Month: December 2011

Welcome to Part 5 of One Year of Blogging, Sharing the Love with Collaborations. This week I will be sharing some insights I’ve gathered over my first year as a full time blogger. I felt it was necessary to share my thoughts with others because its information I wish I had from day one. I hope you can gain something from what I have to say or relate to my journey in some way. //

Let me just say that collaborations have been my form of a floaty/life raft. Opening my blog up to other bloggers and sharing my little corner of the internet with other creatives has proven to be an extremely rewarding experience. If you are interested in providing your readers with some new and refreshing content and also helping yourself out with the post writing “work load”, you may want to consider bringing other bloggers into your digital space.

So how do you get started with collaborations and what are they exactly?
When I decided I wanted to not only bring contributors into my space but also be a contributor on other’s blogs, I made a list of all the bloggers I admired (personally and creatively). Out of that list I started to build online relationships with these people through sharing my own work, connecting in a email, or just a simple hello on twitter. Over time you will know if you want to work with someone because just sharing ideas with them, gets you excited. I made some really great connections over this first year of blogging, so why not tap into their creative minds and resources.

After you make connections with people and narrow down the individuals you’d possibly like to work with, contact them about the opportunity to collaboration. For me, collaborations meant sharing content on each other’s blogs on a weekly basis, also know as guest blogging. This is a perfect way to expand your social network, grow your blog readership because you bringing new readers to your blog, give your readers new content to read (and look forward to) and give yourself a change of scenery.

My blog wouldn’t be what it has evolved to be without the incorporation of collaborations. Collaborations have literally saved my sanity and have kept blogging exciting. See what Bree of Moxee has to say about “sharing the love”.

Insights from Bre of Moxee (one of my weekly blog collaboration partners)
“I believe the single greatest thing about collaborations is watching relationships grow. Whether you’re working on a project with someone or guest blogging somewhere else, a little network begins to flourish. And that network, my friends, can seriously help contribute to a successful blog. Don’t be afraid to reach out and meet new people. You never know what could happen! It really is a small world out there and I know I couldn’t be more excited to see where my current (and future) collaborative adventure take me.”

Read INRO to week-long series.
Read Part 1 // Staying Connected Socially
Read Part 2 // Blogging Regularly
Read Part 3 // Having Patience
Read Part 4 // Sharing The Love (Collaborations)

*All photos in this series are from Marco Suarez Art Shop on Etsy and all type was typeset by myself.

I wanted to thank everyone for stopping by this week and sharing some of their own insights. I noticed some new faces and that’s always exciting to see. I hope you were able to find one little nugget of information that you could take away with you on your own blogging journey. Keep in touch dear friends!