How do I start a blog? How do I work with brands? How do you gain a following? These are some questions we have gotten so we decided to finally answer them with some blogging tips for beginners and what we wish we knew when we first started.
Now before we go into tips one big difference of when we started vs now is that the Instagram feed was in chronological order. We had 7K followers and we getting 25K in reach if not more. With Instagram forever changing it just reminds us that we aren’t in charge of our own Instagram and it is important to have different social accounts. This leads us to our first point
Don’t just rely on Instagram
1. When we first started out all we cared about was our Instagram accounts. Which we regret. We have slowly started to pay more attention to our blog [we both try to post once a week so two posts total a week. We are trying to get this up]. We also never focus on Facebook or Pinterest which we need to. You can actually gain a ton of traffic to your blog from Pinterest if you do it right. Join tailwind tribes and schedule all of your posts through tailwind. If you click this link you get your first month free.
Pictures are important
2. When we first started we really didn’t put a lot of thought into the images and we wish we did. If we had known more about filters on feeds to make everything coherent we definitely would have started there as they make the pictures look so much more professional. We are currently using the bright white filter from here. If you go to Pinterest and see a ugly picture of food are you going to try to make it? No right. If we were to start over we would figure out what we wanted our feed/brand to be and focus not on posting every day but on quality. One of our go to quotes “Quality over Quantity”.
Monetize your blog
3. Now believe us when we say we knew absolutely nothing about starting a website or how to build one. We googled posts on the best platform for bloggers and came to word press. We didn’t want to go cheap on our blog as we had read how much effort it was to transfer platforms and that wasn’t something we had the time or effort for. The first mistake we made was not monetizing our blog. We had no ads on our site until maybe a year in and it was a huge mistake. Also we had no email sign up. Even if we weren’t 100% ready for emails it is worth having on your site so you have a list once you are ready
Engage & Network with others
4. This is probably the most important thing. You should spend at least 20 minutes before you post commenting on others post in your same niche and 20 minutes after you post. We know it sounds like a lot but believe us it helps not only increase your engagement but gain followers. Also don’t be afraid to dm others and ask for advice or if someone lives in your area ask them to meet up and get coffee you never know what you will learn or who will become your best friend. Something new we have been doing is every Sunday we share new accounts we love. It not only helps our followers learn and engage with new accounts we sometimes form friendships with these ladies after. Just always remember community over competition!
Don’t compare yourself to others
5. Not only don’t compare yourself don’t get down on yourself either. There we so many times that we got down on ourselves and gave up [yes we did give up once or twice for a few days] but then we would have a brand we love comment on our post or a big blogger follow us and for some reason those little things got up back on our toes. We always learned to take the small wins. We know how hard it is to compare yourself to someone who just started blogging and has doubled your follower count but don’t. It is not just about following. There are so many brands who want to work with micro influencers as they help sell the products. Only compare yourself to you and make sure each month you are pushing forward. We just saw this post on the Business of Fashion page and love it. Those with a lower following usually covert well for brands so it is something to remind them!
Brand collaborations
6. One of the biggest question we get is about brand collaborations and how you get them. I think we got our first brand collaboration at 2k and we were ecstatic. It was with a jewelry company and we thank them for giving us a chance. When we first started out we did most of the pitching. Most of the time we wouldn’t even get a response or the typical response of “We aren’t working with any other influencers this year” then next month you would see them working with all new ones. We understand that they didn’t want to lose their relationship with us but we just weren’t where they wanted us to be. We have now gone back and worked with some of these brands. Don’t be afraid to pitch to any brands no matter your following. We just pitched someone last week and their response was “No thanks”, which we thought was extremely rude. When you first start out you are going to have to really pitch yourself and sell why that brand should work with you. As you start to grow brand deals will come to you. When we first started out we accepted a bunch of trade only collaborations. It was great as we didn’t have to buy new clothes then. The one thing we wished we asked every time we did a trade collaboration was if they would repost our image on social and tag us. Even if they say no it never hurts to ask and if they say yes you get some new exposure!
Join Blogger Networks
7. We didn’t learn about this until later on but there are a bunch of blogger networks where you can apply to campaigns. Some of our favorites are Aspire IQ where we get a lot of campaigns or Clever influencer network where we have worked with some bigger brands like Dove. Our favorite networks when we just started with Octoly – you can get free makeup by doing posts or stories for brands. We no longer are on this platform as it doesn’t make sense for us to work for free with these brands but its great for new bloggers.
Set goals for yourself and invest
8. When we set goals for ourself we are usually more determined to accomplish them. It is the competitive nature in us. We also didn’t invest in our blog at all in the beginning as we just didn’t want to spend the money yet. We highly suggest investing in your blog. Weather it be hiring someone to help with SEO or Pinterest or even something like boosting your Instagram posts or Facebook posts. The more your put in the more you get out.
The results you want from your blog won’t be overnight but watching yourself grow every month is very rewarding. Set goals, be consistent, & learn how to make time for blogging everyday when you first start out.
There is so much more we could write about and might do a second series on this post but we hope this helps for now. Feel free to ask us any questions.
