A B & Me Blogger in Focus : Coffee, Cakes & Running

Our next feature is one of the bloggers who I traveled with in Turkey. She is so fun to be with, especially AFTER coffee! 😀 More of our Turkey trip on Facebook and Instagram (#tk_tour). See how much fun we had roaming around and taking goofy photos of each other. 😀 And recently she just went to Philippines for another blogger/press trip, so jealous!! [I know I shouldn’t be jealous because that is my home country BUT I have to admit, I have not explored the islands! I should rewrite my bucket list, yeah?!]

Anyhoo, read on …

Name: Debbie Rogers
Location: Dubai
Blog: CoffeeCakesAndRunning

How did you start blogging?  

Accidentally ! I was housebound and bored after surgery for a period of about four months I couldn’t go anywhere, so needed to do something to occupy my mind.  I learnt how to set up a website (coffeecakesandrunning) using a book from Amazon and having done that figured out I should write about something – coffee, food and running were my passions at the time and so that’s how it all began.  I NEVER thought anyone would read my posts to be honest and I only accidentally told my family I have a blog about 6 months ago.

What do you write about?

Coffee, Cakes and Running – well more broadly coffee and my love of coffee (did I mention that ?), food in it’s widest sense from buying it cooking it and eating it – both at home and out and about, so that means some restaurant reviews too, travel, from stay cations to vacations and exercise, though to be fair my writing on this goes up and down depending on whether I’m fit or fat or somewhere in between:)  Essentially I write about the big passions in my life.

Tips for new Bloggers?

Write about things that interest you, find your style and write in that style, find your writing place and enjoy writing.  Plan how you are going to use social media to support your writing. It’s good to have everything connected e.g. same website name as twitter, instagram etc if at all possible – something I didn’t manage to do as I never planned on joining everything up, or on anyone ever knowing who I was. Enjoy blogging, unless you are fortunate and make money from it, it’s a hobby and hobbies should be enjoyable as far as possible.

What are the challenges you face with blogging?

There are always the ethical challenges that all bloggers should think about, for instance how do you handle and then write a review when you’ve had a bad experience, what to declare on your blog in terms of where a meal or something has been provided for free etc and these sorts of things take a while to get right.  In terms of my writing style and images, I’m passionate about showcasing food off to it’s best wherever possible, so the challenge is how to do this without ruining the evening and how to capture great shots in poor lighting etc.  The other main challenge is how much time and effort do you want to and can you spend on what is essentially a hobby, but a hobby that has it’s own costs for instance web hosting fees, buying a decent camera, taxi expenses etc. 

What do you do outside of blogging?

I am an HR Director/Consultant by profession, but am currently working on some consultancy roles in Social Media and HR but would love to figure out how to make a living from my passion which is probably the dream of a lot of bloggers, in the meantime I’d love to travel the world and write about it …. wake me up please I’m still dreaming 🙂

Blogs you recommend my readers should read/follow?

I don’t recommend specific ones as there are too many good blogs and everyone has their own reading preferences.  My tip is to subscribe to the reader on WordPress and then you can get a view of lots of different blogs and see which ones you want to subscribe to. I also actively use twitter and instagram so pick up good blogs from these sources. I read blogs from around the world not just in the UAE and sometimes my choice depends on what I’m focussing on, for instance at the moment I’m working on my fitness again so I will subscribe to blogs that focus on that more than the food ones, when I was training to climb Mount Kilimanjaro I read blogs about that and other challenges.

3 Random Facts about you

• I used to play saxophone in a Jazz band
• My happy place is the beach or pool or in the kitchen cooking barefooted with music blasting
• I make a mean Banoffee Pie 

Follow Coffee, Cakes and Running on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to know more!!