The Skills You Need To Be A Fashion Blogger
If fashion is your thing then you might have thought about becoming a fashion blogger. Whether you want to do it as a hobby or eventually make a living out of it, there are a number of skills you’re going to need to have to be successful at it.
Some of these skills you will probably already have, others you can pick up along the way. If and when you monetize your blog you can hire people with skills you don’t have to improve your blog even further.
So what are the most common skills needed for a fashion blogger today?
Knowledge about fashion
OK, so this one is a given. But knowledge of fashion means different things to different people. Depending on the niche of your blog, this could mean knowing about high-end designers, or vintage designs. Your blog might be about affordable fashion or plus-size outfits. Whatever corner of the fashion world you choose, keep on top of the latest trends and influencers.
Photo by ian dooley
Social media skills
Even with a great online blog, a great deal of your time is going to be spent on social media creating and sharing content and hopefully engaging with your thousands of loyal followers.
Popular platforms for fashion bloggers include Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Knowing how to get people’s attention on each platform and build up followers is a valuable thing to learn. You’re competing with lots of other people and companies online. Over 95% of bloggers use social media to promote their blogs.
Video editing
Creating content on YouTube or TikTok is very popular in the fashion niche. Not only will you have to learn how to talk on camera, but you’ll also have to edit them to a high standard too. There are plenty of resources online that can teach you how to do it (on Youtube or use this free online tool). Practice makes perfect and before you know it you’ll be producing great videos for your followers.
Web design
Some influencers operate entirely on social media, whereas others have a website. It’s always a good idea to use a few channels as you never know when a sudden algorithm change could wipe out your following.
There are a lot of great web platforms out there that let you design a professional-looking website with no web design skills required. The most popular include WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace.
As well as getting up to speed on what makes a good website, there is also the analytics that goes on behind the scenes. This is the information about who visits your site, what pages that visit, and how they got there. By learning how to use this type of software you’ll be able to see what’s working and what isn’t. You can use the in-built analytics on your web platform or set up a third-party main dashboard to see a whole picture of your traffic.
Writing skills
Those blog posts aren’t going to write themselves. You don’t have to be a pro writer but being able to put your point across in words, with a little personality is a must if you’re going to get people coming back to your blogs.
Try and be authentic in your writing. Readers can spot a phony so just be yourself. As you write more blogs, you’ll learn what your readers like and what they don’t.
Graphic design/photo editing
Fashion is a visual medium, so you’re going to need to learn how to take a good photo. You might want to invest in a good camera, and learn how to use it, but many a blogger got started with just their smartphone camera.
Once you’ve learned how to take a god shot, knowing how to edit to look good is another must-have skill set.
Marketing
If you’re planning to make money from your blog in the future, you’re going to need to know how to market yourself and your blog. You can set up partnerships with brands and other bloggers to work with, as well as building up advertising and sponsored posts.
SEO
Where you rank on Google (and some other search engines) is important to attracting traffic. Knowing how to write well for SEO purposes and perform technical SEO on your website will push your search rankings up.
There are a lot of free tools to help you such as Google Analytics or SEO Review Tools.
Sales and negotiation
When your blog starts getting noticed, people are going to start approaching you to advertise on your blog or participate in joint campaigns. Some companies will try and take advantage of inexperienced bloggers and try to get them to work for free or very little. Honing your negotiation skills will help you to get the best deals.
A lot of this comes with experience, but you can give yourself a head start by doing your research and reaching out to other friendly bloggers who can give you advice.
Planning
Posting on your blog in an ad-hoc way can only get you so far. Consistency is the key here. A medium-quality blog that is worked on and promoted consistently will always outperform a fantastically written, but sporadically updated one.
Create an editorial calendar and start planning your blog posts in advance. Add in any key dates and events that are important to your niche and think about what kinds of content you can create around them.
Feeling in control of your content will stop you from rushing everything. The quality of your work will improve and can have a good flow of content to keep everything current and up to date, which will help with SEO and attracting readers.
Photography skills
Needless to say, taking, editing, and retouching photographs will end up being pretty essential. You may also want to hire someone to help with your photograph editing needs.
Takeaways
Being a fashion blogger can be a great idea if you want others to know how much you love it too. It can be a lot of work to set up and maintain a blog but it can be very rewarding. You’ll learn a lot of transferable skills that will help your job and your career, you may even be able to make a living from your hobby too.
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