You Turn

Anna Wintour may be one of the few people on the planet who can say to us "buy this, because I say it's good" though opinions of US Vogue may vary widely the fact remains that it is one of the top selling fashion magazines in the world.

If you wield less power than Anna Wintour, then chances are you're not going to intimidate your readers by the sheer perfection of the fashion snippets you provide in your blog. No need to worry, there are loads of ways to go about generating content. One thing that has been registering on my radar frequently is the idea of user-oriented content:

(Ironically, the photo of the dapper gent blogger Imelda, was taken for Paris Men's Vogue)

This isn't about blog vs. magazine, it's although many magazines (and blogs too) come from the standpoint, "buy me because I kick ass." Part of the appeal blogs have is the feeling of giving the reader some inside information, information although freely available to the public, is not widely known and is somehow secret, more personal.

That's where we come in, can offer daily information, and one way to encourage readers to come back is to offer them something, "reading this blog will help you kick ass." There are blogs like iCiNG that are 'you' oriented, which goes to say Gala Darling writes her blog to help her readers feel good about their style, about themselves. Another Aussie blog, Imelda, provides the scoop on shoes from an insider's hilarious perspective, Imelda talks with us like with a good friend leaving us feeling like we're in the know when it comes to shoes.

The shift is somehow subtle, and yet it's huge, in terms of fashion it shifts the dynamic from that where an elite dictate what is stylish, inevitably alienating the general audience, to a more democratic approach, inclusive to anyone who participates. Having user-focused content not only helps your readers it helps you build a stronger blog. Useful posts give people a reason to link to you, they give people a reason to come back.

Where is the love?

Negative comments seem to be a fact of life on the internet. They are everywhere, forums, on big corporate websites like the BBC and the Times and on people’s personal blogs. Where there’s an opinion, there normally seems be someone hanging around waiting to discredit it. Criticism is fine, but when someone starts harassing you, what do you do?

Thankfully, so far on my own blog, we haven’t had any outright abuse. I try to foster debate, but as the debate is normally as inane as what colour suit looks best, I wouldn’t expect this debate to turn nasty. And yet I’ve seen that, time and time again, on other people’s blogs it does. I’m not talking the ‘oh this is a silly idea’ comments either, I’m talking the full-blown ‘you are fat and ugly and I think your face is stupid’ ones. Here are my suggestions of few ways of dealing with it.

Have a commenting policy in place:

This could be a three page document about karma, or it could be a simple line above the commenting form. While this is obviously not foolproof, it might give you peace of mind when/if you delete comments or even ban specific commmenters later on.

Moderate comments:

Just stop them ever getting made public. This means you get to stop what shows up on your site, but it doesn’t stop you reading what some loon has to say. I’ve seen that a lot of people seem to do this, but it seems to me to be a lot of hassle for smaller blogs where you don’t really have a problem (yet).

Zero tolerance:

Any abuse gets deleted and if necessary the IP gets blocked. Seems extreme, but frankly I doubt you’d accept those sorts of comments from people ‘in real life’ so why should you have to on the net? Most 'haters' seem to be one offs, but it doesn't really hurt to send the 'get out and don't come back' message to people like that.

Allow no comments at all:

Now this one IS extreme, but possibly worth considering, especially if you’re the sensitive type or if the situation gets out of hand (a la gofugyourself). However, I know that for a lot of people, the feedback that commenting allows is a major factor in them blogging in the first place.

Your Toolbox : Getting to Know Polyvore

By now many of you already know about Polyvore.com. Some of you may even use this website for your posts... and some of you may be using Photoshop (ahem, me) to create collages of items in the post. Sarah over at Polyvore.com and I had a chat where she let me know that's it's really a lot more than a collage making tool...

IFB: What is Polyvore? What can it do?
Sarah: Polyvore is a free, easy-to-use web-based application for mixing and matching items - shoes, shirts, skirts, bags, lipstick, nail polish, backgrounds, etc. - from anywhere on the web. It is also a vibrant community of creative and stylish people! With Polyvore, you can put together coordinated outfits, a visual wishlist, an interior design, a moodboard, a birthday card for a friend - pretty much anything you want.

You can see a demo of our editor tool here:
http://s141.photobucket.com/albums/r41/polyvore/?action=view&current=editormovie.flv

Once an outfit is created, users publish them to the Polyvore community. Each outfit has a dedicated page on Polyvore, featuring a list of the items within the outfit, with a link to the store where it can be purchased, as well as the creator's name, number of times viewed, the ability to embed the set within any website or online forum, Polyvore Groups that its in, commenting and favoriting, and color swatches that show the color theme of the outfit.

Fashion bloggers especially like Polyvore because they can easily use it as a tool to add professional, magazine-like spreads to their blog posts. For example, a post about celebrity style could include a picture of the celebrity, with a recreation of their outfit made on Polyvore.com. Or, a post about a particular color or style trend could include outfits that show many examples of that trend arranged in a set, or show a recommendation for how that trend could be worn within a look. All of the outfits created on Polyvore can be embedded into any post as long as they link back to Polyvore.com. And what's even cooler is that all the product information is available on each outfit page - just a click away.

IFB: Who are the bulk of users at Polyvore?

Sarah: We have all kinds of different members on Polyvore. Some are fashion and design students, some are professional stylists, some are retailers or small boutiques who have their own products featured on Polyvore, and some of them are just regular girls (and boys) who enjoy being creative and expressive.

IFB: Where do the products on your site come from?

Sarah: Polyvore has an ever-expanding collection of products that currently contains over one million items. Products find their way into Polyvore primarily through our members. Using a bookmarklet installed on the browser window, users can quickly pull products into Polyvore as they discover them on the web. Alternatively, products can be included on Polyvore by retailers themselves, such as American Eagle, Charlotte Russe, and Net-a-Porter, who supply us with a link to their latest catalog, which we then import into Polyvore.

IFB: How does can this site help fashion bloggers?

Sarah: Polyvore can help fashion bloggers by giving them an easy way to express their posts visually, with real products. This adds a lot of value to their posts - which their readers will certainly appreciate! Bloggers also use Polyvore for contests - getting their readers involved by challenging them to create outfits within a certain theme, or using a specific item. This makes their blogs an interactive, two-way conversation that can contribute to their site's growth.

IFB: Any success stories?
Sarah: Fashiontribes co-sponsored a contest with Intermix Online that was extremely successful and generated over 1500 outfits. The winners will be announced today, and five lucky stylists will each be receiving a $500 gift certificate to Intermix Online. Style Observer is a quickly growing fashion blog that uses Polyvore sets regularly to illustrate styles and trends in their blog posts. Finally, Gala Darling of iCiNG recently teamed up with ModCloth to sponsor a fashion challenge that her readers are really enjoying.

IFB: What are some upcoming or new features that are useful tools for blogging?
Sarah: Today, Polyvore will be launching a "Sites We Like" section on our Explore page. The Explore page is the heart of our community and gets over half a million pageviews per month. Blogs that regularly use Polyvore on their sites will have the opportunity to be featured here and gain extra traffic to their site, increasing their visibility to our community and growing their audience. For more information on this, interested bloggers can contact

We are also testing a feature that allows bloggers to embed the Polyvore editor on their site, so that their readers can put together looks using all of the products recommended by that blogger. You can see an example of this on a test blog we made called "Shop this Look" http://www.shopthislook.com We think this might be a really great tool to add interactivity to fashion blogs, and turn each and every one of us into seasoned stylists! If you'd like to be involved in the beta test of this program, please contact "info@polyvore.com"

Why Cosmopolitan is Good For You

Cosmopolitan is a magazine chocked full of goodies that can make a sailor blush. In fact, it's probably the only women's magazine men are interested in. Well, it's certainly one that they have an opinion about.

I was quite surprised when an insightful blogger clued into the value of Cosmo. No, not for the sex tips, but for the copy writing. Copyblogger, states writing the headline first is the best way to start a compelling post, by first generating an idea to write about. Getting ideas for headlines... now that's how Cosmo can be good for you, well, more accurately, Cosmo's covers (or any other magazine)

...written by pros who make good money getting people to pick up periodicals and drop them in the grocery basket... Coppyblogger

How does this work? Well... let's see...

Cosmo Headline: The 22 Best Relationship Tips Ever
Fashion blogger headline: The 22 Best Thrifting Tips Ever (daunting, but I bet Bits and Bobbins could do it)

Cosmo Headline: Guy's Sex Confessions : Surprising stuff they don't want in the sack
Fashion blogger headline: Your Best Friend's Wardrobe Confessions : Surprising stuff she doesn't doesn't want you to know (this might be good for a team blog like, Pudri)

Cosmo Headline: How to Stay Safe: 5 Places Sexual Predators Look for Women (uh oh)
Fashion blogger headline: : How to Save: 5 Places Bargain Hunters Look for Designer Shoes (much more fun... I'd like to know where WendyB gets all her fabulous shoes)

Cosmo Headline: 6 Instant Confidence Boosters
Fashion blogger headline: : Heck, 10 Instant Confidence Boosters (sounds like a job for Kingdom of Style)

Cosmo Headline: 16 Sexy New Hairstyles
Fashion blogger headline: : 16 Easy Fashion Hacks (Susie Bubble can do that blindfolded)

Well, that was fun... what other titles can you come up with?

All images via Cosmopolitan.com

How stressful is blogging? Really?

Image by Yves Lorson on permanent vacation's photostream

When I first started blogging, I thought it a mere obsession. I tried to blog every day, developing a ritual by chronicling my personal style. Once it became a habit, and the more involved I became with my blog, the more time it took, and the more I demanded of myself. I love the growth, and it's opened the door to many other opportunities, but at what cost?

Once I asked a fellow blogger how much time she spends blogging, she replied, "oh, about 2 hours a day" She has a pretty successful blog, so I thought I was doing something wrong because I was spending nearly every night researching, getting linked into various social networks, looking for new blogs....etc. Juggling everything in my life started to get pretty intense. Then I realized, it was stress.

This Sunday, the New York Times wrote a compelling article about the role of stress in a bloggers life. The 24/7, round-the-clock nature of the web has bloggers latched onto the ether struggling to be the first, the best, whatever, and it's having grave consequences. One blogger gained 30lbs since he started his blog. (I've gained 10). Two leading bloggers have actually died of heart attacks in the past few months.

Blogging can be loads of fun. Heck, I wouldn't do it, if it weren't. It can be stressful, hard, intense.

It's also very important to take care, be healthy.

What kinds of things to do you do to stay happy, healthy and well rested as a blogger?

More apologies...

Hello...

It's me Jennine... I'm just checking in with you all to let you know I haven't forgotten about IFB. This month I moved from San Francisco to Frankfurt, Germany. It was a big move, and there were many things to take care of as well as keeping up my regular blog.

As if this is a kind of excuse, it's not. But I do plan to start posting regularly this week. And as far as IFB requests.. yes... I will get to those too this week.

Kind regards,

Jennine

Interview with Susie Bubble

Susie Bubble is fashion blogging royalty. She started writing Style Bubble way back in March 2006 and since then she's won numerous awards, her readership has exploded and she's on pretty much everyone's blogroll. Susie very kindly agreed to give us some of her time for an interview about fashion blogging...

How did you get started blogging and what do you wish you’d known back then?

It’s a bit of a boring story and it really started with me being a complete fashion geek and obsessively posting on forums like The Fashion Spot and reading blogs avidly (though back then, there weren’t that many to read!). I started Style Bubble in March 2006 purely because it was a natural progression from my fashion geek antics to starting a blog and wanting to keep it quite personal. By personal, I don’t mean that in a ‘Dear Diary’ kind of way but I mean Style Bubble is about blogging my own observations, thoughts and experiences in fashion, making use of my daily fashion life, in the shops that I encounter, the trends that I try, the ups and downs of my style, the designers that I come across.

I didn’t know a lot about blogging going into it and I’m still not really an expert so I guess it’s all still a learning curve for me. I probably wish I’d known how much it would consume my life, not the actual blogging itself but all the stuff attached to it...

What tips would you give to someone just starting out?

Blog about what you love and know. I’m very wary of new bloggers emailing me and asking how to get their blog ‘popular’, as in how they get to the stage of getting invited to events, being treated as press etc. The main motivation of any blog should just be the pure love of blogging. There’s no need to build a strategy to a blog before you start. It’s such a flexible medium that you should just go with the flow and blog about whatever you want to blog about. I find that people warm to fashion blogs that have a bit more ‘oomph’ than merely posting pictures of a bag and saying ‘This is a cute bag’ beneath it so I’m guessing injecting as much of your personality into it helps immensely.

What are you highest and lowest points of blogging so far?

It’s all very superficial but I guess getting mentioned in i-D was pretty special and then getting invited by Gucci and Chanel to their special blog-related events is also highly encouraging as it says to me that blogs have been picked up as a fashion media in their own right. The low points tend to be the negative comments which frequently occur on the blog, to which I either have to ignore or respond intelligently. I have let my initial anger got the better of me in the past but hey, I am a sensitive crybaby and people calling you fat/ugly on a daily basis does hurt a little.

Your output is incredible and so varied- how on earth do you avoid writer’s block and stay inspired?

Fashion is probably the one subject that I could think of a million things to write about and my problem is having too many post ideas and not enough time to write about them. In essence, if I could maintain Style Bubble as a full time blog and write about 20 posts a day, that would be great. However, I’m not keen to rely completely on blog advertising as an income to do that so that’s not gonna happen!

There is so much post to about when fashion changes and when it is so globalised as well. I can’t keep up with all the fashion weeks, all the new designers that are emerging and I don’t even have the time to fully explore trends etc within in my own wardrobe. I guess my interest and obsession with the subject keeps the blog ticking with posts. That’s not to say all my posts are 100% top quality. Some are quickie posts but sometimes they illicit more reactions/comments than the posts I slave over so these things can be hard to gauge.

You get some seriously harsh (and very often completely ungrounded) criticism- how do you deal with that?

As I said before, I’m learning to develop a thicker skin. There really is nothing to do but to ignore the sort of comments that have no concrete point to them. I’m not really into deleting comments if they’re not obvious spam. An opinion is an opinion whether it is ungrounded or not. I won’t lie and say it hasn’t gotten me down and I have contemplated ceasing the blog altogether because in recent months, it has gotten a bit too much but with my temperament, I may be boo-hoo-ing about it one minute but the next minute, I’m fine so it’s all good.... most of the time!

You’ve managed to generate such a large following, with over 5000 readers a day (or whatever that actual figure is?)- what advice would you give to us humbler folk to build traffic?

It’s actually nearer 10,000 but hey I’m not counting or anything! On the technical side, posting often does get you up in the Google rankings. I’m lucky in that Typepad, my blog provider, does all the Technorati stuff (which I don’t completely understand) automatically for me. In the beginning, I did email blogs that I loved to ask if they would like to exchange links. Fashionologie in particular sent a lot of traffic my way in the beginning. It’s really all about mutual lovin’ – you link to them, they link to you, you comment on their blog, they comment on yours – that’s the general pattern of how traffic gets directed. If you are an active member of a fashion forum, then there’s no reason why you can’t shamelessly plug your blog in your posting footer. Beyond that, I never did any active promotion of the blog and traffic came as a natural thing, helped along by press coverage and of course things like mentions/linkbacks on biggie sites like Style.com is a huge bonus.

What are your favourite resources?

I consume just about every fashion magazine and I spend a hideous amount of money on it. It’s not really so much about getting inspiration for posts but just to absorb fashion in general. Online resources are also quite varied and my favourites are a A Shaded View on Fashion, Hintmag, WWD (sometimes...). Surprisingly street style blogs aren’t really referenced much on my blog. To be honest, I tend not to cite one particular online source and like to gather a mix of origins. It may not even come from one particular source but from something quite random that I personally came across. In other words, I have no sound advice but to play it by ear?