Today Fashion Bloggers are a big part of the fashion world, every retailer wants their products being worn by bloggers to help promote their brand and get customers buying their products. Fashion bloggers tend to focus on any new clothing items they have that they want to show their followers by taking photos of them wearing it and where they can purchase it from. They promote beauty products that they use, they put up images of things they like or that give them inspiration, they put up fashion advise for their readers and they post about retailers promotions. For my research I have chosen to research into 5 fashion bloggers that I follow myself, I want to find out what it is they do as a blogger and how they are influencing their readers. Fashion bloggers use all forms of media they can be found on twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube and on their blogs.
Link to book
Basics Fashion Design 01: Research and Design second edition By Sam Seivewright.
Here is a book i found with some general information on blogging and how it has taken a big part in the fashion industry. Below is a copy of the text:
“Blogs are a huge growth area in the
fashion media industry. With the global community that we al now live in,
fashion blogs enable people to review, discuss and follow styles and trends
from all around the world. In terms of research value, blogs offer an opportunity
to gather style and trend information very easily and apply this to market
awareness and new product development.
Fashion blogs can be categorized into many
different fields, such as street style, high street fashion, haute couture,
shoes, handbags, eco-fashion and celebrity style, for instance.
Fashion blogs are increasingly becoming a
vital part of the mainstream fashion media and are easily accessible by a huge
and diverse market. Blogs are also now integral to the PR strategies of many
large fashion companies, as they provide an opportunity for them to promote
their products and simultaneously enable interactive communication with their
customers.
Blogs can be written by anyone, but in
general they fall into three distinct categories, in terms of whether they are
written by insiders, outsiders or aspiring insiders.
Insiders are those who work in the fashion
industry and are able to offer professional opinions and points of view on
current trends and packages.
Outsiders are those people who don’t work
within the fashion industry but have a strong opinion on fashion due to their
personal interest in it as a consumer. Finally, aspiring insiders are those
people who wish to work in the industry and see blogging as a new media and a
means of gaining attentions and possible employment. Many of these aspiring insiders
have indeed found employment and are often invited to feature on mainstream
media websites and to comment on events such as fashion weeks and designer
shows.”
Fashion blogging is a career that has become very popular and now its a career that every girl wants. The Style Network have recently launches a new programme which follows the lives of fashion bloggers and shows what it is exactly they do for their job (below is a trailer for the programme) This is an example of how fashion blogger is seen as a big part of the fashion world today.
"Blogger Luke Langford set the record straight, “The term ‘Professional Blogger’” is no longer an oxymoron”. With the availability of the social media to reach an immeasurable audience, the bloggers of today are no longer only talking about their favourite things as a hobby, they’re full time professionals getting paid to advertise for huge brands, and influencing the way we use content."
That Pommie Girl
Sarah Ashcroft
http://www.thatpommiegirl.com/
On her blog she has an about me page which is where she tells her followers a little bit about herself and how they can contact her.
This is the different type of media platforms she can be found on, her most popular sites are her Instagram and her blogger website.
Here is a screen grab from her Instagram which she is constantly uploading pictures to about new items she has found or just general images of what she is doing.
Sarah Ashcroft likes to make regular videos showing off her new clothing, she calls them "september hauls" or "Zara haul" just letting her readers know what items she is liking that month and where they can find it. She does do other videos on how to do make up and hair which is something a lot of bloggers tend to do as they receive comments on where they purchase their make up from or how do they style their hair in a certain way. Youtube is a really great way for the bloggers to interact with their followers. Below are some examples of what she records on her blogs.
Her Youtube page which is also called That Pommie GirlBelow are some examples of her instagram posts.
Get involved with brands and promote competitions for money off or a chance to win something.
Promotional code for her followers on new beauty products.
A lot of brands send Sarah free clothing to wear and then blog about here is an example of when Asos sent her some free items.
Free beauty products aswell as fashion.In The Frow
Victoria
http://www.inthefrow.com/p/about.html
This is another fashion blogger that I follow. What I really like about this blogger is how she blogs about various topics that every girl can relate to, she uploads really useful links and images.
Above is a list of different media platforms that you can find the blogger on.
On this blog she offers a lot more features than just clothing advise, as you can see above she blogs about various things that can appeal to a wide audience and therefore it results in more followers. She talks about everyday items that girls would use such as beauty products, where to go on holidays and what gift ideas you can do.
Alot of bloggers use a selling app called Depop where you can sell unwanted clothing, this is a really good idea as they are being sent clothes everyday and therefore they run out of room or it may not suit them so they put it on Depop and sell it their readers. It's usually at a reduced price but you have to pay for postage
Above are some examples of her Youtube videos that talk about her new items or gives tutorials on beauty tips.
Here is an example of how bloggers can be used to promote online retailers offers on their blogs or media platforms.
Things I do, think and buy
Charlotte Fisher
A list of different topics she blogs about on her website.
Another blogger that uses the app Depop to sell her clothing that she blogs about.
LULUTRIXYBELL
Lucy Rance
http://www.lulutrixabelle.com/
Here is a screen grab of what social media she uses to promote her blog which is similar to the ones above.
A small section about who she is.
On her blog she promotes differnt magazines that she has collaberated with and that she can be found in some of the magazines listed.
A screen grab of her blog where she talks about products she she likes and how to find them.Poor Little Rich Chick
Mel Ekrem
http://www.poorlittlerichchick.co.uk/
This fashion blogger isn't as popular as the ones above as she is a university student and only does a blog as a hobby not a career, however she still has many followers and blogs about fashion and gives good advise and links on where to get good items.
This was a screen grab on her blog where she is promoting other brands and offers that her followers can use.
Examples from her Instagram
Professional type photos on her blog and links of where to purchase the items.
Interview a Blogger
For part of my research I am really keen to contact one of the fashion bloggers above to ask them a few questions relating to fashion blogging, what it is they do and how they influence people. I thought this would help create some valid research which i could then put into my final essay and back up my view. So far I have only been able to get a response from one of the bloggers.
The email I sent out:
The questions I have asked:
1) What is it you do as a fashion blogger?
2) Who is your target audience?
3) Who do you influence and how?
4) What social media sites do you use to promote yourself?
5) Do you use a lot of online retailers compared to high street stores?
6) Do you think online brands such as Missguided and Boohoo get more customers interest due to their fashion blogger campaigns?
7) Do you agree with how fashion bloggers are the future and are taking over the need for fashion magazines?
Interview Response
1) What is it you do as a fashion blogger?
As a fashion blogger I do pretty much exactly what you see on my blog; I wear lovely clothes, travel to different locations and take lots of pictures!
2) Who is your target audience?
I try to keep my blog quite broad however I do mainly grab the attention of young women and girls aged 12 and over.
3) Who do you influence and how?
I mainly influence young women who have an interest in fashion and like to see how to put outfits together. Students are also a demographic which are interested in my blog as I try my best to ensure that anything I showcase is affordable as well as good quality. I do this by simply taking one or more items of clothing and showing different ways to wear them.
4) What social media sites do you use to promote yourself?
My website is hosted by Blogger and I use Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr to promote my blog.
5) Do you use a lot of online retailers compared to high street stores?
At the moment I definitely purchase more online than I do in high street stores. I often find myself seeing something I like on the high street and then searching through websites later on to find the best and cheapest alternative. I find online shopping much more convenient. I’m also very particular about my clothes so I can find exactly what I’m looking for online instead of spending hours wandering around shops.
6) Do you think online brands such as Missguided and Boohoo get more customers interest due to their fashion blogger campaigns?
I think Missguided and Boohoo are successful regardless, as their clothes are always on trend and well-priced. Now that they have started advertising themselves on TV I think they’ve established themselves as household names. I do think that bloggers have helped online brands by providing reviews or features on how to wear certain pieces of clothing, however the growth of customers for online brands is more dependent on the standard of clothing which is available.
7) Do you agree with how fashion bloggers are the future and are taking over the need for fashion magazines?
I can’t remember the last time I read a magazine! With the rapid growth of the internet, I think there are many forms of media which are thought to now be completely disregarded. In my opinion, I don’t think that magazines have been taken over by blogs but I do think that bloggers have forced magazines to be more active online. People opt to read blogs rather than magazines at times because of the appeal of seeing how a normal person takes attainable clothing to create stylish outfits. There’s also no catch! You don’t feel like you’re being sold something, it’s just another person sharing their wardrobe with you
So How Did It Start?
Here is just a quick timeline that a found on the website below that just gives a brief example of where blogging started and when. I thought this would be useful as I could mention how it has developed over time.
"Do you know your fashion blogger history? Our community has been rapidly changing over the past couple years — so fast, in fact, that we’ve barely had time to take a look back at our progression. In honor of our 7th IFB Con (can you believe it!? 7!!), here’s brief peek at how bloggers have evolved thus far, a la timeline format. Let’s start from the beginning:
December 1978: As the result of a chance photograph of Greta Garbo, Bill Cunningham published a group of his impromptu pictures in the New York Times, which soon became a regular series now known as his street style column.
1992: Tim Berners-Lee launches the first Web site, which had a “What’s New” page informing readers about new information related to the Web site.
1994: Claudio Pinhanez of MIT publishes his “Open Diary,” a Web page documenting his life. Also, online diarist Justin Hall gains notoriety for creating a “personal homepage” on the Web covering his day-to-day activities in very revealing detail.
December 1997: Jorn Barger starts a daily log of interesting Web links published in reverse chronological order, calling it Robot Wisdom WebLog. The term “Weblog” is used online publishers to include any page with frequent short posts in reverse chronological order.
1998: Open Diary becomes one of the first online tools to assist users in the publishing of online journals. Other online journaling tools emerge, including LiveJournal (1999), DiaryLand (1999), Pitas (1999), Blogger (1999), Xanga (2000), Movable Type (2001) and WordPress (2003).
Spring 1999: Online journal author Peter Merholz takes Jorn Barger’s word “weblog” and splits it into the phrase “We blog.” Blog soon becomes shorthand for weblog — and 13 years later it’s still the term we use today!
1999: The development of RSS, or Really Simple Syndication makes it easier for people to subscribe to blog posts, as well as distribute them to other sites across the Internet.
2002: Fashion blogs begin to emerge on the internet.
2003: Glam Media, a company with more than 1,500 lifestyle websites and blogs, includingGlam.com, is founded. The basis includes an ad network, where blogs come together under umbrella advertisements.
September 2003: Kathryn Finney of The Budget Fashionista was invited to New York Fashion Week.
2003: Using the alias Bboy777, Bryan Grey Yambao joined the blogosphere and eventually built a following for himself after posting stories about his weight-loss goals, fashion purchases and hatred for fake designer goods — in 2004 he became “Bryanboy.”
October 2004: Manolo the “Shoe Blogger” starts writing posts to his site.
February 2004: The launch of Flickr, a photo-sharing community, helps popularize photo blogging.
2004: Videographer Steve Garfield launches his video blog and declares 2004 “The Year of the Video Blog,” more than a year before the birth of YouTube.
2005: Julie Fredrickson creates fashion blogging network Coutorture, which grows into an online publication, community and blog network comprised of over 240 editorially selected fashion, beauty, perfume, accessory, and streetwear blogs.
September 2005: The Sartorialist, aka Scott Schuman, begins blogging about fashion on the streets. According to an article on Business of Fashion: According to Mr. Schuman, The Sartorialist was originally inspired by Brooklyn-based writer Grace Bonney’s interior design blog Design*Sponge. “I could tell she was doing it by herself and I liked the idea that she was having an interaction,” he said. “She had like 30 comments on a post and I thought that was really cool.” Schuman decided to start a similar blog for fashion after examining a series of photos he had taken of a few stylish guys in New York’s Fulton fish market while on a photography course.
2006: The Fug Girls start writing for New York Magazine.
2006: The launch of Twitter, one of the first “micro-blogging” communities that allows user to publish and receive short posts via the Web, text messaging and instant messaging.
2006: A research report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project estimates that 12 million U.S. adults publish their own blogs.
2006: Julie Fredrickson ambushes Anna Wintour at New York Fashion Week.
2006: Manolo’s Shoe Blog was, “rumored to be [earning] around $700,000 a year.”
2007: Sugar, the San Francisco site for women’s content, announced it has acquired Coutorture.
2007: Technorati reports it is tracking more than 112 million blogs worldwide.
2007: Rumi Neely starts posting her vintage finds to eBay.
September 5, 2007: Founded by Jennine Jacob, IFB is created.
March 31, 2008: At age eleven, Tavi Gevinson begins writing “Style Rookie.”
2008: Neely launches a separate site to her eBay account, called “Fashion Toast,” and posts her first personal style photos.
April 2009: Neely is featured in CNN Money for her blogging business, which states she was getting “35,000 hits a day.”
September 2009: IFB hosts an event with two panels about fashion blogging which evolved into the IFB Conference (and we are now presenting our 7th conference this September)!
2009: Dolce & Gabbana made news by filling its front row—typically the sole provenance of A-list actresses and Anna Wintour—with fashion bloggers, even equipping them with laptops.
2009: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) publishes its regulations regarding bloggers.
September 2010: Kim France, the founding editor of Lucky Magazine, leaves the print biz to start her own blog, at age 48.
2010: Leandra Medine, creator of The Man Repeller, was studying journalism in college when she started her blog.
2010: The FTC publicly investigates the company Ann Taylor after mandating an update that stipulates that bloggers must disclose “any material connections they share with the seller of the product or service” when writing about it. Bloggers and brands can be fined up to $11,000 for failing to reveal sponsorships. According to Mashable, “Ann Taylor invited bloggers to preview its Summer 2010 LOFT collection, promising attendees a ‘special gift’ and entry into a ‘mystery gift-card drawing’ for those who submitted posts to the company within 24 hours of the event. Ann Taylor avowed to reveal the value of the gift cards, which ranged from $50 to $500, to bloggers after receiving their posts.” No fines were levied.
October 2011: Notable fashion journalist Derek Blasberg, Harper’s Bazaar Editor at Large and a published author, starts a blog on the side called, “Mr. Blasberg.”
June 2012: Scott Schuman states he was disgruntled by the D&G fashion show back in 2009 in an article by GQ: “[Dolce & Gabbana] got a humongous amount of press. … ‘Look, we brought the bloggers in and gave them the front row. Look at the dancing-monkey bloggers!’ ” He then added, “I could barely bring myself to sit down.”
2012: Nick Axelrod leaves Elle for Emily Weiss’s beauty blog Into The Gloss, where he is in the early stages of hiring contributing writers.
2012: Leandra Medine is also expanding her content by trying out new writers so that she may transition from a “blog” to a website — which she describes as a cross between Vogue and Jezebel.
2012: Tavi Gevinson parlays Style Rookie into Rookie Mag, a larger site for young women.
So, what’s next in the timeline? It seems that a few of the more prominent personal bloggers are expanding to develop bigger websites. Does this mean that bloggers are headed to be the next big time fashion editors, presenting their insight on the web rather than in pages of a glossy? What do you think?"Link to page
Below is an article I found which discusses how the popularity of bloggers has grown, every brand wants a blogger to be promoting their products but it also discusses how being a fashion blogger is a full time job not a hobby which is what some peoples opinion of what the job is.
Link to article
Blogger Statistics
Here is the link where I found these statistics Link to website
Other Types of Bloggers
As part of my research I wanted to look into other types of blogging and what it is they do and if it is similar to fashion blogging.
Gaming Blogger http://www.thegamersblog.com/
I did some brief research into a typical gaming blog and what features their blog has. This is what I found
Youtube page
Twitter as a form of media to promote themselves
Film Blogger http://www.slashfilm.com/
Different sections on the blog that they talk about.
News Blogger http://blogs.thenews.com.pk/blogs/
The different media sites they use to promote the news updates.