Tips for Networking

by Elizabeth, Delightfully Tacky

10 Tips and Ideas on How to Network:

1. Using your twitter account, respond to @ mentions! If you get #FF @ mentions, you should thank them! You should also do your own #FF! It's also nice to shout out someone on Twitter saying how much you really liked their outfit. Or, if you're wearing a brand you like on your blog, @ mention them and let them know!

2. Promote others! If you find someone that you really love their style and feel like they deserve the spotlight, promote them! Talk about them on Twitter, Facebook, in a blog post. They'll appreciate it and spread the word. If you find a new blog you like, tweet about it!

3. Create a "favorite blogs" section in your sidebar or on a separate page in your blog. It's a great way to support your favorite blogs.

4. Create a little button for your blog to put inside a widget on your sidebar! That way readers can grab your button, paste it on their blogs and draw traffic to you!

5. Feature other bloggers. I used to do a feature called "Blogger of the Moment" where I would feature cool bloggers that I love. It was a fun way to learn more about bloggers and share them with my readers. One cool thing about it was introducing my readers to bloggers I like who they'd never seen before. Since people come to your blog and have similar taste to you, they'll probably enjoy the blogs you enjoy!

6. Have a commenting system that allows you to reply. For years I'd been hoping that Blogger would update their commenting system to allow replying directly to comments, but I gave up and switched my commenting over to IntenseDebate. I love that I can reply directly to comments, so if someone has a question I can answer them right there! There are a few different commenting systems you can install on your blog if your blog doesn't have a commenting system that allows for replying. Disqus, CoComment, and IntenseDebate are a few and there are plenty more!

7. Guest blog for another blogger, or have guest bloggers on your own blog. If you guest blog on someone else's blog, you'll be reaching out to all of their readers, many of whom probably have never seen your blog before. After they read your guest blog, they'll probably click over to your blog and check out more, and maybe become followers! If you have a guest blogger on your blog, they'll likely link over to the post on their blog, sending their readers directly to your blog to check out the post they did for you.

8. Be a part of online communities. Depending on what kind of blogging you're doing, there are tons of online communities where like-minded folks gather. Think Lookbook or Chictopia if you're a fashion blogger and MadeThis/LoveThis or Project Restyle for DIY folks.

9. Go to blogger meet ups! Try to find out if there is a blogger meet up anywhere in your vicinity. If you're anywhere near New York, there are always fashion blogger meet ups during NYFW. You might have to make a little road trip out of it, but it'll be worth it and so much fun to meet bloggers in person! You'll probably end up meeting some new folks too! If you can't find a blogger meet up nearby, consider coordinating one! It doesn't have to be a fancy shindig, you could all meet up in a park for a little picnic or go out to coffee.

10. If you're a fashion blogger start swapping with some of your blog friends! One of the main reasons I started the Delightful Dozen was because I wanted a more concrete way of interacting with blog friends. Whenever you post an outfit with a swap item in it, you can link to the person's blog who you got it from. And when they post an outfit wearing something you've loaned to them, they'll link to your blog! Pretty cool. Plus, it's an affordable way to style new items without having to buy clothes. Win/win.

Working with sponsors 101

By Elizabeth, Delightfully Tacky

When to start taking on sponsors

Working with sponsors has become a huge part of blogging for some bloggers, and for those of you just starting out, it'd definitely something you'll want to think long and hard about. Some people are adamant about keeping their blogs ad-free, while others are gung-ho about taking on sponsors. It's a personal preference and people will likely criticize you for taking either route, so just be sure of your decision when it comes to accepting sponsors. Make sure to only accept sponsors that you are passionate about! You don't want to have a beauty blog and promote barstools on your blog! Your readers will be annoyed and confused and may not return. You want your sponsor

Before taking on sponsors you'll want to do the following:

1. Do your stats research: You'll need to figure out your stats! You can sign up for Google Analytics or if you use Blogger, you can track your stats through the stats tab.

What will you want to know? Monthly/daily page views, daily unique visitors and how many readers/subscribers/followers you have. Jot these down.. you'll need them soon.

2. Figure out sizes: What size ads do you want on your blog? Make sure the width will fit perfectly into your right sidebar, you'll want all of your sizes have the same width. Then you can decide if you're going to offer more than one size of ad. I have three sizes: large, small and mini. It's nice to create multiple ad sizes at different price points, that way people who run smaller shops and aren't yet able to afford a larger size ad can still get the exposure of having their ad on your blog!

3. Create a sponsor page or post: You'll need to create a place where you can put down your sponsorship details, ad sizes and stats so potential sponsors can check them out. You can link to it on your blog so that companies can easily find information if they want to sponsor you, plus I always link to that page in my sponsor call posts.

4. Create a spreadsheet or notebook: You'll need a way to track sponsors! It's key to organization. This is the hardest part for me. I just recently switched over to using spreadsheets to track sponsors, and I think it'll me much easier than my previous method of writing it by hand in a little notebook! You'll need to make sure you remember the name of the person you're working with, what size they ordered, how much they paid, and when their ad starts and stops! You'll also want to keep track of which sponsors you need to do outfit feature posts for, giveaways, and discount codes. You want to make sure your sponsors are getting what they paid for!

Sponsor calls

Sponsor calls are a good idea because it gives you an opportunity to alert potential sponsors to the fact that you're accepting sponsors, but you aren't pestering shops to come sponsor you. It's a neutral post that simply tells people that you're accepting sponsors and gives them a little bit more information and then can direct them to a page where you have more information about rates/stats/options and more.

Sponsorships vs. Affiliate programs

While sponsorships are basically you selling ad space on your blog, affiliate programs are based off of getting a percentage of the sales you send to a company. So say during one month people click that ad on your blog and buy $2,000 worth of clothing from that company. If you make a 10% commission, you just earned yourself $200! Affiliate programs are great if you know you can make sales for that company.

Tip: If you know you might not be able to sell anything for a company but can provide clicks, go with sponsorship. If you know you are able to sell items for a company, an affiliate program might be the better option!

There are a few different affiliate programs online that different companies work through. Commission Junction, Google Affiliate Network, etc. Most affiliate networks will either cut you a check each month or send your earnings via direct deposit.

Interacting with sponsors

You always want to be professional when you're interacting with sponsors. Be courteous and timely and remember that they are paying to be able to put an ad up on your blog. Try to be organized so sponsors don't get lost in the shuffle, I'm guilty of that and I feel horrible when it happens, ack! It's hard sometimes to wear all the hats that blogging requires. You have to be webmaster, photographer, designer, writer, bookkeeper, PR specialist, and so on. Don't be too hard on yourself if something slips through the cracks. Just apologize and try to be more organized in the future! If it's totally beyond your abilities to juggle all that's required, you might think about outsourcing and having someone else be in charge of your sponsorships.

Tip: When your sponsors term is ending, follow up with them! Shoot them a quick email reminding them that their sponsorship will be expiring, ask them if they'd like to renew, maybe offer a discount as an incentive to continue? If they say no, ask why and you could learn a lot! They might say, "Because you didn't promote us enough, we didn't receive enough clicks," etc… and it can help you learn how to be a better blogger. For the next sponsorship, you might learn to do a few extra tricks!

Courtesy-of items

Once you start taking sponsors, you may start receiving items from those companies as a way for them to get even more exposure on your blog. It's a great way for them to have their product featured and increase the traffic that you send to their site. When you see "C/O" on someone's blog it means the item was received "courtesy of" that company, i.e. the company sent the blogger the item for "free" as a a gift or in trade for ad space to promote the product! You are legally required to announce that something was given to you, so make sure if you receive an item for free, you say it is "courtesy of" or given to you by the company. Honesty is always the best policy.

Payment

How do sponsors pay you? It's up to your personal discretion. If a company asks if you want to trade a month's worth of ad space for $100 worth of clothing decide for yourself if that makes sense. If you like the clothing and feel it's mutually beneficial to both of you, then go for it! If you want only cash, make sure you say that up front so that sponsors aren't confused. If you want a check instead of Paypal, be very clear. Typically, bloggers use Paypal to receive payment. It's quick, easy and you can keep track of your income. Plus, you can also transfer money from your Paypal account to your bank account, or even get a Paypal debit card. Once you receive payment from the sponsor you can add the blog to your sidebar and start promoting. Make sure to write down in your sponsor log when you put up the ad so you can note when it needs to come down by or when the sponsor needs to renew it!

And note: Don't feel bad if a sponsor stops sponsoring. Most of the time companies are trying out new bloggers constantly to try and draw a wide range of potential buyers from across the blogosphere! Don't get mad at a sponsor and call them out online, you'll ruin some great relationships and your readers might not trust your input! Be professional and courteous.

Also note that it's important to be honest when it comes to sponsors and things you receive from them. If a product is bad, say so. You need to be honest. You have a responsibility to your readers to not lead them into buying a crappy item! You don't have to be mean or snarky about it, just be honest about the quality and your disappointment.

NYFW: Bloggers Night Out

Bloggers Night Out was a seriously wonderful event! It was held at Pranna Restaurant - which was a pretty swanky nightclub and restaurant. It was so fun to meet so many bloggers, get your photo taken, check out all of the sponsor booths and hang out with friends. I absolutely loved the cake pops from Stylegroove. At the LuLu*s booth, you could spin a wheel and win some items or a discount coupon. I also won a Tiffany and Co. iPhone case just by tweeting and using Foursquare at the event! The ladies who put it on were fantastic and it was wonderful to meet so many great bloggers!

Privacy on the internet

by Elizabeth, Delightfully Tacky

Blogging is kind of weird. Our lives are broadcast across the world for anyone to read, pretty scary right? It's something we all have to deal with by choosing to put ourselves out there, but it's a risk we take in exchange for being a part of the blogging community. There are measures to take, though, to make sure that you keep your privacy to at least some degree.

Email-

I keep my blog email completely separate from my personal email. This way people can't search for me with my email address. Plus, it just makes it easier to separate who is trying to contact you from your blog versus people in "real life" who are emailing you personally. There are also measures you can take to keep spammers from grabbing your email. Instead of writing your email like delightfully-tacky@hotmail.com you can write it like delightfully-tacky [at] hotmail [dot] com. It just makes it a little harder for spammers to grab your email.

Location-

One thing I'm pretty conscious about it not letting people know where I live. While I'll talk a lot about Tacoma and my favorite places in Tacoma, I won't let people know my address and I'll try to not show landmarks near my home. I guess if someone was really adamant about trying to find my house they might be able to, but I like to keep it as difficult as possible. I'll even go so far as to photoshop out the address number on my house or apartment to keep people from seeing it in my photos. Sometimes I've photoshopped out my license plate on my car too. Another thing that you might want to do is keep your workplace off of your blog too. It's just another way that someone can find you.

One thing that I've started doing is not letting people know when I'm on vacation until after the fact (if possible). I once heard about how someone's house was broken into after they tweeted that they were out of town. I figure it's best to protect yourself from people who may be out to take advantage of you. You never know who is following you online. Most likely it's just people who are interested in your blog, but there could also be weird creeps that live near you and don't have good intentions!

Your Life-

This one is really up to your personal preference as to how much of yourself you want to put out there. How much about your personal life do you want to share? Some people will choose to share very little about their real lives, and others will just lay it all out there. I like to keep a good balance of being open and honest, but also not simply unloading all the crap from my day onto the internet. For me, I like to keep my blog positive and upbeat. I figure there's already so much unhappiness and ugliness in the world and I don't need to contribute to it. That doesn't mean that I'll sugarcoat everything or pretend that I'm super happy if I'm not, but I'm not going to go of on a rant about something terrible that happened if I don't feel like it's uplifting or helpful to others. It's always up to you to how much you share with the world wide web. Make sure you think about what you feel comfortable sharing, and if you feel like you're starting to share too much, dial it down. I think it's important to share at least some of your life with your readers, just because they're interested in you and your life! It creates a connection between you and your readers and they start feeling invested in you.

One thing that I've never really dealt much with is keeping people from your real world from knowing about your blog. This is more important for people who feel like it wouldn't be beneficial if coworkers or friends knew about it, or if your employer would feel odd about you having a blog. Some bloggers are teachers or work with youth and they try to keep their students from finding out about their blog. Other people feel like they might lose credibility at their job if people knew about their blog. I know some people have family members who are uncomfortable with blogging, so in that case they even have to keep their blog from their family. Sometimes it's unavoidable to have people finding out about your blog (since it is online and readily available for anybody to see), but you can definitely take measures to keep people from finding out about it.

For about the first two years of blogging I didn't let any of my readers even know my first name! I still don't have my last name on my blog. It keeps people from being able to google your name and find your blog.

Photos-

One thing that is kind of annoying is the fact that once you put your photos up on the internet, they're kind of up for grabs. You could watermark your photos, but I personally hate the way that watermarked photos look-- the watermark is just always so distracting to me. But the downside of not protecting your photos is that people can take them and not give proper credit or even pretend to be you! If you think that's crazy, trust me, I've had it happen. Most of the time, though, when you find that happening, you can usually email the site's administrator and have them remove the person. So decide if you want to watermark your photos or protect them in some way.

There are a lot of ways to protect yourself on the internet. Make sure that you're really intentional about how much you want to share about yourself. It's a crazy world out there and sometimes we can get caught up in how nice all of our blogging friends are that we forget that there are those crazies out there as well. Protect yourself and your privacy!

NYFW: Beauty Tips

I thought it would be fun to pop in and give some tips on beauty tips for big events! My getting ready process is usually about 30-45 minutes which is so long compared to my at-home getting ready period, but you have to spend a little extra time if you're heading out for a big event! Here are my tips!

• Feel free to go a little bit daring with your makeup! Try the cat-eye, try a bold coral lipstick, try anything. Especially in dim lighting in bars and clubs, you'll stand out.
• Don't worry about looking perfect. If you're making a bold statement with your eyes or lips, people won't even notice any red blemishes on your skin.
• Take care of your lips! If you're constantly wearing lipstick, try using a bit of chapstick or Burt's Bees in between reapplies. It'll keep your lips moist!
• Keep a little mirror in your purse for little checks like fuzz in your hair, lipstick on your teeth, mascara marks under your eyes. It's natural to quick check yourself in the mirror.
• Always wash your make up off at night. Being in the city - all of the dirt, grime and makeup - you just have to.
• Use a brush - if you can - to apply your foundation. It'll help prevent outbreaks and it will also stretch your makeup bottle. By using a brush, it helps cover more skin... which leads you to use less makeup!
• Use a moisturizer at night while you sleep! It'll help replenish your skin from the harsh wear and tear of the day.

Hope you enjoyed a few tips on things that have helped me during fashion week so far!

Fun fact? My favorite lip color to wear in NYC so far has been my Maybelline Coral Crush lipstick. I've worn it for several events so far. When I showed up to the ModCloth Swap, I saw Veronika of Tick Tock Vintage and we instantly said in unison, "Coral crush!" It's the perfect lip color to make a statement, but not be too much. We love it.

Networking: Using Facebook & Twitter

by Elizabeth, Delightfully Tacky

Facebook and Twitter are easy ways to stay connected to your readers. They are the two social networking sites that I really use pretty heavily. There are other networking sites that are available for specific demographics (like Lookbook or Chictopia for fashion bloggers), but Facebook and Twitter are universal networking sites that almost everyone has.

Twitter

Twitter a great way to share information with your followers and fellow bloggers in a quick and efficient way. Plus, with all the smart phones out there, a lot of people have access to that information wherever they go with their phones! For bloggers, Twitter has become a really great resource. You can let your readers know when you've put up a new post, quickly share something awesome you found on the internet, retweet great tweets from other people, and have conversations with people in a really easy way. Replying to people on twitter is just so quick and easy that it's one of my favorite ways to interact with fellow bloggers and readers.

I only follow Twitter feeds that I feel are important to me, or will tweet information that I'll want to check out. If you follow too many people, the sheer volume of tweets to sift through becomes totally unmanageable! There are also different platforms for organizing twitter like Tweetdeck which you can try out to see if they work for you.

Facebook

It took me a lot longer to join twitter than to make a page for Delightfully Tacky on Facebook. Since Facebook is such an invaluable networking site in general life, it only makes sense that it would be useful for meeting your readers where they already are. It makes it so easy to update your readers via Facebook because it posts right to their newsfeed! You can also use apps that link up your blog to your Facebook page so it automatically updates your page when you publish a new post. One cool thing about Facebook is the way that readers can interact too. I've had readers post cool photos on my Facebook page or share links with me. If you don't feel like updating both your Facebook and your Twitter, you can also link your Facebook page to your twitter account so that when you post a status update to Facebook, it automatically tweets that status update also!

Both Facebook and Twitter are always in my top ten referring sites. They're a great way to connect to your readers in an organic way. Since most people already use Facebook and/or Twitter, you're simply making it easier for them to connect to your blog! And that's what you want. You want it to be easy for your audience to access your blog and relevant information associated with it. Facebook and Twitter are perfect in this capacity!

BONUS: 10 Ideas for a Blog Post!

10 Ideas for a Blog Post!
1. Post a "what's in my bag" post (repeat with your makeup bag, camera bag, computer bag!)

2. Create a "wish list" of your favorite items at the moment (Polyvore is great for this!)

3. Going on vacation? Show how you packed your suitcase!

4. Show the inner workings of your closet in a fun video blog.

5. Have a fun DIY tutorial? Nail polish tricks? Share them!

6. Do a Q&A post! (Break it into different sessions!)

7. Cover one of your favorite lines! Include photos of your favorite items and smart research about the designer.

8. Post a weekly or monthly recap with lifestyle photos or things that make you happy. (Think Delightful Dozen's '12 Delightful Things' feature!)

9. Create a slideshow of your favorite outfits from other bloggers. (iMovie is the best and SO easy!)

10. Show bloopers of silly photos of you!