Marketing Tips For Beauty Bloggers
It can feel hard to know where to start when entering the blogging world, with the beauty industry heavily saturated, but please DO NOT let this put you off. If you do all the right things in setting the blog up right and getting your social channels on the right path then you could find yourself becoming the new industry leader in no time! So read on for our top tips.
Buy The Domain Name & Hosting
Do not rely on a name.blogspot.com or anything of this nature, you need to be self hosted if you want brands to take you seriously. This can sound scary, but it is very easy to buy a domain name and you can get the hosting with the same website if you wish, making it very easy to set it all up.
Pick A Theme
Whether you are using WordPress (as most do) or any other platform, you can normally pick a theme, so your website will very quickly appear in a set style and will have a lot of the work done without the need for a developer. I want to strongly recommend people opt for a paid theme rather than a free one, as this allows many of the main things you want (responsive design, detailed CSS styling etc) to be in place and to be further developed than your conventional basic template.
Get Your Channels
Once you have picked your domain name, you need to make sure all of the social channels are available as well. Get them as soon as possible, so you don’t lose out on these. Even if you don’t plan on using the platform just yet, it can be worth getting it in advance to reserve the username.
Embrace Tik Tok
Still in its infancy, Tik Tok is the new place to be and people who adopt the platform soon will be ahead of the curve and the competition. Instagram is becoming a very busy place to be and your voice can get lost, however Tik Tok still offers a great way to appeal to the masses and allows you to quickly become a key influencer in the beauty range.
Create Plenty Of Content
Each article should be an absolute minimum of 500 words if you realistically want to rank on Google. You should also be producing content on a regular basis. For this reason, I normally tell wannabe bloggers to start writing content 3 months before they launch, so that they have a backlog of content they can schedule and then focus on other tasks, such as building out the social profiles.
Keyword Research
It can be tempting to write about what interests you, which you certainly should, however you can also benefit by doing some research into what your ‘competitors’ or other websites in your area are ranking for and gaining traffic for. A great tool for this is SEMrush, as you can see a ‘traffic percentage’, working out how many people are searching for that term per month versus how highly you rank on Google for the term. If you were to find the key terms and pages for several websites, you can make your own versions and see some great results in incoming traffic.
Video Video Video
I cannot say it enough times, the future is all video. It might be nervous to get in front of a camera, but more you do it, more natural it will feel. Setup a filming area, get some decent camera equipment (nowadays a decent smart phone can do the trick) and get a tripod, as it needs to be steady. Make sure nothing in the background will move, as this can look unprofessional and distracting. Plan your videos like you would a blog post, with a complete idea of what you are going to be talking about, but you don’t need to script it (unless you really want to).
PR
If you want to start doing well on Google and in getting your brand known, you need to start getting featured in magazines, newspapers, on the radio and on TV. To do this, I’d recommend adding a number of journalists that write about beauty on Twitter and offering your voice for related pieces. They always need case studies or experts to talk about certain topics and will normally link back to your website from their publication.
Schedule Social Posts
Forget doing all your social posts in the moment, unless you really have the time for all that. For most bloggers time is very sensitive (considering most of us have full time jobs), therefore it can be beneficial to schedule social posts in advance, either at the start of the week or the start of the month. Think about topical posts, so in October you would want to ensure you have a Halloween focused post for the last day, or in the build-up. You can use websites like Hootsuite to schedule your posts.
Journorequest
The popular Twitter hashtag Journorequest is a great way to find journalists that are looking for bloggers, or case studies (as mentioned in the link building section). I tend to use Tweetdeck in order to easily look through Journorequest in an aesthetically pleasing format. You can also use Journorequest to find brands that might want to work with you. While on Tweetdeck, add your brand name in every spelling form, to make sure you see when you are mentioned but not directly tagged.
Learn The Basics Of Blogging
Whether its titles and meta descriptions, heading breakdowns (H1, H2, H3 etc) or site structure, there are plenty of basic areas of blogging you need to get your head around if you want to start performing well on Google.
Internal Links
When writing a blog post, you need to have it in your mind that each post needs 3 internal links. By an ‘internal link’, I mean a hyperlink pointing from the blog post to another post on the site. So if you mention another product you have written about, you could link through to that page on your site, which will help the user find more interesting details as well as helping you rank better on Google. Internal links are one of the most undervalued tactics for bloggers.
Attend Events
I cannot express the value of these enough. Whether it’s beauty focused events, Take It Offline and other marketing events, or key conferences, you can learn so much. I should mention that you will learn a bit from the conference talk, but you will learn a lot more by mingling and networking, as the hands-on advice is priceless. This also allows you to directly ask questions and receive answers that are relevant to your blog and your situation.
Measure
If you really want to see progress, keep yourself motivated and find opportunities, you should be tracking certain metrics, such as followers on each social platform. I tend to record my figures once per month, on the 1st. This allows me to see when certain channels or platforms are either over or under performing, which can help me to identify whether certain actions are working or not. I also record all the features I get in other publications, as this can help when talking with other brands.
Setup Google Analytics & Search Console
Search Console (or Webmaster Tools) can help you to find issues with the website, while Google Analytics will allow you to measure visits and conversions (whatever you decide a ‘conversion’ is). GA can also show you where the traffic is coming from and to what page.
Get A Media Kit Created
When you get round to working with brands, they will often ask for a media kit, to see what your figures are and how much you’d charge. Beyond anything else, this just shows professionalism and they will know they can’t try being cheeky with prices or terms.
I hope you found this useful. Don’t hesitate to get in contact if you have a question.
