How I Became a Second Life Event Vlogger
Two steps? Yeah - it’s really that simple. :) At least it was for me!
Step 1: Build your ‘resume’
…and by resume, I mean your ‘social media channels’. Let’s be real - brands ask Bloggers & Vloggers to help promote their events in exchange for the goods they are wearing in the content that is being created. Just like the ‘real world’, it’s in a Brands best interest to work with content creators (vloggers & bloggers) that:
Have large social media followings (lots of possible customers that could see and want the thing they are wearing)
Create content that people will interact with on social media platforms. When people ‘like’ the content or ‘share it’ to their friends, that creates more reach for the brand to expose itself to more people.
It’s up for debate on whether or not you have to have a large social media following to be accepted as a Blogger or Vlogger. I’m no Strawberry Singh or Meela Vanderbuilt. I’m a ‘baby blogger’ at best: for perspective I have less than 1000 YouTube subscribers, less than 300 followers on Flickr, a very modest Mastadon following, and less than 1000 followers on Twitter (and I follow a ton of people on Twitter, too - so I don’t even know if ‘follower count’ really matters there for the sake of this topic).
Does follower count matter? For Second Life, I don’t think so. Some of my favorite machinima makers in Second Life have less than 200 followers. (Have you seen Teal Aurelia? Or Godiva?)
Teal did a great ‘ad’ for Signature in this video, featuring the body in this epic tale of war and fighting amongst romans. At the time of this article, she has less than 200 Youtube subscribers and 600 Twitter followers, but she has almost 3000 Flickr followers and makes some amazing videos! Would YOU turn her down if she applied to be your blogger? NO WAY. No one would if they went to her social media and saw the content she makes.
I’m no Teal Aurelia, but I -do- make good content. My reach is decent on my posts, I can get some pretty interesting interactions on the content I make, and I’m creative. So for me, my ‘selling points’ on my resume are the actual pieces of content I create on social media platforms - thats why I wanted to make sure I had lots of good ones that were recent and easy to find on all of my social media channels. That way when I finally did apply to a Brand or an Event I wanted to work for, they’d see my newest and best work when they went to my pages.
Step 2: Apply
Events and Brands put out for content creators like Bloggers and Vloggers all the time. I have followed some of my favorite events and brands on social media (Twitter), and thats where I see most of the posts looking for new content creators. (I share those requests too, just in case any of my friends are interested!) When I saw one pop up for an event I like to shop at, I filled out a quick Google Form and waited to see what happened. After a few days, I got a notecard letting me know that my applciation had been accepted.
I think there can be some temptation to go crazy and apply to, like, every event out there. While this could totally come with some neat loot from some amazing creators, I can also see how it could eat up all of your extra Linden and time creating content. For someone like me who actually has fun making advertising ads (I know, I’m weird ya’ll), that can be awesome…but I can also see how that could easily lead to burn out. And this is suppose to be fun, right? :)
Other Stuff
I decided that I was only going to do one Event- offically. I don’t need anyones permission to ‘blog for a brand’ - I can credit whoever I want in a picture or video and share it out on my socials for fun. But when someone gives me free product in hopes of advertising, it’s a big responsibility for me. I’m getting free stuff in the hopes that I’ll create an ad experience that will make people want to go to the event and ‘buy the thing’….and as someone that’s seen some amazing ads over the last few months (that have made we want to go and buy the thing!), I want to do the creators justice. So here I am - I’m an Abnormality girl! \o/
The ‘Blogger Room’ opens tomorrow, where I will have access to all of the items for this coming round. Then it looks like Bloggers/Vloggers have roughly two weeks to create content for the items for sale. I’ve never done any of this before, so I’m excited to go and see whats there. I plan to only take items that I think I can make a reasonable piece of shareable content for, and it’s kind of exciting to see what I’ll send up with. All I know is the theme - that’s it! :)
