When I first started blogging, I truly didn’t know about the opportunities for working with brands. I was writing about our family life and started reviewing the toys that Kora & Logan had and loved to play with. I knew other parents would be excited to learn about these toys, because as parents we always want to spend our money wisely on toys that are worthwhile. Even though I wanted these posts to be helpful, I was pleasantly surprised and excited to see other parents and mom bloggers leaving positive comments on the posts.
This post is sponsored by Find Your Influence.
I started visiting the mom bloggers that left comments and was excited to learn that they were working with brands on a regular basis. After some time, and lots of hard work, I started getting offers for reviews, advertising, and sponsored posts. When I realized I could stay home with the kids and blog for a living, I jumped in with both feet. It has been my full time at-home job for a couple of years now and it’s offered wonderful flexibility in being able to be there for the kids, to attend all of their school functions, and after school activities, and it’s given our family some incredible experiences we wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Blog Consistently – if you blog once a month now, go for once a week; if you blog once a week, try blogging every day. The more consistently you blog, the faster you will grow, not only will your readers look forward to your regular updates but brands like to see blogs that are active and Google likes it as well. Just be sure you are posting quality posts that are helpful to your readers.
Focus On Social Media – the social media world has grown vastly since I started; it’s now required in every campaign I work on to share on two or more social media sites and being selected for campaigns is often based not only on quality of work, but number of unique blog readers as well as social media followers. Start building your social media audience right away. Sign up for accounts, interact, chat with others, tweet, share, and pin other bloggers content that your audience will enjoy. It will help you grow your social media following and will connect you with other bloggers as well.
Video, Video, and More Video – video is where it’s at these days. If you are comfortable with video, work on including them in your posts as often as you can. YouTube is huge and considered another social media account. Vidoes help showcase your personality and/or provide more in-depth information about whatever it is you are sharing on your blog. Also brands love good videos and they will make you stand out.
Join Blogging & Social Media Facebook Groups – there are tons of groups on Facebook that you can find by typing your keywords (mom blogger, fashion blogger, tech blogger etc) into Facebook and then searching “Groups.” Once you find groups you think will be a fit ask to join. Note: make sure your blog link is clickable in your Facebook About Page on your profile, this will help you get accepted to groups if they can click through to your blog from there. It is a great way to connect with other bloggers and often the advice shared is invaluable.
Start Pitching For Products To Review – After you’ve developed a following, start writing brands asking for products to review. If you google “blogger pitch letter” you’ll find examples and templates to help you out. Don’t worry about brands saying no, it doesn’t mean it will never work out, they just may not have budget or product at that time. If they do say no, simply ask to be added to their media list for future opportunities. If they say yes, be sure to provide a high quality review, include lots of photos using the product and video if you can. You want to be sure to do a good job so they will want to work together again and so that other brands will see the review and want to work with you too.
Don’t Be Afraid To Spend A Bit Of Money – When I first started out money for us was super, super tight and I couldn’t justify spending an additional $5 on anything. However if I had paid for some things, I do believe I would have grown even faster and be in even a better place now. I spent so much time trying to do everything myself instead of either paying someone to do it, joining a network that would have provided advice to help me, or buying an ebook or program that would walk me through everything, and in the end it took away time to actually write and grow on social media. I didn’t realize how true it is that “time is money” and often you have to “spend money to make money.”
There are some great programs out there that I highly recommend for beginning bloggers. They will make your life so much easier and will help you grow your blog far faster than I did. They do have a cost but I think they are worth it (I’m not affiliated with either in anyway, so I get nothing if you sign up).
– Elite Blogger Academy
– Mom Blog Money Blog
Those are some of my tips for working with brands and growing your blog. Blogging can be rewarding and fun and it’s been amazing for me over the past few years. If you have any questions please feel free to leave them in the comments below. I’m happy to help out.
If you liked this post you may also enjoy other posts in our How To Start A Blog Series.
