Top Tips To Grow Your Blog

As a blogger there are so many different things you need to learn and work at such as social media, photography and pitching to brands. Here are my tips and tricks on how to set up a work schedule, collaborate with brands, and negotiate fees.

Stick to a schedule

Create a calendar or spreadsheet with all blog posts or freelance work and any deadlines you have. Try and complete this work a day or two before the deadline, then you have time to proofread and edit this. If any other last minute opportunity’s come up then your free to work on that instead.

Network

Attend as many events as you can, you never know who you might meet. Blogger events are normally super fun and you can learn so many tips from fellow bloggers. Talk to brands, find out more information about their company and give out your business cards. They then have your contact information for any future collaborations.

Courses

There are so many blogging courses around to help you learn how to monetise your site or get more page views. If your looking to monetise your blog then its worth investing in a course to help you learn new skills.

Pitch to brands

There’s no harm in reaching out to a company with a collaboration idea. The worst that can happen is they don’t reply, but you’ll never know if you don’t try. Making the first move can help you work with a brand you love and you might even forge a long term opportunity with them.

Be Persistent

You might not hear back from every brand you contact but don’t take it personally, keep reaching out to new companies. Brands and PR companies receive a lot of emails so don’t always have time to get back to everyone. Although you might not hear from someone immediately they might save your contact details and email you a few months later.

Know your worth

A lot of companies expect bloggers to work for free, but you shouldn’t always be doing this. You’re providing a valuable service for brands, providing them with photography, coverage on social media, link building and a review or written content. It can take a lot of time to create this, so don’t undersell your blog.

When you first start blogging or are trying to build your social media following, there’s no harm collaborating with brands for free products. After you’ve been blogging a while you’ll start to realise that some the free products aren’t always worth your time. Although if it’s a brand you love and the products are amazing then go for it.

Negotiate

You’ve received an email from a brand but they haven’t mentioned payment. There’s no harm in asking if they have a budget. A lot of brands don’t mention a budget in the first email but may come back to you with one. There are many different ways you could work with a brand, if they didn’t have a budget but offered you free products you could offer social media coverage, rather than a dedicated blog post. Alternatively if they do mention payment straight away you can try and negotiate this as some companies will start out with a lower figure first.

Join a co working space

When you work from home it can be easy to procrastinate, binge watch t.v shows or get interrupted by your housemates. Once you’ve got out the house and travelled to the co working space you’ll be more motivated to get work done as you’ve made the effort to get there. Rather than procrastinating at home then having to work late into the evening, you can stick to a time schedule and feel more productive.

There are some amazing co working spaces about like Signature Works based in Liverpool city centre. The co working space has everything you need such as free tea and coffee, gym membership and a mail service so you can send and receive from an office address, rather than giving out your home address. They even have a range of events where you can learn more about freelancing.

*Post in sponsored by Signature Works, all opinions remain my own*