned about online business.
After only a few weeks my blog took it's own path and turned into, what I like to call a “blogging blog”. I asked the readers at that time if I should leave it as is, or just focus on one thing and the majority “voted” for my blog to take this course.
Brankica: I also remember meeting you on Website Babble for the first time. You gave the nicest impression and image of yourself. By the way, I am such a big fan of Lisa that I often tell her I am her stalker, following her every step 🙂 When I first started, I was actually in Africa, been deployed to a peace keeping mission and besides the job there was nothing else to do, but surf the net. I was thinking about how could I use that time and started searching for some general stuff, like making money online. I actually never thought I would get into all this.
I guess I was lucky enough to run into Lisa's site to start with. Clicked on few pages and learned about Site Build It. I loved the way she promoted it and I just wanted to give it a go. Although it seemed a bit pricey, I had no knowledge of HTML (had no idea what it was, let alone how to do it) so I thought it would be the best to let the hard work to the system. Lisa was really nice to explain it in details when I sent her an e-mail with additional questions. I bought SBI, started following their Action Guide and chose what I want to build my first website about. SBI has such great tools that if you follow their Action Guide, you can't go wrong. I even did a review of Site Build It on my blog.
A personal look at Brankica Underwood
Ileane: Tell us a little more about yourself and where you’re from. For instance how many languages do you speak and do you think that English speaking bloggers face different challenges than non-English speaking bloggers?
Brankica: I was born in Bosnia and raised in Serbia. Although my country went through several wars in the last few decades it is a gorgeous place. Confirmed so by all the foreign tourists that visit it more and more, and by my American husband who loves it 🙂 I speak Serbian, which automatically means I also speak Bosnian and Croatian, lol, English, Italian, I understand Spanish and I can even speak a tiny bit of Arabic. I think non-English speaking bloggers, if they are blogging in English, really can have a hard time with their writing. I am never sure if I haven't wrote a sentence that has no meaning in English. My husband worked with many foreigners, and got used to bad English, so he doesn't really notice if I make a mistake, hence he does not correct my English. That way I just keep speaking the way I do. But I read a lot, so I think I am improving. Anyway, blogging in a language that is not your mother's language is hard and it makes me a bit less secure than I am usually.
Brankica: I actually only posted 2 guest posts till now, and have been asked to do other posts for some blogs. You can just see me all over the place now. It is something new for me, because it is not one of the strategies SBI teaches you to do. My two posts were:
1. At Ben Wan's blog I wrote about a Facebook comments plugin http://benwan.net/facebook-comments-plugin/
2. At Ana Hoffman's blog I wrote about getting traffic from Flickr http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/flickr-traffic-generation/
Being a guest poster is a great way to get more people to meet you, which was my original plan from the beginning. I didn't go for the links or anything, but the chance to meet new people and hope to get them to like my blog 😉
Brankica: I love Facebook and I am totally addicted to it. However, I didn't have too much success with it yet. I think the main reason is that I haven't given it too much of my time till now. Facebook is a perfect place to promote your business, with 500+ million users, but also a place where people still like to keep private separate from business. So it is tricky in a way, not as easy as Twitter. I do plan to work more on the page, make is connected to my blog of course, but still make it different. I even created that Friend tab to promote people who are active on the page, which is something like having a Top Commenters widget on your blog.
Ileane: What’s sending your blog and your websites the most traffic – is it social media, guest posting, google searches, what’s the scoop? How can we get in on the action and get some new eyeballs viewing our content?
Brankica: This blog is getting the most traffic from social media. I am so active there, that it comes as no surprise to me. It is interesting cause the website gets more than 80% visitors from Search engines. Simple reason, it is SEO-ed to the max while I am not focusing on social media for it (just not enough time). Getting new eyes is not that hard but also a challenge for some. New eyes will come from new sources. For example, I am getting eyes from Twitter cause I am so active there. If I want some LinkedIn visibility, I will become active there. But there are only so many hours in a day and we just can't make it everywhere at the same time. People will say we can use automated tools but I am not big fan of them. Basically, when ever you want new eyes, find a new place to frequent, be it another blog, a forum, a new social media site.
Advice from Brankica for everyone
Brankica: Haven't thought much about plans since it seems everything is just happening and I am going along with it. My blog just went under 100.000 Alexa a few days ago and I am just now starting to think that I am doing something right. I want my blog to become a place where people will be able to learn something, where they can come to get help. Parting words of advice will be a saying I love the most in the world (I even have it tattooed on me) – Either I will find a way or I will make one. Start making roads for you where there are no roads!
And for Ileane – Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about this, this is my first interview as a blogger and I am so glad I did it for Basic Blog Tips!
Hi Ileane and Brankica,
Nice Interview. If there is someone who is doing something right it’s Brankica. Such a contrast between what I hear from Internet marketers – are you struggling: buy your silver bullet – here is Brankica who’s blog just serious about blogging last November and in 3 months has gone under 100,000 on Alexa.
What can be said but Brankica is a woman of action – no the right action. She learning the right thing and doing the right things.
BTW, thanks for the link to my blog.
Ben Wan.
Hi Ben. I admire what Brankica has done. She’s a fine example for newcomers about how to do things the right way. I’m sure I’ll be linking to your blog again in the future too. Thanks for your comment.
Hi Ileane & Brankica
Great to see you over here being interviewed Brankica. I really enjoy interviews cos we get to know a person a little more. All those languages gal and your English is very good. I would expect to speak it just a little better as it’s the only language I speak 😉
I know I always learn heaps when I visit your blog and always leave it with some helpful hint for my blogging journey. Looking forward to see where this takes you as you are very gifted; not only with social networking but with teaching different aspects we need to make us more efficient with out blogging strategies.
Great interview Ileane. Really enjoyed it.
Patricia Perth Australia
Hey Patricia, even I was surprised to learn how many languages Brankica has command of. She’s very articulate. Thanks for your support as always.
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I just need to say thank you one more time, I loved learning from you all these months and plan to do so in the future as well!
Brankica, your picture lights up my home page and it’s like I can feel your positivity all the way over here in Philadelphia. Congrats on all of your successes so far and I really look forward to seeing what happens next for you. Thanks again!
You are admirable, Brankica.
This is one of a few interviews that I could read to the end. It took me over a year to take my blog to Alexa top 100,000 where as you just needed 3 months. So, I can understand how hard working and serious you are blogging. I wish I could write English like you.
Thanks for the interview, Ileane.
Hey Tuan, Brankica is a great example of a success story that is a direct result of the Site Build It program. I hear Lisa promoting Site Build It so I know that it works, and I’m glad that Brankica shared her experiences with us. Talk to you soon.
Well done, Ileane. You asked some interesting questions and we got to know Brankica a lot better.
I would like to ask Brankica one thing: “How do you pronounce your name?”
🙂
Cheers,
Mitch
Let me try to write the pronunciation in English, it would be something like Brah-nkih-tsah (hope I wrote it right).
If you follow Dino Dogan’s blog (DIY blogger net), he has a video about a beer commercial he posted last week and he pronounces my name there 🙂
Brankica, please feel free to post the link to Dino’s video. I can’t wait to watch it! Thanks!!
Here it is, I love Dino’s videos 🙂
http://diyblogger.net/reverse-engineering-mgd-64-beer-commercial
And thanks so much for the nice word in the reply to my comment here, means a lot to me!
Great interview. I’ve learned a lot about my friend Brankica (its pronounced with a hard R and the “c” is “tz”. Everything else is uttered phonetically lol..hope that helps…ok, prob not…go see the video to actually hear it 🙂
And thnx for link-love, much appreciated 🙂
Hi Dino! Nice meeting you. I’ve seen you commenting on other blogs but now I have a reason to visit your place! Thanks for the pronunciation tips. 🙂
Thanks, Dino! You said it very clearly 🙂
LOL the video is cool, too!
Cheers,
Mitch
What an awesome interview Ileane & Brankica.
Social media sites are great way to get traffic. Recently i’ve started to be more active on social media sites. Social sites are great way to connect with other bloggers and build relationship with them.
Thanks for doing this awesome interview Ileane. Keep up the awesome work.
~Dev
Hey Devesh. Thanks for stopping by. I’d love to interview you some day soon!
Hey Ileane,
That’s awesome to hear ;).
Great interview. I am really impressed with the progress of her blog. It’s doing wonderful.
Keep up the good work Ileane and Brankica 🙂
Hi Kharim, thanks for your feedback.
Wow, Brancika is a linguist, a blogger. She’s definitely multi-talented and highly intelligent. I would love to see her blog as it sparked my interest.
Hey Anne, I’m so happy you’re interest in Brankica is peaked. When you visit her blog there is one post that you must check out Human spammer | How to lose reputation as a blogger and get banned the easy way. This post has over 200 comments, so you know it’s golden.
Chat soon Anne!
Great interview Ileane and an interesting “background” about Brankica as well. I met her first actually in my blog where she is an avid commenter and I just regret the fact that I have not reciprocated enough, something I intend to remedy very quickly. Now, how many languages is that again she has on her arsenal? Boy, she could blog about anything in all those languages and get Worldwide coverage, haha.
Great stuff and I really like this type of interviews as it is a good what to find out more about the people we normally bump in the net. Makes us get that feeling of interacting with real persons. Thumbs up.
Hi DiTesco, I’d like to take credit for making the connection between you and Brankica, but there’s no way I can do that because Brankica learned how to get around on her own pretty quickly. She’s always finding great blogs to interact on and many times I will see her comments and she always has something valuable to say. Talk to you soon 🙂
It is the great interview and from its interview I have learn that a person who feels at the start that she is not good at English but she has a lot of management qualities to reach the guest post.The secret of her success is to learn from every where there is knowledge,
I hope this interview with Brankica encourages you.
Woohoo! I love learning new things about bloggers 😛 and Brankica is AMAZING. She is the social media queen. I think her English writing is fantastic and I don’t think I’ve ever been able to point out a mistake in her blog posts or comments or tweets.
This was so fun to read! Thanks Ileane & Brankica 🙂 You both rock!
Elise, welcome to Basic Blog Tips! I found your site the other day and I know I’ll be spending more time there soon. Thanks for your kind words, I’m sure Brankica appreciates them too. Chat soon!
your creativity and interest with positive attitude has given you such a status in blogging that your blog got the name ” blogging blog”
Kiesha, it’s always a pleasure to see you here. I guess seeing Brankica’s quit success brings back fond memories of your own past. We’re all following in Lisa’s footsteps and I can’t think of anyone better to emulate. She’s been my guru from day one and hasn’t failed me with her advice yet. See you at the top!
New to blogging as I’ve always done static HTML sites, so thanks for turning me on to Brankica. She has some good tips and her personality really shines through. I found something helpful on her blog about using Google Alerts in a way I hadn’t thought of.
Hi Brad, it’s my pleasure to introduce Brankica to my readers. I’m glad you stopped by. Thanks.
Hi Ileane and Brankica,
Thanks for sharing the awesome interview. I got to know Brankica a little bit better now and have learned how to pronounce her name 🙂
Wow, she is doing really well – I had no idea her blog is only 3 months old – you go girl!
All the best,
Mavis
Hi Mavis, have you visited Lisa Irby’s blog? I’m not sure if I’ve seen you hanging out there yet. Let me know when you get a chance. Thanks for commenting Mavis!
Great interview, thanks for sharing!
this is a great interview. unveils great tips about blogging.
Great interview and wonderful blog! This is my first visit but I can see there is some great information here. Im helping a friend start his first blog and will be sending him here to learn more!
Hi Connie, thanks for saying that. Let your friend know I’m here to help them get noticed in the blogosphere.
Great interview ladies! A very inspirational story. Ileane, you have a great eye for talent. 😉
Brankica I like that fact that you’ve allowed your site to grow to it’s own, with no attachments to the end results. It is obvious you love what you do.
And btw, “Either I will find a way or I will make one. Start making roads for you where there are no roads!” – Great parting words!
All the best. 🙂
Hi Michele, I love when you make time to stop by and comment, it’s much appreciated. I’m headed over to your place asap!
Ileane, you have a very good list of questions to interview with Brankica. I want to ask you a question, How much time you prepare for this interview? 🙂
Hi Soffia, great question! The first blogger interview I did was with Gera from SweetsFoods and initially I thought that I might ask Brankica some of those same questions. After a second look I changed my mind and decided to take a little bit of what I already knew about her and cater the interview to those topics. It took me about 30 minutes to come up with the questions at that point. It took no time at all for Brankica to respond with the answers. I think they were sitting in my inbox for awhile before I realized they were there. 🙂
Thanks for visiting Soffia, stop by again soon.
Nice interview! You really did a great job and thanks for recommending Brankica, I’m sure I can learn a lot from her experience.
Thanks for this interview Ileane, came to know more about Brankica. Love to see so many connections. 🙂
Hey Pradeep. I’m happy to introduce you to Brankica. She’s great, be sure to visit her blog soon.
Hi Neeraj, you make an excellent point. It’s never a waste of time visiting Brankica’s blog. She is always there to answer you’re questions and she’s a no BS kind of gal. That’s why I like her so much. Glad to hear that you do too. Thanks!
Great interview, Ileane! Brankika is a powerhouse. Everytime I talk to her (online), I learn something new about her. I’m so curious about her fascination with guns. I am afraid of them. We both currently competing in the guest post contest with Famous Bloggers and ComLuv. She is beating me with huge social media attention from other bloggers! Lol! Because we both big fans of UFC, I still love ya, baby 🙂
Really enjoyed this and even more interesting to hear how your name is pronounced! I had it all wrong. lol Brankica, you have become a social media celebrity. I’m so happy for you. Great job on the interview, Ileane.
Ileane, you have a very good list of questions to interview with Brankica.
The interview is doing good! Thanks for a great post..
Brankica and Ileane, you both are great as I visit and stumble here in your site I found very useful and helpful information in blogging. Thanks you so much for the advice Brankica, I will never forget all that you said here.