That Recent Blogosphere Drama

I’m guessing we all know what I’m about to talk about just from reading my title… if not where have you been & teach me your ways of switching off please. Well I didn’t really know if I wanted to approach the subject; I didn’t really tweet (I may have retweeted) & I haven’t really spoken about it. I think as a blogger you have to address current issues & well this is one of them. I just wanted to get my thoughts out so here’s a post on the subject.

The basics are as follows; blogger reaches out to hotel (questionable hotel from previous drama but oh well), hotel gets their knickers in a twist, hotel sees a way for promotion & makes a post shaming the blogger, blogosphere goes wild, blogger responds & well everyone put their two cents in.

In was a bit of a whirl wind & wasn’t very nice but it did bring up a few key subjects; how bloggers communicate with brands & and what people think of bloggers. I thought the whole thing was disgusting but wasn’t surprised, the hotel had previously waged a war on vegans so we all knew they liked a bit of publicity from drama. It was honestly just a shit storm.

I felt very sorry for the blogger in question because everyone was throwing negative views her way but also proud of the blogger community for standing together & not putting up with that rubbish. We are a community & we will defend our jobs. Yes I said job & I’ll say it again; job, job, job, job. It’s a bloody job for some people & for others a hobby. Something that shouldn’t be taken lightly or made fun off.

Jacket: Ebay (topshop) | Top: Missguided | Jeans: Topshop | Shoes: Schuh (converse) | Bag: H&M | Ring: hlsk

We got to see what a select group of the public think of bloggers & it wasn’t pretty but I’m not going to let their naivety get to me. People will always throw shade when they don’t understand something. Blogging is a whole different world for some people & they are just too lazy or uninterested to learn anything about it. Doesn’t stop them judging it when they feel like it but hey ho that’s them.

What I did see from this whole drama is bloggers coming forward together to show that connecting with brands isn’t a bad thing or something to be looked down upon. It’s part of the job; you’ve got to put yourself out there to get recognised & you shouldn’t feel ashamed. We aren’t looking for freebies (there are those who do but let’s not let them represent the majority) & a collaboration is just that; a collaboration between brand & blogger. A mutual agreement to work together & provide a service to each other & of course that comes with payments on occasion.

As a blogger or influencer or whatever you like to call yourself you have a job to do. You may be doing it full or part time, earning money or just doing it for fun but we all know it’s a lot harder than it looks. You’ve got to create content from start to finish, then promote it. That’s simplifying just one element of it because as well as creating content, we’ve got to run the blog & there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. I could quite easily list 5 or 6 different job titles that come under a blogger but I feel no need to justify blogging.

Bloggers work hard! It’s the truth & even if you don’t know much about blogging; if people are doing this full time, paying their rent & supporting themselves you should be able to see it as a job. You don’t need to know the ins & outs if you aren’t interested but you do need to sit back, re-evualate yourself  & not be such a dick about it.

I’d like to say thank you to that idiot company for bringing this subject to light because even though they feel like they’ve gain publicity it’s also brought the blogosphere to the public. Maybe the public didn’t quite get it now but we as a community haven’t let blogging be made fun off. We’ve stood together & defended our trade.

Selfishly I also can’t deny it’s been rather handy to see all these helpful posts about pitching to brands! Also just to end this can we talk about how sassy this outfit is & how amazing these jeans are? Well they are my new favs so expect to see a bit more off them! They are now in the sale so go grab a bargain before they are all gone.

Shelley xx

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