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Personal branding and lifestyle bloggers: can blogs become brands?

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Personal branding and lifestyle bloggers: can blogs become brands?

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Content PERSONAL BRANDING AND LIFESTYLE BLOGGERS: CAN BLOGS BECOME BRANDS? by Allison Champion A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS (STRATEGIC PUBLIC RELATIONS) May 2012 Copyright 2012 Allison Champion ii Acknowledgements While this thesis was undoubtedly the most interesting and exciting project I completed during my graduate school experience, it was also the most overwhelming. I could not have even begun without the support and encouragement of my thesis adviser, Jennifer Floto. Her guidance was nothing short of invaluable. Additionally I would like to thank my thesis chair Jay Wang, who provided a wealth of branding knowledge and information, and committee member Brenda Lynch, who offered incredible suggestions. Finally, this thesis would not exist without the bloggers who provide constant, compelling content that keeps me and many other readers coming back day after day. Special thanks to John and Sherry Petersik and Maegan Tintari, for answering my questions and sharing their experiences. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii List of Figures v Abstract vi Chapter One: Introduction 1 What is a Brand? 2 What is a Blog? 2 How Blogs are Started 3 Why People Are Interested in Blogs 5 Brands versus Products 8 Research Problem 11 Definition of Lifestyle Blogs 11 Target Market 13 Chapter Two: The Three Elements of Branding 15 Brand Identity 15 Brand Engagement: Criteria For Developing a Successful Brand Identity 16 Brand Management 17 Chapter Three: Brand Identity and The Pioneer Woman 19 Personality Traits 19 Target Audience 20 Title, Header and Design 22 Site Topics 23 Competitive Advantage 25 Points of Difference and Points of Parity 26 Promotion of Blog 28 Branding Difficulties and Barriers 30 Conclusions 30 Chapter Four: Brand Identity and Cupcakes and Cashmere 32 Personality Traits 32 Target Audience 33 Title, Header and Design 34 Site Topics 35 Competitive Advantage 37 Points of Difference and Points of Parity 38 Promotion of Blog 38 iv Branding Difficulties and Barriers 39 Conclusions 40 Chapter Five: Brand Identity and Young House Love 41 Personality Traits 42 Target Audience 42 Title, Header and Design 44 Site Topics 45 Competitive Advantage 47 Points of Difference and Points of Parity 48 Promotion of Blog 49 Branding Difficulties and Barriers 50 Conclusions 51 Chapter Six: Brand Identity and …love Maegan 52 Personality Traits 52 Target Audience 53 Title, Header and Design 53 Site Topics 54 Competitive Advantage 56 Points of Difference and Points of Parity 57 Promotion of Blog 58 Branding Difficulties and Barriers 58 Conclusions 59 Chapter Seven: Analysis of Brands 60 Table 1: Comparison of Brand Engagement 61 Branding Success 63 Points of Parity and Points of Difference 65 Chapter Eight: Advertising 67 Chapter Nine: (Personal) Brand Identity 71 Personal Branding Success 71 Chapter Ten: Recommendations 74 Bibliography 76 Appendices Appendix A: Interview with Young House Love 79 Appendix B: Interview with …love Maegan 89 v List of Figures Figure 1: Blogs and Traditional Media 6 Figure 2: Reasons for Visiting Media 7 Figure 3: Consumer Trust 8 Figure 4: The Pioneer Woman Header (March 2012) 22 Figure 5: The Pioneer Woman Header (July 2010) 22 Figure 6: The Pioneer Woman Cooks 22 Figure 7: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels 22 Figure 8: The Pioneer Woman Biography 23 Figure 9: Topics Categorized Within Confessions 24 Figure 10: Site View Customization 27 Figure 11: Cupcakes and Cashmere Header 34 Figure 12: Site Archive Topics 35 Figure 13: Young House Love Logos 44 Figure 14: Young House Love Header 45 Figure 15: …love Maegan Logo 54 vi Abstract This paper examines personal branding as it relates to lifestyle bloggers; specifically, it determines if a blog can become a brand. The purpose of this study is to analyze the content and design of lifestyle blogs and investigate the strategies used to achieve success in blogging. To do this, a traditional branding model is applied to the content of four blogs to determine how the blog authors define brand identity, engage the brand with consumers and manage the brand. Results reveal that traditional branding models apply, but there are distinct differences between conventional and blog brands. The principal conclusion is that bloggers can follow basic branding strategies to build a brand but must define and utilize a distinct personality in order ultimately find success. 1 Chapter One: Introduction Branding is about images. From physical photos and illustrations to those conjured in the mind’s eye, a brand is a total, imag(in)ed package. Brands are not defined as much as they are perceived. Consumers develop ideas and opinions based upon a set of interactions with a brand, and that perception is what they decide the brand to be. The same principle applies to people – humans judge others based upon an arbitrary set of criteria, and that judgment is associated with a person from then on. No matter the type of branding, from product to personal, branding works the same way. When products and people brand themselves in conjunction, there is the possibility for brand reinforcement and success. This is what I will review in my examination of personal branding and bloggers. Bloggers brand themselves along with their blogs – they are entirely congruous. In this thesis, the terms “blog” and “brand” will be used interchangeably, as will the titles of blogs with their authors (blog readers often refer to blog authors as the title of their blog; for example, a reader may state that “Cupcake and Cashmere” posted something when the author of that post was really the blog’s author, Emily Schuman). I will use Kevin Lane Keller’s “Strategic Brand Management” and the branding methods within to explore four blogs, their authors and the brands associated with them to determine if blogs and blog authors can become brands. 2 What is a Brand? There are many ways to define a brand. The American Marketing Association and Keller’s “Strategic Brand Management” define a brand as a “name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition (Keller, 2).” Seth Godin, author of business and marketing books, defines it as “the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another (Godin).” In an article published on the “Branding Strategy Insider” blog, Brad VanAuken writes that a brand is “a source of promise to its customers, (VanAuken)” and it is with him that the author agrees most. A brand is more than a logo, a tagline or a symbol. It is the sum of all those things and more – a brand is a representation of all that a company, organization or person stands for. When consumers think of a brand, they think of everything the brand signifies – its products, its people and how those associations make the consumer feel. The consumer develops a set of expectations related to a brand and looks for those expectations to be met in every brand interaction. The best definition of a brand is a combination of Godin’s and Van Auken’s – a brand is a consistent set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that represent a company organization or person. What is a Blog? Simply put, a blog is an online collection of thoughts. The formal definition of a blog is “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, 3 and often hyperlinks provided by the writer; also, the contents of such a site (Merriam- Webster).” There is much more to blogs than a dictionary can define, however. As of November 2011, Technorati indexed 1,286,225 blogs in existence (“Blog Directory”), and those are only the most influential. Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2011 found that three-fifths of blog authors are male, the majority range in age from 25 to 44 and most spend one to three hours per week writing for their blog. These range from personal blogs that are essentially hobbies to personal blogs that serve as the author’s sole source of revenue to corporate blogs to which employees contribute. There is a plethora of information about the blogosphere; too much to quantify here. What this does demonstrate is that the range of blogs and reasons for blogging are wide and varied. How Blogs are Started There are many ways to begin a blog. Any space one owns on the Internet can technically become a blog or be used for blogging, so the first decision one must make is if he or she will host the blog himself or herself or use a blogging service. Hosting involves purchasing a domain name, paying a blog hosting service to publish the site and designing it using web coding or a content management system. Blogging content management systems or publishing platforms are applications that maintain the site and allow the author to write, edit and publish posts. Popular systems and platforms include Wordpress, TypePad and Movable Type. Some content management systems offer free blogging services which save users the trouble of hosting. For example, Wordpress is a management system that 4 those that host their own sites can use to design their site, but it also hosts free blogs for users to quickly and easily set up a blog without having to buy a domain. Blogger, owned by Google, is a similar service. These services allow a user to pick a site address (ex: www.allison.wordpress.com), choose a theme that customizes the layout, color scheme, font, etc. and begin posting immediately. Sites like this have built-in comment systems and track statistics like page views automatically. Wordpress’ free sites give users three gigabytes of free storage and Blogger offers one gigabyte of photo storage through Google’s photo service Picasa. As blogs grow, additional storage is generally needed, so services offer extra storage space for a fee. As bloggers become more proficient, they often want to move from a simple site to a more customized layout and design. Blog layouts and designs can be as simple or as complicated as the author wants them to be - bloggers can code the site themselves or hire a web designer to create something completely customized. Once a blog is formulated, the authors often build their audience by inserting themselves into the blogosphere and interacting with other bloggers. Commenting on other sites is one of the easiest ways to do this. Blog authors will often leave short comments on other bloggers’ posts with a link back to their site, hoping both the author of the original post and other readers will follow the link. This is the tactic Maegan Tintari, author of …Love Maegan used: “By commenting, I built a sort-of virtual friendship with handfuls of women doing the same thing I was,” she said. “It was a really fun feeling of community and belonging, and I’m still ‘friends’ with many of those women today.” 5 Why People Are Interested in Blogs Though the blogosphere is growing, traditional media such as newspapers and magazines still reign as the most influential information outlets. People use blogs as a source of information in addition to traditional media outlets. Technorati’s 2011 State of the Blogosphere surveyed both bloggers and consumers about growth and trends in the blogosphere. Many bloggers (almost one-third) have been journalists or worked for traditional media outlets. This means that many bloggers are highly skilled writers, and readers are getting well-written, quality content for free. Additionally, the blogosphere is influencing itself. Bloggers reported that the main influence on the topics they write about is other blogs they read. Bloggers are part of the audience, too, and they’re writing about the things they themselves like to read about. Topics people want to read about are being written about. More than 50 percent of consumers reported that they trust traditional media less than they did three years ago, and many agreed that blogs are valid sources of information and often better than traditional sources: 6 Figure 1: Blogs and Traditional Media 7 Consumers also stated that they visit blogs for inspiration more than any other source, and more than half visit blogs for new information and entertainment: Figure 2: Reasons for Visiting Media 8 Finally, Technorati’s survey showed that consumers trust conversations with family and friends far more than any other source: Figure 3: Consumer Trust When people begin to feel a connection with specific bloggers and view them as “friends and family,” they’ll trust them more. This is the direction in which blogging is headed. Brands versus Products According to Keller, a product is “anything we can offer to a market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption that might satisfy a need or want (Keller, 3).” To this end, a blog can be considered a product in that it satisfies the needs and wants of consumers – the readers. Readers seek out blogs for many reasons, and whether they 9 come for news, entertainment, information or inspiration, they want to fulfill their needs using blogs. Because blogs would not exist without an author, the author is a product as well. Products have five levels of meaning: core benefit, generic product, expected product, augmented product and potential product (Keller, 3). All five can be applied to blogs and bloggers. The core benefit of a product is “the fundamental need or want that consumers satisfy by consuming the product or service (Keller, 3).” Different types of blogs have different core benefits, but it can basically be summarized as information. Blogs provide information in some form, and that is what consumers are looking for when they read them. A generic product is “a basic version of a product containing only those attributes or characteristics absolutely necessary for its functioning but with no distinguishing features. This is basically a stripped-down, no-frills version of the product that adequately performs the product function (Keller, 3).” For bloggers, this would mean providing the bare minimum of information, for example, setting up a very basic website that displays text, is updated fairly regularly and is available at all times. The expected product level is “a set of attributes or characteristics that buyers normally expect and agree to when they purchase a product (Keller, 3).” In this case, consumers don’t purchase the product with money as much as they do with their time. Blogs are free and readily available to anyone, and a consumer can only read (or consume) so much. Consumers must make decisions about with whom to spend their time, so the blogs they choose to spend their time reading, or “consuming,” are those they are, in effect, purchasing. With blogs, a reader can generally expect well-written 10 text, photos and a site with a modicum of design that is updated on a consistent, regular basis. This varies depending on the type of blog, however. Some blogs do not include photos because pictures don’t relate to the topic, or the appeal of the text is that it’s not well written. These are exceptions, and it can be assumed that there is a general set of attributes all blogs should possess in order to be considered relevant. The augmented product level includes “additional product attributes, benefits, or related services that distinguish the product from competitors (Keller, 3).” Blogs at an augmented product level have more than the minimum required. Photos are of high quality and visually appealing. Text is interesting and does more than just relay information; it engages the reader and makes him/her feel involved. The site design is well laid out and includes additional features such as a search function and posts are organized in a way that readers can quickly and easily find what they’re looking for. Finally, the potential product level includes “all the augmentations and transformations that a product might ultimately undergo in the future (Keller, 3).” It’s hard to determine how blogs might evolve, because they’re still relatively new. While it’s predictable that a laundry detergent such as Tide could undergo transformations such as Tide with Bleach or Liquid Tide, the blogosphere is still in the developmental stages and these predictions cannot be made with any certainty. It is possible that a better site design may be developed, or camera technology progresses to a point that photos are displayed even better than they are now. The heart of a blog is its content, which is different for each and every blog and blogger. As the content topic evolves and gets better, so will the content itself, which is where the product potential lies. 11 Though products are generally branded, a blog and its author can be considered both a product and a brand. It’s a product in that it is consumed, and a brand in that the author has developed a specific identity and image with which consumers associate the blog. Research Problem The author believes bloggers can create a brand for their blogs and themselves by utilizing the common elements of branding, and then leverage that brand to treat the blog as a product to gain readers, advertisers and sponsorships. This paper will focus on brand identity to explore blogger’s branding tactics, their successes and their failures. By examining each blog using Keller’s models of and thoughts about branding, the author will determine whether or not personal branding can be executed in the same way companies traditionally brand products. Definition of Lifestyle Blogs A lifestyle is, simply, the way people live. From the food they eat to the clothes they wear; the company they keep to the environment in which they reside, a lifestyle is, simply, a way of living. When it comes to bloggers, the term “lifestyle” generally refers to the physical and consumer aspects of their lives. It’s a wide and varied term – “lifestyle” bloggers can cover any and all topics. Generally, lifestyle bloggers write about a variety of topics relating to their everyday lives; these include food, fitness, fashion, beauty, home décor, entertainment, travel and more. Some lifestyle bloggers write about specific topics, while others choose to publish the everyday happenings in their 12 lives, which encompass the above topics. The genre is so broad that it’s hard to classify a specific definition. There are so many blogs that fall into the lifestyle category that specific niches have begun to emerge. Sites that focus on one specific topic while still including bits and pieces of other topics generally are classified into the main topic niche. For example, the topic of family is a “lifestyle topic,” but there are so many bloggers writing about their family lives that they’ve come to be known as “mommy bloggers,” because their focus is on rearing a family and their children. This paper examines four lifestyle blogs, each with different content focus points: food, beauty, home décor and fashion. Because the lifestyle genre is so large, it is impossible to study every topic covered by lifestyle bloggers. Each blog provides a wide spectrum of content and is relevant in the lifestyle blogosphere. The Pioneer Woman chronicles the life of a stay-at-home mom and her family living on a ranch in rural Oklahoma. Written by Ree Drummond, the site covers topics including food, photography, home & garden, home schooling and day-to-day living. Emily Schuman writes Cupcakes and Cashmere, which focuses on topics including beauty, fashion, food and home décor, but in a very different way than Ree. Young House Love is a home renovation and decoration blog written by married couple John and Sherry Petersik, who live in Richmond, VA. They post in conjunction with each other about their home projects and everyday activities. The last blog is …Love Meagan, written by Meagan Tintari from Sherman Oaks, CA. She covers fashion, beauty and do-it-yourself projects with a heavy emphasis on style and fashion. 13 Although the selected blogs cover many similar topics, they each do it in a very unique way. Each blog has its own distinct brand identity and personality, which is how they’re able to exist in the same sphere and all be successful. Target Market Each blog has a similar target audience of women ranging from 18 to 44. This includes a broad spectrum of people, so it is useful to consider audience in terms of market segmentation, which “divides the market into distinct groups of homogeneous consumers who have similar needs and consumer behavior (Keller, 99).” For The Pioneer Woman, the segment may focus heavily on mothers. For Young House Love, it could be homeowners or those interested in renovation projects. Market segmentation is more useful for bloggers to identify specific market segments that aren’t reading their blog than it is to identify markets that are, however. Once bloggers knows who isn’t reading, they can develop content to attract those people. The author believes this is what Emily did when building Cupcakes and Cashmere. Her brand is very aspirational, and many of her readers likely can’t afford the expensive things she features. But there are some readers who can, and by targeting them, she satisfies their interests and also caters to the aspirations of her less-wealthy readers. Keller suggests a marketing program to target specific segments, though this is irrelevant when it comes to blogs. Blog brands develop, but are not advertised in the way a product rollout would be. The brand spreads throughout the Internet and must build a large readership before any sort of tangible brand extension can be conceived. For bloggers, the intent is to attract readers and keep them interested and engaged. 14 Young House Love would agree with the above sentiment. “We didn't actively do much to try to build readership since the blog was for our friends and family. We just concentrated on the content and making our blog good – just because it was a hobby that we enjoyed,” said Sherry. They disagree with the idea of targeting segments, saying, “To this day I believe if your blog has good content, your readership will grow. And no amount of ‘marketing’ will help a not-good blog grow, so it really is all about the posts and photos and writing and passion that, hopefully, comes through.” Because the target market for each blog is similar, one might think there would be strong competition between each blog. The nature of competition is viewed differently in terms of blogging, however. There are many options, but a consumer is not forced to choose between one blog and another – many blogs exist and multiple blogs can be read. The example of Tide is relevant here: households generally only need one laundry detergent and must choose one brand over another. Each company offers essentially the same product, so competitors need a significant “wow” factor to attract the buyer’s attention. This isn’t true of blogs. Each has its own unique attributes and readers don’t have to choose only one – they can read them all. A person only has so much time, however, and how he or she spends that time is what bloggers are competing for. Bloggers must focus on brand loyalty in the sense that readers trust and enjoy the blog content and keep coming back for more. 15 Chapter Two: The Three Elements of Branding Brand Identity There are three elements to branding that every company, organization or person must consider: brand identity, brand engagement and brand management. Each aspect is important, but without a distinct identity, a brand wouldn’t be a brand – it simply wouldn’t exist. Brand identity is the development of a brand using brand elements: “trademarkable devices that serve to identify and differentiate the brand (Keller, 140).” Examples of these devices include brand names, logos, symbols, characters and jingles. Though these are an important part of a brand, the author would argue that brand identity is more than just these outward facing pieces. As discussed in the “What is a Brand?” section, brand identity is much more than a logo. It is everything a brand is and does. In the case of bloggers, personality is a very important aspect of brand identity. Though bloggers generally do have stylized headers and slogans or logos that they use to represent themselves and their blog, their communications to and with readers are far more important. When developing brand elements and tone, bloggers must consider five aspects: how their identity is defined outwardly, their target audience, their competitive advantage, points of similarity and difference between their blog and their competition, and the promotion of their blogs. “The most valuable assets many firms have are often intangible (Keller, 5),” and this statement is even truer for bloggers. Most, if not all, of their assets are intangible. Everything, from their writing to their brand logos, is hosted on the Internet, which is 16 not a physical place. Their personalities are the most valuable quality they possess, which is expressed through brand identity. Brand Engagement: Criteria for Developing a Successful Brand Identity In developing the elements that make up brand identity, there are six criteria that must be considered: memorability, meaningfulness, likability, transferability, adaptability and protectability (Keller, 140). These criteria determine how a blogger builds her/his brand and an attachment between it and the readers. Memorability is equivalent to brand awareness. These elements should be easily recognized and easily recalled. Features that contribute to blog memorability could include a graphic, logo, color scheme or some other element a blogger develops to bring the brand to mind when the reader sees it. Meaningful elements are those that are descriptive, persuasive and add significance to a brand. They should do two things – convey information about the nature of the product category (in this case, lifestyle) and specific information about particular attributes and benefits of the brand. For a blogger, a meaningful element might be a catchy tagline meant to describe the blog and stick in the reader’s mind. Likability elements are those that make the brand fun and interesting. A person must like a brand to want to engage with it. Likable elements are appealing to the senses and excite the reader. In blogging, this could be the site design and the tone the author takes. Transferability “measures the extent to which the brand element adds to the brand equity of new products for the brand (Keller, 142).” In terms of brand extension, 17 blogs are different than traditional products. If the blog is the main product of a brand, the extension will not be more blogs but other outlets for the brand; for example, books, television appearances, speaking opportunities, etc. For a brand to be adaptable, it must be able to grow and develop with the changing industry over time. This is inherent in blogs. The blogosphere has advanced and developed in so many ways since the inception of blogs that it is almost impossible to imagine an Internet without them. As blogs mature, so must the brands attached to them. Finally, the protectability element means that a brand must be able to be protected both legally and competitively. Terms, logos and images must be able to be trademarked and copywrited. To be protected competitively, the brand must be unique. If it can be easily copied and replicated, other bloggers could enter the exclusive space occupied by the brand and diminish both readership and support of the brand. Brand Management Brand management involves the marketing of a brand and the handling of its development over time. According to Keller, strategic brand management is “the design and implementation of marketing programs and activities to build, measure, and manage brand equity (Keller, 38).” This management involves four main steps: 1) Identifying and establishing brand positioning 2) Planning and implementing brand marketing programs 3) Measuring and interpreting brand performance and 4) Growing and sustaining brand equity. In short, these steps involve aligning brand identity and engagement to push the brand forward and make it successful long term. 18 One of the brand management strategies that will be discussed is sponsorship and advertising. As blogs grow, bloggers often run ads and accept sponsorships from various companies. A sponsorship involves a company giving the blogger a product to use, wear and/or feature on the blog, and sometimes will involve in-site advertising as well. This type of advertising is what McKinsey & Company, a management-consulting firm, has termed “sold media.” It’s a new type of media that is different than paid placement because the blogger is using her/his owned space to promote someone or something other than him/herself (Edelman). It is up to the blogger to decide what sponsorships to accept and feature, and often they’ll choose companies that align with their brand identity, though this is not always the case. These sponsorships increase the revenue of the blog, but may diminish the brand equity in the eyes of some readers. It’s an interesting take on brand management that will be discussed in the analysis of lifestyle bloggers. 19 Chapter Three: Brand Identity and The Pioneer Woman The Pioneer Woman is a blog written by Ree Drummond. She’s a stay-at-home mom of four who home schools her children and helps her husband with his duties taking care of their ranch in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, a small town of 3,500 people that lies 80 miles outside of Tulsa. Ree started her blog in 2006 as a place to post pictures and update family members (Lynch). Now, she has a monthly readership of more than four million people and more than 23 million page views per month (Fortini). This seems like an extreme number, but Ree posts a great deal of content. Her site is divided into five main categories: Confessions, Cooking, Photography, Home & Garden and Home Schooling. Personality Traits Ree Drummond is an interesting study in branding. Not only is her site “The Pioneer Woman,” she is the Pioneer Woman as well. It is truly a case of personal branding amplified and projected into something bigger. Ree’s identity is defined by and communicated through her site. Everything about it, from her chosen color scheme and header to the topics she writes about and the way in which she writes them is part of her brand and is a reflection of who she is as a person. This seems quite daunting – to define oneself through something as intangible as a website – but when looked at in pieces it is clear that every aspect of the blog is cohesive and paints a singular overall picture. Ree’s blog stands for simplicity, comfort and friendship. She’s entirely relatable and her blog is a place where readers can feel at home on the Internet. Her tone is 20 welcoming and warm, her topics are unique but do not seem contrived and her overall persona is that of a friend the reader has known forever. Target Audience To determine The Pioneer Woman’s target audience (and the audiences of the other three blogs), a simple segmentation method was employed: viewing the site through the eyes of a casual reader. Without any research, the author assumed that Ree’s audience would be women with children, likely in their mid-twenties to mid- forties. Her topics are heavily influenced by her family, many of the recipes she posts are based on what her kids and husband like and are enough to feed a small group and she has a specific section dedicated to home schooling, which is a fairly narrow topic in which only a certain niche would likely be interested. Looking into the specifications of the site supported this assumption. On Cision, a site that provides public relations services and detailed information about media outlets, the listed topics for The Pioneer Woman are: Cooking & Baking, Home, Photography and Women’s Interests. Site owners set these topics themselves, so Ree has defined these issues as the main subject matter of her site. The outlet’s profile is listed as: “Written from the perspective of a homemaker in Oklahoma. Discusses cooking, home care, gardening, photography and home schooling.” The hypothesis is further supported by Alexa, a website that tracks web traffic. According to the statistics given, The Pioneer Woman’s main audience is Caucasian women between the ages of 25-44 (with the 25-34 demographic more largely represented). These women are likely to have children, and most have at least some college education. Additionally, in an 21 interview given to Forbes in 2010, Ree stated that, despite her assumption that most people reading her site were country-girls like her, there is an even distribution between those who live in cities and those who live in more rural areas. “…it turns out all people can find something to relate to on the site,” she said. “…whether it’s the food or the ranch life or the photography (Casserly).” These statistics are important because, to build a successful brand, one must know their audience and cater to them. When growing her site, Ree almost certainly considered the people currently reading and their interests. She developed content that would be relevant to them and found new topics that would draw even more people into the fold. Each of her site sections is designed to interest at least one segment of her audience. As noted earlier, home schooling is a very specific subject, but moms that homeschool their children come to the site for tips and advice. A woman doesn’t have to be interested in home schooling to visit the site, however. Someone looking for delicious meals to cook for their family will be interested in the cooking section. A person who lives in rural setting like Ree might like that he/she can relate to the stories Ree tells of ranch life, but alternately, a person living in a city might enjoy reading about a lifestyle totally different from her/his own. The photography section is unique in that the tips and tutorials are relevant to anyone interested in learning to take better pictures, regardless of their demographic background. 22 Title, Header and Design Ree uses the header and design of her blog to convey her character and aesthetic. She updates it frequently to reflect the seasons, but never changes the general feeling. Below is a capture of her blog header as it appeared on March 4, 2012: Figure 4: The Pioneer Woman Header (March 2012) It’s reflective of the fall season and incorporates her signature use of vibrant color and pattern. To contrast, here is the header featured in July 2010: Figure 5: The Pioneer Woman Header (July 2010) The title is always rendered in the same calligraphy-style font, and the use of earth tones is common. Headers often have a “rustic” feeling that goes along with her persona as a ranching wife. The look of her site extends to the look of her publications. Figure 6: The Pioneer Woman Cooks Figure 7: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels 23 “The Pioneer Woman” is always written in her signature font, and the colors and “country feel” of the site are consistent throughout the site. The character she uses to represent herself on the cover of “Black Heels to Tractor Wheels” is reflected back on the site as well, where she uses the illustration of a redheaded woman as her avatar: Figure 8: The Pioneer Woman Biography Site Topics Her main focus is Cooking; in fact, Ree’s become famous for her recipes and in many ways is identified as a food blogger and chef. Recently, she filmed a six-episode series for The Food Network called “The Pioneer Woman” that is slated for a second season in the near future. To date, she’s posted 460 recipes, each accompanied by step- by-step photographs and quirky commentary. Further expanding her Cooking section, Ree developed “Tasty Kitchen,” a recipe-sharing community that is independently hosted. In 2009 she published “The Pioneer Woman Cooks,” a cookbook of recipes she developed, made and photographed herself that rose to #1 on The New York Times”bestseller list. In 2011 both “Black Heels to Tractor Wheels,” the story of her transition from a career woman in Los Angeles to a ranch wife in Oklahoma, and a 24 children’s book called “Charlie the Ranch Dog,” which was inspired by her basset hound, were published. In the Confessions section, Ree posts musings about her family, friends and pets and updates about activities on the ranch and things happening in life. In Home & Garden she writes about beauty products, style and clothing, housekeeping and gardening. The Homeschooling section is written primarily by guest contributors who homeschool their children, but Ree writes about her own experiences from time to time as well. It is important to note that each of these sections is very well organized, with multiple links in the header of each section that lead to the various topics within a section. An example is shown in Figure 9: Figure 9: Topics Categorized Within Confessions The Confessions section is categorized with posts about Animals, Charlie (her dog), Country Life, Family, Fun, Juice Bag (a collection of audio clips of her son), Pioneer Woman, The Ranch and Travels. Most of these subcategories are even further organized. 25 Ree’s skills as an amateur photographer have developed as her blog has progressed, and she shares tips and tricks she’s learned in the Photography section of her site. She frequently hosts editing contests and what she calls “Photo Assignments,” in which she chooses a simple topic and readers post their own photos to a dedicated Flickr stream. Thousands of photos are posted, and she posts groups of them each day until she chooses a winner. Her photos are incredibly high quality, and she is generous with her use of them. Cooking posts regularly have 30 to 40 photos per post – she literally photographs every step of the process when she makes a recipe. This makes the reader feel like he/she is with her in the kitchen. Combined with her casual, inviting tone, readers feel like they’ve been invited into Ree’s kitchen – and her life – which is how she developed such a loyal following. Competitive Advantage When considering competitive advantage, one must first dissect and analyze the competition. In Ree’s case, there are no sites that are exactly like The Pioneer Woman – hers is a unique combination of content. Her main competitors are sites that focus on lifestyle, cooking and photography, though none blend the content as she does. A lifestyle blog that is often lumped into the same category with The Pioneer Woman is Dooce, a blog written by Heather Armstrong. Heather’s site chronicles her life as an ex-Mormon with her family and her pets in Salt Lake City, Utah. Like Ree, she’s a stay at home mom who takes fantastic photos. Unlike Ree, she doesn’t cook and lives in a major metropolitan area as opposed to on a ranch. Another competitor is Steamy Kitchen, a blog written by Jaden Hair. Like Ree, she is a mom, author and chef. Her blog 26 is full of beautifully photographed recipes; she’s published a cookbook and writes columns for publications like Discovery Health and the Tampa Tribune. It is impossible to list all the sites that compete with Ree’s in any way, because there are sites with similar aspects in every corner of the web. What sets Ree apart and really solidifies her advantage is her content and the way she presents it. First, she posts frequently, and her content is varied. She publishes an average of 17 posts per week across all of her different sections. In addition to quality content, Ree keeps things simple. A glance at her short biography (Figure 8) tells you everything you need to know in a few short sentences (“My name is Ree. I’m a desperate housewife. I live in the country. I channel Lucille Ball, Vivien Leigh, and Ethel Merman. Welcome to my frontier!”), and if one were to relate any piece of the site back to that bio, it always holds true. She’s also developed an advantage with her brand extensions. What started with the cooking community Tasty Kitchen has grown to include fiction, nonfiction and cookbooks, a television series and an upcoming film – Columbia Pictures acquired the rights to “Black Heels to Tractor Wheels” and is currently developing the project (Fleming). Points of Difference and Points of Parity Points of difference are attributes that readers strongly associate with a particular brand, in this case, The Pioneer Woman, and feel that they could not find somewhere else. Points of parity are attributes or associations that all competitive brands must possess to be considered relevant within a category (in this instance, among lifestyle/cooking blogs) or attributes that a blog develops to keep up with 27 competition. The author argues that there are a few points of parity amongst lifestyle blogs that are “industry standard,” or must be present to keep up in the crowded blogosphere. Photography is an obvious point of parity – a blog without photos simply isn’t as compelling as one that uses pictures to illustrate the author’s point. All blogs must have photos, but the point of difference comes from the quality. The Pioneer Woman’s photos are incredibly high quality, and it is obvious that she puts a lot of effort into editing them and improving her photographic skills. She also posts detailed tutorials to help amateur photographers like herself improve their skills as well. Another point of parity is ease of use. The easier and more convenient a site is to read, the better the reader’s experience will be. Ree recently made changes to her site that made it incredibly simple for the reader to customize their view and easily browse her archives. She added icons that allow the reader to view her blog in multiple ways, customizing the number of posts seen per page and options to toggle the display between a descriptive preview, titles and photos or thumbnails. Figure 10: Site View Customization 28 Points of parity can be endless – a blogger must always adapt to changes among other blogs to stay relevant. Points of difference are where unique attributes come to light. The Pioneer Woman has a few distinct points of difference, one of which is her point of view. Her perspective as a rancher’s wife living in rural Oklahoma is very different than that of most popular bloggers. Her circumstances make her writing even more unique and interesting – for instance, the closest large grocery store is hours away, so most of her recipes rely on pantry staples and simple steps. This comes in stark contrast to most popular food and recipe bloggers who use exotic ingredients, special tools and fancy techniques. Another point of difference are her giveaways, which are one of the driving forces behind Ree’s site and what the author considers to be one of the reasons she’s developed such a large following. She frequently hosts giveaways of items such as DSLR cameras, KitchenAid mixers or jewelry – items she uses and loves. Ree sponsors almost every giveaway herself (meaning she purchases the products) as a way to show appreciation for her readers. Her last giveaway post, featuring a $300 pair of Frye boots, got more than 29,000 comments. "I give a big chunk of my revenue back in prizes,” she has said. “I don't give it all back, for sure, but I wouldn't have an audience if they weren't reading my site, and this is my way of showing them how much I appreciate them (Lynch).” Promotion of Blog Though promotion of the brand would generally fall under the umbrella of brand management, the author believes brand promotion is essential to brand identity. In the 29 case of blogs the more readers a blog has the more money it will make, thus the opportunity for better content. Many bloggers (Ree included, though more so young, single, childless bloggers) make enough money from their blogs that they do not have to work, giving them more time to develop content and perfect their posts. Promotion feeds from success, and success brings more promotion in a cyclical format. Ree claims she saw an increase in readership and “success” after winning Bloggie awards in 2007 and 2008. Bloggies are awards chosen by readers and given annually. Anyone can submit a nomination and/or vote for the best blog in a variety of categories. The Pioneer Woman won the Best Kept Secret Blog award in March 2007 and in 2008 won the Best Writing and Best Food Blog Awards (Lynch). In 2009 the site won Weblog of the Year and Ree was placed on the Forbes Web Celeb list, a “ranking of the Internet’s most famous (Ewalt).” Ree also won Weblog of the Year in 2010 and 2011, in addition to wins in other categories including Best Designed Weblog (2010, 2011), Best Photography Weblog (2011) and Best Parenting Weblog (2011). Promotion also comes in the form of book tours, interviews and exposure from her appearances on The Food Network. As more and more people see Ree and The Pioneer Woman through different channels, more are exploring her site and becoming regular readers. All this traffic leads to revenue. The Pioneer Woman is a member of the BlogHer publishing network, which pays Ree a revenue share depending on the number of visitors her site receives. Ree only runs Blogher sponsored advertisements on her site, and Blogher can use her work throughout its network, where it aggregates content from its authors and advertisements are featured. The details of agreements between 30 bloggers and the network are private, but Ree has revealed that her 2010 revenue from her blog alone was at least one million dollars – revenue from her books, television show and film not included (Lynch). Branding Difficulties and Barriers With all success comes resentment, as Ree has seen in the development of hate sites dedicated to mocking and criticizing her and The Pioneer Woman. Sites such as The Pioneer Woman Sux, The Marlboro Woman and Pie Near Woman write posts making fun of Ree’s every move and repurpose her content in order to ridicule it. Likely built upon simple jealousy, these sites have far, far fewer followers than Ree herself (The Pioneer Woman Sux is the largest with 3,953 unique visitors per month) but the fact that they exist is surely upsetting to the author of the blog. It also shows that for every thousand people that buy into The Pioneer Woman brand, there’s another that finds it phony and ridiculous. This isn’t relative to just The Pioneer Woman, either. Every brand, no matter how well developed the identity, will have those who dislike it for some reason or another. The solution is to identify those who dislike the brand or product and find some way to develop content that will draw them in and convert them to believers. Conclusions The Pioneer Woman’s distinct personality and commitment to simple yet quality content has built her an incredibly strong brand that is already expanding into multiple realms of media. Her success has brought dissenters, however, which is something with which all successful blogs must deal. Bloggers cannot control what is said about them and how their content is shared, but they can control their brand. They are in control of 31 how they handle the attention. “[They] are still responsible for setting the tone, managing [their] reputation, and taking part in the conversation about [them],” writes Murray Newlands in his book, “What is Personal Branding?” How bloggers manage their brand in a space as volatile as the Internet is vital, and is part of the identity they’ve defined for themselves. 32 Chapter Four: Brand Identity and Cupcakes and Cashmere Cupcakes and Cashmere is a blog documenting author Emily Schuman’s “favorite things.” Based upon Emily’s life in Los Angeles, Cupcakes and Cashmere covers every aspect of the “lifestyle” genre, featuring posts about fashion, food, beauty and home décor. Emily started her blog in March 2008 as a creative escape from her day job managing online media campaigns at AOL (Charlotte). “I had always been a creative person,” she said in an interview with Scripps College, her alma mater. “But when I found myself in a job that required me to simply crunch numbers and analyze stats, I knew I needed a change. I…decided to write on a daily basis about the things I loved.” She began with simple posts about fashion, beauty and food and quickly gained a loyal following. She claims she hadn’t found a blog pairing fashion and food, so it was a natural niche for her to settle into. She left AOL in January 2010, when the company was offering voluntary buy-outs, and has focused on full-time on Cupcakes and Cashmere and related projects ever since (Galente). Personality Traits Cupcakes and Cashmere doesn’t have as much personality as The Pioneer Woman. If The Pioneer Woman is the equivalent of a warm, friendly home where readers can go to find comfort, Cupcakes and Cashmere is a place where readers can go to look but not touch. Emily’s brand is extremely aspirational and her tone is distant and a bit removed from reality. Her personality comes across as flawless, which is an illusion 33 the reader knows is not real but enjoys, because it makes it seem like a perfect life is possible. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Emily said, “I don’t want to show the [parts] of my mundane life. That doesn’t inspire people.” She does have a very authentic voice, and it’s believable that she writes about things she’s passionate about. She simply chooses to leave some of those things out of the public sphere: “I’m very selective about the things I showcase on my blog, whether it’s my food posts or my outfit posts…I really want it to be an inspirational destination. No one needs to see the frozen taquitos that I warm up for dinner on a random Tuesday night.” Target Audience Like most lifestyle blogs, the target audience of Cupcakes and Cashmere is women. Specifically, her widest audience is females ages 18-34 with a college education and no children. Interestingly, viewers browse the site most often from work, likely because posts are published in the morning and are very brief. Readers can check in for a daily update without taking any time out of their workdays. The site is aspirational in that many of the items shown are expensive and, because Emily doesn’t work a typical desk job, her lifestyle is enviable. She works hard to make sure everything is presented in a desirable fashion, and the comments reflect her work. Many of the hundreds of comments she receives each day are from readers complimenting her and asking for tips on how to bake (or dress, shop, decorate, etc.) like she does. In accordance with what the author has listed as her main topics, her self- reported Cision topics include beauty & grooming, epicurean, fashion and home decorating. 34 Her efforts have garnered her 48,000 unique visitors and six million page views per month. She has 45,000 Twitter followers and 30,000 people subscribe to her blog through an RSS feed. She knows many of her viewers use an RSS reader, and to drive her actual page views up, she doesn’t publish full posts in a reader format. Instead, she publishes the headline and links to her blog, so one must actually visit her site to see the post. Title, Header and Design Figure 11: Cupcakes and Cashmere Header A blog’s title is its first, most basic opportunity to define itself. Cupcakes and Cashmere does just that, letting the reader know the content revolves around food and fashion. In an interview with website FashionIndie, Emily said of choosing her title: “I knew I wanted my blog to be about things that brought me a lot of happiness, and food and clothes pretty much top the list. I thought it was a cute, alliterative title and something that appeals to a lot of people (Cheesecake).” Even further, the images the title conjures (for the author, it’s a cupcake topped with a thick layer of frosting and a luxe blanket, both in soft pink) segue into the blog itself – a frothy online space filled with beautiful, often unnecessary items. Emily’s focus on high-end fashion, luxury beauty products and gourmet food are showcased in high- 35 quality photographs and surrounded by the blog’s signature pink, peach and white color scheme. Site Topics Emily’s site isn’t divided into specific sections, but she blogs about four main topics – fashion, food, beauty and home décor. Each post is presented in a simple, straightforward fashion – usually the text is concise and supported by three to five photos. Regardless of the topic, posts always begin with a photo followed by a short (usually about 100 word) paragraph. Posts are not tagged or divided in any way, but categories are linked via interactive archives: Figure 12: Site Archive Topics The Outfits archive lists each month with a thumbnail image and includes a gallery featuring every photo included in fashion posts throughout the month. For example, if Emily published six different outfit posts, each featuring four photos of her in the outfit, the gallery would contain all the photos. The gallery does not link back to her posts but is an easy way for readers to browse past looks and for Emily to showcase her sense of style. 36 Fashion posts most often consist of photos of Emily posing somewhere around the city. She is known for pairing high-end items of clothing with more affordable pieces. Under the first photo, she details the pieces she’s wearing, from her earrings to her nail polish. If the item is available online, she’ll link to it, often using an affiliate program. When she first started becoming popular as a blogger, she would indicate that a company had given her an item by noting that it was “gifted.” Now, links to items are credited to her when readers click-through, but she doesn’t disclose that affiliate links are being used. Full-length photos show her entire outfit and close-ups highlight the details. Emily doesn’t write her own recipes, but she cooks and bakes frequently and takes photos of the process and end result. The recipes page features links to some (not all) of her posts featuring food, and the post itself links to the original recipe location. Food posts focus more on the presentation of the dish than the recipe itself. Emily will showcase a meal on a set table featuring attractive tableware and decorations or find an innovative way to display or decorate the dish. For example, instead of setting out cheese on a cutting board, she places wedges on a slate and labels each type with chalk. “How-To” is the archive featuring nine step-by-step beauty tutorials. Beauty products are often featured in her everyday posts (she’ll publish a dedicated post about a manicure she’s given herself or her favorite shade of lipstick, for example), but these differ in that they’re directly detailed. Most regular posts featuring specific beauty products are not archived, though there is a search function so a specific item or post can be found fairly quickly. 37 The “At Home” section showcases rooms in Emily’s home and pieces she’s purchased to decorate it. She’s prominently featured her office renovation and closet reorganization, and she frequently posts about trips to home goods stores to add pieces, from decorative trays to bedding, to her home. Her home reflects the image of her blog (the office is painted pink and houses a clothing rack filled with clothes that she rotates out often), and is popular enough that she, her fiancée and their home were featured in a house tour on popular home site Apartment Therapy. In addition to her four main topics, every Friday Emily will post “Five Things,” a series where she posts five photos and descriptions of things or places she’s been that have made her happy throughout the week. The posts encapsulate her lifestyle, and reading through a few of them would give someone unfamiliar with Cupcakes and Cashmere a good idea of what the blog is about. Competitive Advantage Emily’s competition is considerable, because the lifestyle genre encompasses so much. Because her blog focuses on fashion more than any other topic, other fashion/clothing blogs are her biggest competition. Her main competitive advantage is that she doesn’t post about only one topic – she has found a way to include every aspect of “lifestyle” on a daily basis, and her presentation is that of effortless simplicity. She makes projects seem easy and exudes positivity and happiness. As a result, readers want to emulate her and come back daily for tips and inspiration. Her focus on simplicity is another, perhaps less visible, advantage. She posts once a day, and because posts are short and consist mostly of photos, she can write and 38 publish them quickly and spend her time developing content and working on other projects. Points of Difference and Points of Parity Emily has become well known because of her fashion posts and is frequently credited as a trendsetter or style expert in the media. This sets her apart from the sea of fashion and lifestyle bloggers and lends her credibility. Though it may seem trivial, the fact that Emily is attractive can be seen as a point of difference as well. The main subject of Cupcakes and Cashmere is Emily Schuman, and without photos of her the brand would be much different. Her particular look and style is an important point of difference. As with most popular blogs, quality photography is a must, and Emily’s photos are no exception. She takes the shots of items and places, and her fiancée takes all the pictures featuring her outfits using a professional-quality digital camera. Promotion of Blog Because of her large following, Emily has developed quite a few brand extensions, which promote and further cement her brand and give her an even better advantage over competition. One of her first partnerships was with leather goods company Coach in 2010. She designed a bag as part of a collection of four purses designed by bloggers. In line with her brand imaging, it’s pink, luxurious and expensive, costing $500. The bag had a hangtag that read “Emily Schuman of Cupcakes and Cashmere for Coach.” Her brand name (blog title) was rendered in the original typeface. 39 After this initial partnership, readership spiked and more opportunities arose. She has since done a series of sponsored videos with Juicy Couture, has become a brand ambassador for West Elm and Forever 21 and is a featured blogger for Estée Lauder. Winning the 2010 Bloggie award for Best Fashion blog reinforced Emily’s position as a tastemaker in the blogging community. Her readership increased drastically in 2010 as a result of both her Coach partnership and readers who found her because of the award. As mentioned with The Pioneer Woman, promotion builds from success, so the recognition played a major part in her blogging career. In addition to partnerships, she’s been featured in major media publications including Lucky, Glamour and Teen Vogue. These outlets earn Cupcakes and Cashmere publicity and bring in more readers. Finally, her efforts to build her brand produced a book deal. “Cupcakes and Cashmere: A Design Guide For Defining Your Style, Reinventing Your Space, And Entertaining With Ease” will be published in August 2012. Branding Difficulties and Barriers Cupcakes and Cashmere hasn’t encountered the ire that The Pioneer Woman faces, though Ree is much better known. There are no hate sites dedicated to Emily’s blog, though she has been mentioned on Get Off My Internets, a blog that criticizes the posts of other bloggers. The general consensus among commenters, however, is that Emily is good at what she does, works hard and is generally inoffensive. Otherwise, competition is Emily’s most prominent barrier. As mentioned, her competition is extensive, but few bloggers have reached the level of success she has. 40 With the publication of her book will come criticisms, but as long as new opportunities arise, it is likely she’ll continue to grow her brand. Conclusions Readers refer to Emily as “Cupcakes and Cashmere.” A Google image search for “Cupcakes and Cashmere” returns not the individual items, but pictures of Emily. She IS her blog – without photos of her, the online space wouldn’t be the same. She’s branded herself and her blog with an image of elegance and simplicity that other want to imitate and she’s risen rapidly to prominence. 41 Chapter Five: Brand Identity and Young House Love Young House Love is a blog written by John and Sherry Petersik, a married couple, both 30, living with their one-year-old daughter, Clara, in Richmond, VA. Their lifestyle niche is home decoration and design – daily posts chronicle the renovation and redecoration of their home, as well as projects they complete along the way. In addition, they include frequent updates about their life, their family and how they keep their business running. Young House Love began as This Young House in September 2007. Like The Pioneer Woman, it was started as an easy way to update friends and family – this time about renovations they were making to the home they had purchased in 2006. “We were inspired to start the blog purely for fun, to share our home improvement progress with our family,” Sherry said. “We never thought we'd make a single penny from it, let alone dreamed that it could ever become a full time job for both of us. We just like home improvement, and taking photos, and writing about our journey, diary style.” John and Sherry post daily, featuring details about their home renovations, DIY projects and little life updates. Sherry began slowly transitioning from her job as a freelance advertising copywriter to full-time blogger in May 2008, and John officially quit his advertising sales job to focus full time on the blog and parenthood when their daughter was born on May 14, 2010. 42 Personality Traits Young House Love is the blog equivalent of a best friend. John and Sherry share all the details of their lives and provide a space where readers can feel comfortable to do the same. They really do share every detail – posts average 2,405 words, while the word count of posts on Cupcakes and Cashmere averages 100. Like Ree, they are friendly and down-to-earth, and they bring a quirky, fun-loving attitude to their blog as well. A reader can tell that John and Sherry write as they truly are and don’t hold anything back. Unlike Emily, if they have taquitos for dinner, they’ll let you know. Target Audience According to Sherry, she is her own target audience. “I just write for me, and John writes for him,” she said. “We figure that a lot of our readers see themselves in us, so if we’re true to ourselves we’re all set.” Demographically, the Petersik’s estimate that the majority of their readers are 25-35 year old women in the United States, though they do know that they have non-traditional readers as well, including some men, some women over 60 and under 15 and international readers. Alexa statistics support this approximation; listing the main readership as females ages 25-34 who have children and view the blog from home. Cision topics for the blog include home decorating, home improvement, interior design and personal. It’s the personal aspect that sets this brand apart. Instead of posting dry instructions and basic tutorials, the Petersik’s let readers into their lives and view them as equals. They claim “being real” as another important brand aspect: “People don’t want to think you’re perfect – it’s defeating and it makes them feel bad,” 43 said Sherry. They want readers to know that they’re just regular people (and post disclaimers disavowing themselves of liability for projects readers attempt and reiterating that they’re not experts). When asked to describe their brand in a short phrase, they even stated that it would be either “DIY Ideas from Real People” or “Unstuffy Home Décor and DIY.” They even link to a post titled “Mistakes We (Hopefully) Won’t Make Again,” showing readers that even they do things they’re not entirely happy with and then learn from their mistakes. Their approachable and easygoing attitudes have brought in enough readers that they can support their family of three with income from the blog. The site receives more than 91,000 unique visitors and more than 4 million hits per month. As of September 2011, it had received a total of 68,164,565 hits in its four years of existence – a number that doubled from 2010 to 2011. In addition, the couple has 40,000 RSS feed subscribers and 17,000 Twitter followers. These readers are important to the Petersik’s, and to show their appreciation, they answer every comment question, no matter how many – they frequently get more than 500 comments per day. “We believe that people who take the time to ask a question should get an answer,” said Sherry. “We love the dialogue that comments can provide when bloggers actually interact and write back, and we love to help and encourage people to DIY something they might be afraid to tackle if we hadn’t given them that answer.” 44 Title, Header and Design Figure 13: Young House Love Logos The title of the blog, “Young House Love,” embodies all that the blog is. It combines the family, their home and their love for both one other and for fixing up the space in which they live. The blog didn’t start as Young House Love, however. Originally, it was called This Young House. Sherry said the name came about simply: “we were a young family making over an old house.” Two years in, however, lawyers from magazine “This Old House” contacted the couple with a cease-and-desist letter, claiming the title was confusing their readers and leading them to believe that This Young House was related to their brand. The Petersiks chose to view the incident as an opportunity and changed the title of their blog. “We thought it was a name that still felt like us (many people still called us The Youngsters from our first name, so we didn’t want to completely start over – and adding the word Love made it feel even more personal and true to our lives.” The blog’s logo, though important, isn’t as integral to their brand as it is for some other blogs. John designed their logo in two hours (the original, above right) that incorporated the sideways heart, a symbol they still use as an avatar. The blog header no longer incorporates the heart, but fully explains their blog and their brand in one 45 simple graphic. The heart is now integrated into a background graphic that sits behind the text of their site. They’re consistent with their color scheme of blue and green, and one glance at their full header tells a reader everything they need to know about the couple and the blog; who they are, where they live and what they love: saving money, redecorating their home, and, inexplicably, white ceramic animals. Figure 14: Young House Love Header Site Topics The Petersiks write about a variety of topics, all centering around home DIY (do- it-yourself). After running out of projects to complete in their first house in 2010, they moved into their current one. The couple chronicles literally everything they do to their home – from rearranging the living room furniture to painting rooms and building in shelves. Every project is categorized, budgeted and detailed step-by-step. John and Sherry are avid DIYers, and if a project can be completed without professional help, they’ll attempt it. Currently, they’re in the midst of a major kitchen renovation, which they update readers on whenever they’ve made a decision or completed a piece of the overall project. Thus far, the only professional help they’ve received has been the installation of new kitchen countertops and the removal of a section of wall. In addition, they post smaller projects that are seasonal or not related to the main ongoing renovation. For example, they wanted to purchase a play kitchen for 46 their daughter, but weren’t fully satisfied with the options they were finding in stores, so they made their own. They detailed how they built it using a leftover cabinet and scrap wood. Each piece of the project is detailed in a budget breakdown, and steps are so detailed that reader could easily replicate the project if they wanted to. Because all posts generally include some kind of home renovation project, there aren’t “site sections” as much as there are categorizations. A bar at the top of the site has a link to their “projects” page, where every project they’ve taken on is listed. There are 26 categories, including “Exterior Upgrades,” “Furniture Makeovers,” “Painting Projects,” “Artsy Ideas” and “Let’s Build It.” The “Where to Start” section links to basic posts about the foundation of Young House Love, including “Decorating in Stages,” “Negotiating a Good Deal,” “How We Stick to a Budget” and “Mistakes We Hope We Won’t Repeat.” The couple is incredibly thrifty and reuse or repurpose whatever they can. They research all major purchases and walk readers through their thought process whenever they decide to make a major change or buy an expensive item. The Petersiks believe this is part of the reason readers keep coming back. “Featuring projects [readers] can actually do” and “keeping things low-budget so they can actually afford them” are two of the most important aspects of the Young House Love brand, according to the authors. Another vital aspect is the personality of the site. John and Sherry work hard to make sure their personalities come through and readers feel like friends. They want to make sure their readers feel engaged and involved, so they ask questions at the end of most posts. Questions range from those that relate to the content of the post (“Have you guys taken on something like this?”) to casual (“Anyone have fun weekend plans?”). 47 “We think of our readers as close friends,” said Sherry. “So we just try to shoot the breeze with them.” Knowing that their readership views them as their friends, The Youngsters recently added a “Young House Life” section to the blog. Because the blog is John and Sherry’s full time job, posts naturally feature all aspects of their lives. The Young House Life section, however, features posts that aren’t home renovation related. Posts published in this section feature videos of Clara, photos from family get-togethers or vacations and other activities that don’t involved the main home aspects of the original site. Young House Life posts aren’t published to the main site feed, so readers must click a separate link to find them. This is done knowing that some people come to the site purely for DIY information, so they offer the family details for those who want to read it but don’t force it upon those who don’t. Competitive Advantage Young House Love has a strong competitive advantage in that there are two authors as opposed to one. One may think that it would be harder to combine two people’s personalities into one brand, but the Petersik’s have managed to integrate their distinct voices in order to project one outward personality. They don’t view competitors traditionally – they’ve stated that they think there’s room for many different blogs and bloggers on the Internet. “We all have a different sense of style or writing or budget, so I think blogs complement each other,” said Sherry. In terms of subject matter, though Young House Love is categorized as a lifestyle blog, the authors do cover a fairly niche topic that others write about as well. They believe they’re similar 48 to sites like Design Sponge and Apartment Therapy that offer décor and renovation tips, but the difference is that more than 20 authors contribute to those sites, and John and Sherry do all the work themselves. They also include more personal information: for example, they’ll write about what trends they’re incorporating into their kitchen as opposed to covering design trends in general. Overall, they see such sites more as a compliment to theirs as opposed to competition. “We don’t compete with them or hope they do poorly,” said Sherry. “We want them to do well, which means that blogging as a whole can do well! We love to thrive along with the rest of the DIY blogs out there!” Points of Difference and Points of Parity In addition to the quality photography almost all blogs need to be successful, the Petersik’s believe there are additional points of parity specific to the DIY genre, namely, “step-by-step instructions that are easy to understand and a general sense of “you can do it” to keep people motivated and excited.” These are points they certainly provide and easily exceed, leading to their points of difference. Hand in hand with their competitive advantage, a main point of difference is that John and Sherry “try to keep things very personal.” They’ve even referred to the blog as “a real-time diary about [their] home makeover as it goes.” Additionally, they know that their emphasis on intimacy and real life is important to readers. “We try to stress that we’re real people all the time,” said Sherry. “We share the bad and the ugly along with the good (to remind people that we fail too, everyone does!) and I think people like that we keep it real with budget breakdowns and reminding them that we're nerds and we're into bad puns and all that stuff.” 49 An additional point of parity that really separates Young House Love from most other blogs is that they refuse to accept free products and services or write posts that companies pay them to publish. This policy allows them to recommend products to their readers because they really love them, not because they’ve been paid to do so, so readers know the Petersik’s can be trusted. It’s one more way the couple has built a relationship with their readers that keeps them coming back every day. They formally stated their reasons for adopting the policy in a post announcing it: “we want to stalk every single thing down ourselves and buy it (or make it) without any other reason than it’s what we love and it’s actually within our price range. And we don’t want a post about how we need a new dining table to be misconstrued by you guys as ‘fishing for a freebie’ (and we don’t want companies to consider it to be an invitation for them to offer something up in exchange for a post about it). Besides, being constrained by a real budget is when we come up with our most creative ideas.” They elaborated on this policy in an interview, saying, “We just wanted people to know that when we blog about something it's because we really like it, not because there was something in it for us.” This sets them apart, as a criticism of most contemporary blogs is that they’re “shills” or exist only to receive free product. That John and Sherry actively refuse such offers legitimizes their efforts and makes them a credible and trustworthy source for home décor and DIY products. Promotion of Blog John and Sherry claim they promote their blog by “focusing on content.” They don’t advertise or actively engage in any marketing or promotion activity for Young 50 House Love. “Our entire blog growth has been word of mouth and amazing opportunities that came to us (like being on The Nate Berkus Show or in The Washington Post,)” they said. “So we don't seek out those things or cold call or send letters or pay to advertise, we just write stuff that we love and feel passionate about and hope that folks will feel that excitement and authenticity and tell their friends about us.” As with other blogs, however, success feeds more success. Young House Love was featured in major publications after it already had a large following, and more readers will certainly find the site after their book of home improvement ideas and inspiration is published in the fall of 2012. Branding Difficulty and Barriers Unlike many lifestyle bloggers, Young House Love has managed to avoid the wrath of the Internet. There is barely any criticism of the site, and what does exist is hardly inflammatory. Commenters on various sites have posted that the couple is “too long-winded” or “too perky,” but that is far less harsh than the comments other blogs receive. John and Sherry claim that their main challenge is “finding the balance thing: everyone thinks it's so nice to work at home with a one year old and probably pictures us sitting around reading decorating magazines and eating bon-bons. But the truth is that we juggle a toddler (and being stay at home parents) with doing blog projects, taking and editing photos, writing posts, writing regular columns for BabyCenter and DIY magazine, and writing a 260+ page book. Life is crazy and sometimes we don't get to sleep! So yeah, figuring out how to get 5,000 things done in ten minutes is a struggle sometimes.” 51 Conclusions Young House Love has found widespread success because of its accessibility, its quality content and its personality. By constantly answering to their audience and adapting their content to meet the audience’s needs and wants, John and Sherry are exceeding the expectations of their readers. It remains to be seen how they will expand their blog past their upcoming book, but it is entirely possible they could see the kind of success The Pioneer Woman has achieved because of the unique aspects of their brand. 52 Chapter Six: Brand Identity and …love Maegan …love Maegan is a lifestyle blog written by Maegan Tintari, a 35-year-old woman living in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles. She writes about lifestyle as it relates to fashion, beauty and home décor and also shares pieces of her personal life with her husband and two dogs. The blog began in late 2007 and was originally intended to have a completely different focus. “In August 2007 I thought I was pregnant and created a blog to document my pregnancy,” said Maegan. “2 weeks later, [I] found out I wasn’t pregnant. So instead of creating a baby, I created a personal lifestyle blog.” She’s been blogging regularly ever since. Maegan posts every weekday about topics ranging from fashion and beauty to home décor and craft DIYs. Initially, posts were sporadic and unfocused, and it “wasn’t until the beginning of 2008 when [she] made a resolution to blog every day.” Since then, posts are published on a schedule and readership has grown. When she started the blog, Maegan was working part time at an art gallery, a job she slowly transitioned out of and finally quit in late 2011 to focus full-time on …love Maegan and related projects. Personality Traits …love Maegan is an aspirational brand, but not to the same extent as Cupcakes and Cashmere. Maegan writes lengthier posts, discusses her everyday life and interacts with her readers more than Emily does. She’s less guarded and formal than comparable bloggers, and she’s glamorous and endearing, all of which make her likeable. 53 Target Audience …love Maegan’s target audience is decidedly women. With posts focusing on fashion, beauty and décor, there is no intentional appeal to men. Topics in Cision include DIY, Fashion and Hair. Though there is an easily defined audience for her site (Alexa stats state that readers are women ages 18-24 that have a college education but no children and browse from home) and Maegan acknowledges the statistics, she claims she writes for no one but herself: “I actually do not write with anyone in mind. I do what I love and am honest and passionate and hopefully it shines through and inspires people to do the same.” She’s certainly reaching a wide audience, whoever they are: she has 38,000 unique visitors per month in addition to her 11,000 RSS feed subscribers and 8,500 Twitter followers. Maegan also offers her posts in the form of email updates – when a new post is published, those who have chosen to receive updates by email will have the content delivered to their inbox. Maegan receives approximately 820,000 page views per month and is proud of her numbers: “It drives me insane that other bloggers aren’t willing to share their info and it makes me think they’re not being truthful about their stats and traffic,” she said. “For that reason, I’ve always kept my Sitemeter and other stats public for anyone to see.” Title, Header and Design Figure 15: …love Maegan Logo 54 Maegan says that when she first created her site, the title of the blog was easier to come up with than the content: “While I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to ‘blog’ about, I knew immediately what my blog name would be because I had used the moniker & signature for paintings and clothing designs I had done in the past. I created a free blogspot via Blogger and purchased loveMaegan.com from GoDaddy. The name, ...love Maegan, was the easiest part.” Because the title contains her name, it’s easy to remember and certainly synonymous with “her.” The color scheme of pink and grey runs throughout the site, and is also seen throughout her extensive use of social media. Maegan maintains her Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Google+ pages as a way to interact with her followers, and her branding is consistent throughout. Another important aspect is the description of her site, which appears in search engines and in browser headers. The description reads: “Fashion + Home + Lifestyle,” and is a succinct description of everything her site includes. Site Topics Maegan’s posts fall into four main categories. She doesn’t divide them in any particular way, but they’re categorized and archived accessibly through links at the top of her site. Most of Maegan’s content falls under the “My Style” heading, and it’s the category that drove her blog’s success in the beginning. When she first started the blog, she would take crude shots of her outfit from her desk at the art gallery using the camera built into her computer. Outfits were rarely shown full length, and she’d post photos of her kicking her leg above her desk to showcase her shoes. These posts proved 55 popular, so she started pulling over on her commute home and setting the automatic timer on her camera to take shots of her outfits in various locations. She says of her outfit photos: “In the summer of 2008 I started posting my work outfits and had such a great response I began doing so 3 times a week. I had previously been in a place of anxiety and depression and as cliché as this sounds, my blog helped me find my identity again. It sparked creativity I hadn’t had in years and gave me a perfect platform to find myself... and in the process, offer inspiration to others.” Now, she publishes multiple outfit posts per week and details every aspect of her outfit below the first photo. If an item is available online she’ll link to it, but she does so directly and does not utilize affiliate links. She is given items to wear, but she is careful about openly disclosing to her readers which items she’s purchased and which she has been given. From the outfit posts stemmed a general focus on beauty. Maegan now does not use one all encompassing beauty category, but has links to hair tutorials and manicure ideas. She found that readers were interested in more than just her outfits but her overall style, including the way she wears her hair. This spurred a series of posts featuring videos and/or step-by-step instructions on how to achieve different hairstyles. Recently, she’s begun posting tips and instructions relating to nail polish. Maegan found that her tutorials and instruction posts brought in a flood of readers. In addition to beauty tips, she posts instructions on how to make jewelry, clothing and home décor items. She claims her DIYs have been a driving factor in her success: “In May of 2009 I posted my first DIY (a tutorial on how to make an embellishment for sandals that looked like an expensive pair of shoes being sold at the time) and my numbers skyrocketed,” she said. “I had been doing DIYs my entire life but 56 wasn’t aware of the interest people had in do-it-yourself tutorials until that day. This particular DIY got so much attention around the Internet, I began getting emails about magazine features and the proverbial doors literally opened for me at that point. Because of its popularity, and the popularity it brought me, I added a weekly DIY to my blog which brought more and more daily visitors and monthly page views.” Maegan also publishes posts categorized in the “My Home” section, where she shows readers her home and explains her decorating choices. She’s made many of the items she features herself, and she’ll often post instructions on how to make something similar to the “Home DIY” link. Competitive Advantage Maegan’s competition includes all lifestyle blogs, but she feels she competes with other fashion and style bloggers most directly. Much like Young House Love, she chooses to view competitors as a positive. “I try not to compare my blog to others,” she said, “but sometimes it’s great motivation to keep going.” She sees her age and the viewpoint that comes with it as an advantage, because many of the style and fashion blogs she competes with are written by girls much younger than she is. “I think the main difference is that I’m in my 30’s and while I am categorized as a ‘fashion blog’ I also include DIYs, hair tutorials, design and decor and personal life and life struggles rather than being a socialite and going to runway shows and talking about fashion designers,” she said. “My goal is to include everyone. I’m not interested in being elitist in the slightest, which is mainly what fashion is about. Back to the age thing, many fashion bloggers are in their 20’s... so there’s a big difference between how a woman in her 20’s 57 and a woman in her 30’s chooses to live her life.” Points of Difference and Points of Parity Like all lifestyle bloggers, quality photos are an essential point of parity, a fact which Maegan acknowledges: “…photography and ‘pretty pictures’ [are] a major point of parity among lifestyle and fashion and all bloggers really. I didn’t regard it as strongly as I should have in the beginning and waited far too long to get a professional DSLR camera. I realized quickly after finally getting the DSLR just how wrong I was.” She also finds a point of parity among style bloggers in particular to be a strong sense of style: “I’d say another point of parity for fashion bloggers is having a sense of style and knowing how to take a great photo,” she said. “It may seem like a point of difference, and it may be, but it’s something all the popular ones have.” Maegan credits herself and her personality as her most major point of difference. “I think the point of difference for my blog/brand in particular is, as I state earlier, my age (and maybe just me in general?)” she said. When asked what she considers her brand to be, she answered with an all-encompassing “me” and thinks the five most important aspects to both her and her readers are “1. Me 2. My Style 3. My DIYs 4. My Hair Tutorials 5. My Honesty.” That’s not to say she’s narcissistic – she has a strong presence and her creative skills surpass many other bloggers, so without “her,” …love Maegan wouldn’t exist. She has a tendency to be extremely candid and writes in depth about everything from her reasons behind purchasing a piece of clothing to her struggles with infertility. As a result, readers relate to her and feel involved in her life. “I’m really down to earth and relatable to many of my readers rather than portraying an 58 untouchable celebrity-like image as many bloggers do,” she said. Promotion of Blog Maegan is a savvy social media marketer and says she uses it as the main promotion channel for her site. She’s also got a clear understanding of search engine optimization, as her owned sites (from the main blog to Flickr streams and additional profiles) dominate Google search results. When entering the simple search term “lifestyle blog” into Google, her blog is the second result. She also uses an advertising network, Blogher, which helps with promotion. In 2011 she became the style editor for the network, driving even more traffic to her site. Branding Difficulties and Barriers Aside from critical commenters, which she does have, Maegan’s main barrier was earning readers and respect. “I often felt like I had very little help gaining popularity and had to do much of it on my own,” she said. “The Internet and bloggers are sometimes much like the cliques in high school and sometimes make it difficult for others to grow and succeed. I often felt the sort-of ‘back stabbing’ of my younger years and was frustrated when my hard work would go unrecognized and others seemed to just get on some ‘list’ and get popular over night.” She’s also faced difficulties when people have taken her DIY ideas and called them their own. In 2010 a major fashion site posted a DIY feather skirt that was remarkably similar to one Maegan had made a few months before. It wasn’t the first time someone had stolen one of her tutorials, either. “With blogging, as with designing, there's no assurance that someone else isn't going to rip off your designs and not credit 59 you,” she wrote when the ordeal happened. “In a world where the right thing to do is rarely done, it sometimes just feels like a slap in the face.” Conclusions As with all the lifestyle bloggers examined, a brand can’t exist with a personality behind it. Maegan has built a strong brand based upon herself, which makes it easy for her to build it. As she grows and develops, her brand does too, and readers are following as the person and the brand get better. 60 Chapter Seven: Analysis of Brands Each brand is successful because of the author(s) driving it. Keller writes that there is a “bond or pact” between a brand and a consumer (Keller, 8), and it is this bond that makes blogs successful. Readers come to feel like they know the blogger, solidifying the bond between brand and consumer. Bloggers have become synonymous with their blogs. As mentioned in an above analysis, Cupcakes and Cashmere is Emily Schuman, and Emily is Cupcakes and Cashmere. The blog and the author are one and the same, and as one’s brand is developed, so is the other. The power of branding manifests itself in the mere success of the blogs. Unlike a commodity, lifestyle blogs are absolutely unnecessary. No one needs a blog to live. But like commodities, brands have been created to make one appear more valuable than another. Blogs earn their success through strategic branding. Each of these blogs has a distinct, recognizable identity. They are all similar in that their audience is roughly the same and they center upon many of the same topics, but the approach taken when covering said topics is unique. Keller claims “the key to branding is that consumers perceive differences among brands in a product category. (Keller, 10)” This is evident amongst the four brands featured. Each meets the stated points of parity and exceeds those points with at least one exemplary point of difference. The Pioneer Woman, in particular, puts so much effort into her differences that it is clear why she has a much larger following than every other lifestyle brand – she’s doing it better. 61 It is useful to consider the success of these blogs in terms of their brand engagement using the six criteria mentioned in Chapter Two: memorability, meaningfulness, likability, transferability, adaptability and protectability: The Pioneer Woman Cupcakes and Cashmere Young House Love Él ove Maegan Memorab ility Very Strong Strong Strong Strong Meaningfulnes s Very Strong Weak Very Strong Weak Likeabil ity Very Strong Strong Very Strong Strong Transferab ilit y Very Strong Strong Very Strong Strong Adaptabil ity Very Strong Strong Strong Strong Table 1: Comparison of Brand Engagement From the chart above, it is clear that The Pioneer Woman and Young House Love have built the strongest brands, especially in terms of memorability, meaningfulness and likability. This is a credit to their unique brand personalities. They are particularly relatable, which makes them easy to like and thus significant in the minds of readers. The Pioneer Woman is especially memorable as well because of her distinct and ever changing headers and retro “pioneer woman” imagery. Both Ree and the Petersiks have unique written voices and make a sincere effort to connect with their audiences, which makes them more endearing overall than Cupcakes and Cashmere or …love Maegan. The latter two blogs have fairly strong elements of memorability and likability, but they are much less meaningful because they don’t connect with their audiences in the way the former do, likely because their lifestyles are vastly different than that of their readers. Emily in particular has a distant voice and personality, which is good for making her brand seem aspirational but not as positive in terms of likability. She is memorable because of her distinct style and because of the aforementioned aspirational quality of her blog. Maegan makes more of an effort to connect with her readers, and though her 62 blog is less aspirational, her life is still very different than that of her readers. Emily and Maegan blog full time and tend to show more of the “highlights” of their lives as opposed to every day activities, while The Pioneer Woman and Young House Love write about everything, giving readers a more complete view of the way they live. The transferability element is interesting because each brand has expanded beyond the blog in some way. Every blog has been/is being developed into a book, so they all have that in common. The Pioneer Woman has clearly added the most new “products” to her brand in the forms of books, television and film. Related to transferability but in terms of brand extension within the blog is adaptability. The Pioneer Woman and Young House Love have succeeded the most in that they’ve continually grown their sites and added new elements and features. Cupcakes and Cashmere and …love Maegan are fairly stagnant and their current content remains very similar to what they posted when the blogs began. Finally, The Pioneer Woman again emerges as the strongest brand in terms of protectability. Ree has created a persona that is distinct and unique to her, making it far more protectable than a simple title, header or tagline. Young House Love has already faced challenges in terms of protectability when they had to change their name, so they’ve worked to make sure their current brand can be competitively protected. Their archive of content helps with this, as they’ve developed a strong brand based on their family that would be difficult to replicate. Cupcakes and Cashmere and …love Maegan are less protectable, as they have little more than their names and titles that are unique to them. They don’t create content as much as they photograph themselves and the things they like, which is something anyone could do. Though the brands they’ve built 63 make the content of their blogs more desirable than that of content produced without a strong brand behind it, it does not mean the content is incredibly unique. Branding Success The first step to success for each blog was to determine brand positioning. In each of the cases examined, the blogs were started without determining a position first. In fact, each author has stated that they started their blogs for personal reasons which evolved into something more. Ree and the Petersiks both started their blogs to update friends and family on the goings on in their family’s lives. Emily and Meagan began theirs with more creative intentions. “When I first started my blog, it was just to fill a creativity void in my life,” said Maegan. “And [to] feel a part of something bigger than I was.” Eventually, purposes and positions were developed. For both Maegan and the Petersiks, the realization that the blog could/would be more than just a place to update friends came after their readerships first spiked. For Maegan, this was after she posted her first DIY. “While I was serious about blogging prior, and knew from my previous web design background about making money from advertising, this is when I realized blogging could really become my career (almost 2 years later & around 2,000 unique views a day). I wasn’t sure exactly what it would bring but I knew then that whatever it was, it was going to be big,” she said. The Petersiks saw a jump in traffic after they won an international blogging contest that John entered them into on a whim. “That's when we realized we might want to try to see this whole blog-thing through as more than a hobby. Just to see where it could go. We still never thought it would be a full time job 64 for both of us, but thought maybe it could be a nice side business or something while we continued to work in advertising,” said Sherry. An important aspect of brand identity is positioning amongst competition. Again, the blogosphere is different than a traditional corporate atmosphere, so a blog’s position among competition isn’t as important as its positioning of content and overall goals and aims. Brands must be able to adapt to the changing demands of consumers, and as readership has grown the responsibilities and duties of bloggers has changed. The Pioneer Woman has added guest contributors to her site to help meet the demands of posting so many times per week. She’s also introduced new content and updated her site interface to make it easier for users to browse. Her recipes section is a good example of this. She had posted so much content that it was becoming difficult for readers to navigate and find what they needed, so she developed a new design that will aid both her and her readers in the future. The Young House Love authors claim that they fight to keep their goals and aims the same, but that what is required of them has changed as the blog has grown. “We never want to write as if we're talking to millions of people. We write like we're talking to our close friends, which is what we were doing when we started our blog. We believe a lot of the reason that we have grown the way we have is that we have stayed humble and true to our dorky selves and haven't ‘gone Hollywood’ as they say,” said Sherry. “One newer goal has been to try to find balance. We work a lot more than we used to at our 9-5 jobs (the internet is 24/7) so now it's hard to remember to turn off and nurture our relationship and our family. The lines are really blurred when you work at home, so 65 it's not uncommon for us to work until 1 in the morning on a weeknight, and even put in 12 hours of work on a weekend.” Points of Parity and Points of Difference Because there are so many blogs and so much competition, there are many points of parity and accepted standards readers have come to expect from blogs. One of the most important points expressed and exhibited by all the blogs examined is photography. Each of the bloggers uses a professional quality DSLR camera with a variety of lenses to take photos. Young House Love has written about the pains they take to set up shots and make sure lighting is optimal. The Pioneer Woman edits many of her photos using Photoshop and posts tutorials so readers can create similar effects. Maegan even stated that one of her biggest regrets was not shooting her outfit photos with a DSLR sooner. If photo quality is poor, readers can easily find a blog posting similar content with superior photography. Like photos, the writing of a blog is another important point of parity. Even if there isn’t much text, as with Cupcakes and Cashmere, what is there must be well written and clearly convey the author’s thoughts. The tone of what’s written is important as well, though it may be considered a point of difference more than a point of parity. The Pioneer Woman uses an optimistic, upbeat, motherly tone and writes as if she’s speaking to a good friend. Young House Love uses a similar upbeat, encouraging voice. Either blog’s content could be presented using a different tone of voice, but it wouldn’t align with the brand identity. The manner in which each author writes is a point of difference that cannot be replicated and is unique to each individual brand. 66 Keller writes of brands choosing points of difference and working to deliver upon them, but the author found that points of difference develop naturally as a blogger’s brand evolves. The author doesn’t believe any of the blogs examined specifically chose their differentiations – for example, one of the Pioneer Woman’s major points of difference is her point of view as a stay-at-home mom living on a rural ranch. She has a unique perspective, and she didn’t develop it in order to capitalize upon it. She does, however, use it to her advantage. She could ignore or downplay this distinctive attribute, but instead she plays it up, incorporating it into every piece of her brand, from her logo and design to the way she writes. Bloggers don’t have to work to develop relevant and believable points of difference – they already exist within each author’s distinct personality. They must simply utilize the differences inherent within them to their benefit. 67 Chapter Eight: Advertising According to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere, “of the 14 percent of bloggers who earn a salary for blogging, the average annual amount is $24,086.” It is unknown exactly how much money the bloggers examined earn, but each of them considers blogging their full-time job. John and Sherry Petersik are the only subjects whose entire family income comes from blogging alone – each of the other bloggers has a husband or significant other who contributes additional income. Blogs generally earn revenue through the sale of advertisements (this does not include revenue from book deals, television shows, outside sponsorships, etc.), and the amount of money they make is often relative to the site’s traffic. The more readers a blog has, the more money companies will be willing to pay to advertise. There are four types of advertisements bloggers incorporate into their site (Lawson). The most basic and traditional are private ads, in which a company pays a blogger to feature its advertisement on the blogger’s site. Young House Love and …love Maegan both feature private ads, and Cupcakes and Cashmere has in the past, but as of January 2012 did not. The next type of ad comes from an advertising network. These are companies that connect a blogger with advertisers – in most cases, an advertiser will purchase an ad through the network and it will be featured on the blogs of those participating in the network. Both The Pioneer Woman and …love Maegan are members of the Blogher network, one of the largest and most well known amongst lifestyle blogs. All members of Blogher are women, and the network has specific criteria required for a member to join. Blogher requires members to place ads “above the fold,” or in the first 68 visible frame of their site, and members are not allowed to join any other network that has the same placement guidelines. Blogs must also not engage in any advertorial or sponsored posts or participate in compensated product reviews (“For Bloggers”). The amount bloggers earn is unpublished, but it is widely speculated that bloggers enter into contracts based upon their number of readers. The Pioneer Woman runs no form of advertisement apart from Blogher, and her revenue is estimated to be more than $1 million per year. Maegan became a Blogher member early on in her blogging career and likes the network because it pays more than other types of ads. “…since they’re a network, their ad rates are better than let’s say Google Adsense [a contextual ad provider],” she said. “They also pay per view rather than per click, which takes reader interaction to earn any income.” …love Maegan runs multiple ad networks in addition to contextual ads, or ads that earn the blogger money every time they’re clicked on. Contextual ads come from services like Google Adsense, which places advertisements on a bloggers site based upon their content. Cupcakes and Cashmere runs these ads as well. The ads change frequently, sometimes every time a person clicks a link within a site, and are always relevant to the blog’s content. For example, Cupcakes and Cashmere currently features ads for a home décor store and an online shopping website. The last type of advertising is used only by Cupcakes and Cashmere. It’s called “affiliate linking,” and is discussed briefly in the content analysis of her site. Affiliate links are links to items that are credited to the blogger who publishes them, so if a reader purchases something from a website after arriving at the site through an affiliate link, the blogger gets a portion of the sale. Affiliate links are good for the blogger but 69 can be viewed negatively by the reader. Often, the links are hidden and it can be very hard to tell if a blogger is sending a reader directly to a site through a link or using an affiliate program to make money. Readers may trust bloggers more if they know they’re not being paid to provide an opinion. Young House Love does not accept free products for this very reason. John and Sherry don’t want their readers to think they’re giving positive reviews because they’ve been given something for free – they want readers to know they recommend products because they love them. When affiliate links are used, it is unclear if the blogger is linking to a product because they like it or because they’ll be paid. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires bloggers to disclose to readers when they’ve been paid for a post or opinion, no matter how it’s presented (“FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials”). When affiliate links are hidden, it can be seen as a way of skirting this rule, and a blogger can lose the trust of readers, thus weakening his/her brand. If bloggers want to monetize their sites, it’s a necessity to advertise. It is up to them if they choose to run advertisements that reinforce their brand or not. Private ads are the best solution in that bloggers can choose which advertisers to accept or reject, and this is the tactic Young House Love employs. “Advertisers approach us (we don't seek them out, so we just have a button on our sidebar about advertising and that's how people contact us),” said Sherry. “When they do, we weigh if we think their product or service would be a hit with our readers (if it wouldn't it's embarrassing for everyone, so we try to carefully select our sponsors so our readers will get something from them and in turn our sponsors will get something from our readers).” 70 Cupcakes and Cashmere claims she only chooses brands that will resonate with readers, but this is not necessarily accurate. She states: “I’m very selective when it comes to working with brands and only partner with companies that are a natural fit for Cupcakes and Cashmere.” This may be true of the companies she works with outside of her blog, but it’s not when it comes to ads. She runs only contextual ads, which are relevant to content and can reinforce the brand image, but she’s not in control of what companies are featured. Advertising may become less and less prominent on blogs as bloggers find ways to monetize their brand offline, as all of the above-mentioned bloggers have through book deals and other means. It is a simple way to make money, however, and can reinforce brand identity if approached strategically. 71 Chapter Nine: (Personal) Brand Identity Personal branding is, simply, capitalizing upon a personality. Steps can be taken to build and enhance the brand, but a personal brand is, in essence, the person. Bloggers and their blogs are one and the same, and as one grows into a brand, so does the other. John and Sherry Petersik know they have a brand, and they tell advertisers and companies that want to partner with them that the brand isn’t Young House Love. “It’s John and Sherry,” they said. “Personally as people and as a young family, we’re the brand.” Maegan says the same of …love Maegan: “My blog is an extension of exactly who I am and what I’m doing at any given moment. If I’m true to myself and post what I love, people are interested.” Successful bloggers have recognized the importance of the personality behind the brand more quickly than a corporation traditionally would because they’re so close to the brand and live it on an everyday basis. They also recognize that the brand is fragile, because people are emotional beings. John and Sherry work hard to guard their brand and make sure it stays true to whom they are. “We can't hide behind a big logo or a giant company; we're two people who run this blog and it has to feel like us and any partnerships that we enter into have to feel extremely true to who we are and authentic,” they said. “It's all about being true to who we really are, since we share so much of ourselves, our readers demand nothing less.” Personal Branding Success There are many examples of successful personal brands, most notably among celebrities. Though most bloggers haven’t yet reached celebrity status, it is plausible 72 that they could, given their branding success thus far. One person who has achieved celebrity through blogging is Perez Hilton. Born as Mario Lavandeira, he began blogging in 2004, publishing celebrity gossip. His brand is distinct and is heavily embedded in celebrity and entertainment culture. He favors pink and everything about him, from his site design to the patterns on his clothes, is flamboyant. Perez claims he started blogging as a hobby. “What set my site apart is that prior to PerezHilton.com, most blogs were mainly online journals and diaries, but that never interested me,” he said. “I wanted to talk about celebrities because they were far more interesting (Perez Hilton).” When he started, he had no competition, but today there are dozens, if not hundreds of sites covering celebrities and entertainment. He is successful (according to Alexa stats, his is the 389 th most visited site in the country) because of the way he presents his content. Like Perez himself, posts are irreverent and unapologetic. His is similar to other sites in that he posts paparazzi shots of celebrities and reports entertainment news, but different because of both his tone and his range of content. Perez will sometimes break celebrity news before any other news outlet, meaning he has a variety of well- connected sources. He has also developed multiple brand extensions, from CocoPerez (celebrities and their animals) to Perezitos (celebrity children). PerezHilton.com has existed for eight years and has adapted with the changing landscape of blogs. After harsh criticism of the rude things he would post about celebrities, he adapted his tone and no longer writes disparaging things about people. He advocates strongly against bullying and suicides that result from it. On Oct. 13, 2010, 73 he made a pledge to be nice and no longer “bully” others, stating in a video, “I need to be a part of the solution and not part of the problem (Hilton).” Perez Hilton shows that, once again, personality drives personal brands. His distinct and unique way of presenting content and expressing his persona have earned him success. Ellen DeGeneres is another example of a person with an incredibly well developed brand identity. It extends to every facet of her public life, from her television show to her well-publicized wedding. She goes by simply “Ellen,” and if one were to describe her using only her first name it would be clear he/she meant Ellen DeGeneres. Her personality is strong and defines her brand. Currently, the “Ellen” show is her most well known asset. She wisely does not have a separate personal website, ensuring her online presence associates the show with her and her with the brand. She didn’t follow the branding steps outlined by Keller but found success using the approach taken by bloggers – capitalizing on personality. Her love of comedy developed a fun-loving, outgoing personality that’s expanded as she found fame. Though there is competition in the daytime talk show space, Ellen is one of the highest- rated talk shows because her brand is so distinct. The show is quintessentially Ellen and involves her dancing, singing, cracking jokes and playing pranks. There are points of parity in that she features celebrity guests and hosts giveaways, but the main difference is Ellen herself. As with blogs, the person behind the brand defines it. 74 Chapter Ten: Recommendations It is evident from the research prepared for this thesis that blogs can be branded based upon the personality of the author(s). As long as the authors commit to sincerity and provide quality content, a blog can find success. Keller’s branding methods can be used as a helpful guideline, but branding in the personal realm is not the same as the corporate realm. When a company is building a brand for a product, a personality for that brand must be manufactured. With personal branding, the personality already exists - the person simply has to utilize it. In doing so, however, a person has to know their audience and must always be willing to adapt to the audience’s needs. Additionally, for blogs to be successful, the authors must earn the trust of the readers. When readers feel a connection to a blog and its author, they come back to read more. Authors John and Sherry Petersik agree with these conclusions. “…the main lesson we've learned just by doing it and seeing steady growth and success and amazingly awesome support is just to be true to yourself,” said Sherry. “In sharing so much of ourselves, people have written us to say that they love us, their homes are changed for the better because of us, their relationship is better thanks to us, or that they also had a scary birth and reading my account of it changed their life for the better, etc. It's amazing to hear that (especially because we pretend that we're writing to ten close friends, so sometimes we forget about all the people out there reading our stuff). It makes us feel like we got it right.” Maegan Tintari is in agreement as well. “I’ve learned how much I enjoy sharing creativity and inspiring others to think positively or get creative or even just live what 75 they love,” she said. “…but it takes patience and hard work and consistency and motivation and determination and passion and a whole lotta love to make it successful… I often think of the movie Field of Dreams... If you build it, they will come. It’s true.” 76 Bibliography “Blog Directory - Technorati." Technorati. Technorati. Web. 19 Nov. 2011. <http://technorati.com/blogs/directory/>. Casserly, Meghan. "Home on the Range With The Pioneer Woman." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 3 Mar. 2010. Web. 25 Nov. 2011. <http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/03/blogger-pioneer-woman-ree-drummond- forbes-woman-time-food_2.html>. Charlotte. "Blogger Inspiration: Emily of Cupcakes and Cashmere – College Fashion." College Fashion. 21 Sept. 2011. 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Web. 19 Nov. 2011. <http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2011/03/what-is-a- brand.html>. "WordPress.org." WordPress. Web. 14 Jan. 2012. <http://wordpress.org/about/features/>. 79 Appendix A: Interview with Young House Love 1) Please discuss how and why you started your blog. What inspired you, your motivations, etc. How did you choose the name and URL? I know you’ve written about this before, but I’d like as much background as you’re able to give me! We were inspired to start the blog purely for fun, to share our home improvement progress with our family. We never thought we'd make a single penny from it, let alone dreamed that it could ever become a full time job for both of us. We just like home improvement, and taking photos, and writing about our journey, diary style. As for choosing the name, our blog was called This Young House at first (since we were a young family making over an old house) but we got into a bit of an issue with that name after two years (more on that here) so we changed it to Young House Love (about two years ago). We thought it was a name that still felt like us (many people called us The Youngsters from our first name, so we didn't want to completely start over- and adding the word Love made it feel even more personal and true to our lives). 2) How did you initially build a readership (first few months)? We didn't actively do much to try to build readership since the blog was for our friends and family. We just concentrated on the content and making our blog good- just because it was a hobby that we enjoyed. To this day I believe if your blog has good content, your readership will grow. And no amount of "marketing" will help a not-good blog grow, so it really is all about the posts and photos and writing and passion that 80 hopefully comes through. 3) Did you start your blog with the intention of it turning into something bigger (i.e. sponsorship, book deals, etc.)? Was that idea there, or did it happen naturally? Nope, that was all an accident. Eventually our traffic started growing and then we won an international blogging contest (to the tune of 5K!!!!) so we couldn't believe it. That's when we realized we might want to try to see this whole blog-thing through as more than a hobby. Just to see where it could go. We still never thought it would be a full time job for both of us, but thought maybe it could be a nice side business or something while we continued to work in advertising. More on that here and here. 4) When did you start to see a shift in traffic/what jumpstarted your popularity? It was always sort of a slow growth. We didn't have any major amazing jumps, just slow and steady growth. From zero readers (haha) to 4.5 million hits this past month! It blows our mind. I always tell people not to expect any miracles and just do what you love and see where it goes. It took us 4 years and 2,000+ posts to get where we are today, so nothing happened overnight! 5) The blogosphere is wide and growing rapidly. Why do you think people are interested in blogs? I think people like free. Haha. And I think they like a place where they feel inspired and are armed with tools to change their own lives. They can find that in magazines and books too, but blogs are rapidly becoming a place that people look for inspiration and 81 ideas and tutorials too. I love checking out other blogs for that stuff all the time! It keeps me going! 6) Who is your target audience? Do you always write with them in mind? I am my target audience. If I think what I'm writing about is boring, I delete it. I just write for me, and John writes for him. We figure that a lot of our readers see themselves in us, so if we're true to ourselves we're all set. That has been our only "formula" - just write stuff that we actually like. Otherwise there aren't any rules. 7) Who are your main competitors? Hmm, it's an odd question since I think there's room for a ton of blogs! We all have a different sense of style or writing or budget so I think blogs compliment each other. For example, I have learned that many people who read our blog also read my friend Katie Bower's blog, but since her subject matter and sense of style is different I would never consider her to be competition. I love that people like dropping in on both of us to see what's up! I guess for the sake of your thesis I could say that giant sites like designsponge.com and apartmenttherapy.com cover a similar subject matter, but since they're both written by over 20 contributors and John and I write all of our posts ourselves about a lot more personal things (ex: what we're doing in our kitchen as opposed to design trends or other people's makeovers for the most part), we actually think they're a good compliment to our site as well. So we don't compete with them or hope they do poorly- we want them to do well which means that blogging at a whole can do well! We love to 82 thrive along with the rest of the DIY blogs out there! 8) How is your brand is similar to those competitors? I think we're similar to DesignSponge.com and Apartmenttherapy.com because we're all places that folks can hopefully go for eye candy and inspiration! So we're all tools for people to use to make over their homes. 9) How is your brand different from them? I touched on that above (they have 20 contributors and a more general focus while we write everything ourselves and focus a lot more on our own home, diary style). 10) Points of parity are attributes that all competitive brands must possess to even be considered relevant. Points of difference are attributes that your readers strongly associate with YOUR brand and feel that they may not be able to find somewhere else. What are the points of parity and points of difference regarding your blog and competitors? For example, I would say a point of parity amongst all lifestyle bloggers is photography. At this point, the blogosphere is so crowded that you must have decent photographs to keep up with others. The difference, however, could be that your photography or writing or something is better than other’s. I would say that a few points of parity are: lots of photos, step by step instructions that are easy to understand, and a general sense of "you can do it" to keep people motivated and excited. 83 I would say a few points of difference are: we try to keep things very personal (like a real-time diary about our home makeover as it goes) and that we try to stress that we're real people all the time. We share the bad and the ugly along with the good (to remind people that we fail too, everyone does!) and I think people like that we keep it real with budget breakdowns and reminding them that we're nerds and we're into bad puns and all that stuff. Oh and we don't accept free swag or do paid posts (more on that policy here) so that might set us apart from a lot of other bloggers in general. We just wanted people to know that when we blog about something it's because we really like it, not because there was something in it for us. We also answer every single comment question (even when we can get 500+ comments a day) because we believe that people who take the time to ask a question should get an answer. We love the dialog that comments can provide when bloggers actually interact and write back- and we love to help and encourage people to DIY something they might be afraid to tackle if we hadn't given them that answer. 11) Has your brand positioning or have your goals and aims changed since you started blogging? Nope, we fight to keep them the same. We never want to write as if we're talking to millions of people. We write like we're talking to our close friends, which is what we were doing when we started our blog. We believe a lot of the reason that we have grown the way we have is that we have stayed humble and true to our dorky selves and haven't "gone Hollywood" as they say, haha. One newer goal has been to try to find balance. We work a lot more than we used to at our 9-5 jobs (the internet is 24/7) so 84 now it's hard to remember to turn off and nurture our relationship and our family. The lines are really blurred when you work at home, so it's not uncommon for us to work until 1 in the morning on a weeknight, and even put in 12 hours of work on a weekend. Still working on that... 12) In your opinion, what do your readers thinks are the 5 most important aspects/ dimensions of your brand? 1. Featuring projects that they can actually do. 2. Keeping things low-budget so they can actually afford them. 3. Writing in a way that entertains them while fully explaining things (our readers expect LOTS of details) 4. Being real (people don't want to think you're perfect- its defeating and it makes them feel bad) 5. Not being too salesy (this is why we think it's important to have our no-swag policy, so folks know we can't be "bought") What do YOU think are the 5 most important? I guess I agree with the five above. Also being true to ourselves is obviously at the top of the list, since the second we're doing this for someone else or it doesn't feel authentic we'll close up shop. 13) If you could describe your brand in a short, 3 to 5 word phrase that captures the essence of your blog/personal brand, what would it be? 85 Hmm... DIY Ideas From Real People? Or Unstuffy Home Decor & DIY 14) How do you currently promote your blog? The same way we always have, just by focusing on content. Our entire blog growth has been word of mouth and amazing opportunities that came to us (like being on The Nate Berkus Show or in The Washington Post). So we don't seek out those things or cold call or send letter or pay to advertise, we just write stuff that we love and feel passionate about and hope that folks will feel that excitement and authenticity and tell their friends about us. 15) How do you engage your readership? We like to ask questions at the end of a post. Nearly every post ends with us saying something like "have you guys taken on something like this?" or even "anyone have any fun weekend plans?" - we think of our readers as close friends, so we just try to shoot the breeze with them. 16) Can you tell me about your site metrics? How many unique visitors per month/RSS followers/daily hits? I know some bloggers are wary of giving out this information, but I promise I’ll only use it within my thesis! You can see a ton of that info here in this post: http://www.younghouselove.com/2011/09/blogiversary-iv-our-digits/ Actually this page overall will probably be more helpful than all of these email answers combined (it's full of links about Blogging FAQs): 86 http://www.younghouselove.com/about-2/blogging-faqs/ 17) Do you know demographic information about your readers? If not formally, any guesses? Not formally, but we guess that the majority of our readers are 25-35 year old women in the US (although we do have a big chunk of international readers, which is so amazing to us). We also have some men and some women over 60 and under 15. It's awesome to hear from those people who say "I'm not your typical reader, but I love your blog and wouldn't miss a post!" 18) How do you choose advertisers for your site? Do you choose advertisements based on how they coincide with your brand? Advertisers approach us (we don't seek them out, so we just have a button on our sidebar about advertising and that's how people contact us). When they do, we weigh if we think their product or service would be a hit with our readers (if it wouldn't it's embarrassing for everyone, so we try to carefully select our sponsors so our readers will get something from them and in turn our sponsors will get something from our readers). 19) How would you define a brand? Since we both have advertising backgrounds (I used to be an advertising copywriter and John was an account guy- we actually met in NYC at an agency where we worked on Got Milk, Johnson & Johnson, and GMC) I would say that a brand is a fancy word marketing people throw around. Haha. Kidding. I guess we think a brand is the perceived identity 87 of a product, service, or company. 20) What do you consider your “brand” to be? Do you even think you have a brand? If so, do the things you choose to post always further the goal of your brand, or do you ever stray from that? We actually do think we're a brand (as odd as it is to say). And we always tell potential companies who want to partner with us that our brand isn't Young House Love, it's John and Sherry. Personally as people and as a young family, we're the brand. So we have to guard that extremely carefully! We can't hide behind a big logo or a giant company, we're two people who run this blog and it has to feel like us and any partnerships that we enter into have to feel extremely true to who we are and authentic. So if people wouldn't believe that John and Sherry like a certain brand of paint but that brand of paint wants to partner with us, we have to respectfully decline. It's all about being true to who we really are, since we share so much of ourselves, our readers demand nothing less. 21) What do you consider to be a successful personal brand? Is there a particular person or case? Oprah. I love her. She does so much good and she's funny and real. She talks with food in her mouth and mispronounces words and blushes. I love it because even though she's a billionaire, she's so relatable. 22) What challenges have you faced in branding and building your blog? 88 Our main challenge is really the finding balance thing. Everyone thinks it's so nice to work at home with a one year old and probably pictures us sitting around reading decorating magazines and eating bon-bons. But the truth is that we juggle a toddler (and being stay at home parents) with doing blog projects, taking and editing photos, writing posts, writing regular columns for BabyCenter and DIY magazine, and writing a 260+ page book. Life is crazy and sometimes we don't get to sleep! So yeah, figuring out how to get 5000 things done in ten minutes is a struggle sometimes. More on that here (along with how we make money): http://www.younghouselove.com/2011/09/blogiversary-iv-time-money-and-pies/ 23) What lessons have you learned? Is there anything you would have done differently? Suggestions for others hoping to do what you’ve done? I would say the main lesson we've learned just by doing it and seeing steady growth and success and amazingly awesome support is just to be true to yourself. Corny, but so so valuable if you honestly put yourself out there and do it. In sharing so much of ourselves, people have written us to say that they love us, their homes are changed for the better because of us, their relationship is better thanks to us, or that they also had a scary birth and reading my account of it changed their life for the better, etc. It's amazing to hear that (especially because we pretend that we're writing to ten close friends, so sometimes we forget about all the people out there reading our stuff). It makes us feel like we got it right. 89 Appendix B: Interview with …love Maegan 1) Please discuss how and why you started your blog. What inspired you, your motivations, etc. How did you choose the name and URL? I know you’ve written about this before, but I’d like as much background as you’re able to give me! I had been a freelance graphic and web designer since 1997 & worked part time for an art dealer since 2001. But I was bored and really wanted something to call my own. I think more than anything, I wanted to be my own boss. In Spring of 2007 I started an eco company called beSmart beGreen and created and sold canvas tote bags with snarky sayings and images. I soon realized I needed a blog to accompany it and as a graphic/web designer, a blog was basically just another website that was easier to build. But then the eco craze hit and everyone everywhere was cashing in and it just wasn’t enough for me. In August 2007 I thought I was pregnant and created a blog to document my pregnancy. And then 2 weeks later found out I wasn’t pregnant. So instead of creating a baby, I created a personal lifestyle blog. While I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to “blog” about, I knew immediately what my blog name would be because I had used the moniker & signature for paintings and clothing designs I had done in the past. I created a free blogspot via Blogger and purchased loveMaegan.com from GoDaddy. The name, ...love Maegan, was the easiest part. 90 2) How did you initially build a readership (first few months)? The first few months were spent just learning the craft and trying to come up with things to write about other than how annoying the traffic is in Los Angeles. I spent a lot of time searching out other like-minded bloggers and leaving comments everywhere I landed. By commenting, I build a sort-of virtual friendship with handfuls of women doing the same thing I was. It was a really fun feeling of community and belonging and I’m still “friends” with many of those women today. 3) Did you start your blog with the intention of it turning into something bigger (i.e. sponsorship, book deals, etc.)? Was that idea there, or did it happen naturally? At the beginning of 2008, about 4 months into blogging and still unsure exactly what to blog about other than my day to day life, I decided to get serious about it and focused on posting every single day. In the Summer of 2008 I started posting my work outfits and had such a great response I began doing so 3 times a week. I had previously been in a place of anxiety and depression and as cliche as this sounds, my blog helped me find my identity again. It sparked creativity I hadn’t had in years and gave me a perfect platform to find myself... and in the process, offer inspiration to others. In these first few years I would spend countless hours on weekend nights commenting on hundreds of blogs across the internet. It was a grassroots approach to advertising and networking but also made bloggers really happy to get comments and see that other people are taking notice of them. So, I guess, no... when I first started my blog, it was just to fill a creativity void in my life and feel a part of something bigger than I was. 91 4) When did you start to see a shift in traffic/what jumpstarted your popularity? In May of 2009 I posted my first DIY {http://www.lovemaegan.com/2009/05/diy- christian-louboutin-petal-sandal.html} and my numbers skyrocketed. I had been doing DIYs my entire life but wasn’t aware of the interest people had in do it yourself tutorials until that day. This particular DIY got so much attention around the internet, I began getting emails about magazine features and the proverbial doors literally opened for me at that point. Because of its popularity, and the popularity it brought me, I added a weekly DIY to my blog which brought more and more daily visitors and monthly page views. While I was seriously about blogging prior, and new from my previous web design background about making money from advertising, this is when I realized blogging could really become my career (almost 2 years later & around 2000 unique views a day). I wasn’t sure exactly what it would bring but I knew then that whatever it was, it was going to be big. 5) The blogosphere is wide and growing rapidly. Why do you think people are interested in blogs? I think there’s a level of authenticity in blogs, in knowing that “real people” write them unites people and makes them feel like they belong somewhere. Through the years I wrote quite a few posts about not being able to get pregnant and by the end of the day my inbox would be flooded with emails from women thanking me because they were going through the “exact same thing” and felt so alone. On the other hand, I definitely think many people start blogs with a “get rich and 92 famous” mind set without realizing how much hard work goes into it & how long it takes to even get 20 readers a day in the beginning. 6) Who is your target audience? Do you always write with them in mind? My target audience {as far as my stats are concerned} are women without children between the ages 18-34. I actually do not write with anyone in mind. I do what I love and am honest and passionate and hopefully it shines through and inspires people to do the same. 7) Who are your main competitors? Well, all bloggers in the fashion, style, DIY and lifestyle category are my competitors and new blogs are started every day. I try not to compare my blog to others but sometimes it’s great motivation to keep going {and sometimes it just makes me mad ;} 8) How is your brand is similar to those competitors? Well really, we’re all trying to do the same thing. My brand is similar in that I feature outfit shots and talk about style and beauty and hair and fashion and things many women are interested in as well. 9) How is your brand different from them? I think the main difference is that I’m in my 30’s and while I am categorized as a “fashion blog” I also include DIYs, hair tutorials, design and decor, and personal life and life struggles rather than being a socialite and going to runway shows and talking about 93 fashion designers. My goal is to include everyone. I’m not interested in being elitist in the slightest, which is mainly what fashion is about. Back to the age thing, many fashion bloggers are in their 20’s... so there’s a big difference between how a woman in her 20’s and a woman in her 30’s chooses to live her life. 10) Points of parity are attributes that all competitive brands must possess to even be considered relevant. Points of difference are attributes that your readers strongly associate with YOUR brand and feel that they may not be able to find somewhere else. What are the points of parity and points of difference regarding your blog and competitors? For example, I would say a point of parity amongst all lifestyle bloggers is photography. At this point, the blogosphere is so crowded that you must have decent photographs to keep up with others. The difference, however, could be that your photography or writing or something is better than other’s. You are absolutely correct about photography and “pretty pictures” being a major point of parity among lifestyle and fashion and all bloggers really. I, for one, didn’t regard it as strongly as I should have in the beginning and waited far too long to get a professional DSLR camera. I realized quickly after finally getting the DSLR just how wrong I was. I’d say another point of parity for fashion bloggers is having a sense of style and knowing how to take a great photo. It may seem like a point of difference, and it may be, but it’s something all the popular ones have. I think the point of difference for my blog/brand in particular is, as I state earlier, my age {and maybe just me in general?}. And while people may think I live a glamorous life, I’m really down to earth and relatable to many of my readers rather than portraying an 94 untouchable celebrity-like image as many bloggers do. I also create DIY and How-To posts, which offer inspiration and ideas and something people can take with them when the leave my blog. 11) Has your brand positioning or have your goals and aims changed since you started blogging? Not really... I basically wanted to be my own boss, and now, 5 years later, I am. I have a successful business that I created from the ground up that is constantly fun and inspiring and what gets me up in the mornings {and I hate mornings ;}. Honestly, it’s exactly what I wanted and more but it took many years of diligence & patiently working for free to get here. 12) In your opinion, what do your readers thinks are the 5 most important aspects/dimensions of your brand? What do YOU think are the 5 most important? Hmmm... I would say 1. Me 2. My Style 3. My DIYs 4. My Hair Tutorials 5. My Honesty. and I suppose mine are aligned with that. 13) If you could describe your brand in a short, 3 to 5 word phrase that captures the essence of your blog/personal brand, what would it be? From Valley Girl to LA Woman, Maegan Tintari has more than a few years experience in the fashion world and cultivating her own personal style. With her successful fashion, home, & lifestyle blog, ...love Maegan (.com), she shares personal style secrets, DIY how-tos and hair tutorials, as well as offers tips to inspire women of all shapes and sizes 95 to own their beauty and get creative with their wardrobes. Currently working on her first book entitled: Rock Your Assets: How to Dress your Body Type to Become a Fashion Goddess, with a release date in the Spring of 2013, Maegan also gives you a daily glimpse inside her personal life with her husband and two adorable dogs. 14) How do you currently promote your blog Mostly via social media: Twitter, Facebook, the like. I do some in person, handing out business cards if someone compliments me on what I’m wearing or my hair. lol 15) How do you engage your readership? I still on occasion try to check out my commenter’s blogs and leave comments, though I don’t have too much free time any more but it really makes my readers happy. Otherwise, mostly via Twitter and Facebook. They just make it so easy to engage. 16) Can you tell me about your site metrics? How many unique visitors per month/RSS followers/daily hits? I know some bloggers are wary of giving out this information, but I promise I’ll only use it within my thesis! Actually, it drives me insane that other bloggers aren’t willing to share their info and makes me think they’re not being truthful about their stats and traffic. For that reason, I’ve always kept my Sitemeter and other stats public for anyone to see. Monthly unique visitors are around: 550,000 Monthly page views are around: 820,000 Unique daily hits are between 15,000 - 30,000 96 Subscribers are around 20,000 17) Do you know demographic information about your readers? If not formally, any guesses? It’s mixed but my highest numbers fall under these categories: female, high income, college grads, 18-34, no children 18) How do you choose advertisers for your site? Do you choose advertisements based on how they coincide with your brand? I’ve been with BlogHer for a really long time, almost since the beginning of my blogging career {and now I’m their Style Editor} but since they’re a network, their ad rates are better than let’s say Google Adsense. They also pay per view rather than per click, which takes reader interaction to earn any income. Other than BlogHer, I have about 5 ad networks running at this time. I’d like to cut back the clutter but I also like the income. In choosing them, I usually just make sure they’re legitimate and have good rates. As far as the ads are concerned, I opt out of certain campaigns like diet ads, political ads, & religious ads, things of that nature that are too opinionated or offensive to the other side to run. 19) How would you define a brand? 20) What do you consider your “brand” to be? Do you even think you have a brand? If so, do the things you choose to post always further the goal of your brand, or do you 97 ever stray from that? You know, I really just consider my brand to me “Me”. My blog is an extension of exactly who I am and what I’m doing at any given moment. If I’m true to myself and post what I love, people are interested. 21) What do you consider to be a successful personal brand? Is there a particular person or case? A successful blog or brand, I think, is one that is not only “known” but also an only source of income, affording you to live the life of your dreams. 22) What challenges have you faced in branding and building your blog? I often felt like I had very little help gaining popularity and had to do much of it on my own. The internet and bloggers are sometimes much like the cliques in high school and sometimes make it difficult for others to grow and succeed. I often felt the sort-of “back stabbing” of my younger years and was frustrated when my hard work would go unrecognized and others seemed to just get on some “list” and get popular over night. 23) What lessons have you learned? Is there anything you would have done differently? Suggestions for others hoping to do what you’ve done? Well first and foremost, my main regret was not starting my blog earlier and not getting a DSLR camera earlier. But I’ve learned a great deal about myself and the world via blogging. I’ve leaned to shut my mouth and keep my opinions to myself, lol, which is difficult for me but a necessity when dealing with a great number of people. The last 98 thing I ever want to do is offend someone or make them feel badly and I have, accidentally just by stating my opinion. Yes, people are sensitive, but so am I and I never want to be the source of pain. I’ve learned how much I enjoy sharing creativity and inspiring others to think positively or get creative or even just live what they love. I would definitely suggest to anyone to start a blog, if nothing else to find out what they truly enjoy about life and even learn a thing or two, as I have. But it takes patience and hard work and consistency and motivation and determination and passion and a whole lotta love to make it successful. My husband has been my number one supporter and has always told me to look at my blog as a small business, which won’t see profit for at least 5 years, and he was right. But I think what he’s said more than anything else these last 5 years was “be patient”. I often think of the movie Field of Dreams... If you build it, they will come. It’s true.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This paper examines personal branding as it relates to lifestyle bloggers

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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator Champion, Allison (author)

Core Title Personal branding and lifestyle bloggers: can blogs become brands?

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Strategic Public Relations

Publication Date 05/03/2012

Defense Date 05/03/2012

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag blog,blogger,branding,lifestyle blog,OAI-PMH Harvest,personal branding

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Wang, Jian ""Jay"" (committee chair), Floto, Jennifer D. (committee member), Lynch, Brenda (committee member)

Creator Email allison.t.champion@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-27182

Unique identifier UC11289113

Identifier usctheses-c3-27182 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-ChampionAl-739-0.pdf

Dmrecord 27182

Document Type Thesis

Rights Champion, Allison

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA