My Gluten Free Life
My Gluten Free Life is a web directory created by the team at TOA Digital Marketing Agency. Heidi Grimwood, CEO of TOA, lives gluten-free and have struggled to find decent gluten-free options for the home, and even more difficult eating out. Thanks to their hard work and determination they have over 1,300 businesses listed in their directory who offer gluten-free options or products in their business. We have conducted an interview with Heidi.
What's so special about your web directory "My Gluten Free Life"?
My Gluten Free Life was created to solve a problem I had when I started to eat gluten free food. I found not only was it extremely expensive but also many products were hard to find. When I was travelling around Ireland on business, I often would go into a shop or café for a bite to eat and skulk out, head down because there was nothing appetising for me that was gluten free. At the time I was teaching nutritional therapy and many of my clients were coming to me because they had been advised to eliminate gluten from their diet to help improve health issues. They literally wanted me to go shopping with them because this new eating regime was so alien to them! So, I decided as I didn’t have time to spend all my week in the supermarket with my clients that I would source products. I found out where they could buy them, I sourced places to eat where they offered more than just ‘salad and fruit’ as a gluten free option and also shared my recipes on my gluten free living on a budget. In 2015 Mary, my social media executive (aka guru) joined my digital marketing team and has since changed to a gluten free diet for health reasons. Mary loves to find new products and places to share also.
How successful are you so far in extending it to people who will need it?
As I started to share this information online, I discovered how many people really need this. Since 2011 I have been growing this community online and now reach over 300,000 people each week. We currently have over 1,300 businesses listed, and are constantly looking for new businesses to promote.
What is your next milestone or goal? How do you intend to reach it?
Our next goal which is already underway, is to manage social media accounts of gluten free businesses and business who offer a selection of gluten free products. One of the main challenges of starting with a new client on social media is to find their target market online and get them to engage with the business. Well we have their target market and they are very engaged, so who better to develop their social media accounts but us!!
What inspires you the most during the creation of this useful directory?
My motivation for this web directory is getting the right knowledge out to our gluten free community. So, my inspiration is through seeing people react, engage and respond to the information we put out there.
How else do you engage with your targeted community?
We engage through Facebook, Twitter, the directory itself, through blogs, recipes, Google ad words, paid Facebook ads, Instagram, our mailing list and through sending articles to the media printed and online.
More info:
Website: https://www.myglutenfreelife.ieFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/myglutenfreelifeireland
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mygflifeireland
Pinterest: https://hu.pinterest.com/toadigital/my-gluten-free-life
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidigrimwood
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myglutenfreelifeireland
