The Top 1000 Most Influential Style Blogs - rankings presented by Signature9

by @JedWexler

Bootstrapping your digital PR.   

FMG Member YM Ousley, publisher of lifestyle news site Signature9, has recently released an update to her firm’s ranking of the top 1000 individually-reviewed fashion and beauty blogs from around the world; The Style99.

We are very excited to recommend the list, and YM’s firm is offering FMG members a 30% discount on the entire list until September 14^th 2011.  The first 99 rankings can be viewed at no charge. 

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE THE ENTIRE LIST

The ranking includes contact information, traffic, twitter details, Facebook links, and advanced metric data for more than 1000 fashion and beauty blogs - with over 400 from the US, Canada and Brazil, and more than 400 from the UK and continental Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Spain). 

This is truly Fashion 2.0/3.0 PR meets social media metrics – and a great example of how to combine human curation with a powerful tech platform (and just in time for Fashion’s Night Out and New York Fashion Week, which kickoff tomorrow.

                          Q&A with Style99 Founder, YM Ousley

 “Too often hits, pageviews and other metrics that don’t reflect the true influence of a site or blog, “ YM Ousley.

FMG:  Why is this list important?

YM:  Too often hits, pageviews and other metrics that don’t reflect the true influence of a site or blog  - and unfortunately these have become the default standards for assessing most websites. While Comscore or Nielsen can give an indication of traffic popularity, increasingly PR reps, brand marketers, and media buyers are looking for a better way to qualify the quantity.

FMG:   What was your methodology in compiling the rankings?

YM: By combining traffic estimates with link and social media data, we try to give a more complete picture of which publishers are having an impact with readers. Anyone can buy or trade traffic, but organic links from other bloggers and social shares from readers are tougher to obtain and can give a much better indication of true influence.

“Every day, fashion and beauty blogs are attracting larger audiences with deeper influence than ever before. “

FMG:   With the rise of social media analytics platforms like Klout and EDITD, where does TheStyle99 fit in?

YM:  Every day, fashion and beauty blogs are attracting larger audiences with deeper influence than ever before - but traditional metrics and trend forecasters don’t always present an effective real-time picture of what is going on in the marketplace.

We just wanted to make it easier for PR agencies, fashion/beauty marketers, advertisers, media buyers, start-ups, and even enthusiasts to join the ever-expanding conversation.

Related Articles:   The importance of one-to-one engagement and social listening

As powerful as this list is, it is important to know that simply blasting press releases may be the least effective way to engage the bloggers on the list. 

This article by Business of Fashion speaks to the importance of developing long term reciprocal relationships with bloggers.  People blog about things they are passionate about – and why it is best to join the conversation in a one-to-one, authentic, professional way.

We also recommend attending and learning more about The Evolving Influence Fashion Blogger Conference, Today, September 7^th.

And finally, an article about the new era of social media metrics and trend forecasting.

How Realtime Data is Reshaping the Fashion Business

Special thanks to @Signature9

Download the 1000 most influential style blogs rankings here

Submissions:  @FashionFMG

An FMG snapshot of 3 Fashion/Tech startups that are well on their way…

@EDITD

London-based start-up EDITD provides social metrics and market data to help fashion brands make the right decisions on design, merchandising, and pricing.  In June of this year EDITD also raised $1.6 million in seed financing from Index Ventures.    

EDITD looks to be a genuinely disruptive platform that provides real-time “3.0” fashion forecasting, analytics, and market intelligence.  EDITD is reshaping how the fashion ‘trend forecasting’ industry operates by providing real time data instead of just being a ‘predictive’ service. 

More importantly, the team at EDITD has created a beautifully designed site, where look and feel, messaging, functionality, UI, and hard-core tech, all seamlessly combine to make for an exceptionally compelling offering.   This company is a standout.      

Two of our favorite resources, Signature9 and Business of Fashion have already written extensively on EDITD.  Read on.

SHOPSUEY MARKET

Founder/CEO (and FMG Member) Lisa Morales-Hellebo (@lisahellebo) has also created a potentially disruptive “social commerce” platform with ShopSueyMarket

Over a year in development, ShopSuey aims to use its proprietary curation technology to help stem the overwhelming tide of digital information confronting fashion seekers today.

The site curates personalized fashion looks for each user in real-time based on direct data feeds from retailers, while making it easy for users to share, customize, and revise the styles they receive. The company also provides shopping analytics to a rapidly-growing list of A-tier retail partners.

According to Morales-Hellebo, ShopSuey is, “a search engine that delivers smart groups of related goods as results.  Ultimately, we want to become the daily touchstone in every busy woman’s life by easily answering the question, ‘what am I wearing today?’ “

The company is still in its beginning stages but has an experienced team behind it and a trend/tech-savvy CEO who understands that consumer-centric shopping is the future of commerce.

ShopSuey’s recent demo at the DC Tech Meetup

@TheRunThrough

 TheRunThrough is a new private B2B site that aims to connect leading fashion brands with editors to make the heretofore, very complicated, labor-intensive sample-pulling process much more efficient.    

According to an article in Mashable , “seventeen brands have signed on to the launch, including Cartier, Bulgari, Donna Karan, Tory Burch, and Rebecca Minkoff.” 

Free to editors to browse collections, the site will generate revenue by charging the brands themselves $6,000 yearly.  At first glance, TheRunThrough looks like a great example of a start-up effectively using tech to make an existing fashion industry process much more turnkey for everybody.

They have already been mentioned in both tech media (Mashable) and fashion media (WWD) outlets - a superb start for a Fashion/Tech startup.

by

@JedWexler for FMG

POLYVORE’S CEO PASHA SADRI ON SOCIAL SHOPPING AND THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF FASHION**

by Kristin Young for FMG @kristayloryoung

There has never been a more unlikely group of revolutionaries in fashion: a handful of young engineers dressed in typical Silicon Valley unfashionable jeans and T-shirts, gathered around a pod of computers looking not at designer lines but at numbers spit out by analytics software.

We are at the modest headquarters of Polyvore.com, a shopping site launched in 2007 by three ex-Yahoo engineers, Pasha Sadri, Jianing Hu and Guangwei Yuan. The site allows users to clip in fashion products from their favorite stores on the Web to create “sets,” basically collages that resemble trend pages in a fashion magazine. Users can create collections, enter contests, get style advice, join groups, look at each other’s sets and, of course, click to buy merchandise.

They can also share their sets on blogs, Twitter and Facebook. With 6.5 million unique visitors per month — about six times the number of people who read Vogue — the site is attracting big-name retail partners like Bergdorf Goodman and Nordstrom and designers like Yves Saint Laurent, Tory Burch and Diane von Furstenberg.

Earlier this month Polyvore* announced a collaboration with Fashion’s Night Out 2011 - perfect timing for FMG’s Kristin Young (formerly of WWD) to sit down with Sadri to discuss the impact sites like his are having on the fashion industry.

“nobody had paid a lot of tech attention to fashion.”

FMG: What made a bunch of tech guys get into the fashion biz?

PS: The founding story is a little bit unglamorous. We identified that the migration from print publications to digital was well on its way. And then there was this observation that nobody had paid a lot of tech attention to fashion. We were surprised apparel and soft goods is the largest category online and the fastest growing. It was not a very crowded market compared to a lot of other fields where you have a hundred companies trying to do the same thing and only one of them is dominant.

FMG: Where do Polyvore’s products come from?

PS: Most of the products are contributed by the users. We have a bookmark drag bar that allows you to clip from any other store or site. About 95 percent of content is actually arriving through this mechanism.

FMG: How do fashion brands utilize Polyvore?

PS: There’s a tremendous amount of data in Polyvore. We have a new tool—dashboard—that let’s [companies] take the temperature and see how their brand is doing and they can respond real time. Designers can actually get feedback much earlier on collections or specific pieces - and it can become part of the design process.

FMG: Are traditional bricks-and-mortar stores soon to be as relevant in fashion as Tower Records is in music?

PS: For clothing, you’re still talking about physical products. You can’t download clothing. So you’re going to watch a slower transition.  But, overall the shift is going to be online.

FMG: Rebecca Minkoff recently held a design-off challenge for a clutch on Polyvore. Are you going to see more of this kind of interaction?

PS: Sites like Polyvore, Youtube, et al., are really about enabling people who have that talent but didn’t have the opportunity to participate. So you would normally not see them because these platforms didn’t exist for them. Thanks to the Internet and existence of these platforms, you have the opportunity to showcase your talent.

“Our belief is there is actually no substitute for human taste. “

FMG: How does Polyvore make money?

 PS: Today there are actually two revenue streams, commission and advertising. We make a commission whenever somebody transacts a product.

FMG: How can companies use Polyvore with other social media sites?

PS: Many brands are paying attention to social media, for example, Facebook. Once they create a presence on Facebook, they need to constantly have interesting stream of things to say in order to maintain their fan base. Polyvore actually works perfectly for that. Our community produces a lot of activity and content around each brand. Companies can get more engagement out of their fan base on these social media platforms.

FMG: Why do you think Polyvore caught on?

PS: For a lot of sites, immediate revenue is the focus for a lot of shopping oriented sites. Whereas on Polyvore, you want to come and browse and interact. That suits the way a lot of women shop.

FMG: Google’s boutiques.com uses algorithms to generate suggestions for its users. Do you agree with this business model?

PS:  Our belief is there is actually no substitute for human taste. You cannot capture it in an algorithm. Following that person who’s taste you like is the best way to discover products that you are likely to like as well. An algorithm might capture the average of your taste, but it leaves out the element of surprise that a real person gives you.

-Kristin Young for FMG   (**photo courtesy of Polyvore)

*Partner with Polyvore as a brand or blogger