In 2015, Myriam Sandler had a problem many moms face: Her baby daughter Nicole refused to eat solid foods. Spaghetti, soup, rice … she wouldn’t have any of it. “That was driving me crazy as a first-time mom and I was determined to find a solution,” recalls the Venezuelan-born Myriam, who grew up in Miami.

Fortunately, Myriam had an educational  background in psychology and, prior to becoming a mom, had worked with kids that had ADD and ADHD. She eventually realized that baby Nicole likely had “texture sensitivities,” which makes some foods seem unappetizing. So she began to create play activities to help her daughter experience things that felt squishy, slimy, wet or rough. Through feeling the textures, Nicole became accustomed to the sensations and started eating. 

“I felt like I had a parenting breakthrough,” Myriam says. This experience inspired her to record short videos of her sensory play activities to share with other parents on social media. What began as an experiment has developed into a booming social media and web presence, as herMothercould brand has attracted more than 640,000 followers on Instagram and 40,000 monthly visitors to her website, along with business partnerships and other opportunities.

Here’s how Myriam went from being a young learning mother to a full-time social media and web creator, promoting her growing, family-friendly brand across multiple online platforms. 

Launching on social media

After creating her Mothercould websiteand a brief foray onto Instagram in 2016, Myriam paused  content development to focus on her family. In late 2018, after giving birth to her second daughter Emma, she relaunched herMothercould brand on Instagram, featuring kids’ play activities and recipes. “There were no videos out there bringing play into food and activity recipes,” she recalls. “It just exploded and the feedback from other parents and educators was so rewarding. It inspired me to keep creating.”

Families were hungry for the fun, rainbow-colored activities Myriam posted. By August 2019, she had 100,000 Instagram followers. “I thought, let’s branch out and see what happens,” Myriam says. She established a presence onFacebook andTikTok, and began sharing some videos onYouTube and Google’s new short-form DIY video platform,Tangi. 

Attracting business partnerships

Interest in Myriam’s content kept growing by leaps and bounds, as she brought together an online community of like-minded parents. For almost a year she rejected Instagram promotions that would come her way, waiting instead for the right moment to turn her hobby into a business. So she reached out to a food coloring brand she loves to use in her recipes. The brand jumped at the chance to sponsor her content. “Two weeks later, Nickelodeon Kids called,” Myriam recalls, asking her to create activities for the Nickelodeon Parents channel.

Myriam attributes her success to being authentic and not being shy — reaching out to companies she wanted to work with herself. “You get a lot of ‘nos’ before you get to a ‘yes,’” she explains. “For me, the Wilton partnership gave me the confidence to pursue more.” As her brand exposure increased, more businesses began approaching Myriam for customized content and sponsorships.

Creating a web hub

Though Myriam had originally considered Instagram her home base, the platform allows only one link on the user’s bio page. She realized she needed to create a links page on her website to invite her Instagram followers to learn more about Mothercould’s online shops and her other product-related “favorites.” Adding this landing page link on Instagram had an unexpected benefit. “My website went from almost no visitors to 40,000 monthly visitors overnight,” she says.

This traffic boost motivated Myriam to reevaluate her Mothercould website, which until recently  was an afterthought to her social channels. She created a centralized hub from which she could link to all her social media properties. She began updating her blog with fresh content, appealing to visitors who want to read about activities and view printable recipes. “This was a real tipping point for me,” Myriam explains. “It helped with my SEO and getting more people to the website.” 

Expanding the Mothercould brand 

By 2021, Myriam signed with Digital Brand Architects, one of the first and largest digital creator agencies, to handle her business partnerships and other opportunities. 

Morgan Pitts has always had an eye for style. While studying marketing at the University of Maryland, many of Morgan’s friends encouraged her to start a blog, but it was not until after graduation that she actively began blogging to showcase her own work. From there, an impromptu tweet and an idea for a T-shirt inspired Morgan to build a platform as a way to build an online community. Now she uses @blackgirlswhoblog and the #blackgirlswhoblog hashtag on Instagram to share playlists and inspiration, and to empower Black women across the world to share their voices, too. 

What is “Black Girls Who Blog?”

“Black Girls Who Blog” is an online community of Black women in the blogosphere and a place where Black women who blog can be seen, heard, celebrated and validated. 

What made you decide to start it up?

When I graduated, a friend who was doing pageants had asked me to style her for new headshots. So, I decided, I want to start a blog. I want to have something tangible to show my work.

Fast forward to a year later, April of 2014: I unintentionally tweeted that I would love to have “Black Girls Who Blog” on a T-shirt. It was aimless, and I didn't think anything of it. I just sent it out to Twitter. At that time, I had a small community of Black women who blogged; we followed each other, and we supported each other's posts. A friend of mine reached out and asked if an illustration should accompany the text on the shirt. She sent me a draft of the original Black Girls Who Blog logo and had shirts printed. That is how #BlackGirlsWhoBlog was born. 

I started an Instagram to promote the T-shirts. When that run died down, I thought I’d just continue posting on this account and share different Black women who blog, who I thought were fly, talented, cool and have quality work. 

I started making every day a theme and that gave me some consistency. The rest is history.

Are you the only person behind it? Do you do all the writing?

Yeah. I do literally everything. I'm a one-woman show.

How do you find people? How has the community grown since you launched it?

When I first started, I was posting bloggers that I was aware of. As the hashtag and the page grew, I just had to search through #BlackGirlsWhoBlog on Instagram. Features are selected by using the hashtag and tag in the photos. There is some color coordination that goes into the selection so every week there's a cohesive color theme.

What is the response from the people you feature? Do you feel like the community is growing? 

The community is very dynamic. You have people who are going to hold it down and support, who were here back in 2014, and you have people who are stumbling across it today. They become immersed and want to be a part of it. 

I don't tell people they're being featured. I do my own research, and then I curate the content I post. Everyone is even more excited when they're featured because they have no idea that it's coming. They wake up, and they're like, "Oh my gosh!"

How are things looking for the Black Girls Who Blog hashtag?

A few months ago, the #BlackGirlsWhoBlog hashtag on Instagram hit one million users, and I'm proud of that. You can obviously see the following, how it’s grown and how people interact with the content.

What are some things that you've learned about this community that you didn't know before?

You assume that the only bloggers out there are the popular ones. You don't even realize how many people have their own personal blogs that they take very seriously, update consistently and put a lot of time, effort and money into. There's so many different topics, so many different lanes of blogs out there. 

You appear on a lot of panels; can you talk about that?

I did two events in New York. One was a panel with three of the ladies that I've mentioned in my blog, talking about how the blogosphere and the internet have given microphones to marginalized voices. 

 I did another event with Glossier. They were expanding their shade range of complexion products, so I did an event with them. And then most recently, I did an online video call tutorial on how to make video content with the Jumprope app. [Events like these are] an extension of “Black Girls Who Blog.” They’re events for community members, and I do them when the opportunity presents itself. Someone has come to me and asked , "Hey, would you be interested in doing this?" If I'm interested, I pitch the idea. It's an extension of the brand IRL versus in a URL.

With 84 million readers and 55 million social fans across nine media brands, from Bustle to Elite Daily to Input, Bustle Digital Group (BDG) has the largest reach and engagement of any millennial and Gen Z-focused publisher. 

BDG has been working with Web Stories since late 2019, and has adopted them across their brand portfolio to connect with their audience of digital natives who grew up on the Internet and spend hours a day on their phones. A major champion of Web Stories at BDG is its editor-in-chief and executive vice president of culture and innovation, Joshua Topolsky.  He shared with us his vision for Web Stories and the future of digital content.

When did Bustle Digital Group begin publishing Web Stories, and what did you hope to accomplish?

We started working on Web Stories with Google in December 2019. It was clear that we shared similar goals on pushing storytelling on the web beyond traditional and familiar formats. We knew if we gave our writers and editors the tools to create evocative, mixed-media stories, they'd use those tools to make great things — stories like they’re already telling, but also new types of stories that simply can’t be created in a more traditional format. 

Tell us about your audiences, and what you’re hoping to accomplish with these stories.

Our audience is made up of people who've been raised online and intuitively understand the frameworks of mobile devices and social networks. They’re hungry for a more engaging, immersive and modern form of storytelling. Web Stories are design-first, and we wanted to use them to tell the stories that really can only be told when you combine mixed media, interactivity and traditional journalism all in one place.

How do Web Stories change your storytelling process?

Content creators have been stuck in a groove for a very long time, in terms of how stories are presented, the tools we have to tell them and the channels through which we reach our audiences. Web Stories let us break out of that groove.

One of the great powers of Web Stories is that you can take familiar content and elevate it to a place that makes people pay attention. Instead of writing 1,000 words, you can combine photos, quotes, video, infographics and text to viscerally change the way you communicate with your reader.

Let’s chat about some of your favorite Web Stories from across your publications.

Let’s start with Bustle’s 9 Genius Morning Routines for People Who WFH. This could have been a basic listicle, but instead we join together visuals and quotes and put them in a format that feels native to people who live on their phones. So something that you might have glossed over suddenly becomes an electric piece of visual content. 

For Romper’s How Kristen Bell Teaches Her Kids the Big Lessons, the team took additional content from an interview and were able to slice it into something completely unique that was additive to our feature storytelling.

Lastly, for Input’s Pixel 5 vs. iPhone 12, we used Web Stories to showcase camera comparisons, showing someone flipping through photos on the phones in real time. This is the best of what happens on social media and what YouTubers do with review videos, but compressed into a format that feels a hundred times more native on a mobile device.

Can you tell us a bit about your results with Web Stories so far?

We’ve seen tremendous performance on our Web Stories. We've been able to expose a much larger audience to our content — not only because of how shareable stories are, but also due to where they appear on Google Search and Google Discover. 

Our advertisers love that Web Stories give them an opportunity to tell their stories in a different way. They’ve become an integral part of how we help partners tell their stories.

How do you look at the future of storytelling and content consumption more broadly on the web?

Web Stories are a sign of things to come. Beyond text, images and video, there are other things on your phone today — real-time 3D, interactivity, mobile gaming — that you could experience within HTML and within the browser. From a design perspective, you have a variety of opportunities to add typography, color and more. The combination of these elements could lead to massively powerful experiences. 

Any high-level advice about how to think about the Web Story format as a whole? 

The most practical advice I can give is to take this format seriously. We’ve seen stories spread like wildfire across social media, and we have early and positive results that people want them elsewhere. This is a new format, a new space — think about it as an open canvas to reinvent your storytelling.

It's important to ask, “What stories should we tell and how would we tell them if we had different tools?” The limitations are diminishing and the opportunities are increasing. I think the next year or two is going to be explosive in terms of creativity, but in order to tap into that creativity, you have to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.

Stories have become a popular format for digital content and social media. It seems that most social apps have their own take on stories, but what about Web Stories? On the surface, all story variations may appear to be the same. For example, they all allow you to tap to go forward and backward, swipe up to open an attachment, or swipe right to go to the next story. That said, let’s check out some features that distinguish Web Stories from other story formats.  You can also see a full breakdown in the video above.

Web Stories:

1. Are designed for high-quality editorial or journalistic content. You write a full Story on your topic before publishing it instead of posting one page at a time. 

2. Have no expiration date. You can publish a Story, and it will stay up as long as you like.

3. Are published by you and hosted on your servers.  You host and own your Web Stories and content instead of posting them to an app or other platform. Your copyright, your content, your rules.

4. Have no editorial restrictions. Create what you want, not what’s defined in someone else’s terms of service.

5. Let you earn money from ads or sponsored content. Unlike stories on other apps and platforms, when you include ads in your Web Stories, you get to keep the revenue.

6. Are accessible like any other webpage. They can be accessed on any browser or device you use to access the web — instead of just in one app. They can also be created in a number of ways, including the tools listed on stories.google. 

7. Are indexed by search engines. People can find your Web Stories through search and they can be linked to from your other pages.

8. Are highly customizable. You can use any web font and can add custom animations or even modify the underlying CSS.

9. Can have embedded links. There’s no friction in getting to the content you need or to say “link in bio.”

10. Act like standard web pages. This means you can view them in different browsers, on different devices, and use tools like Google Analytics to measure their performance.

11. Are responsive. A Web Story can automatically resize and adapt to fit different screen sizes, like those for desktop computers, mobile phones, and tablets. (Not yet supported by all Story creation tools.)

12. Can feature interactive elements. You can run quizzes and polls from inside your Web Stories.  (Not yet supported by all Story creation tools.)

13. Can include new content. New pages can be added in real-time to your Web Stories, and users will be notified of them and able to view them without having to refresh their screen.

To learn more about Web Stories check out our Web Stories site, and the “Storytime” videos on our YouTube channel.

DAP The Contract is a classically trained pianist, but grew up in Lagos, Nigeria listening to almost every genre of music. After falling in love with hip-hop music in boarding school in the U.K. during his teenage years, he made his first beat at age 14 and never stopped. Now living in Brooklyn, New York, DAP is a producer, rapper and singer, all while having just finished law school. Recently the Google Web Creators team and creative agency Ueno partnered with DAP to share a bit of his story and music in a Web Story.

DAP’s “day-in-the-life” showcases the power of Web Stories by taking readers along for the ride from the moment he wakes up to when he shuts off the studio lights. Comprised primarily of first-person video, DAP’s story feels like a conversation where he’s sharing his routine directly with his audience. This structure follows the best practices for creating a Web Story highlighted on stories.google, including being video-first and providing a first-person point of view.

The Web Story also highlights some of the key features of the format, like links to listen to his music and to follow his other social channels.

We recently chatted with DAP to learn a bit more about his background and how he uses the web to connect with his audience.

Tell us a bit more about your journey to becoming a musician and producer.

When I was younger, my sister played the Motown classics: BeBe and CeCe Winans, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson. When she played me Chaka Khan’s “Through the Fire” and then Kanye West’s “Through the Wire,” something drew me to hip-hop more strongly than any other music I had heard. But it wasn’t until I made my first beat at age 14 that I completely fell in love with hip-hop and the art of lyricism.

While I have supreme confidence in my ability as a musician, my work ethic is what got me to this stage. I had already played the piano for a decade before I made my first beat, and knew that having a long-term mentality and putting in the work over an extended period of time would separate me from my peers. I labeled each beat I made by number, starting from the first beat until the most recent—906. I love that I have some kind of marker for how much blood, sweat, and tears went into this journey.

I studied Latin and Greek (Classics) from middle school through college at Brown University. Scansion (the term for finding the rhythm of poetry) was my favorite aspect because of my lifelong passion for music. I always wanted to be a producer, but studying these subjects made me appreciate lyricism and storytelling on a deeper level. I drew a lot of inspiration from the simple fact that I could relate writings from 2000 years ago to my life and others’ lives today, and from recognizing the power of words and art, music especially, to change people’s lives. 

On February 5, I released an EP called “I’m Glad You Made It This Far.”

How can folks stay up to date on what you’re working on?

In this post: Matt Kepnes, the founder of “Nomadic Matt,” talks about how he became a travel blogger and built his business on the web.

Matt Kepnes was just 23 in 2004 when he took his first overseas vacation to Costa Rica. For someone else, this would have been a brief break from a corporate job. But to Matt, this trip — followed by a second overseas trip to Thailand — set him on the road to pursuing his newfound passion for travel full time.

In July 2006, Matt set out on an adventure around the world that continued for 10 years. An early travel blogger, he founded Nomadic Matt in 2008 with the goal of helping people “travel better for less.”

Today, Matt has two New York Times best-selling books, “How to Travel the World on $50 a Day” and “Ten Years a Nomad.” He teaches blogging and writing courses, engages with his active online community and runs a charity he founded in 2015. 

In a recent interview, we chatted with Matt while he was traveling through Oaxaca, Mexico. He shared how he built Nomadic Matt from the ground up, what he’s working on now and how he manages to enjoy a non-working vacation every once in a while.

Can you give us a breakdown of all your current creative undertakings?

I have the blog, which is NomadicMatt.com, and then I have blogging and writing courses. Then we have a conference called TravelCon, where online creators and media go to learn what's hot in the travel industry.

I had a hostel, which is closed due to COVID-19, and we have our online community, the Nomadic Network, which also used to hold in-person events around the world. And then I have a charity called FLYTE, that raises money to send high-school kids in underserved communities on study-abroad trips.

Why did  you decide to become a travel blogger?

I started the website to try to get freelance writing gigs. I naively thought that if I started a website, that people would hire me to write. So I sent out a lot of freelance writing pitches and worked as a copywriter for online ads and websites for a time.

While building up the blog, my mentor said to me, “You have a travel website and expertise. You should just focus on that full-time." And so I did, and it took off.

I brought a lot of SEO knowledge into Nomadic Matt, so I was ranking highly on search, which helped me get media mentions. I got a hit in the New York Times in 2010 and that launched everything. And one day I woke up, and I said to myself, I guess I'm a travel writer.

How much of your SEO knowledge do you use today?

At least two-thirds of the searches on our site have nothing to do with the pandemic, so a considerable amount of our time and effort goes into ensuring we rank highly on these more evergreen topics. I’m also always updating our content and asking, “How can we optimize this page?” and “How is Google ranking our competitors?” 

 I've identified about 150 pages on my website that I always want to rank highly. So we cycle through those articles and ask ourselves, “Where do we stand?” And if we see we’re down in the rankings, we ask, “What's changed and what can we do better?"

I also do every interview I’m offered, because those interviews link back to my site.

You mentioned your blogging course. Can you tell us about that?

I have a blogging course called Superstar Business Masterclass, and we have one for writing, too. You can buy a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription, and I am your teacher. I edit your work. We have weekly calls. You have tech support. We have a community forum and a collaboration board so other students can meet each other. I share what I’ve learned over 12 years, so people don't end up making the same mistakes I did. I also help you stick out when there's a million platforms and a seemingly endless number of bloggers.

Why do you still maintain a website when you have all these other platforms? Why is it important to you?

Algorithms change, but my space on the web is something that can't be taken away. It allows me to build an email list and be a reference for people. So rather than constantly having to find new people through search or having to play a social media algorithm game where things are always changing, I have my own place to call home online.

And travel is a research-heavy thing. You don't make a $3,000 vacation purchase because Instagram has a “shop now” button. You have to get time off from work, you have to plan your trip, you're doing a lot of research, buying guidebooks, etc. So people still use text-heavy articles to research, and a blog is the best medium for that.

Does travel writing as a job ever take away from the pleasure of traveling?

Yes, yes it does. When I was traveling for fun, I wasn't taking pictures of menus and walking into grocery stores to write down prices for vegetables. But there's different kinds of travel writing, and I do a lot of what is called service journalism, where knowing how much things cost is important. I have to be a little more attuned to prices, especially because I work on the budget side of things where people are price-sensitive.

Like any job, it's really important to take time off. So, there are many times where I'll just go somewhere, shut down the computer and just enjoy a place without writing. You learn how to balance it.

In this post: Matt Kepnes, the founder of “Nomadic Matt,” talks about how he became a travel blogger and built his business on the web.

Matt Kepnes was just 23 in 2004 when he took his first overseas vacation to Costa Rica. For someone else, this would have been a brief break from a corporate job. But to Matt, this trip — followed by a second overseas trip to Thailand — set him on the road to pursuing his newfound passion for travel full time.

In July 2006, Matt set out on an adventure around the world that continued for 10 years. An early travel blogger, he founded Nomadic Matt in 2008 with the goal of helping people “travel better for less.”

Today, Matt has two New York Times best-selling books, “How to Travel the World on $50 a Day” and “Ten Years a Nomad.” He teaches blogging and writing courses, engages with his active online community and runs a charity he founded in 2015. 

In a recent interview, we chatted with Matt while he was traveling through Oaxaca, Mexico. He shared how he built Nomadic Matt from the ground up, what he’s working on now and how he manages to enjoy a non-working vacation every once in a while.

Can you give us a breakdown of all your current creative undertakings?

I have the blog, which is NomadicMatt.com, and then I have blogging and writing courses. Then we have a conference called TravelCon, where online creators and media go to learn what's hot in the travel industry.

I had a hostel, which is closed due to COVID-19, and we have our online community, the Nomadic Network, which also used to hold in-person events around the world. And then I have a charity called FLYTE, that raises money to send high-school kids in underserved communities on study-abroad trips.

Why did  you decide to become a travel blogger?

I started the website to try to get freelance writing gigs. I naively thought that if I started a website, that people would hire me to write. So I sent out a lot of freelance writing pitches and worked as a copywriter for online ads and websites for a time.

While building up the blog, my mentor said to me, “You have a travel website and expertise. You should just focus on that full-time." And so I did, and it took off.

I brought a lot of SEO knowledge into Nomadic Matt, so I was ranking highly on search, which helped me get media mentions. I got a hit in the New York Times in 2010 and that launched everything. And one day I woke up, and I said to myself, I guess I'm a travel writer.

How much of your SEO knowledge do you use today?

At least two-thirds of the searches on our site have nothing to do with the pandemic, so a considerable amount of our time and effort goes into ensuring we rank highly on these more evergreen topics. I’m also always updating our content and asking, “How can we optimize this page?” and “How is Google ranking our competitors?” 

 I've identified about 150 pages on my website that I always want to rank highly. So we cycle through those articles and ask ourselves, “Where do we stand?” And if we see we’re down in the rankings, we ask, “What's changed and what can we do better?"

I also do every interview I’m offered, because those interviews link back to my site.

You mentioned your blogging course. Can you tell us about that?

I have a blogging course called Superstar Business Masterclass, and we have one for writing, too. You can buy a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription, and I am your teacher. I edit your work. We have weekly calls. You have tech support. We have a community forum and a collaboration board so other students can meet each other. I share what I’ve learned over 12 years, so people don't end up making the same mistakes I did. I also help you stick out when there's a million platforms and a seemingly endless number of bloggers.

Why do you still maintain a website when you have all these other platforms? Why is it important to you?

Algorithms change, but my space on the web is something that can't be taken away. It allows me to build an email list and be a reference for people. So rather than constantly having to find new people through search or having to play a social media algorithm game where things are always changing, I have my own place to call home online.

And travel is a research-heavy thing. You don't make a $3,000 vacation purchase because Instagram has a “shop now” button. You have to get time off from work, you have to plan your trip, you're doing a lot of research, buying guidebooks, etc. So people still use text-heavy articles to research, and a blog is the best medium for that.

Does travel writing as a job ever take away from the pleasure of traveling?

Yes, yes it does. When I was traveling for fun, I wasn't taking pictures of menus and walking into grocery stores to write down prices for vegetables. But there's different kinds of travel writing, and I do a lot of what is called service journalism, where knowing how much things cost is important. I have to be a little more attuned to prices, especially because I work on the budget side of things where people are price-sensitive.

Like any job, it's really important to take time off. So, there are many times where I'll just go somewhere, shut down the computer and just enjoy a place without writing. You learn how to balance it.

If you’ve boarded the Web Stories train in the last few months and are using WordPress as your website’s content management system, then chances are you’re creating stories using Web Stories for WordPress. To help you make the most out of the visual editor, here’s a roundup of all the latest and greatest features since we’ve released version 1.2 in early December (and subsequently 1.3 this week).

Monetization via Ad Manager and AdSense

One of the best advantages of Web Stories compared to their social counterparts is that they can be monetized by you, the creator. That’s one of the reasons we consider stories primary content for your website, similar to blog posts or videos. The Web Story ad ecosystem is still emerging, but AdSense and even programmatic demand via Ad Manager is already supported. You can now enable these integrations for your stories in the plugin’s settings without any coding necessary.

Page Layouts

Sometimes you don’t want to switch to an entirely new story template. You just want more choice for list styles, sections or covers without changing the rest of your story. To make designing and layouting stories more flexible, you can mix and match individual pages easily via the new Page Layouts section.

Basic Animations

The new built-in animations allow you to add a dynamic pinch to your Web Stories. Better yet, templates come with built-in animations beyond the basic effects. Test how one of your story pages will animate using the play button in the right bottom corner below the current page.

This is only the start of animations in the editor. In the subsequent months, we’ll follow up with combined effects like Ken Burns-style animations and a powerful timeline that allows you to control properties like easing, delays and more in more granular detail.

Border and Corner Radius

These two additions might not be as flashy as some of the other new features, but borders and border radius are basic building blocks that should make your life easier for many types of layouts.

Pre-Publish Checklist

Remembering everything you should do as part of your Web Story creation process is a lot, even if you’ve internalized all episodes of Storytime. To help you not forget anything important, the editor now has a pre-publish checklist tab.

The pre-publish checklist is alerting you about critical issues that may make your story ineligible to appear on platforms such as Google Discover, and offers recommendations about common accessibility shortcomings like low contrast and more.

In addition to these new capabilities, the team has fixed many dozens of bugs and improved interoperability with other plugins. Best of all, since all development happens in the open, you can find all the details in the public release log, and explore what’s coming next in the public roadmap.

Rachel Brathen wants to create a more peaceful and harmonious world, one yoga pose at a time. A native of Sweden, Rachel moved to Aruba with her husband in 2010, where she’s taught yoga full-time ever since. 

Business started out slow, teaching a few students at a time. Then five students turned into 10, 10 turned into 20, then people beyond Rachel’s area started reaching out to her for more information. That’s when she established an online presence, and her brand took off.

Rachel has built an enormous worldwide following of yoga practitioners with her Yoga Girl website andblog. Her commitment to helping others get in touch with their authentic, inner selves — set against the backdrop of Aruba’s beaches — appeals to yoga enthusiasts of all skill levels. “I went from teaching 15 people on the beach to teaching hundreds of people in another country very, very quickly,” Rachel recalls. She offers online classes via her website and in-person classes at her Island Yoga studio in Noord, Aruba.

Over the years, she’s expanded her digital reach on social media, including YouTube and Instagram, where she has 2.1 million followers. She’s published two books, including the New York Times bestseller“Yoga Girl,” and she’s appeared on many magazine covers. She’s appeared on many magazine covers and hosts apodcast. 

She also runs two nonprofits: Sgt Pepper’s Friends, an animal rescue foundation in Aruba, and Yoga Girl Foundation, benefitting women and children in need. “I'm so grateful that we have the Internet,” Rachel says. “It's wild to think of where we would be without it.”

In a recent interview, we caught up with Rachel to learn how she used the web to build her worldwide Yoga Girl community.

Tell us how you got started with yoga.

I’ve had a lot of pain my whole life — back pain from scoliosis and from three car accidents when I was young. I found meditation when I was 17. Shortly after that, someone asked me, "If you're practicing meditation, why aren't you doing yoga for back pain?" I thought yoga was for super-flexible people, or you had to be up at four in the morning to do it. So I was hesitant in the beginning. I was lucky to find an amazing teacher and a style that was super helpful for my pain. In a few years, I started teaching and changed it my whole life.

How did you transition from yoga in a physical setting to a digital one?

I'm on a tiny island in the Caribbean. My original idea was to have an online presence so that the people who live here could find me. Then almost right away, people who didn't live physically in my location started reaching out, asking questions and wondering about the practice or how to start a practice.

I entered the social media space as a newbie, with the idea of wanting to inspire, educate or invite people into the practice. But I had a lot of ups and downs, with a lot of trial and error. I realized early that what really inspires people isn't so much the perfect poses, or the most beautiful pictures, or the green juices and the sunshine, which I was sharing — but the real, genuine, authentic stories about the good and the challenging parts of life.

How do you identify what your audience might be interested in?

I keep in touch with my community through direct messaging and comments and emails. We have a community board on yogagirl.com, where people write in all day. So sometimes I can gauge that there's a topic bubbling up there. Oftentimes, it's the state of the world, which reflects the state of my inner world, which usually reflects how we all feel. 

So if I don't know what to record that week for the podcast, I'll just go to my biggest struggle right now — that thing that's hard for me in my life. And it blows my mind every week, how many people say, "That's my exact issue. I'm feeling exactly like that." We have this idea that we are so separate, but we're not. We all feel the same things, and it's nice to have someone on the other end just touch on that and validate that it's OK to have those struggles, too.

Let’s get your thoughts on a few different types of yoga. What do you think of Ashtanga?

Ashtanga is one of the first styles of yoga that I found my way to. For people who thrive in structure, it's a wonderful practice. But for me, it's a little too disciplined to fit my day-to-day.

What's your take on hot yoga?

A good instructor knows not to push boundaries, but to guide people to really listen to their own bodies. It's wonderful to sweat, and I have no problem with that. We don't have to heat the studio here. We just close the doors, and it's hot yoga.

What about acroyoga, which combines yoga with acrobatics?

With acroyoga online, we see really advanced stuff, because it looks so beautiful, and everyone is always super flexible, super thin. It's always exotic, on a cliff or on the beach somewhere. But I think actually acroyoga can be a bonding experience between people, with your partner, as a couple or with friends. There's something really joyful and light about having that physical connection.

What do you think of paddleboard or stand-up paddleboard (SUP) yoga?

I love it. I really do. Taking a board out, anchoring somewhere and then just having my regular practice on the board or sitting in silence with my breath. There's something so special about nature, but it can also sound and feel a little bit gimmicky. It's not really the everyday yoga practice. It's really an adventure, and I think something that you probably would do on vacation.

Where can folks interested in signing up and subscribing find more information?

Yogagirl.com is a great place to start. We have our subscription platform there with yoga and meditation classes. And on Instagram, I'm at @yoga_girl

We've seen amazing momentum from web creators trying their first steps with Web Stories. With more adoption comes more content exploration, guidance and questions, and it’s still early days for Web Stories, so we’re all figuring things out together as a community.

Web creators around the world are figuring out how Web Stories complement their portfolio, and one particular thing we've seen folks try out is teaser content: Web Stories that are essentially advertisements for some other content, like a blog post or full-length video.

Unfortunately, from what users are telling us, this isn't what they want. Instead Web Stories are best when they tell a full story and aren’t used to “tease” other content. Readers don’t like to feel forced to click through to a connected blog post to finish reading. While Web Stories can help grow traffic to your domain and raise your visibility, they likely will not work as a pure acquisition channel where users have to click through to complete their content journey. We want to see you succeed, so let’s discuss what to do instead. 

Let’s address the elephant in the room, the reason why we’re talking about all of this in the first place: monetization. We know that many blogs and websites have their monetization strategy well crafted and want to drive users to their main property. That makes sense. However, with Stories, it's important to think about the users consuming them and how Google showcases them.

What you might not know is that you don't have to rely on converting traffic to your blog pages to monetize. You can directly monetize Web Stories with in-between-page ads. Well-optimized blog posts might still make you more money today, but ad networks are working on building out and expanding their Web Story integrations, so you should see both CPMs and fill rates improve over time.

Quality content will make your Web Stories find an audience

Google wants to send users to the best content, so the quality of your stories is very important in determining if they show up on Search and Discover. In other words: A critical ranking signal at Google is the quality of your content. And a one- or two-page teaser for your blog post doesn’t tell a satisfying story to a reader, so Google will do its very best to not show these to users.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that you can’t link to more extended deep dives on your blog. Like always, there’s nuance, and acceptable ways of adding value in the moment while directing readers to your blog, YouTube channel or e-commerce storefront. Here’s how you can do it.

Dos:

• A shopping inspiration list that highlights products and links out to places where you can buy them.

• A short version of a recipe with complete ingredients listed that leaves more detailed instructions behind a click. It inspires readers to cook and see the end product, plus allow them to dive deeper into the recipe if they prefer. But it is still a story with a beginning and an end.

• A story that connects to an article about the same topic, but both convey the information with different angles. For example, creating a story about the “making of” the recipe. 

Don'ts:

• A three-page story that is a list of the “10 best sci-fi TV shows,” but stops at #3 and forces the reader to click through to your blog for more.

• A one-page story that mentions a recipe in the headline, but is just a bunch of photos that redirect to the website.

• A list highlighting beautiful cities in Europe, but just listing a city and a photo and pointing to the blog link for any actual information..

To readers of Google Discover, Google Search and other places, Web Stories are a standalone form of engaging content, so please treat them as such. After all, I'm pretty sure you’d be equally frustrated if you went to a magazine rack and discovered that it’s only the covers and all pages are missing! 

Showcase your Web Stories proudly on your website

When you focus on quality storytelling and give Web Stories that first-class treatment next to your blog posts and videos, don’t be afraid to proudly showcase them on your website. Embedding Web Stories in a carousel or gallery on your site doesn’t just refresh the look and feel of your site, it also makes content much easier to consume to your most loyal readers, improves the organic ranking of your stories and diversifies your traffic sources.

Web Stories allow you to reach an entirely new audience on Discover and beyond, and contrary to their social story counterparts can have links, so publishing the best stories will build your brand, help you acquire new loyal readers and engage readers organically.

We can’t wait to see what stories you’ll tell.