Are you considering a career as an influencer or blogger? Think you got what it takes to become the next big thing? Don’t know wherever to do blogging full time or part time?
I have some insights about the above questions. Curry’s PC World, and Joe Blogs network invited me down to a branding workshop. Led by Anna Hart blogger from South Molton Street Style she also runs One Roof Social.
When I first started blogging 6-7 years ago. Before instagram was invented, the sole purpose of the blog was to share photos of my food and keep a diary of where I ate. Recommending places to friends and family. Strangers emailed me and I interacted with people on twitter, building that trust and community. What started as a hobby to me can be now converted to a real job.
I knew the basics of web design and SEO studying in Multimedia and interning at a web design company. I learned the importance of branding as a junior graphic designer using the Adobe suite to create my logos and wireframe my blog design.
The shift in influencers dominating front rows of fashion shows, being invited to exclusive events and receiving samples and gifts that were usually exclusive to celebrities and press have changed. Now you see everyday people building empires from their own bedrooms using social media platforms.
Anna began her talk with the influencer market, China has the biggest influencers. The UK accounts 7% influencers compared to USA with 30%.
How to identify yourself like those publications on a newspaper stand. There’s those high-end editorial quarterly magazines, coffee table reads, weekly and daily publishers. How often can you produce content for the blog or other social channels?
Branding is one of the most important things for an influencer, being consistent, and knowing your USP will attract your audience, that keeps them coming back and engaging with your content. Think of yourself as a company that people can identify, a lot of people recognises my blog name instead of my real name. Once you established your brand name, reserved the handle on the social networks you put your content on. I.e instagram, facebook, snapchat, twitter, pinterest, youtube.
We then paired up and described our USP and personalities, letting the other person guess what brands would be the dream partnership to work with. Karen saw me working with four seasons hotels around the world, because of my love of luxury, beauty products, travel and food.
SEO tips
Google crawls the internet for content and returns the results with the most relevant information. Every result has three parts, the title, URL and snippet. SEO works around key-wording with relevant words.
Rename your images instead of the automated camera file name “IMG_01” rename your files to something more relevant to actual image and keyword your targeting.
Try not to have long blog post titles, stick to 55 characters.
Anchor your text correctly in the post, link relevant words, google looks at follow and no follow links.
Use google analytics to check your monthly users, you can look into the demographics of your audience, the location, gender, age.
Elevate your blog and brand
The tech team from Microsoft demonstrated the snazzy features that are only available with Office 365 subscriptions. Powerpoint designer feature transforms your presentation to the next level with the transitions and animations. A media pack can easily be used to pitch new collaborations with companies.
The features in Word I wished was around when I was at University would have been so helpful is the researcher feature, the search tool within word looks up internet post and adds citations with ease. The new on-screen helper finds the best words to use to improve sentences. It marks the readability score of your documents.
The Microsoft surface pro is something I wanted, a compact high spec tablet/laptop will make working on the go much easier for me.
