Engage & Interact Here

Since I began building my website, NextInFashion.com, I have discovered several websites that allow me to easily engage and interact with potential site visitors and contributors. Here are two of the sites that have proven to be most effective in creating awareness for NIF.

1. Independent Fashion Bloggers

When I first came across this website I thought, "Great, there are even more competitors than I could have imagined, and they're all in one place!" As I started to click from page-to-page on the site, I realized that there is a large fashion blogging community that is willing to offer advice and share what is and is not working for them. It was also apparent that the bloggers were very interested in networking with other bloggers and excited to "meet" new people.

Almost immediately I decided NIF had to have a strong presence on this site and created a profile. Some of the tools I found useful in attracting potential site visitors and contributors were:

+The real-time "wire" feed: write a note that is posted for everyone on IFB to see; i.e. new blog post announcements, calls for submission announcements, general updates

+ Groups: you can start a group and it is added to the "Latest Groups" bulletin for everyone on IFB to see, so if you need advice on certain advertising methods or are looking for fellow bloggers to talk with from your city, this would be the place to figure things out.

+Polls: use polls to get answers to your big blogging/fashion questions. Anytime you want you can start a new poll and it will be posted in the poll feed for everyone on IFB to see and answer (if it is an interesting enough poll).



2. The Fashion Spot

The Fashion Spot is an excellent general fashion website for the fashion conscious looking to interact with others with similar interests. A large portion of TFS is the forums. The topics have thousands of replies, and view counts in the hundred thousands. If you have a need to engage people with a passion for fashion, this is the place to be, and the place to dedicated some hours in the day to. For NIF, I have posted calls for submissions as well as answered a few of the questions from future fashion students; this portrays NIF as an informer in the area of academic meets fashion and the people answering the questions have visited the site after seeing the answers I gave.

The trick is to post a few topics in the forum (with intriguing titles) and you will reach many, many people who may be just who you are hoping to reach. The catch, you have to apply to be able to utilize The Fashion Spot forums; it is a simple process, but may take a few weeks before you will be accepted.