Oh Blogger Where Art Thou!
Hi, my name is Kess Crystal and I’m both a blogger (The Glamour Sauce) and marketing and PR manager for a number of brands and events in Second Life including FaMESHed and Spotlight Magazine. I’m in the very fortunate position of being able to view blogging from a number of different angles and today I’ve been asked to write about the different ways to find or attract bloggers when setting up a blogging team. The article is therefore aimed at creators and brand owners but I hope it’s of interest to all the SL Blogger Support community. Read on as there’s also an opportunity at the end to become a FaMESHed blogger for a month!
For most designers and creators in Second Life starting a new brand the issue of hiring bloggers is not high on the agenda for launching their product successfully. Who can blame them right? There are hundreds of other things to think about that go toward making a brand successful and looking at one part of the marketing channels i.e. bloggers is a way down the list.
There does come a time when the important element of adding bloggers does come up though. Most creators realise and appreciate that having a good blogging team helps to get their brand in front of eyes that may not see their creations any other way. Everyone has a few bloggers on their friends lists these days and it’s not uncommon as a blogger to be approached by a friend who has just launched a store or brand to blog for them to help get them off the ground.
Eventually as the brand grows in stature and success designers reach a point where they are ready to take on bloggers in a more professional and formal capacity. For the designer, who may never have blogged themselves in the past and in a lot of cases may not be social media and marketing ‘savvy’ taking on bloggers can be a daunting task.
There is an argument for hand-picking and directly approaching bloggers. This approach requires a lot of research and knowledge about bloggers who might be appropriate for the business. We know as bloggers, and for sure creators know, that not all bloggers will fit the bill. Many bloggers specialise in niches that might not suit the brand e.g. you could be a lingerie store…so you aren’t going to need a lot of male bloggers, or décor bloggers! (Though I’m sure we all know a few male bloggers who would still give it a great shot!)
SL Blogger Support is of course here to help! We have numerous resources at our fingertips to help creators and brand-owners through the minefield and our ‘Looking for Bloggers’ section on our website has an easy to use form to complete to post a notice on our site with your application. This is one of the most popular and most read sections of the site and a great way to let potential bloggers know you are looking.
Flickr can be another great way to let bloggers know that you’re in need of their services. There are several groups on Flickr that specialise in promoting blogging opportunities to SL bloggers. You can find many of them by searching ‘looking for bloggers’ in the Flickr search function. I’ll list a few here, but there are others and this is not an exhaustive list and I urge you to do your own research to find other similar groups:
Of course the benefit of using is Flickr is that nearly every blogger you would want to have promote your brand is using it too. Many of them will also be using Facebook to promote their posts and promote their work to the online SL community. This means that there are also lots of groups and pages on Facebook providing a service of advertising stores/creators and designers looking for bloggers. Again, here is a couple of them and you can find others with simple searches for SL Bloggers:
SL Stores Looking for Bloggers
Depending on the number of bloggers a store/designer or event wants to add there may be other options including:
- Advertising in the stores in world group or subscribo
- Plurk
- Other blogging platforms such as WordPress, Blogger or Tumblr
- Promoting in store a ‘Looking for Bloggers’ notice
- Utilising space in the creator profile for ‘Looking for Bloggers’
Lastly I wanted to give SL Blogger Support readers and members of the SL Blogger Support a heads up on a fairly unique way we’ve come up with at FaMESHed event to experience as many bloggers over a year that we can. From the November 2016 round, in addition to our regular bloggers, we’ll be running a contest each month to find a Guest Blogger of the Month. One Blogger, One Month only. We know that we could never take as many bloggers as we want to so this is a way of giving other bloggers the chance to show what they can do and add FaMESHed to their blogging resume. You can find out more about what you need to do to enter at:
FaMESHed Guest Blogger Spot Contest
Lastly, remember, SL Blogger Support is here to support all aspects of blogging in Second Life from creators and designers looking for advice on bloggers, to bloggers supporting each other and recently blogger managers in supporting each other in what is a fairly new, but increasingly more important role in the blogging world. Check out our other pages for lots more advice, articles and tutorials.
SL Blogger Support 
Reblogged this on Shari The Cat – Not so New Blogger – Still Old Soul! .
Reblogged this on the glamour sauce and commented:
I wrote this article for SL Blogger Support and thought I’d share with you guys as I am sure there are some of you that would like to apply to be guest bloggers for FaMESHed. Good Luck!