…well, not quite.
We had an email this week from Kayla asking how you find friends in blogging. We’ve all been there. If you’ve just started blogging, it can seem like a pretty daunting experience to suddenly be plunged into a circle of people who all know each other. You probably want to talk about blogging to people in the “real world” but no one really knows what you’re talking about. Blogspot? Analytics? Glossybox? Their eyes start to glaze over, and you end up staying quiet.
There are lots of ways to meet people – think of this kind of like online dating. You’re looking for people who you fit well with, who you can talk for hours with, who you can text, or dm, or email, or snapchat a comment that you wouldn’t want to broadcast to all of your followers. Sadly, there’s no version of OK Cupid for bloggers yet, but there are lots of ways to get to know people.
First – and probably most importantly – Twitter. Tweeting is so helpful to get to know people – you can work out what their sense of humour is like, and (it might sound harsh) whether they’re interesting to you. You can talk to lots of people at the same time and if you don’t want to meet up with people, then you don’t have to!
Related to talking to people on Twitter are the hashtag chats. This is a great way to find lots of people interested in the same thing you are – if we’re going to use the dating analogy again, think of this like speed dating. You’re talking to lots of different people at the same time. You can find out when the hashtag chats are in this post – if you know of any others, or different times, please do let us know!
If you’re feeling like you want to find other bloggers in your local area so you can work together on posts (outfit posts are so much easier when it’s a friend taking the photos, right?) or just go for a coffee (or a cocktail!) and blab about Blogger, then you need to check out the UK Bloggers Map
Finally, it’s not really a way to find people, but more to attract them to you – but the first rule of the internet should be don’t be a dick. If you’re rude to people, then word does spread quite quickly, and who wants to be known that way?
How did you find your blogging BFFs?
Love, love, love the don’t be a dick rule. I feel like I need to write that on my message board at work. Ya know, just to remind people!
I just recently started a new blog focusing more on books. It’s hard because I love both beauty and books but I found it hard to have any opinion on beauty products. Now it’s fantastic because I can talk with people who write beauty blogs and they are just this complete fountain of knowledge and I get to go home and actually write about books and I feel like approaching people who maybe don’t blog about what you do but seem interesting is fantastic because you can teach each other new things!