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Conversations with the Inspiring Cassandra Ann Vega

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Cassandra Ann Vega.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Cassandra Ann. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I am the blogger behind CassandraAnn.com, Brit + Co Lifestyle Contributor and Digital Marketing Consultant. I was born and raised in Phoenix, AZ. Documenting my everyday life via Instagram, @IamCassandraAnn. I’m a new mom to a beautiful baby boy (born on Valentine’s Day!), a dog mom who’s obsessed with her four-legged kids and I love being creative.

While attending college (ASU, West), I worked as a Geek Squad Agent part-time. It was the best! Although dealing with customers in a retail environment can be stressful, my coworkers were amazing and felt more like family. During my sophomore year in college, I also started working at a local hotel as the marketing and social media assistant. I helped launch all of the social media accounts for this hotel and ended up serving as a consultant for the entire hotel management company and their other hotel properties across the US. This was a time where Facebook and Twitter were just gaining major momentum in the world and Instagram wasn’t even a thing yet.

Luckily for me, my supervisor at the hotel was so flexible and let me take control of creating various marketing + social media campaigns. I taught myself how to use graphic design software so that I could assist with editing photos, creating flyers + fun email campaigns. During this time, I knew I was meant to work in the digital world. I loved learning about new marketing techniques, digital platforms and seeing the start of digital influencers come to life. Eventually, I worked my way up to a full-time Regional Marketing and Social Media Manager. I assisted multiple hotels and brands with their social media and marketing efforts. Sadly, I was laid off in 2014 due to downsizing.

I started my blog in 2014 after being laid off, I wanted a place that I could share my personal interests with whoever cared to read them. I had no idea if I could actually make a living off my blog, so I talked to my husband about the possibility of pursuing this outlet. Financially, we still needed a steady income, so I immediately started to apply for freelance roles that would allow me to have a work-from-home flexibility while also working on content for my blog. For the next few years, I worked with multiple brands while helping them with their digital marketing efforts. I started to get more traffic to my blog as time went on. I would reach out to about 25+ brands a week to see if they wanted to work on a project with me + my blog. Most of my sponsorships were too far and few in-between. My blog was gaining a ton of traffic from these phone backgrounds I created were free to download.

Eventually, one of my phone background designs that I created for Christmas was featured on BuzzFeed’s homepage and my traffic soared like crazy! Since then, three more of my phone backgrounds was featured on BuzzFeed. By popular demand, I also started to create more backgrounds each season and my Pinterest traffic soared tremendously. It’s all about how you marketing yourself and how you can gain the most traffic, so having a background in marketing has helped me with this so much. After my BuzzFeed features, companies started contacting me for partnerships and digital brands like Brit+Co wanted me as a contributor to their website. My blog has grown so much since then and I’ve been able to make a living off of it. I still have a passion for digital marketing (even though that’s pretty much what blogging entails 85% of the time!) and in 2017, I was contacted by my previous hotel supervisor asking if I’d be interested in assisting a new hotel management company that she worked for and their digital marketing efforts for multiple hotel brands. Of course, I said yes because I missed the fun creative flexibility of hotel campaigning… and if I’m being honest, hotel marketing is just so much fun to promote and market.

My husband and I welcomed our first baby this year on Valentine’s Day and I’ve taken some time off to be with my baby boy. My maternity leave ends in April and I’m excited to get back into the swing of things on my blog and social media channels. I have so many fun upcoming projects that I’m working on for my blog + social media channels. I feel so blessed to do the two things I love most: blogging and digital marketing. I’m lucky enough to have a husband who continuously supports me in everything I do and try.

Has it been a smooth road?
The best advice I could give someone who wants to grow + increase their digital presence is to be authentic, market yourself to brands (because they won’t all come to you!) and never stop improving or trying to grow your digital presence.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into Cassandra Ann story. Tell us more about the business.
The trending topics and blog posts on my blog are about home decor, DIY and my free downloadable phone backgrounds.

Do you have a lesson or advice you’d like to share with young women just starting out?
Never stop learning. If you don’t know how to do something, research and teach yourself how to do it. This helped me so much throughout my professional and personal life… and still does. I also think it’s important to work with like-minded individuals. If you’re just starting out in your career and want to gain experience, contact or ask someone in a similar career or position that you desire to have if you can shadow or work with them.

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Image Credit:
CassandraAnn.com

Getting in touch: VoyagePhoenix is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.

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