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| Photo by Darachphotography |
Blog Name
Let’s take a step back and start at the very beginning. The most important thing when setting up your blog is to really think about your blog name. You want something catchy which is relatable to you as an individual and also the personal brand you are portraying in the blogging world. I’d also recommend keeping it short as this works better for tweeting, where you are limited to a certain number of characters. When I first set up this blog (way back when) it had a much longer name which was quite the mouthful when I was trying to promote it to people at events. Comment down below if you remember the full original name lol! Bec Boop is short, relatable to my personality and memorable. If you don’t get the blog naming part right you’re going to struggle with the next steps so really give a lot of consideration to this.
Tweet
Twitter is by far your best friend of the social media channels when it comes to promoting your blog. I’ve lost count of the number of different twitter chats there are for bloggers but there are literally chats every day! Some of the ones I join in regularly are #FBLChat (Tuesday 8-9pm), #BBloggers (Wednesday 8-9pm) and #FBloggers (Monday 8-9pm) but honestly there is a bloggers chat going on on twitter most nights of the week. These twitter chats are definitely the best way to network with other bloggers with similar interests and should hopefully lead to an increase in readership numbers which is one of the main areas brands/PR’s will focus on when deciding who to work with. You can also use twitter tags such as #BloggersWanted to look for opportunities where brands are looking for bloggers to promote their products.
Contact Details
Make sure your contact details are super clear on your blog homepage. Otherwise how is anyone going to ever be able to contact you? I like to have a separate contact tab on my blog with detailed ways PR’s and brands can get in touch and I also have my email address displayed clearly on my blog homepage. It’s also a good idea to add some social media buttons to your blog sidebar so brands and PR’s can easily check your social media stats.
RSVP
You’ve followed all the steps above and have received your first event invite. Now what to do?! RSVP of course, please first of all ensure that the event invite is actually relevant to your blog. Pesonally I wouldn’t be attending a fitness bloggers event as I specialise in blogging about fashion and beauty so it would most likely be of very little interest to my readers. Of course you could always go along and make some new contacts or friends, who knows 🙂 I prefer to stick to relevant events which I can tweet about or post on my Instagram feed. If the event is relevant for you then go ahead and reply to the brand/PR to confirm your attendance. If you are nervous about going alone you can always ask if it’s ok to bring a plus-one (never assume it’s ok, as a lot of events have restricted numbers for attendance). Follow the event #hashtag in the run-up to it so you can network with other attendees and if it turns out you won’t be able to make the event after all be sure to let the PR/brand know. Otherwise you might not get invited to their events in the future!
Make the Most of the Event
These are my primary tips for getting your name out there when it comes to blogging and nabbing that event invite. Once you attend the event it’s really important to make the most of it and this article has lots of helpful tips for making the most of big fashion or blogging events such as London Fashion Week (Sp). Above all my advice when at a blogging event is to relax, network as much as possible and most importantly have fun! Smile and be yourself 🙂
Here’s some other blogging tips I’ve featured previously which you might find interesting:
Guide to Attending a Blog Event.