The IFB Evolving Influence Conference brought together fashion bloggers and brands. IFBCon Part One covers the first two sessions of the conference. Here, the remaining two:

Foot in The Door: Launch your new career with your blog

Susanna Lau – Style Bubble , @susiebubble

Style Bubble started as an obsession, with Susie rushing home from work to post 3-4 times per day. She wanted to show it was possible to have fun with fashion and how to play with clothes, that fashion was “this thing that you could experience yourself.”

Getting Traffic

Her first major press in Teen Vogue, a few months after starting her blog in 2006. Along with press building traffic and several small writing gigs on the side, her readership grew organically.

Creating content

Susie confessed that in the beginning, she had no concept of having relationships with brands. “I was just emailing indie designers to find content for my site. I was doing everything on the sly.”

Beyond Blogging

In 2008, Susie famously became the Commissioning Editor of Dazed Digital. “It was so valuable to work in an environment like that.” The position gave her the opportunity to improve her own writing as well as experience commissioning work from others.She decided to leave in March 2010 to work on her own full time.

“I have no idea what I’m doing from week to week, going on from project to project.” Recent projects include an installation with Joyce boutique in Hong Kong, commissioning a newspaper celebrating Selfridges London shoe boutique, freelancing for Pop magazine, and partnerships with Doc Martens & Sanrio. She’s also been styling the Ting Tings–frontwoman Katie is a fan of Style Bubble. “Katie has own style, so it’s really a collaboration.” Susie noted that she works to keep blog content and projects separate.

Acting as a contractor of sorts for fashion brands, Susie does custom projects for each brand, but admits that “It’s been very stressful working for myself.” She has a literary agent that she works with to help manage the business side of things.

Advice

• Keep your content fresh by seeing as much as possible and narrowing it down to what you’re really passionate about.

• When deciding which brands to work with, look for synergy with the brand–it should feel like you can do something incredible together.

Image, SearchingforStyle.com

Bryanboy, @bryanboy

Bryanboy started in 2004 as a travel journal, and has always been a diary of sorts–fashion just happened to play a part. “I’ve never really had a job in fashion,” says Bryanboy. “My interest comes from being a consumer. Over the years, my interest evolved.”

Before blogging, Bryanboy worked as a freelance web designer. Now, his energy is focused on his blog and his readers–and he wants to keep it that way. “I’m just doing something I really love and I’m just having fun in the process. For me, why should there be a next step? I can see myself doing this for 10 more years.”

He admits that he’s come a long way since the faux-cocaine pics of yore. “I also evolved as a person. I have to be a little bit more responsible. I can’t really forget where I came from and my blog is a reflection of my life.”

Getting traffic

The blog really took off in 2006. “Facebook was a good tool for me because any time I posted my link, it would send traffic.” As long as you have something that appeals to people,regardless of where they are, you can build an audience.

Adding value

As a professional blogger, Bryanboy’s value to brands lies in his ability to generate discussion. If he blogs or tweets about a brand, it encourages discussion, awareness, and inspiration. “I have so much energy, when I obsess about something I have to share it with everyone.”

His dream project? Something long-term: “Bryanboy dolls with Jason Wu!”

Content is Queen: Captivate your audience with compelling content

Emily Schuman - Cupcakes & Cashmere , @byemily

Emily started out writing restaurant reviews online. She quickly grew tired of just doing that, and decided to create a site that talked about everything she loves. Her main focus? Compelling content, pretty photos, and a clean layout.

Outfit posts

With outfit posts, she wanted to show how to mix and match pieces. “Being an effective editor is important” when deciding which photos to keep, so she tries to keep the posts short and use 4-5 of the best photos. Her boyfriend takes the photographs when she’s wearing something post-worthy (“not every day!”) that incorporates items at different price points.

Emily spends time planning which parts of an outfit to showcase–detailing, nail polish, hair. “We take a lot of pictures–horizontal, vertical, details. A good outfit post takes time and preparation.” She tries to take pictures on the weekend or in the evening during “the magic hour”–the time right before dusk, and uses a tripod and remote if her boyfriend is not available.

Food

“Shooting food is different than shooting clothing.” Emily says she started reading food blogs and photography books to get a feel for how professional photos looked. For visual interest, she recommends investing in props: napkins, place mats, ribbons, etc. “I take my time staging the shots. I want it to be visually appealing, inspiring, but still attainable.”

Naming your blog

Emily asserts that choosing a name is important. If you’re struggling, she advises writing down a bunch of words you like, putting them together, and crossing off what doesn’t sound right.

Site design

Favoring sites that are simple–white background with black text–Emily points out that people are visual. Visitors should be able to get an immediate feel for what’s going on and where to find what they’re looking for.

Getting traffic

“I commented on sites that I liked and found ways to get on people’s blogrolls. Blog growth was a gradual process. There was never one big break–there were several big things that happened.” It’s also important to be consistent: “Keep writing so people know they can come to you for more content.”

Staying organized

“I typically have some sort of schedule lined up. There’s a lot of work involved. I think about what I’m going to post, what I’m going to cook, what I’m going to wear.”

Advice

• Think like an editor. When choosing photos for outfit posts, narrow it down to 4-5 of the most visually appealing images.

• Get a feel for what you like by finding inspirational pictures online and narrowing it down to a few common elements.

• Write about what you love instead of trying to fit into a specific category.

Amy Odell - The Cut, @cutblog

Having earned a Journalism degree from NYU, Amy now reports fashion news–entertaining fashion news. While in school, she applied for all kinds of internships. “No one wanted anything to do with me.” Deciding to work for the school paper, she was then able to find events to cover, and took the initiative to go to editors to ask if she could write stories. “It’s wonderful training–going up to people at events to interview them.”

Keeping up with the news

Amy pointed out how important it is to be first in the news arena. “You have to get your post up first, make sure people know you’ll catch EVERYTHING and they can rely on you. Pull new things that come up throughout the day–I write about what I think is entertaining.” To keep up, she reads multiple news publications early each day.

Blogging for a magazine

Blogging for a magazine is a bit different than blogging for personal reasons. You have a larger platform, but you also have to stay true to the publication’s voice. “You do have to consider things like ads being pulled,” she points out. As far as content, daily Trackur reports indicate that Anna Wintour, Beyonce, and celebrities are popular. She notes that it’s important to have a good mix of news, high fashion, and celebrity news.

Even so, it’s still necessary to have your own point of view. “Blog things you feel strongly about.” She also advocates being authentic. “Be honest with your readers. Don’t be afraid to say something because no one else is saying it.”

Advice

• Stay on top of the news. Read print publications, set up an RSS feed for alerts, keep an eye on social media streams, and post quickly!

• Do something different. When multiple outlets are covering the same stories, it’s important to take a different angle–try to get a first look, or a quick quote, or go behind the scenes.

• Don’t lose your voice. If you want to be funny, be funny. Or sarcastic, or sweet, or curious…whatever suits you.

Image, Elle.com

Rumi Neely and Colin Sokol - fashiontoast, @rumineely

Rumi started fashiontoast when she noticed how many questions she got from customers who purchased vintage clothing from her eBay store. “There was a lot of curiosity from people on how I was styling outfits,” so she started the blog to show them. After a while, she noticed that the personal photo posts got the most response, so she figured she needed to put more effort into those.

Popularity

“Every day I’m shocked and amused at where the blog has gotten me. That wasn’t really my goal.” Rumi feels an obligation to her readers, and says that she and Colin are always ready to take pictures wherever they are. Though he has no formal photography training–or even real experience with photography prior to Fashion Toast–Colin says “I have a camera on me 24 hours a day.”

Pretty pictures

Regarding the photographic content of the site, “It’s just something we have fun doing, we don’t think too hard about it, and we don’t always plan.” Their process is very spontaneous–inspiration could strike at any time. Rumi notes that this spontaneity is also reflected in her stream-of-consciousness writing style, which, along with the editorial-style imagery, garners approximately 75,000 unique visitors per day. “It’s about knowing what you like and capturing it as you see it,” she says.

Getting traffic

Rumi notes that there was a slow build-up, and that there was no magic secret formula to getting readers all of a sudden. She and Colin take feedback seriously, too: “We both read all of the comments.”

The NEXT level

After receiving multiple offers to model and collaborate with brands and not really knowing how to handle it, Rumi went to NEXT to find an agent and bookers to help her manage projects. Soliciting professional assistance is a great way to ensure that contracts and financial agreements are handled properly.

Advice

• Be unique! Even if you do decide to do something someone has already done, take inspiration from the concept and do it in your own way.

• Choose projects that seem natural and are a good aesthetic fit. The Forever21 job came about because Rumi says, “I’ve been wearing Forever21 forever.”

Whew! That’s the end of our event coverage–thanks for making it this far! So…what did we miss?

Last week’s Independent Fashion Bloggers’ Evolving Influence Conference was just as informative and stylish as we expected. There was a lot of information to take in, so instead of putting up one 4,000-word post (whew!), we’ve decided to create a series with detailed coverage of each session, complete with insight and advice from each speaker. Let’s get started:

It’s Just Business: Make a living with your blog

Mattias Swenson - Bloglovin’, @mattiasswenson

The business of blogging, especially in the fashion and style sector, has come to the forefront over the past few years. Mattias Swenson of Bloglovin’ predicts product placement will expand in the coming years as brands realize how much influence bloggers have and how that influence can drive sales.

Partnering with brands

Mattias maintains that brands generally look at basic factors when determining who to work with: Unique visitors, comments per post, and number of followers. While transparency and authenticity are important, “As long as you’re selective with your brand endorsements and choose things that you stand for, your readers will trust even paid endorsements.”

Measuring success

He also noted that brands and bloggers currently measure success by revenue (money coming in), though brands rarely share their return on investment from a blogger-based campaign, making it difficult to determine how much to charge.

In general, price points have been pushed up over time and are determined by the market rates as opposed to influence. Which means that bloggers with different sized audiences might be making the same rate per campaign, instead of being compensated based on their respective influence. In a perfect/fair world, the more successful your campaigns, the more you should be able to charge.

Advice

• “Don’t sell your media like magazines or TV–you’re more than that.”

• Think of how you can use your influence to sell things you believe in. Make sure to partner with brands you really like or use.

• Spell out a clear value proposition in your pitch. Be specific about what you bring to the table and how it benefits the brand.

• Use Google URL Builder in conjunction with Google Analytics, and tag your links. Read more about installing Google Analytics on your blog in this article.

Phil Oh - Street Peeper , @mrstreetpeeper

Phil opened by talking about how he got to the point where street style blogging is his career. “Everybody thinks the road to blogging is paved with Hermes,” but he decided to differentiate by covering street style in different cities, a unique concept at the time. Part of his monetization strategy involved implementing a brand tagger so people could search for products and see people wearing those items–a very attractive proposition for potential advertisers.

Finding advertisers

He started out with three ads that he gave away for free to friends in “glam” industries. After a few years and an unhappy stint with an ad network, he started building a media kit–which he highly recommends for everyone. “The hard part is finding who to contact,” so Phil used Google and LinkedIn to find ad managers of the brands he was interested in working with.

He also teamed up with other big bloggers to pool traffic as a group, noting that trying to attract CPM advertising with big brands means you’re competing with the likes of Conde Nast, Yahoo, and AOL.

“Everybody thinks the road to blogging is paved with Hermes.”

Charging for your services

If you’re small or new and a brand wants to work with you for free, Phil advises “Do it if you want to and think it’s a fun project, not because you eventually want to charge. You have to have guts and stand up for your work. If you think the time and effort you spend is worth something, charge.”

Advice

• If you’re just getting started, offer free advertising for a few brands in industries you’d like to work with. It gives the impression that you already have contacts in the right places and companies want what you have to offer.

• Build a media kit–even if it’s as simple as a two-page presentation. Trawl Google and LinkedIn to find the right people to send it to.

• Form an ad network with 4-5 other bloggers so you can charge more money and attract larger advertisers.

• Treat your product or commodity as valuable–your pictures, your writing, your audience, and your time are worth something to brands. Make sure you’re fairly compensated.

Get Involved: Cultivate a passionate readership

Yuri Lee - LOOKBOOK.nu , @lookbookdotnu

According to Yuri, Lookbook sticks to two tenets: Do less and be good.

1. Do less. Do one thing, and do it the best. For Lookbook, it is important to showcase the best content, so they spend a lot of time on algorithms designed to filter out spam and celeb photos. They also focus on fresh new content, and try to make sure every post has something worth value.

2. Be good. Be good at what you do, and treat other people well. Leave meaningful comments, drive traffic to other’s sites, read and respond to feedback to engage with your readers. Create a relationship so readers know there’s a real person behind the site. Every contact or relationship is an opportunity.

Getting Traffic

When first starting, they tried several techniques to attract users: they printed fliers at Kinko’s (that didn’t work), they sent personal emails to target audience members, and relied on word of mouth to help grow their audience. All in all, Lee says Lookbook grew organically.

“People notice when you put love into your work. Press is overrated.”

Making money

The current business model is simple monetization through advertising. “The first year, we were very poor,” notes Lee. As the site grew, they included more ads, and took time to make sure those ads were relevant to readers.

Fun fact

The site is Lookbook.nu because they couldn’t get .com, and were too late for .us. .Nu is the domain for island nation Niue, but they thought it sounded cool and went with it anyway!

Advice

• Keep it lighthearted and strive to have fun. Invite people who embody the spirit of your site to be a part of your community.

• Keep in touch with your most enthusiastic users. Make personal contact, ask their opinion, and encourage them to be a part of the process.

• Focus on one or two things and do them to the best of your ability.

Gala Darling - Gala Darling, @galadarling

Gala opened with the importance of defining what a passionate audience is for you. Work that out first, then it’s easier to find. She pointed out that not everyone is going to like you, and you just have to get over it. “You’re being judged no matter what, so just be yourself.” Needing to be liked all the time can dilute your voice–if you’re going to do something and have it resonate with people, you have to be passionate about it.

Authenticity is a must. “You need to be honest and truthful, brave and bold. Online, everything is recorded so you can’t get away with any bullshit.” Even vulnerability can work in your favor. “It makes people feel like you’re real.”

Encouraging interaction

The best way to get people interacting depends on what you’re doing with your blog. Encouraging conversation in multiple places is good for building Google juice. “I do most interaction with readers on Twitter, Facebook and email.” Doing that helps the audience grow organically.

Truly successful communities

The true measure of a successful community? When you get people talking and thinking about what you’ve said in their own space, that’s an engaged audience. Encourage people to draw their own conclusions and run with their own ideas.

“Making people think is a good way to start a dialogue.”

The downside to comments

She noted that the downside to having a large volume of comments is that it can feel like voices in your head all the time. If you’re constantly thinking about your audience, that can be counterproductive. “Writing in anticipation of a response is dangerous.” On the subject of negative comments, Gala says “I ban people who are rude to me. Why should you put up with that? People can say whatever they want on their own site, but not on mine.”

Making money

As far as monetization, Gala notes that her podcast makes the most money. “I could cut ads, etc. and still make a good living.” She uses e-junkie to sell podcast, and records in Garage Band or QuickTime Pro. She recommends establishing an audience before starting your own podcast.

Advice

• Offer something of value to your readers. Help them with something.

• Practice facilitating discussion.  “The more you do it, the more you learn.”

• Have conversations using multiple platforms: Facebook, Twitter, email, message boards.

Check back tomorrow for the remaining sessions with Style Bubble, Bryanboy, Amy Odell of  The Cut , Cupcakes & Cashmere , and Fashion Toast!

Whew! Made it through all four sessions of the Independent Fashion Bloggers Evolving Influence Conference and came away with a few important points. More in-depth coverage will follow next week, but here are the main take-aways:

There is no formula for success.

A diverse cross section of bloggers spoke, from Rumi of Fashiontoast to Gala Darling to Amy O’Dell from The Cut, and none of them followed the same path. They’re all successful, but they each achieved that success their own way.

Traffic grows organically over time.

Almost every blogger was asked the same question: “How did you grow your readership?” No one had a real answer! Sure, people did the usual commenting on other blogs/sending emails to people they thought might be interested/telling friends and family, but other than that, everyone noted that their traffic grew organically.  Again, no formula.

Do you

Above all else, everyone mentioned how important it is to have a unique voice and do what you do best. Don’t try to imitate someone else, follow your passion.

Check back next week for the full recap and to link your Fashion’s Night Out stories!

Issue 9 of Style Sample magazine will be released in less than a week! Expect interesting articles, beautiful photos, the best shopping, and useful advice about fashion, blogging, and everything in between, including:

• Inspirational interviews with your favorite (and future favorite) bloggers

• Step-by-step instructions on how to create a badge for your blog

• An in-depth look at the world of fashion marketing–and how to get your foot in the door.

The issue will be released on September 7th, but in the meantime, here’s a peek at the cover:

You can also follow the Twitter list of Issue #9 contributors and get to know everyone!

IFB Evolving Influence & Fashion’s Night Out

Attending the Independent Fashion Bloggers Evolving Influence Conference? We’re looking for people to write about the sessions (and the after party, of course)! If you’re interested, email editor(at)stylesamplemag.com.

Whether you’ll be in NYC for the Fashion’s Night Out festivities or have something special going on in your own city, we want to hear how much fun you’re having and what you’re buying (’cause you know you will)!  Blog about your #FNO experience on your site, then add the link to the collection. More info will be posted as the event draws near.

What’s it All About?

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the opening of The Brush Factory, a fashion design collective & retail space located in–you guessed it–an old brush manufacturing facility here in Cincinnati, OH.

At The Brush Factory, new designers have the resources and ability to create their own ‘mini’ store and sell their collections at an affordable cost. Current designers carried at the Factory include Lynda Lucas, Chris Kittrell, Brittany Rose (Poncho Rose), Margot and Kit Anderson (CoolSisters), and Jennifer Sult and Lacey Voss.
Founder and fashion designer Brittany Rose Kovacs is profiled in the upcoming issue of Style Sample magazine, so be sure to check out the feature when the issue drops on January 5th. In the meantime, you can keep up with Rosie via her blog, A Dose of Design, and become a fan of The Brush Factory on Facebook.

~Tamia

Hayley and I had the opportunity to interview celebrity stylist Mariel Haenn, who has worked with people like Rihanna, Ciara, Will & Jada, Keri Hilson, etc. As expected, she was extremely stylish (and very nice, too!) but I had to take a pic of her hands–her nails and jewelry were SICK:

Stay tuned for the full interview, up next week!

Salon Essentials Fashion Show

The SSM Team came out in full force to support the Salon Essentials Fashion show at the Contemporary Arts Center in downtown Cincinnati. First off, a big thanks goes out to Koree Thatcher owner of Salon Essentials for being such a great host and congratulations to her and her salon on their two year anniversary.

The night started off with a fashion show featuring the girls from Swey Modeling, Inc sporting their clothes from Missy & Jack Boutique and rocking to the beats of D.J Spam. Meanwhile, media providers JYS Productions and ShawnD Productions were diligently capturing the glorious night. Overall we were most impressed with the overwhelming positive attitudes of all the participants. Swey Modeling, Inc is part of a non-profit organization which provides mentor-mentee relationships with the girls to promote a sense of self worth through modeling, dancing and community service.

To end the night, a special fashion show was put on by those in attendance who wanted to strut their stuff. This was a great way to check out all the outfits without even moving!

The night ended with Hayley getting felt up by French restaurateur Jean-Robert after a late night at The Righteous Room. Umm…can we get some free steak frites?