their brand, your blog and how to respect yourself

blog 'success'
I'm going to get serious here for a moment. Most fashion bloggers do what they do with a hell of a lot of passion. I'm no exception to the rule. Since 2008 I've maintained this little slice of cyberspace and loved it intensely (while still accepting that it is, after all, just a blog, of course). I think I'm very fortunate to receive the comments and followers that I do, especially considering that my blog is a bit of a random collection of stuff that doesn't overtly cater to any particular kind of reader and doesn't fulfil the all hallowed 'niché' that is apparently necessary in order to make a blog 'successful'. I look at blogs with 3000 followers and I marvel at that. I do see it as an achievement. It's almost like that blog has become a magazine. People click on it to know something, to find out something, and if that something is the blogger's opinion, that's fucking fantastic. I don't ever feel as though a blog's large following is undeserved or difficult to understand. Some bloggers network harder than others. Some bloggers dedicate more time to replying to comments or engaging the community. Some bloggers are great with giveaways or appealing to what readers want. Some bloggers are fortunate enough to have courted some kind of publicity which led to a massive traffic increase. Some consistently produce amazing outfit photos and some can write like gods on acid. It's all good.

Of course quantity, size, popularity - these are only some of the scales on which to judge success. Some of my favourite blogs have under 50 followers. They are magical little places where the blogger has a zero compromise attitude and doesn't tend to be about the 'polish' or about putting forth a certain image. They offer up their life, their passions, their weird little notions, and that's what sends the shivers up my spine. If I was asked to sum up how best to judge the success of your blog, I'd say it's got a hundred times more to do with how you feel about it every time you log in to post than it has to do with brand attention or the number of followers. If you're not getting a kick out of it and it's not pushing you or inspiring you or helping you to reach the like-minded, it's not successful.

The problem with my kind of attitude is that it riles against a certain reality. A reality I've been faced with more and more as my blog matures.
Blogs are the new darlings of brands.
A union has been made and it's thriving. I think it's caused a lot of bloggers out there to feel that success is some tangible thing that's set in stone and meted out by brands. When they approach you - you've arrived.

keeping your head when all around you is chaos brands
Ever seen this badge on a blog before? If you click on it you'll see that it's a statement bloggers can choose to make, declaring that their blog is an advert-free space and that they work in accordance with the belief that taking money in exchange for ad space devalues blogging as a medium. This might seem a little extreme to a lot of you. I must admit, I always used to find the notion a little hasty. I mean, what's wrong with making money doing something you love? And, why should we view all brands as 'bad'? But I'm beginning to see the value in this little badge and the approach behind it.

Blogging is young. It's the little sister of journalism and it's done well in pissing off and threatening the traditional fashion literati by proving that you don't need to go to fashion school or work your way up through some hierarchical structure to have your voice heard. It's been revolutionary in that sense, but in order to keep that edge it has to remain impartial and keep some of its journalistic purity. But the most important reason to honour the badge, or at least appreciate its message, is to show brands that we are not going to be told that success equals brand attention or that our ambition for our blog should be for a brand to pluck it from obscurity and give it their corporate seal of approval.

Now that I've had my say, I'm going to make an example of bloggerswardrobe.com
They're approaching fashion bloggers with limited traffic and small-to-medium followings, supposedly giving them an 'opportunity' to audition for a shot at being selected to obtain free clothing from brands. It all looks fantastic at first glance, right? Well, I call bullshit. Look at the bloggers they've already selected for this brand collaboration. They're all very big fish with thousands of followers. Yet, bloggerswardrobe have told thousands of blogs with not even half of that following that if they make an audition video mentioning bloggerswardrobe and get as much traffic as they can to the site, they might be in with a chance of joining the big guns and getting free stuff.

Hundreds of blogs have uploaded videos dedicated to bloggerswardrobe, giving them lots of traffic and publicity. These bloggers are being unknowingly used as pawns. They are not going to be selected unless they have seriously high traffic, yet they're being encouraged to use their blog space to advertise this business. (bloggerswardrobe have not yet confirmed which supposedly amazing brands are taking part in this collaboration, but with the amount of bloggers giving bloggerswardrobe free publicity, it won't take much for them to convince brands that it has clout.) I was approached by bloggerswardrobe, worked out pretty quickly how the scheme was only benefiting them, and this bad publicity is the only publicity they're going to get from me.

I'm not trying to tell others what to do with their space. I'm simply making a point that I don't think can be made enough if you're really serious about your blog:

Don't be a bitch for business.
Don't be a puppy dog. Don't jump at the chance of a free dress without thinking first. Your blog has value to them, but unless you're at the very top of your game in terms of traffic and following, their business does not have value for you. So don't sell yourself short and don't let them continue believing that fashion bloggers are a bunch of dumb onions who don't understand how the system works.