Today we’d like to introduce you to Alyssa Taliaferro.
Alyssa, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My love affair with fashion started in a very natural way. As a young girl, I vividly remember stealing my mother’s Vogue magazines every month so I could attempt to sketch the dresses splashed across each page. I was enamored with the movement of each piece, how they fell against the bodies of the models who headlined every issue. And while I loved the idea of being on the creating end of those pieces someday, it was my first love – writing – that paved the way for where the next decade would take me. I entered the University of New Hampshire as a freshman International Relations and Spanish dual major, and probably would have stuck with it if only I’d been able to pass microeconomics!
Realizing where my strengths were, I transitioned my major to English with a focus in creative writing but still had these big dreams of being on television one day as a reporter for Channel 7 or a sportscaster for the Red Sox. That’s how I ultimately wound up as a journalism major. Throughout that time, I began and abandoned several beginnings of lifestyle blogs, and it wasn’t until I graduated and moved home to Boston that I began taking it more seriously. Maybe I just needed to be back in the city to feel inspired again, I’m not sure. For me, running my own blog had always been a pipe dream, but the feeling that it could be something more would always find its way back into the forefront of my mind.
That feeling resurfaced itself as I began my career in the agency world as a social media manager. Those who have worked in that world know that it can be a volatile one at times, and having my writing to fall back on only reaffirmed my decision to keep building my blog and my brand. And so it goes, I started A With Love in Summer ’17 and it’s quickly become my sanctuary, a place where I share my style, travels, recipes, adventures, and everyday life living in Boston.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
While the influencer movement is gaining traction rapidly, I definitely think that there is the general public still has it’s reservations and preconceived notions about bloggers.
The blogger space is also not as heavily saturated in Boston as it is in other major cities (i.e., Los Angeles, New York), but Instagram has definitely helped to give us Boston gals a platform to build off of! And sure, there are some pretty amazing perks when your blog starts to get some traction – invites to cool events, free product, brand collaborations, etc. … but what’s more is that creating a blog from the ground up – a space that is entirely yours to call the shots on – provides an opportunity and more importantly, a responsibility, to foster, inspire, and uplift a community. Getting to where I am now with my blog has not been a cakewalk by any means, either. Then again, I don’t consider where I am now to be someplace far from where I began.
Sure, on the outside it’s very easy to package everything perfectly, but what most people don’t see is the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes to make it look effortless. I work full time in digital marketing and run my blog as my side hustle, so it can sometimes be difficult to feel inspired to create after a long day at the office or shoot content for upcoming weeks. It’s taken some trial and error, but I’ve now worked my schedule out so that I’m shooting content in batches on Sundays where I have the most free time, thus allowing me to feel more at ease overall and creative in my approach.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about A With Love – what should we know?
If you ask my girlfriends, they’d tell you that I specialize in being their personal stylist! And with all joking aside, having family and friends always come to me for style and beauty advice is what really solidified my decision to go all-in with starting my blog.
I spent a great deal of time brainstorming the types of topics I should write about because I wanted my words to be helpful to the people that were already out there looking for them. There were many times when the idea would cross my mind and I thought that if I was already the go-to ‘expert’ among the people closest to me when it came to these types of questions, maybe there would be a community of women out there that would feel that way and trust in the advice I had to give.
Three years later, my lifestyle blog A With Love embodies feminine style, beauty, food and travel with strong roots in this city. It is a place where I share the things that continuously attract and inspire me, where the nuanced pleasures of everyday life are wholeheartedly celebrated.
I think what I’m most proud of, as cliche as it sounds, is that I didn’t give up on this dream. Sure, the monetary value may not be quite there yet, but I’ve definitely grown as a writer and I feel that I am now at a place where I’ve come to really define my own personal aesthetic and translate that into my brand. I also think that building the blog has honed my analytical skills as well as my business skills.
My background in social and digital marketing has definitely made it easier, but I find myself tailoring my content across each of my platforms based on how they perform from a data perspective. For someone who basically failed finite math in college, I’d say that’s a pretty big accomplishment for me.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
There is a quote I’ve always loved by Matthew Kelly that reads, “The people we surround ourselves with either raise or lower our standards. They either help us to become the best version of ourselves or encourage us to become lesser versions of ourselves. We become like our friends. No man becomes great on his own. No woman becomes great on her own. The people around them help to make them great.”
Throughout each of our lives, we will come across people we, day in and day out, choose to surround ourselves with, and then there are those who come along by happenstance and shape who we are for the better. For me, there have been many people along the way, and at 28, I feel lucky to already be able to say that. I first have to credit my mother.
Aside from turning a blind eye when I would rummage through her magazine collection, she has told me every year of my life that she thinks I will become a big writer someday.
Sure, she’s likely bias, but knowing I have her support and belief in my work is what has always fueled my work ethic. I am truly grateful to be have grown up around and still be surrounded by loving, caring people who have recognized and encourage this dream that I’ve had for as long as I can remember. My creative writing professor in college, Meredith Hall, also played a huge role in pushing me beyond the boundaries of my writing.
I recall one afternoon sitting with her during her office hours while we read through my memoir that she’d assigned the week prior. The piece I’d written was one I held close to my heart, and I just remember her never criticizing my work, but rather pushing me to see beyond the story I’d written in order to write the story she knew it had the potential to become. It was in her class that I remember falling deeply in love with long-form creative writing. I’ve always tried to find ways to incorporate my creative side into the numbers side of things when it came to my job, likely out of fear that I would lose that piece of who I am.
From very early on in my career, however, I have had a mentor and friend who has always encouraged me to find room for both, and I credit that person a great deal for their belief in my ability to in fact be successful in both and hold me to a standard even I did not know I was capable of reaching at the time.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.awithlove.com
- Email: alyssa@awithlove.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alyssataliaferro/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/awithlovetheblog/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/awithloveblog
- Other: https://www.bloglovin.com/@awithloveblog
Image Credit:
Anna Elizabeth and Rachel Leiner
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