ALEESHA
BADKAR
Digital Journalist
Beauty | Lifestyle | Shopping
ABOUT ME
I'm a writer specialising in beauty, lifestyle and digital.
I am currently working as shopping writer for woman&home, where I cover shoppable features across beauty, fashion, health and lifestyle. I also write beauty features for our sister site My Imperfect Life.
Previously I worked as digital news writer for woman&home, GoodtoKnow and WhatsOnTV, where I covered everything from the newest beauty and fashion launches to the latest health and wellbeing advice, what the Royal Family were up and the whatever Netflix craze we were engrossed in each week.
Before that I freelanced as a digital writer for Women's Health, where I wrote online beauty, health and fitness features and freelanced with Stylist's Beauty Desk.
I have an MA in Magazine Journalism from City, University of London and a BA in English and Spanish from University of Leeds.
I am interested in beauty, lifestyle, travel and shopping writing. Please don't hesitate to contact me for freelance work, commissions or just to get in touch.
Aleesha
WORK EXPERIENCE
Present
woman&home | Digital Shopping Writer
Responsibilities are:
Working on increasing sitewide eComm revenue by between 50-500% WOW (varies by week) by ensuring that all eComm content across site is high-quality and strategic, monitoring its performance and supporting team in using internal affiliate system.
Increasing traffic to shopping features by nearly 600% between July and October this year.
Writing and optimising shoppable features and guides across beauty, fashion, health and lifestyle.
Managing sponsored content and maintaining relationships with sponsors.
Regularly updating top-performing shoppable content for traffic-driving purposes.
Increasing traffic on essential content by building and sending editorial newsletter.
Training team members in software use.
July 2019 - August 2020
woman&home, GoodtoKnow, WhatsOnTV | Digital Writer
Responsibilities were:
Increasing UPVs across all five woman&home news channels (royal, entertainment, beauty, fashion, health & wellbeing) by an average of 291% YOY and on GoodtoKnow news content by 642% YOY after working closely with Digital News Editor to build a news strategy and develop a new team process.
Developing beauty content plan around strong beauty news angles and shoppable trend pieces by working with print beauty team on editing and optimising the content for SEO.
Covering news across the four brands (including breaking stories).
Contributing to brands' social pages.
Managing team, compiling news list, editing stories and sending daily newsletter in news editor's absence.
March - July 2019
GoodtoKnow | Digital Writer
Responsibilities were:
Writing news stories for the brand's website.
Writing lifestyle features for the site.
Updating features for SEO.
Creating and scheduling weekly newsletter.
Contributing to brand's Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest pages.
Daily use of Google Trends and Keyword Planner.
September 2018 - March 2019
GoodtoKnow | Social & SEO Writer
Responsibilities were:
Writing news pieces for the brand's social media pages.
Updating features for SEO.
August 2018
Stylist | Beauty Desk Cover
Responsibilities were:
Writing beauty section of the print magazine's Style List page.
Pitching and writing digital beauty features and news stories.
Editing beauty interns' digital beauty features for publication.
Arranging photography for beauty features.
Checking images and credits for beauty pages.
Sourcing images and samples for beauty pages.
Organising beauty team's calendar.
Ensuring smooth running of beauty desk.
July - August 2018
GoodtoKnow | Freelance Social Media Writer
Responsibilities were:
Writing news pieces for the brand's social media pages.
November 2017 - April 2018
Women's Health | Freelance Digital Writer
Responsibilities were:
Writing beauty, health and fitness features.
Repurposing print content for digital use.
Update old website content.
Using Google Trends, Google Analytics and MOZ to analyse trends in order to improve SEO and increase website and page traffic.
August - November 2017
Stylist | Beauty Intern
Responsibilities were:
Writing for Style List page and feature box outs.
Contributing to Stylist Magazine and Stylist Beauty Desk Instagram accounts.
Pitching ideas and researching features.
General beauty admin.
EDUCATION
2017 / June
City, University of London
MA Magazine Journalism
Merit
I developed advanced skills in reporting, interviewing, researching, news and features writing, magazine design, photography, subediting, multimedia editing, magazine production and social and digital journalism.
2014 / July
University of Leeds
BA English and Spanish
2:1, with a year abroad
I spent my year abroad at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, where I studied at the School of Economic Sciences and Business Studies.
SKILLS
Shortlisted for AOP Digital Publishing Award 2020 for work on the w&h/GTK/WOTV digital news team.
Spanish speaking – full professional proficiency.
Competent using creative tools, including: Photoshop, Canva, InDesign and iMovie.
Competent using digital tools, including: various CMS (including Wordpress and Vanilla), Outlook and Google Workspace.
Competent using SEO and marketing tools, including: Google Trends, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Data Studio, Keyword Planner, Keyword Tool, Parse.ly, Taxi, Selligent Marketing Cloud and Fie Affiliate Widget Console (Future’s internal system).
Competent using planning tools, including: Google Sheets, Desknet, Content Station, Trello.
Driving licence.
