Simple Blogging Tips (for beauty bloggers)

Your Say: Do you find blog reviews useful or helpful? How useful or helpful are they?

July 13, 2016 Paris B 44 Comments

You know, in the early days of blogging, a mere 10 years ago or thereabouts, blogs were only just evolving to break the mould of traditional print media. Instead of thinly veiled advertorials and pretty pictures found in magazines, bloggers came on the scene to offer something more unique – honesty. It was refreshing!

Over the years, as blogs, bloggers and blogging has evolved, this focus and perception too has evolved.

These days, I’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who reads blogs anymore. Or who’d admit to it anyway 😀 But that got me wondering – do you find blog reviews helpful or useful at all?

PR samples are a fact of life on social media so enough with the PR Product Shaming already!

May 4, 2016 Paris B 39 Comments

Now that brand PR marketing seems to have shifted focus to other forms of social media, leaving blogs and bloggers a little out in the cold, I’ve noticed another shift in the dynamics of bloggers and blogging. I’ve noticed a shift to the other extreme, where bloggers seem to prefer to adopt a “no-PR” approach.

What some bloggers have chosen to do, is to not navigate the PR jungle, and not accept products for editorial consideration or reviews. Some had been PR-friendly before this, but no longer want to be for various reasons – the perceived loss of personal integrity, or a quest to downscale their product collection, or just a loss of interest in beauty blogging in general. Some have been sidelined by brands or PR, for reasons no one can fully understand. From a fellow sidelined blogger, I fully commiserate!

I see nothing wrong in not accepting PR products – I do it as well, to a degree, where I choose to adopt a stricter, more selective approach. I buy a lot of my own crap (my affectionate endearment for my beauty buys LOL! 😀 ) and I accept some. If I’m uncomfortable or unlikely to use what I may receive unsolicited, I return them. If I don’t receive something I’m interested in, I buy it. That’s how I roll these days.

But that’s not what I’m on about today. What makes me a little uncomfortable, is with what I’d term “PR Product Shaming” where people say things to a blogger with the conscious or unconscious intention to make a PR-friendly blogger feel ashamed, or uncomfortable about accepting PR products for editorial consideration.

Your Say: Do you expect beauty bloggers to be experts at makeup application?

March 22, 2016 Paris B 31 Comments

I received an interesting comment recently, that had me first roll my eyes and then, start to think about perceptions. Without quoting the comment verbatim, what was essentially said to me in the comment section was that I “obviously” did not know how to use makeup, since the product I featured did not look like I’d taken a spade to it, and I suppose it was also because in my photo of how it looked when I wore it, it did not look like I had trowelled it on. At least that’s what I think was the intention. The words used weren’t as complimentary. LOL! 😀

But after I got over the initial irritation, I started wondering if that’s what readers perceive of bloggers. Is it the general perception that bloggers all know how to do immaculate magazine-cover makeup? Or that if a blogger is talking about a makeup product, they must therefore be able to trowel it on, and look perfect at every angle, contoured and highlighted to within an inch of their life. Is that what you think?

If we make the beauty gurus, should we begrudge them their commercial success?

March 11, 2016 Paris B 19 Comments

It’s been an interesting week for me, blogging wise. First, I toasted myself for surviving 9 years on the interweb in one of the most challenging blogging niches I know of, and then I had an eye-opening few hours catching up on some online blogging goss. I came across across quite a few blog posts, forums and boards where people voiced their dissatisfaction and generally disparaged a few big-name beauty bloggers for selling out to advertisers. Then, I read the rebuttals by the affected bloggers I follow.

While people can be very nasty, I have to say that in a large part, I tend to agree with the general thinking that it’s very hard to actually trust anything said in blogs these days as so much of it is carefully curated and thinly veiled advertising. Yes, I’m a blogger and I say so. I see the dishonesty and lack of integrity and as a blogger, it disappoints me as much as it does you. Even more, perhaps, as that means I’m tarred with the same brush.

Yet, in some ways, I feel that as readers, we made these bloggers who they are. We MADE the “gurus”, and if they’re now enjoying commercial success of that, we shouldn’t begrudge them that success, right?