A Friends and Family Guide to Supporting Bloggers

A Friends and Family Guide to Supporting Bloggers
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As a blogger you can forget that sometimes the outside world doesn’t fully understand our little community and that they might not know how to support us as their loved ones… so I thought it was about time we told them how.

1. Face to face (and sometimes behind our backs)

Being a blogger is pretty full on. My friends and family have come to understand that sometimes I forget to text back and that if they want to see me at the weekend, they have to book me in two months in advance (Mum I’ll text you back once I’ve finished tweeting about this post). My boyfriend also calms me down at least once a week when I freak out about not having time for Pinterest, #bloggersboyfriendproblems. So just bear in mind that we aren’t ignoring you, we will just have so much more to catch up on next time we see each other!

You also can’t beat a bit of word of mouth promotion. So next time you catch up with your hairdresser, you might get chatting about how much you love Nutella and slyly mention how your cousin has a great Nutella cheesecake recipe on her blog.

2. Out and about

Bloggers are known for taking pictures of everything, so please bear with us whilst we snap away and make you wait that second longer before you can tuck in. I know you just want to ram those ribs in your face but we promise to be quick!

Talking of pictures, sometimes we like to be in them. The quickest way to get the job done is imagine you’re taking a picture for a magazine campaign. We pose, you frame us nicely, then we bump up the contrast in Photoshop.

On a rare occasion we might even ask you to be in the picture. You’re really important to us so we want to introduce you to our readers (they’re super nice and might even compliment you in the comments). I promise you’ll be in the best lighting and I might even edit out that little spot on your chin.

3. Good old fashioned reading

The thing that makes me smile the most (which doesn’t give me a notification) is when someone comes up to me and tells me how much they loved reading my blog. I don’t expect you to read every single one of my posts) but making the time to read them makes the biggest amount of difference.

4. Become an official fan

I don’t think people realise that we still need subscribers. It’s like going to a library and reading a book without officially borrowing it – acceptable but we’d prefer it if you just committed. There are two very easy and simple ways to subscribe to our blogs. Old fashioned email and commonly used Bloglovin – If you’re a reader of many blogs, then sign up! This really useful site collects all your blog posts in one place which you can like, share and save for later.

5. Commenting

Now, we’re going to start getting technical. When it comes to commenting (on our blogs and social media), it can be tricky and might depend on the individual blogger. But I will take responsibility for any family fall outs and say go for it.

So what to write? If you’ve read the post then just tell us what you loved about it and why you think others will want to read it.

What not to write… We love knowing how proud you are of us but do remember this is our business so save the cutesy stuff for our private Facebook account, or better yet, our birthday cards. Remember that fans and brands will see it. In the same way, don’t take the mick… we love the bants in real life but telling us that our recipe looks gross is probably not going to help us to work with Mary Berry.

6. The big and slightly scary world of social media

Facebook

The best thing you can do is share a post. Commenting is also great as it will boost our posts up the news feed. If all else fails, then just click that thumbs up and like away. The more likes a post gets, the more likely it will appear on other people’s news feeds which as we know means more exposure.

Twitter

Retweeting and quoting a tweet. This is pretty much the same as sharing on Facebook. You are simply sharing our tweet with your followers which means that it will appear in their feed. To quote a tweet means that you are sharing our tweet but adding something else to it. Liking is exactly the same as Facebook. Like away my friends.

Instagram

With Instagram you get to like away by clicking pretty little red hearts, isn’t that fun? You can also comment on our pics which helps us to move up the news feed and be a ‘top post’ in a certain hashtag.

Pinterest

If you have a Pinterest account then simply follow us and pin our pins. Simple. If you don’t… where have you been? How do you decorate your house or bake an avocado brownie or plan your wedding without your boyfriend knowing?! (He knows).

7. Give us 30p through affiliate links and adverts

Adverts are pretty obvious but affiliate links are slightly more discreet and will be links within a blog post. For example, your friend has written about how much she loves her new elephant statue from Etsy, bets are that the link she’s provided is an affiliate. What this means is every time anyone clicks the link, Lucy gets about 30p. Of course it’s not a huge money making scheme but bloggers with a lot of readers can make a fair amount. So next time you’re thinking of ordering a saucy novel from Amazon, make sure to check if your lovely blogger is affiliated.

8. Share our super fantastic giveaways

Bloggers LOVE hosting giveaways and our readers love them just as much. They get free stuff and we get to increase our following or subscribers by asking them to retweet us, like our Facebook page etc. So do a little share, get your girls to enter and help your blogger make someone’s day.

9. Enjoy it with us

We couldn’t expect all this support without giving something back. I know, I know, you love me unconditionally, you don’t want anything… but every once in a while I’ll treat those around me to a cheeky blogger perk. So stick with us, the more success we get the more freebies we can give you for Christmas (only joking, kind of).

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