Simple Blogging Tips (for beauty bloggers)

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?

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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.

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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?

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