The Do’s and Don’ts
Hi guys! Took a break from the blog last week as I felt I needed a bit of a refresh, but now I’m back and I’m ready to talk industry! I know you guys like these kinds of posts and find them helpful so I’m always excited to share them. By the way, thank you to those of you that send in your questions and topic ideas for this section of the blog – so helpful! For today’s post I’m going to share a few do’s and don’ts when it comes to growth, engagement and the alike. And I want to make it clear that these opinions are just that – opinions of my own. I wouldn’t even say they are industry standard, they are just simply what I stand behind and what I feel to be best practices. So keep that in mind when reading, and let’s get to it! 🙂
That’ll Be a ‘No’ For Me
As stated above here are a few things I don’t believe in. When it comes to running my business and crafting my personal brand I’ve tried to be very thoughtful and strategic. In the process of this I’ve formed some strong opinions. In my mind, there’s basically a right way and a wrong way to go about growth and engagement, so that’s how I’ll present it here. Below I’ll share my personal no’s.
Buying Followers
This is pretty obvious right? Clearly if you’re trying to make a marketing career out of the internet you would want the audience to be made up of REAL people right? You’re not doing yourself (or anyone else) any favors by buying a bunch of bots to ‘follow’ you. If you want to read more on this topic I actually wrote an entire blog post on it that you can find here!
Loop Giveaways
This is a method I see a lot of other bloggers using. It’s not as blatantly detrimental as buying followers, but I don’t think the underlying principle of it will reward you greatly. For those of you that might not be familiar with the term ‘loop giveaway’ it basically means a bunch of bloggers (sometimes literally upwards of 50) will team up, pool X amount of money together to buy the giveaway prize (usually a gucci bag, ipad, laptop, big gift card etc.) and then they will all post about it encouraging people to follow ALL of the bloggers to be entered to win.
The problem I have with this is, you end up getting a bunch of random followers that landed on your page with the incentive of winning something, rather than following you because they connected with you and your content. Even worse, when you do a loop giveaway you end up getting folded into the mix of however many bloggers are a part of it, which makes it near impossible to form a strong bond with the new followers via the giveaway.
However, I do see the value in giving back to the people that support you and your work and I love that part of giveaways. That being said I think it’s best to do them singularly, with one or two other bloggers, or with a brand. This way you can probably connect with you audience a bit more over it, and you can tailor the giveaway to be specific to you, your content, the brands you align with, and your audiences interests rather than any random person that wants a macbook. Hope that makes sense…
Engagement Groups
I get a ton of DM’s asking me if I use engagement group/how to enter them/and if I want to join someone’s engagement group. Again, for those that may not be familiar with this term, it’s basically a group of bloggers that mutually agree to like, comment, and engage on each other’s posts to help the overall engagement of each person’s post.
When I first started blogging I was introduced to this idea and I blindly joined as I figured it was a way to network, support each other, and hopefully improve my engagement. However, I quickly found out that it wasn’t that easy. For starters not everyone in the group always holds up their end of the agreement, even if you do – meaning some girls will skip out on their comments and likes. That’s just pretty annoying and unfair so I decided to ditch that model.
Months later after I had learned more about the industry I also realized I didn’t like this method because it didn’t seem 100% clean to me. Engagement is something that companies definitely take into consideration when evaluating your page for sponsorship, but it’s also a part of this job that helps you better understand your own work. When people are genuinely liking, commenting, and engaging with your content that’s how you know you’re doing a good job. Basically forcing people to do so seemed icky and disappointing to me, it didn’t give me the same feel good feeling as an authentic reaction from my audience, so that’s why I’m not big on engagement groups.
I’m All For It!
Although the following methods make take more time and patience to grow and keep your audience engaged and interested, they are the principles that have lead the way for me. Not only have I seen success with these methods but they also align with my personal values and beliefs, which is honestly the most important part of this process for me. This is not to say that anyone who uses any of the ‘don’t’ methods listed is a bad person. They just view things differently than me, which is obviously totally fine. I also think it can be an honest mistake or misunderstanding to use some of the ‘don’t’ methods early on in a blogging career. And there’s no harm in learning from that experience and readjusting down the road. Anyway, let’s talk about the methods I use and fully support!
Talk To Your People
I cannot stress this one enough. As a blogger/creator/influencer you will create a much more engaged community if you interact with your audience. This can be anything and everything. For starters, these are the people supporting you so you should be grateful and courteous. As much as possible you should always try to comment back and show your appreciation for the love they are showing you. As you grow this will become increasingly hard to manage and fully accomplish, but always make it a point to show gratitude and grace to these kind supporters. I’d also suggest actively answering your DMs. This is something that has become increasingly hard for me as sometimes I’ll spend literal hours answering DMs and not even make it through half of them. That being said, try to be as helpful and approachable as possible whenever possible, but understand that you’re only human and you can’t be a 24/7 answering service. But you can be kind, helpful, and appreciative to the people that support you!
Shout Outs (Mutual and Not)
I’m not one for spammy inauthentic shout outs, but I am all for girls supporting each other and sharing the love. I’ve utilized this method in the past and I’ve seen great results from it. It works best (and makes the most sense) if you share accounts that you genuinely love following – as your audience will probably love them too and find great value in you sharing them. Another reason I love this method is because no one is bribed to follow with a prize, it’s simple an introduction from which the potential followers can make their own assessment. In that sense it’s totally organic and I love that, those are the type of people you want following you, not the person that just wants an ipad. It’s also pretty easy to get a small (I suggest 6 girls max) group together and coordinate a day to share each other’s accounts on your stories. I recommend doing this only 1 time a week max, or else it may seem annoying to your audience.
Explore Your Community
Something I did a lot when I first started out (and would do a lot more of now if I had the time) was explore the community I was trying to be a part of. For example, being a fashion blogger I’d seek out other fashion bloggers, cool brands, and other inspo accounts. Once I found them I would follow, comment, and like to show support but also to start connecting to the online community of fashion. You can do this by looking up hashtags, browsing the explore page, or using the similar accounts tab on other accounts. Don’t be shy to engage and get to know the community you’re aspiring to be a part of. Before you know it you’ll have made some pretty cool internet friends this way! 🙂
Hope you guys liked this post! Let me know if you have any other burning industry questions and I’ll add them to the list! Xx
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Photography by Clayton Wenner @clayhendrx
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