We were fortunate to recently host two of Cape Town’s leading fashion bloggers, Fran de Viliers of OpenWardrobe.co.za and Marco Riekstins of ManofCloth.co.za
Marco has been blogging for three years on his male-oriented blog Man of Cloth, where he gives the modern man advice on how to always look good and fashionable. He visited our school to speak to our third-year students about one of the legends of international fashion, British designer Paul Smith.
However, being a consummate blogger he couldn’t help but give the students some great advice on how to run their own personal blogs, which included:
• Always know what your voice and your message is
• Always keep your blog concise and clean
• Research your content well so that it is intelligent and fresh
• Read a lot of other blogs!
You can follow Marco’s blog by visiting www.manofcloth.co.za or connect with him on Twitter on @manofcloth
Fran de Viliers is a popular Cape Town fashion blogger and social media expert. She was invited to the school to explain to our third-years how they can use social media to build their personal brands and so make them more employable in the fashion industry.
She took students through two blog platform options – WordPress for the more serious, dedicated blogger, or Tumblr for the casual blogger who prefers to update their blogs on the go.
She offered some invaluable social media tips, including:
• Fashion is visual and emotional – make sure this is carried through on your blog
• Every tweet you post is a press release, as they all represent your brand, so keep things interesting and consistently professional
• Your name is everything, so protect it
• Quality trumps quantity – focus on posting useful, quality content instead of just bombarding people with an endless stream of posts
• Shy away from negativity and always stay positive – remember, you are selling yourself as a brand
• Make sure you have the following on your blog – RSS feed, emailer list integration, and a widget for your Facebook, Twitter
and YouTube
• Finally, follow this simple social media success formula – Image + Message + Call to Action + Link = Engagement!
You can follow Fran’s blog by visiting www.openwardrobe.co.za or connect with her on Twitter on @frangipaniesWe’d like to once again thank these two for sharing their expertise with us, and good luck to our third-years as they dip their toes in the exciting world of social media!