I can't even believe I am writing this post but I have received many questions over the last couple weeks about starting a blog! So, I thought I would write my top three tips I wish someone would have told me when I started my blog!
First let me say this, if you are scared or afraid of failure, then you are going to fail! You have to get out of your own head and just START! Trust me - still to this day I get nervous about what people think or say about me but I know that I have found my joy and I am happy about that!
Next - I am probably going to get a lot of crap for this - don't except a ton of support from your friends. Your friends may SAY that they support you and are happy for you - but really, they don't want you to be any more successful than them. Don't expect them to even subscribe to your blog. I'm just keeping it real with ya'll - you need to find friends that TRULY want you to succeed and will subscribe to your blog, share on facebook, like your instagram posts and TRULY WANT YOU TO BE HAPPY AND SUCCESSFUL! Once you find those people, love them and never let go of them! That is your true squad.
Ok - lets get to my top tips!
1) Engagement - Engagement is HUGE! This is especially true once you begin building your clients through Instagram. Once you really get started on Instagram, you will find that your posts are viewed by more users when you actually engage with them! So this means taking time to sit and scroll through your feed and liking and commenting on posts. This also included responding to EVERY DM and COMMENT! Instagram wants to create a social media platform that is authentic and that creates relationships - so you need to actually create relationships.
The jury is still out on my thoughts of engagement pods. The truth is, they work in the fact that you will get likes and comments. But what we don’t know is if they put a damper on your chances of getting a collaboration (meaning a brand realized that your excellent engagement rate is fake!) AND if Instagram is ultimately hurting your reach by using them. Mark Zuckerberg is pretty darn smart and there is no outsmarting the folks he has writing code. So if you see a blogger with 10k followers and 2,000 likes - most likely they are using engagement pods or telegram groups to generate fake likes. I call them fake likes because they are just users that like each other’s posts in order to get the likes reciprocated. Side note - the more likes, the more likely your post will be seen on your followers feed. Its a tricky trick slope on this one! Mark Zuckerberg can figure out when you are constantly engaging with accounts and not following them, too (which happens all the time in engagement pods - you are just in the pod for likes and comments, not for follows!) So if you genuinely like someone’s content, you should follow them!
Another con to engagement pods is they skew your true engagement. I don’t know about you but I really want to know what my followers like to see. If you use an engagement pod, all of your posts are going to get around the same number of likes. Whereas, if you use genuine authentic engagement likes the gram wants, you will find out rather quickly what type of content your followers want to see.
2) Say no to collabs that don’t fit your brand - In my opinion, this is a huge one too! You will get approached by many, many companies wanting to do a collaboration. This means they either pay you monetarily or by gifting you products in exchange for an Instagram post or blog post. Read this next sentence twice - IT IS OKAY TO SAY NO! As influencers, our job is to actually influence. And in order to influence, your audience has to trust you! You have a brand and you should only accept collabs that fit your brand. I turn down collabs every day and I am okay with it. You should develop a list of dream companies that you want to work with and don’t stray too far from that list. You want to work with companies that you truly trust their design, quality and customer service.
3) Batch Content - Another huge one here! You could say that I learned this the hard way. I was shooting outfit pics every day and it was honestly exhausting! Batching content basically means, you shoot a ton of different content on the same day. Then, you organize them in your planning app, create a feed that flows and develop your captions. Doing these steps reduces the stress dramatically! For example, with my batched content, I can basically spend time engaging authentically on Instagram prior to posting, then I have my caption and post ready to go when my planning app tells me to post! Its super easy and I'm not stressing about posting at the right time!
I have so many other things to share with ya'll in regards to blogging! Take these first three tips and digest them! Let me know what you think! And let me leave you with this . . .
Lets not focus on the numbers. I would rather have a large amount of sales than a large amount of followers. Do not focus on the followers! They will come as long as you keep sharing good quality shots of creative content. Let’s read that sentence again - they will come as long as you keep sharing good quality shots of creative content.
Happy Blogging, my friends! <3
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