Blog

In Conversation with Sasha Wilkins Liberty London Girl

We are so thrilled to that Lifestyle Blogger Sasha Wilkins aka Liberty London Girl (@LibertyLndnGirl) is joining us in April. She is one of the UK’s most successful bloggers and is a well known brand in her own right. Her blog gets over 250,00 hits a month and she has been named of one of London’s most influential people. She is going to share her story with us. There will be a Q&A session after her presentation.

About Sasha Wilkins

Style journalist, editor and broadcaster, and entrepreneur, Sasha Wilkins is probably best known as the founder of the multi-award winning lifestyle digital platform LibertyLondonGirl.com.

Founded eight years ago, read in 140 countries, and reaching over half a million people each month, LibertyLondonGirl includes the popular blog, Instagram & Twitter feeds which between them showcase Sasha’s singular, curated view into the worlds of fashion, food, art, travel, design and sausage dogs.

Sasha is also a talented cook, and her recipe book Friends, Food, Family: Recipes & Secrets from LibertyLondonGirl was published by Quadrille in the UK in 2014. It will debut in America in Autumn 2015.

Before launching LibertyLondonGirl, Sasha’s career as a senior fashion editor included roles as Executive Style Editor, both at The Wall Street Journal in New York and at The Observer’s O: Magazine in London. Her features journalism has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Red and The Sunday Times, amongst others. She remains a regular fashion week critic for both Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio and The LFW Daily, and has appeared on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour and on ABC’s Good Morning America as a style expert.

You can find her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Date: Tuesday 7 April 2015

Tickets: £15

Agenda

This event will be held at the stylish Westbury Hotel on Conduit Street. (Nearest tube: Bond Street)

6.30pm – Registration and networking
7.00pm – Guest Speaker in private room

8.00pm – Adjourn to the Polo Bar for drinks and canpaes Including Q&A and Networking

Get your ticket now to confirm your place.

Venue :

Gillray’s Steakhouse and Bar, County Hall Marriott Hotel
Westminster Bridge Road, SE1 7PB
Nearest tube: Waterloo or Westminster
Note: There are 2 entrances, one is the main hotel entrance and the other is on the South Bank, just past the London Eye, above the Aquarium which leads directly to the restaurant.

Hashtag: #LadiesBlogging

Blogging

Alternatives to nRelate Plugin for Related Posts

I know a lot of you use the nRelate plugin for related posts but they have just announced that they are going to discontinue this. This is a real bummer as I really like the options that this plugin allows and the ability to edit the CSS to fit my blogs.

I have been looking at alternatives and have found a few below:

My favourite new plugin Contextly – Free and Paid

Contextly is available for WordPress blogs as a plugin. This one is most similar to nRelate and is the best alternative I have found so far. Just install it, get the API and you are done. The best thing is that all the processes are not done on your server so it doesn’t hog up your resources. It will not slow down your site.

You can customise your Contextly feeds by adding two RSS feeds to the “Interesting” and “Custom” sections. You can also add in-post sidebars manually or automatically.

Another useful perk is that you can get daily or weekly emails that show you detailed stats per post and identifies which post got the most traffic. I think this is quite a nice addition service.

This one is free up to 10,00 uniques a month. I believe you pay for the premium service if your traffic exceeds this.

Link Within – Free

Link Within is a service that I used to use a while back before I found these other ones. You can use this on Blogger, Wordpres, Typepad and other blogs too. This is easy to install with just a code from their website. The issue with this one is that there are no choices for settings, to exclude categories, to change layout and designs. It is the most basic but has its limitations.

Engageya – Free

This works on Blogger, WordPress and has a JavaScript option for other platforms. You need to sign up for an account to get the widget.

Shareaholic – Free

I found out that they had this option recently when they automatically turned it on when I updated the plugin. I used this for the Sexy Bookmarks option but I really don’t like it when they force new options on you without warning. I have turned this option off now.

There are some choices in the settings section but I didn’t spend a lot of time testing them out.

Other WordPress Plugins

There’s a number of Related Posts plugins for WordPress such as

Blogging

9 blogging detox tasks for the first week of the year

It’s the new year and it’s time for a blog detox. Here are 9 things that you should do to update, clean up to maintain and protect your blogs.

1. Update copyright on your blogs

Does your blog still say “copyright 2014”? This is one that is often forgotten and ignored. If your blog does not have have an automatic or dynamic year inserted in the footer, you will need to get into the code and edit it.

2. Audit your social media accounts and set goals for 2015

If you are like me and you just let your social media account run without much thought on promotions, this year might be the year that you take a more proactive approach. Assess where you are and set up a goal for numbers to achieve this year. For Ladies In Blogging, I will be setting up some new goals and will probably do a few follow along posts. If you would be interested in this, let me know in the comments below.

3. Edit your editorial calendar

Plan your blog content by using an editorial calendar. If you are on WordPress, you can use this free plugin. If not, just use Google Calendar or something similar. Mark down all the major events of the year, seasonal events and anything else that is relevant to your audience. Prepare content to suit the seasons or to promote for an event.

4. Change your passwords

With so many bot attacks on blogs it is imperative that you keep your sites secure. Check that your login in name is not a first name, if it is change it. Change your password to something that is more secure with caps, numbers and symbols.

5. Check that your site security is in place

These wordpress plugins are useful for deterring software from hacking your sites, login lockdown and wordfence security plugins can help add that extra layer of security.

6. Review your blog backup plan

Do you have a blog backup plan? If not, make sure you add one. Regularly backup your blogs in case your server fails or you get hacked. You can easily restore your blog without losing years of content that you have painstakingly created.

7. Fix your broken links

This is important for SEO as broken links will put a damper on your SEO efforts. Use this site Broken Link Checker and run a report. Fix all the links that are listed on that site and keep doing this on a regular basis.

8. Update your about page

Your about page is one of the pages that a lot of people will visit if they want to learn more about you and your blog. If you have not updated this in a while, then you should take this week to revisit it and update all the pertinent information on it.

9. Update your Media Kit

Lots have probably happened on your blog in the last year so it is probably time to update your Media Kit. If you don’t have one, come along to our next event to learn more about how to create one.

If there are other things that you do on your blog, do share in the comments below. Please feel free to share on social media too.

Networking Events

January Networking: Create Your Media Kit and Working With PRs

NOTE: New Date announced! 24 March 2015

If you are progressing from a hobby blogger to getting more commercial and monetising your blog, you need to be prepared for all the questions potential clients will ask. Having a comprehensive media kit will answer all these questions.

At this month’s event we will talk about Media Kits or Media Packs, what they are, what you need to include and show you a sample of some innovative ways to design your own media pack. There will be a lot of takeaways from this session.

Introduction of media kits
What to include in a media kit
What stats to include
Media kit design dos and don’ts
Learn how to communicate with brands and potential sponsors
Why work with brands at all
What brands really want
How to remain authentic

Our Speaker of the month is Helen Best Shaw of FussFreeFlavours.com

“Helen Best-Shaw (@FussFreeFlavour) is the food writer, recipe developer and the voice behind Fuss Free Flavours, one of the UK’s most popular food blogs. Having spent many years as a financial analyst, she now works with food, full time. With her firmly held belief that everyone deserves good food, and mantra of “tasty stuff without the fuss”, Helen’s recipes aim to be achievable, attainable and affordable as well as delicious.” FussFreeFlavours.com

Helen, a top UK Food Blogger, will be our guest speaker on this topic. She is frequently at the top of the UK food Bloggers’ charts and she now makes a full time living from her blog and she will share with you her tips and tricks on how to put together your own media pack.

Date: ~~Monday, 12 January 2015.~~ 24 March 2015 From 6.30pm.

Tickets: £15

Agenda
6.30pm – Registration and networking

7.00pm – Guest Speaker and Q&A

8.00pm – Networking

Get your ticket now to confirm your place.

Venue : (Note new venue)

Four to Eight Restaurant

G5 Catherine Street,

Covent Garden

London WC2B 5JZ

Hashtag: #LadiesInBlogging

Blogging

Writing: Most misused English words

As bloggers we tend to write as we speak. Sometimes, there is little attention paid to the usage of proper spelling or grammar. As a reader of many blogs, I find it hard to read blogs that are filled with typos and grammatical errors.

Another common problem is the misuse of words, like “there” and “their”. Here is a handy chart that explains the 12 most misused words.

Source for Infographic: Listmonde

In Conversation with Sasha Wilkins Liberty London Girl

Alternatives to nRelate Plugin for Related Posts

My favourite new plugin Contextly – Free and Paid