{"id":70638,"date":"2014-11-17T12:10:47","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T11:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=70638"},"modified":"2014-11-17T12:10:47","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T12:10:47","slug":"blogger-outreach-kingsdown-roots-a-mens-fashion-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/blogger-outreach-kingsdown-roots-a-mens-fashion-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogger Outreach: Kingsdown Roots, a men’s fashion blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interview with Matt Ridout<\/a><\/span>, author of the men\u2019s fashion blog Kingsdown Roots<\/a><\/span>. Matt spoke to us about writing for the \u201ceveryday man\u201d, the importance of working with the right PRs, collaborating with BOSS Orange and the five best practices PRs need to follow when working with bloggers. <\/b><\/p>\n

Why should people read your\u00a0blog?\u00a0What makes it different? <\/b>Men\u2019s fashion blogs are a long way off from being as popular as women\u2019s but I like to think the content I write about appeals to the everyday man. I take a slightly different approach to the topics I blog about \u2013 firstly, I like to buy and review a lot of clothes which I then score under: comfort, look and price. This is more of a practical approach over styling. I also interview a range of other male fashion bloggers to find out how they\u2019ve succeeded in the industry which provide some great tips for me.
\nHow do you measure the success of your website?<\/b> Kingsdown Roots is coming up to its first birthday so it\u2019s still early days for measuring success but I do regularly check sessions\/visits in Google Analytics and look at SEO metrics such as Domain Authority and backlinks \u2013 I have a background in SEO so I\u2019m biased to that channel.<\/p>\n

What’s your favourite\u00a0blog\u00a0and why?<\/b>\u00a0It\u2019s hard to pick one – I\u2019ve learnt a lot from a blog called Bucket and Spades<\/a> which is a great collection of articles and photos. I read e-consultancy<\/a> regularly too, which gives me great insights into digital marketing techniques and case studies \u2013 I\u2019ve written for them<\/a> in the past too.<\/p>\n

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a\u00a0blog?<\/b> Manage your expectations carefully. Blogging isn\u2019t something that you can leave and come back to. Blogging requires constant thought each week, whether it\u2019s brainstorming content ideas or planning your marketing efforts, it\u2019s very time consuming. I\u2019ve been writing for Kingsdown Roots for just under a year and it\u2019s only just starting to take off. It will take time and you need to keep at it before you start seeing results.<\/p>\n

How do you work with marketers and PRs?<\/b> It\u2019s surprising how important PR contacts are to bloggers, especially in fashion. They help bring content ideas to the table which can really help save time on occasions, whether it\u2019s a new brands or an upcoming trend, they act like a newsfeed to me. There are also instances where PR contacts will involve you in campaigns, like brand exclusives or real life events \u2013 these can both be valuable at creating content and gaining extra visits to your blog.<\/p>\n

Who do you work with in brand marketing? PRs? SEOs? Anyone else?<\/b> I don\u2019t run any external brand marketing at the moment; it\u2019s something that I\u2019ll look at once the size of my readership increases.<\/p>\n

Can you list five best practices for\u00a0blogger\u00a0outreach?<\/b><\/p>\n

1. Being personal is incredibly important: no-one wants to read an email that starts with \u201cDear Friend\u201d or \u201cDear Sir\u201d – always use a bloggers name. Make sure you\u2019ve read some of the bloggers content and comment on something specific which you like too.<\/p>\n

2. Always choose bloggers you have a realistic chance to work with, make sure they\u2019re relevant to what you\u2019re trying to promote \u2013 if you send a financial blog content on football it\u2019s unlikely they\u2019ll post about it.<\/p>\n

3. Check to see if the bloggers have collaborated with other brands\/businesses, if they have it\u2019s likely they\u2019ll work with you too, or at the very least be more open minded to new ideas.<\/p>\n

4. Get to the point in your emails, there\u2019s nothing worse than reading a short story to find out what the purpose is, if you have something to offer don\u2019t be scared of being direct.<\/p>\n

5. Don\u2019t be afraid to follow up on email requests; bloggers are busy people, they could be on holiday or might have genuinely forgotten to reply back to you, if you follow up a week later it can help improve your outreach success<\/p>\n

What has been your\u00a0blogging\u00a0highlight?\u00a0<\/b>My blogging highlight so far has been my recent collaboration with BOSS Orange – they contacted me and included my blog in part of their 3 month promotional campaign. It\u2019s really nice when agencies and brands reach out to you and genuinely want to work with you. It gives a great sense of satisfaction.<\/p>\n

What will be big in your blogosphere in the coming months?\u00a0<\/b>I\u2019m looking to do a complete site redesign after Christmas, my current design is visually OK but it\u2019s not the fastest at loading, I need a design which is more mobile\/tablet friendly. Besides that I have more designer clothes reviews coming up as well as some great interviews with a few more well-known fashion bloggers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt spoke to us about writing for the \u201ceveryday man\u201d, collaborating with BOSS Orange and the 5 best practices PRs need to follow when working with bloggers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":332,"featured_media":70642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1449],"tags":[78,6902,6903],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/332"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}