How to Start a Beauty Blog
Want to know how to start a beauty blog? This step-by-step guide for starting a beauty blog will make it easy to instantly establish an interesting and useful site for your readers.
Important Elements of a Successful Beauty Blog
Like being a fashion blogger, a lifestyle blogger, or any other specialized writer, becoming a beauty blogger requires a number of key elements to become successful. Beauty blogging theme involves more than just making posts about hair, makeup, and skincare products or techniques. Setting your blog up for success from the very beginning involves careful thought about how you’re going to communicate your message to your readers or viewers. Because beauty is often such a visual subject, photography and, increasingly, video are super important to the whole process. You’ll want a good camera setup, good lighting, and basic knowledge of how to style and edit your shots. Don’t discount the importance of video; beauty vloggers on YouTube and even some social media mavens are cutting writing out of the equation and gaining huge collections of followers in the process.
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This doesn’t mean that you can’t include written content in your blog. That written content just needs to be useful and optimized for search. Try to structure your posts to include a numbered or bulleted step-by-step list of instructions for your readers. Doing this will not only make the post extra useful but may also help you get featured in a Google Answer Box for a specific search query, which is a great way to get your blog featured at the very top of a search engine results page for a specific topic. Search engines still value written content very highly, so don’t discount how important this element of your beauty blog can be. SEO strategy is essential for your beauty blog’s success.
Last, but not least, you’re going to need some good content ideas to really set yourself apart.
Great Content Ideas
Learning how to start a makeup blog requires a lot of content idea brainstorming. There are a lot of different makeup “how-tos” and other types of content out there and it’s no use doing the same thing as everyone else if you want to rise to the top.
Check out some of these famous beauty blogs for inspiration:
Stay on Top of Trends (or Create Your Own)
Start looking carefully at celebrity social media, editorials in fashion magazines and makeup looks from runways shows. Spotting a trend before it really takes off can put you in a unique position as a beauty blogger. Provide the first good tutorial on how to do a cutting-edge makeup look will definitely make your blog stand out, so try to think outside the box and provide something new and different but still relevant.
Of course, following other people’s lead isn’t your only option as a beauty blogger. You can also try some outlandish techniques and push the envelope. Even if it isn’t a look you’d actually wear outside or expect to see on the street, you can still provide something interesting and entertaining for your readers or viewers to watch. In fact, getting outlandish may even help you achieve viral success as people ask what the heck you’re doing.
Let Your Personality Shine
Some beauty bloggers and vloggers are so charming and personable that it doesn’t really matter that they aren’t the best at what they do. In fact, these self-deprecating bloggers can actually turn their lack of skills into an asset. If you can manage to both laugh at yourself and make your readers or viewers feel included in your struggle to reach the levels of perfection achieved by others. This relatable approach may actually end up setting you apart more than being really good at makeup alone could. Focusing on the “fails” aspect of trying to learn how to do makeup might be a good idea, too.
Provide Unique Insight
Is there a particular technique or process that you once struggled with but have mastered over time? Whether it’s the dreaded cat eye flick or even something more personal, like a skin condition, focusing on the things that have been challenging for you in the past can actually give you an advantage as a beauty blogger. As mentioned above, being perfect isn’t the only way to be popular and, in fact, relatability is one way to make a name for yourself while staying true to who you are. Sharing the tips and tricks you’ve discovered for solving a particular problem can be an awesome way to empower your followers and showcase your expertise in a certain beauty skill area.
Try Weird Products
Beauty companies are always trying to reinvent the wheel and the social media focus on makeup, hair, and skincare products have sent their ingenuity efforts into overdrive. The result is a constantly evolving range of different “new and approved” beauty products that will supposedly revolutionize the way you care for yourself and do your makeup. Predictably, many of the claims that these products are really life changing are dramatically overblown but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few diamonds in the rough. Most people will give one or two of these products a try—if that—leaving a whole lot of unknowns for you to explore on your blog.
As part of your approach to watching beauty trends, pay attention to new weird and (potentially) wonderful beauty products hitting the shelves. Give them a try and document your experience in detail on your blog. If you’re getting to a particular product later than some high-profile beauty gurus, watch their videos or read their posts and see if they did anything wrong in trying the product. You can put an “I actually made this thing work!” spin on it if necessary.
Create Truly Original Looks
Halloween often gives beauty gurus an initial boost, but that’s not the only time of year you can really make an impact. Think of the Halloween spirit at other times of year. How can you truly transform your face and show off how amazing makeup is? Contouring and painting to look more like a celebrity or creating makeup looks inspired by a specific book or movie character can be great ways to really show off your creativity and skills. The added bonus is that you’re creating super shareable content that’s almost guaranteed to get clicks and reposts—if the finished product actually looks impressive. That’s the key to the original look. It’s got to actually be original. The most imaginative and creative beauty bloggers and vloggers tend to do the best, so really push your creativity and don’t hesitate to do something truly outrageos.