Marieke

Tell us about yourself and your life? 

I’ve been happily married for nearly thirty years and we have two dear children; a young man of twenty-three and a young lady of twenty. I was born in Dordrecht but grew up in Brabant. I met my husband when he was a student in Tilburg and I eventually moved to the Randstad with him. But still, my heart and soul lie in Brabant. Going back home, filling my lungs again with the fresh air of the countryside, is always guaranteed to make me happy.

Tell us about your career, your Instagram feed, your mission?

After obtaining my ‘VWO’ diploma, I went on to follow ‘Secretarial Studies’ at ‘Schoevers’, completing this successfully and gaining a secretarial position with Shell. That led to being head-hunted by a company in Rotterdam and in turn accepting the offer to be ‘PA’ to their top man. I spent eleven happy and successful years there, learning a lot and travelling the world into the bargain. Finally though, when the children reached school age, I made the decision to be a stay at home Mom. A friend of mine had recently started blogging so I joined her. It was relatively new then and I had never heard of it before but in no time we were doing really well. There then followed a blog targeted at young mothers and we coupled it to Instagram. That provided the initial foundation for my current Instagram account, which is now the sole basis of what I do. The niche market that I aim to attract is ‘women over forty’ as I feel there is very little on social media that targets this specific group. I notice that women in this age category are beginning to prefer scrolling through Instagram as opposed to FB. My ideal situation would be that I find a few fixed brands that are willing to work with me regularly and that it all falls into place effortlessly. Even better would be if someone other than me, got it up and running in the first place ha ha ha!