Jan
20

Social Media Sharing Golden Rule

We were all taught the golden rule as kids. You know the rule I’m talking about, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” We can apply that rule to blogging and social media sharing too. Think about it for a second. How do you get people to tweet, stumble, pin, tumble, or share your posts on Facebook? Simple, share others’ posts on your social media platform(s) of choice. How does sharing other peoples’ work help you?

Well, if you have been working hard at developing your following on a certain media platform chances are you’ve discovered that bloggers follow bloggers (at least most do to a degree). If you’ve established yourself as a blogger that shares interesting or informative posts from bloggers other than yourself your followers will click on that link your posted from your own site. You know what happens next? People share your interesting, original content with their followers. From there it gets shared, shared, and shared again.

That makes following the golden rule on social media easy, and beneficial to yourself. To get your stuff re-posted post it yourself first, but make sure to share other people and their work too. Check out my post on spreading out what you want to share. You don’t want your timeline to look like you are pimping yourself out. You want to be respectable and trusted member of whatever social media platform(s) you use.

Now tell me a few things?!?

What social media site do you use the most to share posts you like? How do you thank those that share your stuff? Do you share posts from people that share your work?

Nov
28

Why We Wear Clothes

My daughter dropped a little pearl of wisdom while at Gammie’s house this weekend. She said, “Clothes are to help us look pretty like a princess.” Coming from a little girl who LOVES to run around “naked butt”, as she calls it, this caught me off guard when I got a text from my mom asking me if I taught her this. I replied that it wasn’t anything I shared with her. I’m sure that in watching me take outfit pictures and trying out new ways to wear things she came up with this jewel on her own.

Anyway, besides the obvious reasons of wearing clothes to cover our bodies, I have allowed her to choose her own “style” of dressing. Sometimes it is a hit, and sometimes I would say it was a miss. However, if she feels “pretty like a princess” in a striped dress with a paisley skirt, and skull leggings I’m happy.

I have raised a girl that is as comfortable in and out of clothes. Nate came to me saying we would have a problem on our hands. Lyla was in her room looking at her self in every angle possible. Later I asked her what she was doing looking at herself in the mirror like that. She told me she was strong and pretty, and when she grows big she will be gorgeous like mommy. I smiled and told her that yes she is strong and pretty, but we still have to wear clothes when leaving the house. She said she likes picking out her clothes.

Yes, she can often be found wearing princess dresses, or a mash up of different clothing. Either way, she is having fun and looks like a princess to me. At our house, we wear clothes to have fun!

Why do you wear clothes? Do you wear certain clothes, because, they are part of the “role” you are playing (mom, business woman, indie songstress, etc.)? Do you wear clothes to feel pretty? Do you wear clothes to blend in with what is “in” right now?

Check out her tumblr funsizefashion.tumblr.com

Oct
26

Social Media Sharing Part 2

Not to long ago, I was a member of a beta social media sharing site called tribber. I wrote a post about what I learned about sharing social media from my short time there. A lot of that post has to do with the points that were overwhelming to me, and some of the people I interact with on Twitter. However, I also stated that I realized how beneficial sharing is to growing a strong and organic social media following that relates to you as a person, and not just an image on the screen or feed that they follow. Whatever social platform it may be Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Stumble Upon, or Pinterest people will choose to follow you and continue to follow you if you are posting something that you believe they may find interesting or valuable. I’m sure you have heard it a million times over, “content is king”. It is true no matter what you are doing. I’m going to continue to focus on Twitter at this time, and show you another way I have found to share quality content without overwhelming your followers.

Enter the Buffer app…Buffer app, social media sharing, twitter apps

What is Buffer?

Buffer makes your life easier with a smarter way to schedule tweets. Work out all your tweets at one point in time during the day. Then fill up your Buffer with your tweets and Buffer schedules them for you. Simply keep that Buffer topped up and you will then be tweeting consistently all day round, all week long.

So far, I am really liking the features of this app. It is really simple to add blogger’s posts or articles as I read them via a bookmarklet, browser extension, or the Android app. The only thing I would like more is if it was able to pull the blogger, writer, or sites twitter handle to the tweet. Thankfully, you can edit texts before adding them to your dashboard if you happen to know the handle already. You can also edit posts inside your dashboard too, as well as, rearranging the posting order. I would also like if they would work with su.pr to shorten links as another option. However, that is a little thing that I’ll touch on at some other time. You can also choose what days you want to tweet. I’ve chosen to pause my feed for the weekend, so I can collect posts for the next week. Also, my twitter feed is usually a little quieter during the weekend. I’m assuming yours is probably the same.social media, twitter

Buffer than sends the tweets out at optimal times during the day. This supposedly doubles your clicks and retweets. I don’t have enough background on this for my account to verify, but I have seen an increase in my Klout (social media) score. I guess that is a good enough judge of the results so far.

A few benefits that Buffer has over Tribber

  • You select exactly what you want to share, without hurting the feelings of any of your “tribe members” by manually selecting what posts to your social media outlet. (You can post to Facebook too, however, I’ve chosen not to do so)
  • You also have more control over when tweets will post and at what frequency. I know you can edit some of that with Tribber, but not exactly enough for my liking.
  • You aren’t in a “niche tribe”, so you are not likely to be ignored because you are posting the same thing your followers have already seen posted by others they follow. This was bound to happen with the amount of overlapping social media outlets have in the fashion/style/beauty blog community.
  • You are not “pimping” yourself out to promote things you haven’t given your personal brand approval.
  • There are a few twitter feeds that I have seen that are completely Tribber fed without a single personal tweet from the blogger. You are being followed for a reason. Let your followers get to know you, and you should get to know them. Your Buffer is empty until you put something in it to post.

Let me know if you sign up for Buffer for your social media sharing, and how you like it.

Oct
10

Guest Post:How To Maintain Clothes

Hey everyone!  I’m Kinsey from In Kinsey’s Closet, and I’m guest posting for Danielle while she’s on blogger maternity leave!

A few years ago, if you looked into my closet you would have seen blouses, dresses, boots, and hangers all tangled in a big pile.  I’d rifle through it every once in a while if I needed a specific item, but for the most part I just let the pile sit there accumulating dirty clothes.  Since I’ve started style blogging, I have realized that my clothes need better care.  Picture your clothing as a car; regular maintenance and mindfulness are necessary to keep it on the road.  The same is true for your wardrobe.In Kinsey's Closet, maintaining clothes, blue polka dot dress, red cardigan

Here are some quick tips for better maintaining your clothes so that you can keep your wardrobe and blog in tip top shape!

1)   Start off with better quality items.  Okay, so this isn’t really a tip about maintaining clothes, but it needs to be said.  No matter how carefully you hang and launder your favorite Forever21 shirt, it’s probably still going to pill and come apart at the seems after a while.  Even with small paychecks and tight budgets, saving for a few well made pieces gets you so much more than several items from the cheapie stores.  I also tend to feel an obligation to take better care of clothing that I had to save up for.  You can bet I’m thinking twice about throwing my Calvin Klein dress into the same heap as my Charlotte Russe blouse.

2)   Don’t buy clothes you can’t afford to maintain.   I have to face it: frequently dry cleaning clothing is not in my monthly budget.  I know this about myself, so you aren’t going to find many dry clean items in my closet.  If you can’t afford to maintain it properly, don’t buy it!  Trying to hand or machine wash a dry clean only garment is just asking for trouble.  If you can afford to dry clean your items regularly, then by all means make it a part of your wardrobe!

3)   Don’t wash everything after every wear!  A few of you clean freaks are probably cringing right now, but it’s true!  Not every item needs to be washed after one wear.  Toss (no, gently place) underwear, workout gear, socks, and soiled items into the hamper, but most other garments don’t necessarily need to be washed right away.  I’ve gone an embarrassingly long time without washing some of my jeans.  I have skirts that I’ve worn several times and never washed or dry cleaned.  They still look almost new because their fibers haven’t broken down in the washing machine.  Lint rollers and stain remover pens can help extend the life of your clothes. Obviously, if you’ve stained or sweat in it: wash or dry clean it!

4)   When you do wash, wash wisely!  Separate your clothing according to color.  Darks, lights, and reds are usually go-to color loads.   Wash all clothes, unless they are extremely soiled, in cold water.  Not only will you notice a drop in your electricity bill (and maybe you could parlay that moolah into better quality clothing?), you will notice that your garments will show less fading and bleeding.  Separating also helps you keep from ending up with pink underwear (insert apology to my boyfriend here!).

5)   Organize, organize, organize!  I can’t stress this one enough.  Not only is a well organized closet and chest of drawers more visually appealing, it helps you to find your clothing quickly.  Back in my chaotic closet days, I would tear through my clothes looking for a specific item and end up with a big pile of clean clothes in the middle of my floor.  If I was in a hurry, you could bet those clothes were still laying on my floor when I left, and most likely they stayed there for a day or two until I got tired of walking over them.  If my closet was organized by color or garment type, I would have been able to go directly to the item I wanted and pull it out with no fuss.

These are a few ways to better maintain the clothing you’re featuring on a regular basis.  Even the best of us can’t pull off fray, fallen hems, open seams, or fading.  Buy smart, wash smart, and see how much further your clothes can go!

Sep
11

Part 2 Thrifted Fashion Love

To continue on with my set of posts on thrifted and self-made fashion I want to give you a few other blogger’s opinions on the subject matter. Part 1 can be found here or originally as a guest post on Natasha’s blog, Required 2 Be Inspired.

As I mentioned in part 1 I have many reasons for liking thrifted clothing. I am giving a new home to items, as well as stretching my money farther. Items that I find aren’t currently being sold by every fast fashion shop, currently found in style magazines, or strutting down the catwalks of NYFW. Instead, these pieces may have interesting stories of there own. It is possible that the perfect, black dress I just found was worn by someone to there first semi-formal. The jeans that fit me just right, and are worn in perfectly may have traveled cross country as a young woman heads off to fulfill a life long dream of becoming a musician.

Tabitha, of Defining Tabitha, loves telling people that she got things from a thrift stores. She says, “It is moments like those when I can prove that it is not so taboo to be rummaging through second hand goods, because, you can find things and make them your own.” She says that 90% of her thrifted finds aren’t worn as is. “It usually requires a little snip here, a little hem there, or a lot of alterations all together,” to make a garment what she wants it to be. She likes bragging that an item cost less than a burrito bowl at Chipotle. She loves trying new trends from the thrift stores, because, it doesn’t break the bank. For instance, I knew I wanted to find a pair of colored jeans. I have seen them on bloggers again and again. I wasn’t going to spend a lot of money on a maternity pair that I would never be able to wear again. What did I do? I thrifted a pair of my own!

Tiffany, of a Reason to be Fabulous, said her thrifting passion began when a cool upperclassmen took her thrift shopping. Her thrifting style started out completely different than it is now. However, it was a jump start to where she is now.  ”Now, she loves finding timeless pieces that have survived decades of wash and wear.” You can get a cheap outfit at Forever21, but if it falls apart after 3 or 4 washes the price per wear is going to be much higher than the cute, thrifted outfit you just uncovered.

Now she is always on the lookout for colorful blouses, pleated skirts, dated dresses and stylish shoes. No matter how her sartorial choices have changed is the thrill of finding unique pieces. She loves knowing that she will be the only girl wearing this piece at the bar that night.

Elissa, of Dress With Courage, is someone that I greatly admire for her thrifting prowess. I mean who else can author a 23 part series on vintage and thrifting?!?! She started thrifting back in high school. Thrifting wasn’t as popular as it is now. She says she was drawn to thrifting, because, “It was a cheap way to buy clothes, and it made me feel unique.” Elissa says, “Creativity is a key component in wearing vintage, and thrifted clothing without looking like as though you are dressing for a theme party.” What is Elissa’s favorite part about thrifting? “Adventure! Pulling up to a store always gets my blood pumping.”

original post

I agree 100% with these ladies. Thrifting is an excellent way to stretch yourself creatively. You can get a lot of bang for you buck at the thrift store. Also, you know that everybody is going to wear the same thing you are.

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