Chanel Q, 30, who lives in Marlboro, is known as The East Coast Blogger. She’s @TheEastCoastBlogger on Instagram and @ChanelQ_ on YouTube.
You grew up in North Carolina. How did you come to New York?
I moved here to work on a project for the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Beacon, to produce Bible literature. It’s getting started in 2024, so right now I’m just chilling out. I love to travel, which is why I created the blog. I became a travel agent in 2021, right after COVID, but obviously that didn’t work out.
Did you publish any earlier blogs?
In high school I was into fashion, so I posted my outfits. I’ve been consistently writing and journaling about my travels. Mostly it’s an actual journal at my house, and I wish that I could transfer that to the blog. I used to be an ophthalmologist tech, and I had a YouTube channel about that and I would mix in a few travel videos. People liked them and I thought of launching a channel for travel, but YouTube’s a lot of work. I’m trying to balance my full-time job at Fidelis Care versus the project that moved me here versus the blogging.
What sparks your interest for content?
I like to see people who are in my age bracket or, as an African American woman, who look like me. I feel like the Hudson Valley is a perfect spot to showcase. Looking at a review on Google is one thing, but someone online can show you actually how it is. Beacon is one of the favorite places I’ve found. There are so many lovely coffee shops here. Beans Cat Cafe is one of my favorites.
How do you decide what to cover?
I found this place [Beacon Coffee Co. & Mercantile] because I had been to the Cornwall location and learned online they were opening here. I’m going to Cold Spring next week, and I’m going to look around because I don’t know what’s there. I like to walk into stores, see what I can find. Normally, I try to film everything during the weekends, since that’s when most things happen, or I’ll go out after work after 5 p.m. I’ll take snippets on my phone and piece them together for the entire day. It takes me 10 or 15 minutes on my phone to do most of my videos, which is outrageous compared to the time for YouTube. I make sure I get a lot of [background] B-roll. I schedule each post to go out throughout the week because that’s when people are online.
What makes this fulfilling for you?
I love hearing comments, or seeing people save the posts for whatever they’re going to do, or they’re going to go visit, or people will tell me: “Oh, hey, I went and visited this.” I love being able to connect with people who are into the same things, which is kind of hard, because most of them I feel like are far away. Brands or companies also reach out to me to promote, and I get paid for certain posts. So that’s always a great benefit, for sure.
Right now, this is just a hobby. But this summer, I started posting four or five times a week, instead of once a week, or even once a month, and I’ve seen a lot of growth [in followers]. I would love to have this be my full-time job. My advice to people who want to blog is to just do it. I started a page like this multiple times years ago, and I’d delete it because of people judging me. At the end of the day. you must do what is best for you. If you’re not hurting anyone, who cares what people think? If someone’s not supporting you or being rude or whatever, hit the block button. Just start filming!
