Transcriber: Ruxandra Taleanu Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo
I am an ego blogger.
Now a lot of you might be thinking,
what on Earth is an ego blogger.
I personally prefer to call myself a personal style blogger.
But I recently went on a trip to Spain
and I heard this term, Ego Blogger,
and I thought it was a very interesting concept.
But why? Why do they call us ego bloggers?
Because what we do is we take photos of ourselves
and we post them on the internet.
A lot of you might be thinking that this is a very strange,
and even narcissistic concept, but the fact is that
this kind of blogs are getting bigger and bigger.
And I feel like the demand for this kind of blogs relies on a concept of reality.
Now people are hungry for real inspiration.
We don't want to rely on the magazines to feed us
with this amazing editorials of these beautiful models
wearing extremely expensive clothes.
We want to see this on real people.
We want to see what people around the world are wearing.
And most importantly, we want to see them
on clothes that we can afford.
I was born in Mexico and I was very tall for a Mexican girl.
We were all the same age. That's me with the guitar.
And my mom used to find it impossible
to find clothes that fitted, especially pants,
and she had to make them herself.
And I used to find it fascinating that
we didn't have to go to the store and buy a ready made pair of pants,
that we could make them from scratch.
So, at the age of seven, I remember begging my mom
to teach me how to sew,
and I think it was that moment in my life
that triggered this fashion obsession of mine.
But now, for a young girl growing up in Mexico,
studying Fashion Design was not an option.
Everybody kept telling me that it was
an useless degree to have on my CV,
they told me, "You can't study fashion",
and I let that get into my head, and I decided
to go for Interior Design instead.
But then, I used to find myself sketching clothes
on my breaks -- don't tell my teachers --
and sewing clothes at night in my dorm,
instead of making my homework, and I thought,
I have to do something about this.
And that's when I had to make one of the hardest decisions
of my life back then, and I decided to drop out of university
and chase my dream of studying Fashion Design.
Then, after I dropped out of university,
an opportunity came for me to come to this city,
and I thought, Paris is three hours away,
I could really, realy make it there.
And, I didn't even have any limitation, I thought
it's a land of fashion and anything is possible.
I can make it there. Naively, I thought that.
Unfortunately, the reality was a lot different,
and I found myself jobless for over a year.
I applied for internships
in every single fashion magazine in town
and they all said no.
And I missed my family a lot.
I didn't have any friends,
I didn't know anybody, but I still had that drive,
and I still had that dream inside me, and I thought,
why am I going to give up?
I am not going to give up, and one day,
when I was sitting in bed I thought,
what can I do to get myself noticed,
where can I get my voice heard, and then
it finally hit me as it has been so obvious all along:
the Internet.
I started my blog on the 26th of November of 2007,
four years ago last weekend,
and, when I started, I began gathering all the sewing knowledge
that I had learnt from my mother when I was a child.
And I started posting do-it-yourself projects on the blog,
which was basically showing my readers
how to make their clothes step by step.
But then, one day I was flipping through a magazine
and I was looking at an editorial and I thought,
"What if I could do this, but with affordable brands?"
So then I began translating the looks
from the magazines and the runway shows,
in my own personal style,
with the brands that my readers could afford.
And it somehow worked. I mean, nowadays
I find that people want to see what I'm doing,
they are interested, and millions of people
look at my blog every month.
Our style scrapbook has over 71,000 likes on Facebook,
and over 30,000 followers on Twitter.
But what made my blog so successful?
Oh, that's my DIYs.
I'm going to try to break it down to three main areas.
There is a lot more, but I am going to squeeze it in.
Great content.
Now you have to have great content.
This is very important and on that falls --
You have to have great quality photography.
Now when I started my blog,
I didn't start with a professional camera,
and when you see the photos from before —
That was me before.
That was me on Fashion Week
last September, in New York.
It's a huge difference.
You won't start with professional looking photos.
But it's a process and practice makes perfect,
so just keep practicing and you'll get there.
Also, you have to keep a good flow of content.
Post as often as you can.
I know that it's not possible to post every day.
It's difficult.
But the blogosphere is getting so big
that if you don't post often,
people will forget about you,
and they'll move on to the next blog.
So you have to keep reminding people that you're there.
Now, on good quality content is also --
put your personality across.
The reason why people love personal style blogs
is that they feel they can connect with you,
they feel like they can relate to you,
like they have gotten to know you
in the time they've followed you.
So always put your personality on your text,
tell them stories, tell them anecdotes,
make them feel happy, make them laugh,
make them cry reading your text.
The moment that people feel related
and like they can connect with you,
they will come back for more.
Now, the second one, and it's very important,
to build yourself a strong social network.
This is one of the most important parts,
and with that comes to communicate.
People won't guess that you're out there.
You have to tell them.
You have to invite them
to come into your blog.
You have to go visit all your favorite blogs and tell them,
I've just started this amazing blog
and it's going to change your lives.
Catch them with that phrase and then,
little by little, people will start coming,
and that group is going to multiply.
And it won't happen overnight,
it's not going to be like all this mass of people
are going to come, but I can assure you
that the ball is going to start getting bigger,
and people will start coming.
You also have to build yourself
really strong social media channels.
Twitter and Facebook are the ones that I use,
and I recomment to use that, because they are
huge traffic generators for the blog.
Every morning, when I have a post up on my blog
I go on those two and I let people know
that I have a new post, and the traffic
that comes from there is incredible.
So build yourself really strong media channels.
And the last one, but not least,
is be yourself!
This might seem pretty obvious,
and it might seem like, well, be yourself.
But this is very important!
Don't try to copy other people.
If you try to copy other bloggers
and you try to replicate them, remember that
these people will be a lot better at being themselves
than you will ever be.
So you already setting yourself to be second best.
So always be yourself. Put your personality across.
People will know that you're being genuine
and they will like that, and they will come back.
I learned so much through the past four years,
and I think one of the things that I've learned the most,
and that stayed with me the most,
is that I mustn't be afraid to try.
And I want to leave you with a quote
that I always remind myself
whenever I feel like I can't do something.
When I feel like I need that push for motivation
and I feel in doubt, and it goes something like:
"Only those who risk going too far
can possibly find out how far they can go."
So, I really advise you to do the same.
Thank you.
(Applause)