Things I did to up my blogging game!

Hello lovelies, I have been so overly flattered that several of you had actually emailed me to request that I did a blogging segment on how I became a successful blogger and also that I do a video makeup tutorial (which will come later!).

But anyways, I know how difficult it was for me to actually make the slightest dent in the world of fashion bloggers, and even now I am no closer to blogs like Cupcakes and Cashmere or FashionToast but I have managed to increase my hit count without regular shameless promotion!

One of the first things that I did when I started my blog was created a logo, my initial logo was (see below) followed by my current one that reads 'Statuesque' with my favicon being an E. Now, whilst many bloggers are very very well acquainted with photoshop, I am not so I rely on a tool called fontspace.com. Fontspace is absolutely brilliant for generating a simple text logo: all you have to do is search for a font and type in the word(s), change the colour as desired and then screenshot and crop it! That is exactly what I did. However, fortunately I did not have the HTML skills to completely create my own theme so all I have done is tweak the 'Simple' theme that Blogger automatically provides us with. 

Secondly, I had to establish my niche. There are hundreds of thousands of fashion blogs on the interweb and to be honest, it is all too easy to become like everyone else. I wrote a list of my all time favourite things to do which included: photography, writing, posing (I know...), travel and cooking. With these four passions of mine, I set about creating pages that would link to my posts that were tagged with the above titles. Then all I did was write, if I baked a new recipe, I would blog about it, if I went on holiday, I blogged about it etc. etc. 

Thirdly, I take my own photos and make sure I have photos of me as well. Although it may be rather fun to write an anonymous blog, its really not a good idea unless you become an instant hit. Also, outfit of the day posts (OOTD) help provide a bit of insight into how you think; what you think when you choose an outfit, how it corresponds to the event and where each part is from. Simple right? 

*Top Tip. Get the CSS code to make all your pictures the same size, there is nothing worse than randomly sized images!*

However, although blogging can consist of lots of pictures, make sure the writing is of a high quality. There is nothing worse than reading a blog that looks beautiful, but there are numerous spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and the writing is just plain old boring. And make sure there is a balance between pictures and writing. Unless your blog is specific to stories or poems; no one wants to see a block of solid text. Trust me! 

Finally, one thing I always do is carry around my Nikon and my Moleskine notebook just incase I feel the need to capture a moment or come up with a brilliant blog idea! It makes things so much easier!

All of these tips have helped me increase my daily hit count by a huge amount and I hope it helps you too! Feel free to email me anymore questions at ellie@lifeofelliegrace.com

I apologise for this solid block of text so I hope this helps those of you who requested it!