Almost Girl

Bright and early today Coutorture hosted a Q&A Seminar with Michelle Madhok of SheFinds on Fashion Blogging Success Strategies.

We learned a ton!The great underlying theme was branding. Knowing your own voice and niche is critical to implementing any of strategies discussed. Figuring out who you serve and why they read you was the first critical step Michelle took on her journey to success. Once you figure out your audience letting them know that they can rely on your content and read it at regular times (posting consistency is critical) is the first step in traffic development.

She had great ideas on topics ranging from the importance of syndication (get yourself on BlogBurst) and embeddable content (use widget sites like My Blog Log and WidgetBox and more targeted fashion type widgets like Shopstyles’s shopping widgets) to submitting your content for linking (try BuzzFeed, Sugarloving and Skirt) the benefits of networks (Coutorture being a great place to start) to how to let publicists know you have written about their product (Who Reps What). Michelle also stressed the importance of making your content accessible in a variety of formats from on your own site to in feeds with services like Feedburner and Feedblitz (which also have free newsletter services) and in newsletters with services like MailerMailer, iContact and Constant Contact.

We also learned about doing your own publicity from submitting press releases to PR Web to making yourself available to serve as an expert with PR Leads. Not to mention learning to get yourself and your brand out there by attending events and networking with other women like you thanks to sites like Ladies Who Launch. Because it is important to remember that they best way to help ourselves is to help others! Figuring out what you can give to others is the surest way to discover connections and friends that can help you!

We also touched on the importance of establishing partnerships! Make sure to reach out to people beyond your specific niche as long as the demographic is similar. Make a list of potential partners that you can help and that can help you. Other women’s sites are a perfect match for most of us so leverage sites like BlogHer to find potential partners. Once you find these partners act like your own business development executive and offer them ideas for how you can collaborate. Michelle suggested swapping ads which is a bit like a more visual link share. Have banners or boxes with your logo or brand materials that partners can easily run! Offer to do the same for them.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 7:33 pm and is filed under And Now For Something Positive, Coutorture, The Business of Fashion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.