Blogger Spotlight: Laura Scott, SheHearts

Laura Scott is the blogger behind SheHearts, a luxury lifestyle blog that specialises in beauty, fashion, travel and food. Laura showcases handpicked favourites from each sector with in-depth reviews and quality photography. We spoke to Laura about how her experience as a social media consultant helps with her blog, excellent collaborations she’s worked on and  the importance of Twitter.

Why did you start your blog?
SheHearts started due to my sheer passion for all things beauty, fashion, travel and food combined with my love of photography and creative writing. I brought my interests together along with my professional skill set to ensure that readers came away feeling both visually and editorially inspired.

Another reason is that I simply love helping others when it comes to helping choose places to travel, beauty products to try, and restaurants to enjoy.

Professionally I work as a social media consultant and I’m also a certified photographer, fashion stylist and marketer, so my professional skill set benefits the quality of my blog and brands that I work for.

Can you tell us about your social media consulting?
I have over twelve years’ experience in social media consultancy and it’s something I’m very passionate about. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some truly wonderful brands such as NIVEA UK while they sponsored The Voice on ITV, Monsoon and Accessorise, Celebrity hairdresser Stuart Phillips, and many others.

I love helping brands create personalised strategies to boost their social media performance, and just like SheHearts, everything I do is highly personalised. I always ensure I help brands create unique and personalised social media strategies to help maximise their brand’s online voice.

Which social platforms are most important for your blog?
Before starting my blog, I started off on Twitter which is something that’s incredibly important to my blog. Social media is all about engagement and developing relationships online; I love the people I have met and friendships developed through Twitter and also through my blog.  Twitter is my favourite social media platform in general because it’s so simple to use and an effective way to continually engage on a daily basis, I love it.

Instagram is also important especially for travel photography, I love showcasing images of beautiful places I visit.

What advice would you give other bloggers looking to be successful on social media?
To simply be yourself, talk about things you personally love and engage with your following. Develop relationships with others and always be genuine. Kindness is something which is incredibly important when it comes to social media.

Remember your blog is your brand, it’s so important to be yourself and be passionate about what you talk about. It’s important to start a blog out of sheer passion and enthusiasm.

You cover a diverse range of content, is it a challenge combining it all?
Not at all, the topics I cover all tie in nicely together underneath the same bracket: a luxury lifestyle.

Approaching things from a generalised luxury lifestyle perspective gives SheHearts readers a variety of things to choose from whenever they visit; I like a slight element of surprise too and creating posts which are slightly different.

How do you like to work with brands and PRs?
Developing relationships with brands and PRS is so important to me, I’ve worked in PR before and I’ve had the pleasure of working with bloggers before I became a blogger myself, so I understand the importance of brand/blogger relationship.

Relationship is the key word here, when working with a brand you feel passionate about, it benefits both brand and blogger, the pieces you create are always passionate.

It’s great to create a personalised piece between brand, PR and blogger to create something unique. That’s something I particularly enjoy so that it benefits both, that’s the beauty of a successful collaboration.

What one thing should brands and PRs know about you?
Delivering high quality content for brands I work for is incredibly important to me. Ensuring I deliver high quality photographic imagery and engaging editorial are aspects I always ensure to deliver when it comes to collaborative project.

Engagement is also something I really enjoy and generating conversation with my readers, bringing them great content excites me and it brings me joy when others enjoy the features that I create for them.

Can you give an example of an excellent collaboration? What made it so good?
There are a few favourite collaborations across my different specialist areas:

Fashion – I always enjoy collaborating with luxury international designer Omar Mansoor; he’s showcased at London Fashion Week International several times and I’ve had the pleasure of showcasing some of his samples straight from the catwalk and onto SheHearts. Interviewing Omar on my blog has allowed me to give features a personalised touch, and allows me and my readers to really get to know him as a designer.

Beauty – One of my favourite beauty collaborations has been with the Charlotte Tilbury team. The brand is very close to my heart as I hired a pro-artist from the Tilbury team to do my wedding day makeup last year, so showcasing her beautiful products on SheHearts really was extra special. Recently I showcased some of my favourite picks from the brand and also products I used on my wedding day. The collaboration was a success as the brand truly understood my vision for the feature and passion for photographic.

Travel – One of my travel highlights this year was a stay at the Abadia Retuerta Le Domaine, a five-star hotel in a restored 12th-century abbey tucked away in the city of Valladolid, Spain. The hospitality during our stay made this such a positive press experience.

Food – Collaborating with The Ritz London was a favourite foodie feature of 2017. The entire experience was incredibly personalised. We enjoyed a VIP tour around The Ritz exploring their private rooms which really was such a pleasure and, of course, enjoying their cocktails and moreish canapés!

What other blogs do you read?
I read a variety of different blogs, one of my favourite lifestyle blogs is A Glass of Ice run by Gabrielle who is also a great friend of mine. We have similar interests and both share a love of photography, fashion, beauty and chocolate! Another blog I enjoy reading is The Style Contour for fashion and great styling tips. For beauty I absolutely adore Kandee Johnson‘s YouTube channel and Lisa Eldridge‘s tutorials. There are just so many!

Laura Scott and SheHearts are just two listings on the Vuelio Influencer Database, which is the UK’s leading influencer database available to the PR and communications industries.