When I was in college, there was a fraternity brother of mine who no one in the fraternity–except for maybe three of the brothers–felt comfortable hanging out with. He had a reputation around the brotherhood for being rude, uptight, and a general jerk to be around. This particular brother also didn’t take care of himself very well, and because of that he was overweight and a bit of a slob.

But after college, something clicked. He began to change his diet and exercise. He started running more and began to train for marathons, eventually losing over seventy-five pounds. He found a steady job that paid well and required him to think about his approach in dealing with people, and gradually his internal vision of himself and general outlook on life began to change for the better.

What happened? My fraternity brother began to respect himself more and as he did so, others around him began to notice this and view him differently. Their respect towards him began to mirror the respect that he had for himself. He understood that in order for him to change the way that people around him perceived him, he needed to first change the way he thought about himself.

By taking strides to cultivate in himself a stronger sense of respect, my brother was able to slim down, become a more likable individual, run a few small marathons, and today he lives a healthier, happier life because of these small, but important adjustments to his life.

DOCKERS’ DILEMMA

As little as two years ago, Dockers found itself mired in a similar situation. If you were a middle management guy working in a suburban office park with a relaxed dress code and needed a decent pair of khakis to keep up with the office, you looked to Dockers. They were the undisputed KING of boring, uninspired khakis–the pair you bought at Dillard’s when you didn’t want to drop a lot of money on khakis and wanted something safe.

And why SHOULD you pay a lot for khakis? The prevailing thought that Dockers was allowing to happen was “Khakis are khakis. So what if they don’t fit you very well and aren’t created to last–you paid $45 for them and they’re nothing special. Who cares?” That was the problem Dockers was facing, and it was a big mountain to climb. When people thought Dockers, they thought “cheap commodity,” instead of “exceptional product.” People lacked respect for the product Dockers was offering because they knew that Dockers didn’t have the proper respect for its own product to begin with.

Fortunately, Dockers saw this as a concern. They knew they had to change the way that people thought about them, and they realized the only way to do that was to cultivate in themselves a certain level of respect. In order for people to respect Dockers and their khakis, they needed to respect themselves first.

The Dockers transition wasn’t a re-branding, it was an internal philosophical evaluation, a way of asking themselves “what kind of company do we want to be and how should we go about positioning ourselves towards that specific ideal?” They wanted to go from being your dad’s and your frat brother’s standard issue, ordinary office and weekend khaki, to being a well-respected pants brand with a strong American pedigree and a new-found respect for the khaki. In the past, they were focused on being completely average, utterly uninspiring. They weren’t pressing forward–they were coasting, and that wagon was quickly losing momentum.

Reinvigorating your brand is not the duty of a PR, marketing or branding firm. It’s not something that you assign to an outside agent who fabricates a grandiose story on your behalf. At times it may be motivated by financial necessity, but the desire to change is a seed that grows from within. In order to start any sort of process like this, you need to assess how you respect your company and your product, and this “respect audit,” as it were, needs to be completed internally first in order for it to be naturally reflected outward later. You need to ask yourself what it is that you need to change in order to be proud of your company, and you need to have a specific vision in your mind of the type of company you want to run and the type of product you want to offer. There needs to be a true dedication to the cause. Finally, you need to aim, shoot, and fire. Forget the past, and focus completely on this new future without looking back!

You’ll find that after you turn this corner that the conversation about you will change, people will start to look at you differently and they will start to respect you much more than before. Yes, at some point you may have to enlist the services of a PR or branding firm to help you structure your re-branding process from a communications standpoint, but this comes only AFTER this internal respect audit process is completed.

Dockers didn’t have full respect for their khakis and it was obvious. Today, the company has instead chosen to offer an exceptional product. One that it is proud of, and one that reflects the brand’s full respect of itself and the product. The people at Dockers wanted to change the way that people thought about their khakis, and in order to do so they needed to first change how the company itself thought about its own product. It was an internal transformation reflected outward which led to the blossoming of the Dockers khaki into something that people like you now value.

THE INTERNAL TRANSFORMATION PROCESS

Sometimes you need someone new to take the wheel. Dockers knew that in order to create a better product, they needed to seek out someone who would help them in that regard–a lead designer who was passionate, aware and ready to instill in the company a full embrace of the product and a respect for the khaki. Paul Dillinger turned out to be that man, the conductor of the orchestra. Having come from the now defunct Martin + Osa, he knows a thing or two about designing for and reflecting the tastes of a younger, more discerning crowd. You can clearly see his hand at work in Dockers’ new product line.

How do you know in which direction to go without listening? Dockers needed a better understanding of what it meant to have the proper respect for the product by listening to what people were saying. They needed to be in on the dialog on Twitter, Tumblr, and blogs, because in order to know what true respect for a product meant and in order to reflect those ideas, Dockers needed to learn these principles.

So what did the people at Dockers do? They started paying attention to what people were saying. They soon learned that what it means to respect your product is a focus on the proper fit, caring about the quality of the fabrics that you’re using, and paying attention to the manufacturing process. New pants brands who were smaller and who were already participating in the discussion were taking the khaki and creating a product that was selling for nearly triple what Dockers was charging–and they were able to get away with this. Why? Because they pushed the idea of what people believed khakis could be while simultaneously showing a true respect for what they were producing. Dockers ran with this, and they reflected their new respect in themselves by sourcing better fabrics, and updating the fit to a slimmer profile.

THE RESULTS OF THAT INTERNAL TRANSFORMATION

With these changes, Dockers has begun to walk with a little bit of a swagger. People have started to take notice and are growing increasingly respectful of the brand’s newly refined approach. Individuals love rebound stories, and the optimism and invigoration that Dockers is now displaying are infectious qualities. We as human beings can’t help but want to participate in the excitement when we encounter someone or something that radiates these characteristics.

Now that Dockers is showing a full commitment to the product, they’ve been able to team up with GQ, The Council of Fashion Designers of America, and some of the most exciting menswear designers in the country for “The Best New Menswear Designers in America” collection. Designers Michael Bastian, Miller’s Oath, Warriors of Radness, Patrick Ervell, Alexander Wang, and Riveria Club, have each in their individual designs elevated the Dockers khaki in a completely unique way, expanded people’s notion of what you can do with a pair of khaki pants.

These partnerships shout to people, “Hey guys, we at Dockers–we’re serious about our khakis now. We’ve matured, and we’ve taken a strong look at ourselves. We didn’t like what we saw and we know you didn’t either, so we made strides to change. Now we’re serious about design, and we want to show you that we’re a different Dockers by showing you that our khakis don’t have to be boring. Thanks for sticking with us!”

That is a seriously effective message, and it’s hard not to respect someone who acknowledges the mistakes of their past and shows a true commitment to moving forward. For Dockers, teaming up with these designers certainly goes far in showing people that Dockers is indeed different and serious about what it’s doing now. The conversation that people are now having about khakis is a different one from before, and it’s a conversation that Dockers has worked hard to shape over the last two years. But the brand didn’t succeed in doing this by sticking with its comfortable, ordinary attitude from the past, nor did it stick with the traditional idea of what a khaki should be. The company is pushing the khaki envelope and refusing to rest on its laurels. Dockers had fun, created something that it was proud of, and right now things are looking good for them. When you begin to respect yourself better, people begin to see that and things begin to fall into place.

Are you just coasting by? Are you creating a product to the best of your ability, a product that you can be 100% proud of? Do you respect your company to the fullest and is that respect mirrored in the product you offer?

People mirror the respect that you have for yourself. My advice is refuse to stay stagnant, never coast, always aim to improve. When you have true respect for yourself, this process becomes natural and you’ll find that the doors will begin to open.

*Photo Credit: Dockers Tumblr

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but now that social media is becoming more important within publicity strategies, brand owners and designers are starting to throw around a particular term in an effort to extract some measurable value with their social media campaigns. This term, in case you’re wondering, is “Return on Investment”–ROI.

Because there are a LOT of dollars being thrown around for social media projects, people want to know what their investments are getting them. But so far, it’s been very hard for us to measure that reliably.

Yes, we have “innovative” widgets, services, and apps that allow us to see the activity that a particular blog post, Facebook post, Tweet or Tumblr post gets us in terms of numbered actions like reblogs, retweets, favorites, and everything in between. And, true, we do have applications like Klout supposedly helping us gauge our influence across multiple social media platforms, but when you boil it all down, and as modern renaissance man Duncan Davidson pointed out in his article “Social Scoreboards are the Modern Page Counters”, the basis of what you’re getting with these applications is little more than social media scoreboards.

So you have to ask yourself–what does it all mean? So what if my Facebook post has 2000 likes or my blog post got a few comments? Yea, it’s awesome that my Tumblr post got 500 reblogs in one day, but what is that saying for my brand? How do I measure the value of my Tweet that was favorited 15 times, the same one that started a highly opinionated Twitter discussion that lasted all day? What is the meaning behind all of this and how do these activities translate in real life?

In truth, it’s really, really difficult to answer these questions right now. What’s important to remember, though, is that social media should always be a means to an end…NOT and end unto itself. To borrow a phrase from Erica Swallow’s Mashable Business article, “Social media is the vehicle, not the destination.” You should be thinking about how to convert your social media activity into actual, real life activity, be it sales, testing out the public reception for a prototype, a specific number of heads at an event–whatever goal you have that you need to meet.

Which is why Oscar De La Renta’s Facebook event from earlier this month (that I learned about on Tumblr via Oscar PR Girl) was such a special thing: it’s a step towards measuring ROI because it engages fans, and engagement typically leads to people buying your products and attending your events–all measurables that you can tie in with a specific social media promotion. It was an F-Commerce event, an event exclusive to Facebook designed for sales.

OSCAR PR GIRL, TUMBLR, ESPIRIT D’OSCAR, AND F-COMMERCE

Tumblr is a funny place, we all know this. You can literally sort through all sorts of nonsense ALL DAY LONG and find absolutely nothing of actual value on there, unless you consider gpoys, scantily-clad models, and interior design photos to be of any particular value–in which case you’ve found your Mecca. But every now and again, you’ll run across something like Oscar PR Girl’s Oscar De La Renta Facebook event promotion that makes you think and gets the gears cranking. Sometimes, when you aren’t looking, you get hit by a diamond in the rough.

As it turns out, that is exactly what happened when I ran across ODLR’s Facebook event that Oscar PR Girl was promoting on Tumblr. I was doing the typical Tumblr session–reblogging this, laughing at that as I sifted through the feed –when I ran across something different from Oscar PR Girl. Now, I know you’re probably wondering to yourself “how can something done by Oscar de La Renta even apply to menswear? How is this even remotely relevant to this blog??”

Well it’s simple and I’ll explain it to you like this. Oscar de La Renta was promoting a small Facebook event on Tumblr, a “chic little cocktail ring” that held a small amount of the Espirit d’Oscar fragrance that you could only find on Oscar de La Renta’s Facebook page.

I followed a few links and walked away with some observations as to why Oscar De La Renta’s Facebook campaign was a great example of an F-Commerce event and a strategy for quantifying your ROI. Here’s what I came up with:

1. It offered exclusive, valuable content to followers. Having a Facebook page for your label is more than simply throwing up a profile where you throw up the lookbooks. It should function as an auxiliary place where consumers can find extra value. It should act as an active place NOT a passive archive of your brand.

Too many times, we see brands using Facebook as a place to archive or summarize their events and lookbooks and yea this was cool in 2008, but today it’s important to take it further for consumers beyond the typical picture flipping and liking. You can engage them in a way that gets them excited about your brand in a way that feels personal and unique, especially since most brands are not doing this. Make them feel special and exclusive. Make them feel like following your Facebook page and aligning themselves with your brand is worth something and is justified. People want to feel valued, and one way to do that is to follow Oscar PR Girl and ODLR’s lead. Give them a treat and they will love you for it.

2. It funneled traffic to a specific place integrating all social media platforms to publicize the event. The event itself is an intelligent approach to using Facebook for brand allegiance and product promotion, because not only did they provide an incentive and a reward to Facebook followers, it also integrated another social media platforms–Tumblr and Twitter–to spread the word.

This is a perfect example of how to go about using Facebook for your brand and integrating all your social media accounts to work together to promote an event by funnelling traffic to a specific place. This is the way you’re supposed to do it.

3. The end result? Better consumer engagement through Facebook and a way to measure ROI. When you engage consumers and give them a little taste, they’re much more likely to either buy the full product afterwards and/or pull the trigger on other products from you in the future. Obviously, I can’t attest to the conversion rate here for ODLR with this event, nor can I cite any specific numbers that show any jump in sales for Espirit d’Oscar due to this event. But, I’m still willing to bet that this Facebook exclusive helped tick some boxes and put ODLR in a better position for meeting a few Espirit d’Oscar sales goals. That’s something you can measure…ROI, people.

THOUGHTS ON APPLYING THIS STRATEGY TO YOUR MENSWEAR BRAND

If you’re a brand with a Facebook page and you’re wondering how to get more out of it (which you absolutely should be thinking about), look at what ODLR did. Obviously you won’t be offering any “cocktail rings” anytime soon, but perhaps you can think of doing something unique to what you do that keeps people engaged on your page.

As with all other social media and PR projects and campaigns, you need to be focused and you need to have a strategy for ensuring that it creates value and rewards both your company and the people who support you. This reflects extremely well for your brand. Figure out ways where you can make your Facebook page function as a separate limb–something that helps out the body as an active contributing member, instead of something that really has no worthwhile function. Don’t just start a Facebook page just because you think you should.

Ask yourself, how can you make Facebook an active place that might help you reach your real life goals? Are there any projects or exclusive offers that you can have on Facebook that feels like a natural extension of your brand to help you get there? Don’t simply promote brick-and-mortar events with recaps. Don’t simply summarize events or collections. Try events that are specific to the Facebook page and for your Facebook fans. You want it to function as it’s own special place, not a storage room of past material. And in the end, if you need any help, just go back and use Oscar de La Renta’s example.

*Photo credit: Oscar PR Girl

Let me ask you a question. If you’re a blogger and you’re looking to monetize, why not repay your readers’ belief in you by creating something you know they will value? Why not monetize your blog in a way that allows you to maintain complete control over your voice, complete control over the product, the styling, the publicity, sales, distribution–all of it–while you enjoy the direct benefits of leveraging your influence with your audience?

THE SOLUTION: A PRODUCT-BASED APPROACH TO MAKING MONEY FROM YOUR BLOG

I’m not sure how YOU feel about this, but to me that sounds like a pretty efficient way to make money from a blog. So with that said, if you’re a menswear (or womenswear) blogger, I’d like to suggest to you that you aim to monetize your influence, not through a service-based platform that I pointed out in Part I, but through a PRODUCT-BASED PLATFORM that repays your audience for supporting you. As a blogger, it places the control firmly in your hands and leverages your influence much more organically. And just what are the benefits of the product-based route, you ask? Well, listen up.

1. Complete Control.

With a product based approach you have control over every aspect of producing, marketing, and selling your product, and it’s up to your readers to keep you afloat. In the product-based approach, you’re selling to a network of A FEW THOUSAND people who trust and are eager to support you. When you’re stuck in the service-based world, however, you’re relying on only a HANDFUL of brands who may not trust you as much, and in the end may not even choose to work with you at all. What do you think will cause you the greatest financial hit: if one reader out of an audience of say 5,000 decides to pass on buying your product, or if one brand out of a total of 10 decides to pass on a partnership with you?  Duh.

In the end, though, make sure that your product is the best product you can make, and not just something to make a quick buck. That’s opportunist and short sighted. Aim high. Make sure it’s something you can build on, and something you’re proud of.

2. The Pieces are Already in Place.

Right now as you read this, all of the pieces are already in place for you to market, sell, publicize and distribute your product, whatever that may end up being, before you even create anything. You’ve got the attention of the audience, and the publicity chanel by which to promote to them. Talk about ideal conditions.

When companies first start, the thing they need the most but don’t have is an audience. That’s why they spend so much time and money trying to get the word out. As a blogger, you already have that covered. Think about it, how many companies would KILL to have that support structure in place before making a cent?

3. It’s More Sustainable and Leads to a Stronger Progression as a Blogger.

Do you think the bloggers who take the service-based approach still see themselves blogging 10 years from now? What about five years from now? I’m guessing that’s a no for the majority. The only problem is that, as we’ve seen, when you’re relying on the service-based approach as your main strategy, you’re at the mercy of the brands (again not as sinister as it sounds, it’s just business) which means you may be blogging longer than you think if brands decide you’re not worth the cash. In other words it’s the riskier solution.

Creating and offering a product to your audience is a long term solution if done correctly because your audience trusts you and is less fickle as a group than a brand will likely be. Also, in terms of individual progress, what’s more progressive–working alongside brands to effectively act as a brand promoter, or using your influence to create something on your own that people will value and cherish? Shouldn’t take you much time to come to a conclusion on that one. It also bears mentioning that by creating, you learn the fine details, the ins-and-outs of what goes into producing the very things you write about because you HAVE to. #ProgressionStaysWinning.

YOU GOT ANY MENSWEAR EXAMPLES?

Why yes. Yes, I do. In menswear, two of the best examples of going the product-based route and doing it effectively are Run of The Mill and Inventory Magazine.

Run of The Mill

At ROTM, three of the menswear fellas (LAS, Captain Kirk, and Jon–maybe you’ve heard of them) currently use their knowledge and influence from blogging to produce, market, and sell garments that they love, and that they know their followers and peers are also be highly interested in buying.

I remember right after Capsule FW 2010 when LAS called to tell me about the ROTM project with these two bloggers he’d met there, Jeremy and Jon. I thought it was a great idea because at the time (and even now, ROTM excluded) no bloggers were doing the “created by a style blogger” approach quite right. I didn’t know quite what to expect, but I was pretty sure that if they found a way to produce something of value and publicized it correctly, that it would fly off the (virtual) rack. And you know what? It freaking worked, imagine that.

For the first collection, they partnered with McNairy, but as of today they are fully autonomous, creating private label goods at their own pace that are of exceptional quality at a very fair price. They’ve used their pre-established reputations in the menswear blogging community to convince guys that ROTM items were worth pulling the trigger on, and supporters have shown up in kind.

ROTM is honest, they have phenomenal customer service, they act on the feedback they get from their customers, and theirs is simply a successful product-based model to follow.

Inventory Magazine

Before Inventory Magazine was Inventory Magazine, it was H(y)r Collective. From the start, H(y)r established a following and a strong voice in the menswear blogging community by offering an issue-based digital menswear and culture magazine. It was tasteful, informative, aspirational, and it successfully brought to the internet the feeling that you get when you get a new magazine issue in the mail (and to be honest, I think they’ve still left a void that’s yet to be filled).

Soon, they branched out into products, pairing up with a few brands for H(y)r collaborations–most notable of which being the Gitman Brothers shirting collaboration–before eventually re-branding as Inventory Magazine in the middle of 2009. Ryan Willms and the others at Inventory now publish a seasonal print magazine that progresses what they did with H(y)r Collective, featuring compelling content on topics they and their audience want to hear, and impeccable art direction. Like ROTM, the guys at Inventory have also successfully leveraged their influence, and repaid their audience’s support by providing a product that they know their audience values. They retain complete control over that aspect of their influence.

So bloggers, if you want to make money off your blog, create and sell your own products using your influence to repay your audience. Partnering with brands is fantastic, just as long as you’re selective about the projects that you choose and you aren’t relying on these partnerships as your main strategy in monetizing your influence. Yes, it may take a LITTLE longer to establish a profit (there’s no instant gratification that you get through providing a service), but the end result is a monetization strategy that is more sustainable, and I’d argue, more rewarding than simply providing a service for a brand.

*Photo Credit: The Way I See It

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WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Is the product-based strategy the better approach to take compared to the services-based approach?  Is this something you think most bloggers should consider? Does this effectively take care of the unethical issues in style blogging?  Let’s hear your thoughts!

If you’re a style blogger and you’re wondering how you should go about getting that cash, then you’re going to want to sit down for this.

This week, there’s been a lively discussion that’s extremely poignant to style blogging and it’s a discussion that I’m personally loving–hopefully you’ve caught wind of it. It’s a conversation exploring the ethical principles of bloggers providing content for brands in exchange for reimbursement, and how to best provide this service for brands while still maintaining the voice and honesty as a blogger that brought them success in the first place.

Since style blogging is such a dynamic and ungoverned medium at this point, people are still trying to figure out the best way to go about things. FTC regulations aside, there really are no established set of principles between bloggers and brands that serve as the protocol for working together, nor is there any standard for content reimbursement between them either. It’s all very relative, and I think this is a bit unsettling for people. Rightly so.

The fact remains, though, bloggers offer a unique opportunity for publicity, and as they’ve seen their influence expand, they’ve increased their desire to be paid for their work . Obviously, this is a natural progression that was inevitable from the start, but I’ve noticed a problem in the strategy that bloggers, at least in this particular conversation, are using in order to make money from their blogs.

THE REFERENCE POINTS

So let’s start out by highlighting the catalysts of the conversation these last few days. For our purposes here, there are four articles that bear mentioning:

Hayley Phelan’s (thank you, Jake Davis) very insightful article on Fashionista.com, “Can You Trust the Editorial Integrity of Personal Style Blogs? A Closer Look at How Bloggers Make Money.”

Two articles by Rachel Sturgatz on WWD, “Hot Fashion Bloggers” (which Phelan’s article is a reaction to) and “Social Media: Nobody Does it Better.”

And finally, “The Dirty, Unethical Business of Fashion Blogs” by Jenna Sauers of Jezebel.com. All four are very good reads, so if you haven’t read them already, I definitely recommend doing so, because you’ll definitely learn a few things you didn’t know before.

THE GAME IS MATURING AND BLOGGERS JUST WANT TO GET PAID!

Throughout the week, each of these articles have received some heavy attention, and they all, in varying degrees, address the critical topics of the moment in style blogging:

1. the fact that the genre is maturing; and

2. the fact that brands are becoming more comfortable with the idea of teaming up with bloggers for collaborations, partnerships, and promotions, in a reimbursement for content context in order to gain access to bloggers’ precious audiences.

Now, if you’re a blogger or someone who follows mens- and womenswear blogs, this isn’t exactly breaking news. As fashion blogging has matured over the last five years, brands reimbursing and/or bribing bloggers in exchange for content is an assumption that most bloggers and their followers have accepted as fact. These articles just confirm that even more.

And it’s perfectly understandable that bloggers are looking for reimbursement. First of all, blogging is more work than the end result might lead you to believe; secondly, bloggers know that what they’re providing for the brands is a unique service (pay attention to this word–service–we’re going to come back to this later) that has powerful benefits, and they obviously want to make sure they get reimbursed in some way because of this.

This is something I quickly understood when I was running Components of Enthusiasm, and I made sure that anytime I wrote a product review that I always got to keep the item in exchange. Brand owners knew what the deal was. They never complained nor seemed to mind (except in one particular instance) because they understood the value that I was providing them.

I’VE NOTICED A PATTERN

But there’s something that I’ve noticed that’s bothered me about this conversation on bloggers looking to monetize their style blogs, and after reading Phelan’s article, I realized what it was.

Here’s the thing. Wanting to be paid by doing what you enjoy is perfectly OK–actually, in my mind it’s ideal–but when you do so, you need to make sure that the way you’re going about it doesn’t leave you shortchanged. The issue that I’m noticing with bloggers and the monetization strategy highlighted in these articles is that there’s a disconnect between how bloggers are trying to get paid versus the actual nature of blogging itself, and it definitely needs to be pointed out.

THE NATURE OF BLOGGING AND THE ROLE OF CONTROL

Before we do that, however, let’s take a step back and consider the nature of blogging. What are some of the beneficial characteristics of it? Well, for starters, blogging offers the individual blogger complete autonomy and complete authority over their content. It’s a democratic platform based largely on the value that you as a blogger provide. So, if your content is strong and presents a particular value that enough people enjoy and appreciate, then you’ll begin to be esteemed based on that merit. Given this, there’s a theme I want to emphasize that’s central to everything that blogging and social media in general represent.

That theme is “Control.” The control that comes through social media is the prerequisite that allows bloggers to take an extremely quick route to becoming a specialist on a particular topic. Control allows them to become experts in whatever industry they want by letting them take their own path to success, and it also allows them to express their own voice, and to maintain their autonomy. Control is the unique element of blogging that makes it so special.

THE PROBLEM WITH THE SERVICE-BASED APPROACH

The guiding light in the monetization debate that bloggers (and their talent agencies) continuously emphasize in their arguments is that their primary value lies in their influence with and access to their audience. Well yes, they have that part right. The bad news?

Their approach to using this influence as their PRIMARY strategy for getting paid is all wrong.

Why? BECAUSE THEY’RE EMPHASIZING A SERVICE-BASED APPROACH THAT IS SELF-LIMITING. As a result, control is the very thing that bloggers begin to lose when they decide that getting paid to provide content for brands is THE BEST WAY to turn their influence into money.

Here’s why, as a blogger, the service-based approach is a limiting strategy.

It limits your voice because you can’t really speak as candidly as before about the things provided by your partner brands for fear of losing that partnership.

Your trajectory is capped, dependent on the whims of the handful of brands who may or may not choose to work with you. Another thing to consider: yea, you may be the blogger of the moment now, but what happens when the next hottest blogger comes along? Most likely, it’s deuces for you. Realize though, that the trust you establish with your AUDIENCE, unless you do something completely idiotic, generally doesn’t waver in this way.

You’re also limited by what brands allow you to do in these collaborations and partnerships. They determine what your role will be and how you’re best used for their purposes. Now to be fair, I don’t want to make this out to seem like brands are out there purposely enforcing some sinister scheme, because I simply don’t believe that to be the case. This isn’t some rubber baron plot. My point is, brands are absolutely eager to work with bloggers–and in a way that (generally) feels honest and fun. But at the same time these are businesses, and they’re only going to work with you in a way that they believe best fits their business goals. In their mind, they come first, which again limits your control.

It’s a passive approach. I also want to point out that there’s nothing inherently wrong with partnering with brands and being reimbursed for content. In many cases, we’ve been treated to some fun and well-conceived projects that have benefited blogger, brand and audience alike. But, by using this approach as your MAIN way of leveraging your influence, you’re basically carving out a career as a brand evangelist for hire, which is a rather passive approach to putting your influence to work for you. Some people are completely comfortable with this, and that’s more than fine, do what you enjoy. I should also mention that clearly not every style blogger who decides to collaborate with a brand is planning on doing brand partnerships for the rest of their lives, some view it as a means to an end, which is also perfectly OK.

It’s a cry for validation. Believing that the service-based approach is the best way to monetize is also, when you think about it, basically a method for validation. It’s sends a silent message that says “hey look at me…I do good work and I have a great audience that adores me! Please validate my blog and my blog’s value by paying me to provide this content for you!!” If we’re being real, that’s not the best look. Again, in this service-based approach, your payment (and in many cases your livelihood) depends on a company’s belief in your value and their decision to work with you.

That’s just the thing though: bloggers, because they produce using a medium that’s so democratic, don’t actually NEED ANY SORT OF VALIDATION FROM BRANDS in order to profit from the influence that they’ve worked so hard to establish. Their TRUE validation rests in the hands of their audience.

Now, you might think that my arguing against brand-blogger partnerships as a blogger’s primary method of monetization, and the fact that I make my living by running a menswear PR firm seems a bit…counter-productive. But, you’d be missing the point. In itself, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with bloggers partnering with the brands that they admire and support. I’m not saying they should never style, collaborate on products, attend any shows–that’s not what I’m saying at all. What I AM saying, is as a blogger, just don’t make these service projects your primary strategy for getting the most out of your influence because in the end, that’s not what you’re getting…you’re not getting the most out of it. Sure, you can still attend the shows and style the lookbooks, but as long as you aren’t dependent on these and instead approach them as extra perks of the industry, then you’ve preserved your control.

If anything, these service-based projects should act as the side dish to your main course in your monetization strategy. The main course being your product of value that you create and offer to your audience as a way to repay them for supporting you. It’s called taking a PRODUCT-BASED APPROACH and I’ll lay it all out for you in Part II of this discussion.

*Photo Credit: Mos Exerent

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WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Should bloggers consider their partnerships with brands better? If you’re a blogger, what are your thoughts on the merits of the service-based approach? Is there an optimal way to go about leveraging your blog for money?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.