Blogger Outreach: Gemma Cartwright
Don’t be afraid…
Gemma Cartwright started blogging when she was in 16. She joined Shiny Media [R.I.P.] in 2004 to launch their first fashion site Shoewawa.com, going on to become Group Editor of the Shiny fashion network. She’s written about celebrities for The Nod, happy homelife at Domestic Sluttery, geek chic for Dork Adore, and a host of on- and off-line media.
Last year she founded Big Girls Browse, a site aimed at anyone who finds it hard to shop to suite their shape, and has already attracted interest from most of the High St brands including a guest spot editing the Evans blog.
Gemma Cartwright
1. Do PRs contact you regarding your site?
Yes.
2. Should they?
Absolutely. I really don’t mind receiving press releases, email pitches, celeb style IDs, event invitations…anything really. I’m not bothered by a bulging inbox, I can easily delete the stuff I don’t need. That said, I do get a lot of badly-targeted stuff from PRs in the US and my requests to be removed from their lists go unnoticed. If I went to all the events in NY that I’m invited to, I’d have an astounding amount of airmiles!
How to do a blogger event
Event Essential: The Goody Bag
Following on from How not to run a social media conference in London I saw this from Gemma Cartwright praising The Body Shop for a recent bloggers event and explaining why it worked. [Organisers Headstream should take a bow for this]
If you’re collecting advice then back in the day I also wrote on the Shiny Red blog top tips pitching to the UK’s top tech bloggers following a panel discussion.
Tiaras and Tears: The problem with the Female Social Media Guru UK Award
You may have caught my previous thoughts on women being under-represented at industry events. So while it’s fantastic to see Social Glue initiate a Female Social Media Guru UK Award it caused a few rumblings and raised some questions for me…
Couldn’t we just recognise these women amongst their peers [male & female]. I think this is the heart of the problem the award is attempting to address.
Jamie has justified thus:
This is a debate we have had over the last few weeks. You are right there should be no division on gender but if you look at speaker panels there clearly is. Hopefully this combats the problem.
The “you missed off so-and-so” outcry was almost certainly due to lack of criteria [it seems to be just something to do with the internet and having a vagina being female] and probably a misconception there’s only a small number of fantastic women in Social Media.
I also found the later ranking of all nominees, with number of votes displayed, in poor taste.
I don’t want to get too down on Jamie. It was intended to address a very real issue and was well intentioned but comparing these women across their diverse areas is bit like like apples and oranges.
Here’s some of my faves and the areas where I think they are Social Media gurus. I’m pleased some of them made the list.
About:
I'm Darika Ahrens and I help brands develop marketing strategies for Social Media. My background is in Public Relations for companies like Orange, Microsoft, Philips, HTC, Yell.com, and Estee Lauder. I've worked with and trained some of the UK's top agencies.