{This is our last post in the Houston Fashion Blogger series. Hope you enjoyed it. Connect and follow these ladies.}

Hi fellow readers of Women Are Gamechangers! I’m so happy to be writing a post for all of you! I’m Shasie of “Live Life in Style” Fashion Blog. I’m an Engineer by Day, Fashionista by Night and founder of Houston Fashion Bloggers. I started my blog back in February of 2010 to satisfy my side passion for fashion and it’s been crazy ever since! What started off as a hobby that I had to perfect has become a part-time job…and I love it! This is my story on how I used my blog to create 3 successful communities of fashion bloggers.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a leader not a follower, 100% bona fied, Type A, competitive, aggressive personality. When I start something I have to finish it, or be the best at it. Of course you can see how this leads to tons of pressure on one’s self, but it’s also great for achieving goals, or starting new ventures or dabbling into an industry that you know nothing about, like blogging. When I first started blogging, I was a lamb to the slaughter (okay it wasn’t that bad, but just sayin). I didn’t know ‘niche’ blogs even existed before my friend Kerry suggested I start one (as a way for me to stop bombarding her Facebook news feed with constant outfit photos of myself! lol). After perusing a few blogs, including my favorite; Jessica Quirk’s What I Wore, I knew that this was something I wanted to do and that darn Type A came out and had me wanting to be where Jessica was in her blogging career,…and just where was Jessica, you ask? Over 12,000 followers, quality outfit photos, invitations to New York Fashion Week, complimentary products from top design houses, and an upcoming book deal. Yea…a lot to aspire too for someone just starting off with a point & shoot, and not knowing a thing about blogging.

So I needed help to quench my need to be the best and who better to ask for tips & advice than other bloggers! I remember emailing Jessica…a lot and she was so sweet and answered all my questions! She introduced me to the Independent Fashion Bloggers site and I signed up right away. At first I couldn’t find any “personal style” bloggers like myself…just bloggers posting magazine editorials. This was not want I wanted. I wanted to see individuality. I wanted to see how real people styled the latest trends and what items they had in their closets. I created a group within IFB called Bloggers who blog on their own outfits. Creating that group would turn out to be the best thing I could have done for my blogging career.Bloggers who own their own outfits on Independent Fashion Bloggers site.

Bloggers who own their own outfits on Independent Fashion Bloggers site.

As you can see today, that group has 421 members and is still growing! With its formation I instantly begin connecting with other personal style bloggers, so much so that I decided sending messages back and forth on IFB wasn’t fast enough for me, and I wanted live-time communication. I decided to create my first Facebook group called the Fashion & Beauty Bloggers Networking group (FBBNG) and invited some of the bloggers I had met on IFB. Today my FB group has over 155 members and myself and Holly of Holly Dolly Fashion admin this group of bloggers from all over the world. It’s amazing how close you can become with people just through similar interests but never meeting in person, however I had a vision that would soon lead to local, face-to-face blogger relationships.

Fashion and Beauty bloggers group on Facebook created by Shalanda.

Motivated by my connections with bloggers worldwide, it was time to look in my own backyard, but finding bloggers in Houston was harder than I thought! In fact, I thought I was the only blogger here for a long time. It wasn’t until Fall of 2011 that I began meeting some other bloggers at Houston Fashion Week. We exchanged cards, and begin to contact each other via email. After that, I began meeting more and more bloggers at random fashion events around the city, and thought…wouldn’t it be great to have one big meet up with all of us locally? So I sent out an email blast to all the Houston Bloggers I had met asking them if they would be interested in attending a Houston Blogger Get-together.

My first meet-up in December was sadly thwarted by rain (Houstonians shutter in doors in the rain) and only 5 bloggers showed up, including me. At first I was discouraged, but decided to spend some money and create a Houston Fashion Bloggers Group on the popular meetup.com site. After creating the group, members began to join exponentially! I guess I wasn’t the only one searching for Houston Fashion Bloggers. Since then my group has grown to over 60 members between our FB group and meetup.com! Hard to believe that I once thought I was the only one here! We have had 3 successful meet-ups so far and many planned for the future. In fact there is so much activity with my group in and around the Houston Fashion Industry that I had to institute a leadership team, to help me manage!

The most recent project, Houston Fashion Bloggers. Great group on meetup.com to join and networking with other Houston bloggers.

The reason I chose to share this particular experience of my blogging career with you is to hopefully motivate you to create the voids that you see. Don’t be afraid to create something that you can’t find, odds are someone else is out there looking for the same thing, and you never know where that your creation can lead too. All of the bloggers I have met whether internet only or face-to-face have become my friends. Whether it’s emailing each other for advice, commenting on our blogs, shopping together, attending meet-ups together or even dog-sitting for each other, we have become friends. The best part to me is knowing that all the people I used to know individually now know each other and that’s how you build a community.