Afternoon all, it’s been a while since I shared a business related feature, so if you only want to visit Love My Dress to soak up all the beautiful wedding inspiration, you might want to skip over this particular feature. For anyone else interested in my latest ramblings on the business of blogging, stick around. I’ve got some things I want to share, and as always, I welcome your feedback.
In the 5 years and 4 months since I published the very first post on Love My Dress, I’ve shared 3,389 posts and moderated 41,111 comments. ‘I’ became ‘we’ as I took on support and established a team. I now have 11 feature writers, one of whom is a professional freelance copywriter, and 10 of whom are readers who have applied to become writers (7 of these are Interns I took on board in December last year). I also have a professional freelance administrator who works almost full time hours for Love My Dress, and I pay a developer/designer too. More than twice the amount of money I used to bring home in to my bank account in my previous job now goes towards paying these people to help me manage a blog that started out as a passion project.
Have you viewed Love My Dress through your mobile or iPad/tablet lately?
Our new mobile responsive blog view launched earlier this week
Love My Dress isn’t just a wedding blog any more, it’s a successful commercial business and as with most businesses, we face competition and need to work constantly to stand out in the crowd – make our blog the ‘go-to blog’ not just for brides to be, but for those businesses who align with our aesthetic and values and who are looking to promote their products or services online.
Love My Dress was established at a time when wedding blogs in the UK didn’t exist – it was around the same time the Rock My Wedding set up too and about the same time that the Rock n Roll Bride blog was taking off. I have respect for these other two UK based wedding blogs for having made it this far with a loyal reader base and successful business model, in a commercial environment that is changing all of the time.
A problem for more long time established blogs like Love My Dress, is that there is a plethora of newer blogs that have entered the scene since we started out. There’s nothing wrong with this in principle of course – there should be ‘room for everyone’ and the competition keeps you on your toes. I enjoy being part of the blog community and supporting other bloggers. Most of us are simply trying to earn an honest living doing what we love. But a comment I keep on hearing these days is ‘there are just so many wedding blogs out there now’.
Screenshot taken from Bridetide top 100 wedding blogs
There would be a time when being located on another continent gave a blogger a unique voice – but these days, with social media connecting anyone, anywhere, and at anytime, the physical location of one blogger to the other doesn’t really offer a distinction of this kind any more. Furthermore, reader habits have changed vastly since I first started blogging in 2009. And they continue to change all of the time.
Our thousands of readers are interacting with Love My Dress in more ways than before, as the ever-changing social media landscape advances at lightening speed. Whilst our reader number continues to rise for example, traditional blog commenting is on the decline (a trend observed across the blogosphere) and readers are choosing to engage with blogs through their social media channels. Comments on and followers of our Instagram feed for example have hugely increased in number and there are exciting new ways to target a very specific audience at granular level through Facebook.
All the while, the internet has grown more crowded, requiring more energy than ever to be noticed and heard. I speak on behalf of myself, of Love My Dress and of the sponsors who support us.
The questions is, how do you stand out in an world of wedding blogs?
Becoming a mobile responsive blog
50% of our readers are now viewing Love My Dress through their mobile phones, iPads and tablets compared to the 12-15% or so who were doing so back in 2011. I’d wager a bet that that most other blogs share a very similar statistic. We needed to do something to make sure Love My Dress was loading fast, in a user friendly format on small screen, mobile devices, so earlier this week, and after weeks of work getting it right, we launched a mobile responsive version of Love My Dress. This means anyone who visits the blog via their mobile device will now be met with a much more user friendly blog layout.
Developing a mobile responsive blog is just one of the key steps we’ve had to take in order to help us stand out and respond to reader habits. I know, I know – some blogs have had a mobile responsive view for way longer than we have. Our issue has been working out how to integrate our sponsor banner adverts in a way that wouldn’t put the reader off but that provided good honest exposure for our advertisers. I’m super proud of the solution we’ve come up with and based on feedback received so far, so are our sponsors and our readers.
I believe that being fit for mobile is a ‘non-negotiable’ for bloggers these days who want to stand out and provide the best possible blog reading experience.
Our media pack – email us for a copy.
Beyond The Banner
If you have a copy of our media pack (pictured above), you’ll be aware of our new ‘beyond the banner’ mantra. Beyond the banner is a term we use to describe the full suite of support we provide sponsors who pay Love My Dress to advertise their products and services. I truly believe that the days of providing a straight forward banner advert are gone. I believe that sponsors need and deserve more, and so my team and I have been working hard on ways we can broaden the level of support we provide.
We want our sponsors involvement with Love My Dress to be positive, meaningful and above all, to have a positive impact on the success of their business. Our goal is to develop long-term trust and brand association between reader and sponsors. Whilst a banner advert remains the first, and most important ‘foot in the door’, we have completely enhanced our sponsor pack and the level of support we provide, which includes:
- a free introductory feature
- free Events Listings
- significant savings on blog features
- free exposure via our social media channels
- a free, enhanced listing in our beautiful new supplier resource, ‘Annabel Adores’ (more on that a little further down)
I believe all bloggers need to look beyond the banner. We will continue to seek to find more useful and meaningful ways of supporting our advertisers above and beyond their banner advert.
Submissions Exclusivity
Some of the other changes we’re making focus on our submissions exclusivity – that is, the length of time we ask wedding photographers not to submit the content they share with us elsewhere, after it’s featured on Love My Dress. I’m referring specifically and only to real wedding features.
I’ll be honest, I was disheartened to discover purely by accident this week that two weddings I shared last year went on to be shared on other wedding blogs, 6 weeks and 5 months after our own features. All of a sudden, our own 4 months exclusivity policy didn’t really feel long enough. My frustrations led to me sharing this post on Facebook.
I rely on the wedding photography community for our content and have a great deal of respect for them. Likewise, I really hope that the photographers who work with us respect and appreciate that our readers and social media followers have been hard earned, and that securing a feature on Love My Dress doesn’t just mean a blog feature any more – it means having images shared and credited on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and even Google+ – not once – several times. We’re constantly developing our social media strategy and working out how best we can maximise exposure for those who supply our content. All this takes time and effort and time and effort costs money. Investing in this aspect of running my business is absolutely critical however.
On the note of submissions – we don’t have an online system that handles submissions and don’t have any plans for one (I recently turned down a developer who wanted us to trial one), but we do have an excellent set of email templates that enable us to:-
- provide an accept/reject on every submission within 2-3 working days
- confirm via email when a feature will be published (within 2-3 days of receiving the images)
- notify all suppliers involved in a wedding we blog that they have featured on our blog
Again, all things that take time and time is money but in my view, keeping those who feed your content well informed and updated this way keeps everyone happy. It helps to set us apart from the rest and hopefully minimises any criticism we might receive in any private forums. No one is perfect after all, but we are getting there 😉
Images from some of the real weddings we’ve shared this week
Annabel Adores
That supplier resource I mentioned earlier? We’ve been working for months on developing our own directory that we’re aiming to launch in May. To be fair, the term ‘directory’ doesn’t do it for me, so I’ve been fondly referring to it as a resource for months now. It will infact have a name all of it’s own; ‘Annabel Adores’ will soft launch in May .
Lots of blogs have a supplier directory, so why bother creating one of our own? Because we want to stand out and build a resource that not only looks beautiful but offers readers a much more organic and pleasurable way of locating wonderful sponsors.
We’re still designing and developing but the image below gives the tiniest of flavours of what you can expect.
Social Media
The cacophony of social media makes it more difficult than ever to stand out, but we try our hardest to connect in an honest and genuine way through all our social accounts. Facebook continues to diddle with their algorithms, limiting organic reach further and further, forcing page owners like me to pay to secure any kind of half decent reach – something I was incredibly reluctant to do at first – but that I now embrace as part of our marketing strategy. There’s absolutely no shame in paying for Facebook promotion. I hear people moan about the Facebook thing, but it’s OK. I get it. Facebook is a business just like the rest of us – it has to make money somehow.
Twitter isn’t the social hub-spot it used to be and is mostly, I find, the reserve of industry chatter. For me, the excitement is all about Instagram and I love how this beautiful little social media tools allows me the opportunity to to micro-blog, by sharing excerpts from our blog features. It encourages more meaningful engagement with our Instagram followers and blog readers. Since I started utilising Instagram in this way, our follower numbers have leapt forward.
Good customer service
Two years ago I wasn’t running my business as well as I am today. I was struggling under the pressure and didn’t have decent systems in place to help me manage my work flow. We receive a ridiculous volume of emails every day and it had become overwhelming. Bringing in a skilled administrator with years of administrative experience has given my business a huge boost, as has expanding my team of writers and taking on a professional copywriter.
We’re not perfect but we’ve come such a long way and good customer service continues to be my number one priority. Timely, polite communications and reliable, trustworthy, well written content.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
So there you have it, some musings on how we’ve been tackling the issue of standing out in a crowded social media environment. You might be wondering why I’ve shared this post today, why I’ve given away some of our insider info, and what I hope to achieve from doing so? I’ve always enjoyed reading how other bloggers tackle the challenges of remaining commercially successful and truly believe that we can only benefit as a whole if we keep on sharing and challenging one another to do things better.
I also want to be able to say on my toes and continually challenge myself and how I manage this blog so that it remains a commercial success for as long as possible. I suppose I feel by ‘putting it out there’, I’m holding myself to account, setting a benchmark that I can only improve on – an exercise in discipline and good management for anyone who is there own boss. Whatever, it has felt like a really useful exercise for me being able to share this information and I really do hope that other bloggers or those working in the wedding community might gain some insight or usefulness from this post. We can only continue to write in our style too, to believe in our own unique voice and perspective and way of sharing weddings and wedding related content.
As for all you lovely brides, if you’ve even got this far, then please know your voice is always valuable to me. Do you think there are too many wedding blogs out there?
I’m not expecting any comments back, but it would be lovely to see some below all the same 🙂 Do you blog? Do you work with bloggers? What are your views of how social media has changed and how are you working to stand out in a saturated social media environment?
Annabel x
Annabel View all Annabel's articles
Founder of Love My Dress. Passionate Podcaster and Editor. Annabel lives in rural North Yorkshire with her husband and business partner Philip, their two daughters and menagerie of furry hounds. She loves photography, meditation, walking, being outdoors and star gazing. She is fierce when it comes to championing talent within the wedding industry and when she's not working on Love My Dress, she supports her husband Philip in the running of the family's sustainable flower farm and floral design business, Moonwind Flowers. In 2013, she became a published author.
What a refreshing and honest post, Annabel. What I’ve always loved about Love My Dress is how personal each and every feature seems, from the real weddings to the Lovette posts and supplier features.
I started reading wedding blogs about 5 years ago, way before I was engaged myself but when friends of mine started getting engaged and married, and used to be a regular reader of several well known US blogs. I loved the real wedding features, but more and more ‘inspiration’ shoots took over. While they’re very beautiful, and nice in small doses, and beneficial for suppliers to show off their services,I always thought almost what a shame it was that all the flowers, food, props etc weren’t being appreciated by a real bride who couldn’t necessarily afford those suppliers themselves. That’s why I come back to Love My Dress again and again, because the posts here truly bring to life the love and care that has been put into each and every wedding that features. As a bride to be, this is more inspiring to me than seeing 10 inspiration shoots in a row. I’m sure lots of other readers feel the same, and I know I’ll continue to come back and browse even after I’m married.
X
Thank you so much Charlotte, I really appreciate your feedback – a real little boost of confidence this morning – so grateful xxx
This was a super interesting read and as a blogger myself, it is super wonderful to hear some of the business side of things from a successful blogger. The real wedding features – I have to agree with Charlotte in that for any bride-to-be, real weddings are such a great source of inspiration and it’s so important to have /real/ inspiration, mock weddings are gorgeous but are often unrealistic for many brides. That is something that is so wonderful about Love My Dress.
One small criticism I do have is that I actually did apply for your internship last December. You do emphasize good customer service and I do recognize that you had many submissions and get tons of emails everyday, but as a applicant who spent a lot of time working on the intern application, I was very disappointed that I never heard back from you (but rather found out through seeing your features on the interns who you did choose). Not sure if this was something that happened to any of the other applicants or not.
I also did see on your Facebook the post about exclusivity – and saw you mentioned that you had the 4 month policy and two of your real weddings were featured 6 weeks and 5 months after being featured on your site. However, 5 months is after the 4 month policy so didn’t the photographer abide by your policy in that case?
Just a couple of things that I have noticed and made an impression for me as a reader of the blog.
Lots of respect for you and your team and I truly appreciate the sharing of some of these insider tidbits. I will absolutely take it as wonderful advice and food for thought!
Hello Anonymous!
I promise I’ll reply back properly soon – it’s Sunday evening (= total choas in our house as I prepare the dinner and my girls run amok!) 🙂 I just wanted to reply back briefly to say we sent an email to all the unsuccessful Intern email applicants – did you not receive? I only this morning removed it from Mailchimp in a house-keeping exercise! So I’m no longer able to check if it went to you (but perhaps ended up in the spam bin) in error – but either way, I’m sorry you didn’t hear back from us!
Reply back soon on the rest – better go keep the sausages from burning 🙂 xx
As a bride to be I discovered Love My Dress after a friend’s wife shared their Real Wedding feature on Facebook a few weeks back. Since then it’s become a must-read for me. There are loads of wedding blogs out there but this is the only one I keep coming back to, the articles have given me loads of ideas. I love the format and find it really easy to read. My wedding will definitely be Love My Dress inspired!
i dip in and out of wedding blogs as a bride and LOVE the fact there are so many. This isn’t a bad thing I think. There are so many different styles both in the US and UK they appeal to different brides. Just like clothing shops I think there should be one for everyone. I for instance read Once Wed, Wedding Sparrow and Magnolia Rouge the most and love their style. I also think that since the Internet moves so fast these days that someone sharing a wedding 5 months after you did is fine. Even at 6 weeks. The liklihood of the same person seeing it on both blogs I should imagine is pretty slim. Even I don’t read them religiously 😉 but saying that I’m not a photographer or a business! I think keep doing what you’re doing and don’t worry about others. Only the successful blogs will remain popular and that’s only because they have something you don’t. And that can be a good thing! Look forward to continuing to read LMD!
Katie
Thanks so much for your feedback Katie, it’s always so good for us bloggers to hear directly from our readers and I really appreciate you having taken the time.
Love Annabel xx
Great post Annabel and your unique voice is one of the elements that initially drew me to you all those years ago. As you know I have been a long and loyal cheerleader of Love My Dress and for me it’s simple, your passion shines through in everything you do.
I too believe in honesty, open-ness and sharing what I do and the processes behind how I work. I do this for a few reasons: because it helps me to formalise my own often-crazy ideas, because I want to show real brides-and-grooms-to-be what it is I do as a creative wedding planner, and also in the hope that I can inspire those who are planning their wedding to think a little differently. But one of the key reasons was to showcase a creative side to the wedding planning & styling industry, I started out when the only planners around were considered those for the very rich or famous and people believed all they focused on was scheduling and etiquette.
I can hand on heart say not one of my clients gives a flying whats-it about social norms and following traditions, I have attracted the very type of client who shares my beliefs, those who want something hugely creative that’s an amazing, immersive experience for them and their guests. And that’s why I started writing in the way I did, sharing my unique approach and beliefs, telling people they didn’t have to worry about what’s been done before and to be imaginative…..that as long as something felt right to them, then it was right.
Unfortunately I have been copied, emulated and even directly ripped off with the content I have created, the words I have written and the details I have styled. It’s disheartening and saddening to witness , especially when what I do comes so much from the heart. The sad thing is there will always be that contingent of people who will do this, but moreso what I have realised is that by having this POV and sharing it I have also influenced other planners/stylists etc to set-up with a similar approach to mine, that was so fresh 5 years ago. A blessing and a curse some may think, but I prefer to look at it as a positive position for the industry as a whole and that it makes my voice even stronger because now there is a collective tribe saying the same things. The copying won’t stop me from continuing to share what I do because that’s the most natural thing for me to do….I can’t fight nature.
Keep on keeping on Annabel. xxx
I’m a fan of Love My Dress but I have a beef with blogs thay has been inflamed with the mention of “Annabel Adores”. This beef extends to all blogs so please don’t take personally but I’d be interested in your response.
“Annabel Adores” suggests that these are your pick of your favourite suppliers whereas In reality it is (or as if as is currently) will be a list of your paying sponsors. This doesn’t mean to say you wouldn’t recommend them anyway but in some instances you might not and there may be other non advertisers you love and adore but don’t share on this list.
The title is misleading on many blogs as it infers impartial recommendations not paid for ones. A good number of brides anyway are misled by this and whilst I’m sure this isn’t your intention it is the net result.
There is a working group commissioned by the government now looking at this as part of a wider study looking at the impartial influence of blogs and review sites.
As a reader whose trust you’ve built I want to know more of your real loves and recommendations rather than just those paying for them . Difficult one I appreciate but I hope you appreciate my query.
Hello Anonymous,
Thank you so much for your comment and taking the time – I do indeed appreciate and respect your comments.
On first impressions, the words ‘Annabel Adores’ do indeed convey something beyond a paid-for entry, but I would argue that if it’s something I’ve personally exerted editorial control over, then doesn’t that make the name I’ve chosen acceptable? You have definitely given my team and I food for thought however. Whilst the resource will absolutely be launched in May, we still have time to consider the appropriateness of it’s chosen name and identity. This is why comments such as this are always helpful in assisting us to determine direction and position.
The resource certainly will not be a free-for-all, neither are our sponsored banner adverts – we vet all sponsor applications and decline if we don’t feel they are an appropriate fit – it doesn’t matter how much money the sponsor has to spend.
We all know its a crowded market, and Annabel Adores will stand or indeed fall, based on the quality of the listings. So yes, it is going to be my personal pick. It is a recommendation – not impartial, but ‘curated’ – not everyone will be invited to be included, not everyone will get sent the link to the sign-up form.
The resource will be clearly labelled as paid-for content, in the same way we label all our sponsored content as such. I’ve always been as transparent as possible with such things. I would like to think our readers are intelligent enough to know that we have to charge for a business to feature on the blog – but still feel happy making choices based on our, my recommendations. The trust thing is so an intensely important issue for me.
I’m so glad to hear you are a fan of Love My Dress. I really hope that you can continue to trust the content that we deliver.
Thanks so much again,
Annabel
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I didn’t think for a minute I’d posed an easy question and as such appreciate your response, and appreciate you respecting my right to ask it. I’ve discovered some fabulous talents via your site, some of whom are sponsors, and others via features but who aren’t in your suppliers list.
Once a personal blog become a commercial enterprise I fully accept its direction has to change and as your personality and personal thoughts and preferences were central to the start and evolution of the blog making a business transition and having to remove some of that independence of comment in order to treat your sponsors as they deserve to be treated, whilst still retaining a unique voice must be a nightmare to navigate and I’m certainly not going to criticise, you seem to do it well. In this context I understand your description of “curated” although previously I didn’t really know how to interpret it in relation to a blog.
My initial beef still stands in the sense that it is not specific to you but rather an industry wide blog and web directory thing, however I do respect that you make careful selections of all sponsors. I don’t think there is a real answer but I had to voice my thoughts.
Thanks so much for your reply Anonymous, I genuinely take on board every comment left on this blog and especially ones that raise important issues like you have.
I’ve shared your comments with my team and we’ll think through things this week.
Yes indeed, it can be a tricky process navigating your way through the wold of the commercial wedding blog, that said, I really love the challenge it presents and am really proud of the way Love My Dress has grown and become so respected and trusted. I can’t stress enough how much I recognise that respecting the trust of our readers is absolutely crucial to our continued success, so it’s super important to me to get things like ‘Annabel Adores’ right. I will also say though that we’re asked time and time again to get a resource like this up and running – so ultimately, we are responding to reader demand – rather than a way of further monetising the blog.
Thanks so much again, when the resource is up and running, it will be really great to receive your feedback and I invite you to email me personally at any time with any other feedback, comments or concerns you might have – [email protected].
Very best wishes,
Annabel x
As someone who works within the wedding industry and helps to curate a directory I just wanted to say that, although directory members do pay to be featured, I know we only ever select businesses that we genuinely love. As a business our credibility is dependent on who we associate ourselves with and it is incredibly important to us that the businesses we work with are in keeping with the ethos of our brand and genuinely reflect our ideals and vision. If they didn’t then our directory simply wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t stand out, it would be obvious that we only selected the businesses because they paid us, not because we liked them, and our followers would lose interest because they wouldn’t be seeing the type of suppliers that we know they like and want. Plus I know personally I would find it incredibly hard to promote people I don’t like, one of the aspects of my job I love is discovering new and exciting talent and then letting as many people know about them as possible!
From the little I know of Annabel I imagine that she would be the same, only selecting businesses that she genuinely loved and were in tune with Love My Dress and all it represents. There is a wealth of incredibly talented suppliers and businesses out there, with new suppliers and makers starting up all the time, the difficult part is selecting the people you really love, oh and then hoping they want to be featured in your directory too!
I think when deciding on the credibility and value of a directory you have to base your opinion on the blog/website that features them, I for one know that I would most definitely trust that Annabel and Love My Dress would only select businesses that they love and genuinely believe would be of interest to their readers.
A great post and very interesting, also something that a lot of people and sites would not share.
It is so easy to set up a blog or site now a days that it is easy for industries and niche sectors to become flooded, but that doesn’t mean they are all great, it is more about focusing in on what you do best, and also being a site that sticks to its goal and what its readers want, while also coming up with new creative features etc.
There will always be sites that copy things but it should just be a complement to doing things so well, it is good to be a leader and always thinking two steps ahead of everyone else.
Sam
Thanks so much for your comment Sam, I really appreciate it. Sharing this post was something that had been on my mind a while. I know some critics might say ‘why bother?’ but I’ve always listened to *my* instinct when it comes to stuff like this. There is so much changing right now, it was a really useful and helpful exercise for me to consider it all and pen my thoughts. I am glad you found it a helpful read 🙂
Annabel x
If you didn’t go with your instinct, or do something different that others may not, then all blogs would be the same and you certainly wouldn’t stand out!
Other comments have been interesting too which adds to it as well!
As a spouse to be I found Love My Dress after a companion’s wife imparted their Real Wedding highlight on Facebook a couple of weeks back. From that point forward its turned into an absolute necessity read for me. There are heaps of wedding sites out there however this is the stand out I hold returning to, the articles have issued me heaps of thoughts. I cherish the organization and discover it truly simple to peruse. My wedding will without a doubt be Love My Dress roused!
A someone who runs a successful (although still in its infancy – 3 years) wedding website/blog (call it what you wish) in another country, we too have a community of wedding vendors, neatly placed in A-Z alphabetical order under specif categories. With this comes SM coverage, interviews and so forth. These are paid for profiles, BUT we do not accept every enquiry we receive, in fact, this year alone, we have turned down 10 enquiries to list.
Why?A number of factors, either the company/vendor in question has no trade licence, they have no website, they are brand spanking new with zero experience, they have no professional photography to showcase their work or their product/service does not match the needs of our readers. We don’t point black say NO, but we advise and make suggestions on how they can improve their own business and refer them to our community for wedding vendors, where we put on education and inspirational workshops for professionals in the industry.
At the end of they day, we work 24/7 creating unique content for our readers, we answer emails directly from brides, we put on events for the bridal community – We are a business. We need to pay our bills and we need vendors to pay to be listed in order to keep our site alive, however we have to create a balance……unlike some wedding websites, we are not a “free for all” directly that pumps out press release content just for the sake of SEO rankings. We also write unique features, feature real weddings, create styled shoots, conduct industry reviews, etc.
What separates the websites that have a personal touch to the “money hungry” free for all directory style sites, is that we and websites like ‘Love My Dress’ genuinely care about the industry and our readers. We are connecting brides with vendors, vendors with brides, transactions are being made, connections are being made and for the work, energy, personal touch and passion we bring to the industry, I think it’s only right that we too, earn a living. But of course, we must be transparent when earning that living, which I do believe we are and any reputable site that does the same, is too xxx
Hi Annabel,
We (myself and two others) run a small UK based wedding blog promoting UK businesses who hand make items or offer bespoke services. We have worked hard to create a blog that has relevant and creative content that our readers enjoy. We have recently added a directory element which we charge to be part of. The cost is comparatively very low but it is equally necessary to cover the running costs of our website. We don’t get paid for our time as we’re in the process of growing as a business. We simply enjoy what we do! We do however choose our sponsors very carefully and do not promote any business that doesn’t fit with our core values. We must love what they do and with the amount of talent out the this isn’t difficult in most cases.
Your blog continues to inspire and enthuse, keep up the fantastic work!
From all at And So To Wed x