How did indie_landlord come about?
It all began with Instagram
In March 2022, I set up a new profile on Instagram to document my refurbishment of a lovely Victorian buy to let in Maidstone. Before long, I changed the handle of the account to myvictorianhouses, as most of the content was about my portfolio of Victorian houses.
My account started to grow rapidly when began posting practical “how to” content for landlords, like self-managing, self-letting and what to look for in buy to lets. I started getting lots of questions in my Direct Messages, particularly from new landlords, picking my brain.
Then the blog and newsletter
These DMs gave me the idea of answering the questions in a blog, that I’d make available for free, as a way of helping others and sharing best practice.
After an intensive month of teaching myself WordPress and SEO, The Independent Landlord blog was officially launched in August 2022, with the free weekly newsletter soon after.
One nickname for social media
The blog and newsletter quickly grew in popularity, and I wanted to have one face for The Independent Landlord on social media. However, the name was too long!
After much umming and ahhing, and the inevitable poll on Instagram, I decided to shorten it to @indie_landlord for social media.
I really love indie_landlord, as indie is a friendly short form of independent, and it reminds me of indie record labels 🎸 😊
Most of my social media focus is on Instagram and Twitter. However, every blog post has a pin on Pinterest, which makes it easy to search for topics. I occasionally post on TikTok, but prefer Instagram because of the lovely property community. I also post and comment regularly on LinkedIn under my actual name, Suzanne Smith.
If you’d like to follow The Independent Landlord on social media, here are the links direct to @indie_landlord on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and TikTok.