On a hot and (let’s face it, we were all a bit) sweaty Tuesday evening – was it really only last week? – #blogclub headed over to Bath and Unwind‘s beautiful offices on the Triangle to talk about sponsored posts. Sure, we’ve discussed them before at a previous meetup, but the thing about sponsored posts is that it’s such a huge topic! Last time we covered things like how to figure out how to set a rate and how to get those opportunities, so this time we looked at the disclosure side of thing.
Make sure to click on the images to go to the original Instagram pages!
We talked about nofollow links – what they are, and how they work. There are two reasons to use nofollow – to provide a disclosure to search engines, and to tell the search engines that you don’t endorse those sites, which means they don’t get a boost in search results for being linked on your site.
We also discussed disclosing to your reader – which is partly where the discussion in last week’s post came from – and whether it’s worth not disclosing to keep bands wanting to work with you. A link that appeared this weekend (behind a paywall, unfortunatly) that was quite interesting was this article from the Sunday Times where bloggers said that they didn’t disclose to “keep [their] feed pretty”. According to the article, the ASA will be releasing new, clear directives on the various ways on how to disclose all the different ways that bloggers can be paid for what they do. We’re really excited by this news, and will have the lowdown for you as soon as possible!
We love holding #blogclub at local businesses like Bath and Unwind because it means that the company gets introduced to a group of amazing bloggers that they could work with again in the future, and bloggers are introduced to a company that they might not have heard of before. Bath and Unwind are an online beauty store who have a huge catalogue of high end beauty products, and it was interesting to hear about the smaller brands that they have on the site.
A huge thank you to Bath and Unwind for being the most perfect hosts (down to the amazing cupcakes made by the boss’ wife!), and to Sophie, Amie, Charlotte, Lily, Sofia, Gina, Lyzi, Alison, Katy, Rosa and Jo and Victoria for coming!
If you’re a blogger or a business (not just in Bristol!) that’s interested in what we do, head over to the #blogclub page to find out more and to get in touch!
