LLG FAQ

WHAT’S YOUR DAY JOB?

Sausage dog trainer, cake decorator, mess maker and party frock wearer.

For most of my career I have been a hyphenate kind of person. I’ve been earning my living as a reporter-writer-blogger-journalist-broadcaster-editor-stylist-brand consultant since I started my career at Condé Nast over ten years ago. Since 2009, running LLG Media has been my full-time role: this encompasses my digital media consultancy business LLG Consults, the LLG digital platform (blog, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest), and all the external brand collaborations and endorsements I undertake as a pro-blogger.

CAN I HIRE YOU?
If it’s legal…email me at contact [at]libertylondongirl.com

EMAIL
If you would like to get in touch, the email is contact [at] libertylondongirl.com and I absolutely welcome messages & feedback, (especially from readers who love dachshunds too.) Being part of a community is what blogging is all about, & receiving emails from you all makes my day. Really.

However, my brain has started to buckle under the pressure of trying to reply to the astonishing number of emails I receive each each week. I’ve now come to the realisation that I just cannot physically reply to each email individually. I read absolutely everything, but I cannot promise to acknowledge each email I receive.

If your query is about TV, Radio, Endorsement and Speaking enquiries please contact my lovely agent Richard Gibb at Curtis Brown at richard [at] curtisbrown.co.uk

ETHICS
NOTHING makes me angrier than unethical, mendacious, unprofessional & spectacularly stupid bloggers who egregiously mislead their readership as to the commercial origin or provider of the clothes, products, hotel stays etc that they trill about on their sites, thereby letting down the entire blogging community (you know exactly who you are). For the full LLG ethical disclosure section please head here.

ADVERTISING
At the moment we do not run display advertising on LLG.
Please email me at advertising [at] libertylondongirl.com to discuss any future placements.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN BLOGGING?
I started blogging back in 2006, but didn’t take it up daily until March 2007 when I moved to New York from London when I was working as a freelance stylist. I stopped for most of 2008 when I went off to head up the fashion, beauty, jewellery & watch departments on The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ magazine as their executive style editor. I took LLG out of cold storage in January 2009 and have blogged daily, or nearasdamnit since then.

IS IT JUST YOU?
Yup. It’s pretty much all me. I built the site myself, &  write, photograph, picture edit and post everything on LLG. I do occasionally run guest posts from other writers, bloggers & editors, but it’s always at my discretion, & they are always clearly marked.

Now that LLG is my full-time job, I do have some help from Team LLG. That’s my Executive Assistant and all-round superwoman Emily Cunningham, who runs my office, life and well, everything,  & who can be contacted at Emily [at] libertylondongirl.com, and my extraordinary agents at literary & talent agency Curtis Brown. Richard Gibb in Presenters handles all my commercial collaborations, PAs, and endorsements, and Gordon Wise is my literary agemt.

PHOTOGRAPHY
I shot approximately 75% of the photography on LLG using a little digital point & shoot Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS5 with a Leica lens until April 2010. Would I recommend the Panasonic? No, not particularly, but it did the job. After that I used a brilliant little Canon Ixus, and then a Canon G12. I now shoot on a Canon Rebel/6D DSLR, and also on my Samsung SIII phone. The other 10% of images are from publicists, retailers or stock.

If you believe we have used an image in error please contact us at contact [at] libertylondongirl.com

MY WEBSITE
I started Libertylondongirl using a blogspot domain on Blogger. Eventually I bought my domain name, and then switched to a self-hosted blog when my traffic exploded in 201o.

I use Go Daddy to host my blog.  (Please don’t.) I built the site myself using the Thesis template on a WordPress.org platform.
My header was designed by the utterly excellent, calm & collected digital designer Tim Dillon who took my inchoate ideas and made them brilliant.

COMMENTS
Oooh yes please. I love to hear what you all have to say. Feedback, agreement, disagreement: bring it on I say. Without comments I’d just be wittering away into a vacuum. Two way communication is what social media is all about: conversation not a broadcast.

BUT. The comments section is not the place to shamelessly plug a different website, blog or place. Three word comments with a big bold link in the comment body?  Off to spam you go.

Likewise pasting your blog address into the comment body is just spam by a different route. The comments form layout is specifically set up to allow your usename to auto-link to your URL. Leaving it again just looks like shameless pluggery. As it happens, my comments section is auto set up to refer all comments containing URLs to spam where they will stay unless the URL is pertinent to the comment.

Likewise, trolls. I believe strongly that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all. By that I don’t mean that everyone has to agree with all that I say but, if you wish to have a difference of opinion with me, it would be splendid if you could avoid slander, insults, obscenity and general nastiness. The karma police WILL get you. (If Posetta Baddog doesn’t get there first.)

FASHION & JOURNALISM STUDENTS
Since I started LLG, I’ve received regular mail from students who want career advice, to interview me or to get my ticks on survey boxes. Up until now, I have replied to them all, as I like to help, but I can no longer promise to do so due to the rather staggering volume of requests I now receive. (Often simultaneously from lots of students on the same course at the same university!)

In particular, I can no longer provide written answers to interview questions for term papers, reports or theses, or fill out surveys, especially those which require personal information.
Bulk impersonal requests via Twitter to hundreds of bloggers & journalists are rude & I don’t respond to them