Online beauty coverage is bigger and better than ever before. Meet the new "it" editors leading
the charge.
For Annie Atkinson of She’s in the
Glow, sifting through hundreds of products a month can be all-consuming — literally. “My boyfriend
practically dies every time he steps foot into my apartment because it’s like a product explosion. It’s quite hard
to keep up with it,” she says.
There’s a reason beauty brands are so eager to get their products in the hands of Atkinson and dozens of other beauty
bloggers like her: These content creators are the new “it” faces in the burgeoning online world of beauty. They have
a curious, loyal readership that’s valuable to brands and a trustworthy sense of taste and self-deprecating humor
that’s alluring to readers.
These editors include models, such as Ruth Crilly of
A Model Recommends, and
former print editors turned digital wunderkind, such as Emily Weiss of
Into the Gloss and Polly Blitzer who
founded Beauty Blitz in 2008. Some are
behind-the-scenes experts like makeup artists Robin Black of
Beauty Is Boring,
Lisa Eldridge and
Charlotte Tilbury or
celebrity nail artists such as Madeline Poole of MPNails.
Even well-known digital style brands are getting into the action:
Who What Wear launched
Byrdie earlier this year. They are all figuring
out smart new ways to present beauty products from behind a computer-screen barrier.
Youtube Stars of beauty tutorials
The challenge is pretty obvious: It’s easier to communicate the shape of an Alexander Wang tee or a Prada pump than
it is to convey just what Dr. Hauschka’s new moisturizer smells like or how it will feel on a reader’s skin. “One of
the biggest hurdles for beauty in the digital landscape is the lingering uncertainty of how a particular product
will look or feel on you,” says Ashley Weatherford, who launched
August Skin in May 2012. Plus, beauty’s
not just about what looks good or what the latest trend is — readers want to know what works, how to apply it and
where to buy it.
“I think a sense of humor and irreverence is what keeps people coming back.”
— Ann Colville Somma, cult of pretty
One way these editors are overcoming the hurdle is with brutal honesty. “The most embarrassing posts (like when I
photographed my under-eye bags or talked about my dandruff) always get the most views,” says Weatherford, who
concedes that giveaway posts are also popular.
“Great visuals drive engagement and click-thru,” says Ann Colville Somma of
Cult of Pretty. “But I think a
sense of humor and irreverence is what keeps people coming back.”
“Girls just love reading about what other girls keep in their beauty bags. It’s a fact,” says Atkinson. “People love
tutorials, videos, how-tos, drugstore beauty and nails. Nail art I am not totally sold on, but nothing gets more
traction than some crazy palm tree nail art.”
Advice is a reliable standard of the digital beauty empire. “How to deal with acne, how to use a retinoid. … People
are so interested in the information you convey, and people have so many questions. I have posts that are years old
that still get questions,” says Michelle Villett, who launched
Beauty Editor in 2009 after leaving her
post as the beauty and health editor for Elle Canada. She says she didn’t like most of the beauty content she found
online and was bored by the constant positive reviews for an endless stream of products. “If it’s just products, who
cares?”
Digital beauty sites also are becoming more sophisticated. These sites not only have a glossier aesthetic, but the
creators also are tweaking the presentation of content and product recommendations to better serve readers and
monetize their popularity. For example, the user experience design on
xoVain prioritizes editorial content just as
much as products. The site, a collaboration between xoJane
Editor-in-Chief Jane Pratt and Say Media that bills itself as “a new kind of beauty site where there are no
secrets,” clearly features “shoppable” products, even on the home page stream. It’s a one-click-to-pretty
marketplace, and readers appreciate the seamless commerce integration. As well, affiliate linking, which long ago
became standard practice on fashion and style blogs, is becoming more common for beauty sites.
The increased daily coverage of beauty has changed the industry. “I think the Internet has completely changed the
credibility and life cycle of beauty products because bloggers are looking to share newness on a constant basis,”
says Colville Somma, who has a day job in product development in the fragrance and beauty industry. “It's also more
important than ever to actually innovate versus interpreting or fast-following, because the trends come and go so
quickly and your product will just get lost in the crowd unless it really stands out and has a certain cult status
or timelessness.”
To be clear, bloggers haven’t usurped the utility of mainstream publishers.
Women’s Wear Daily is still the bible
for the business of beauty, and bloggers still count Allure’sDaily
Beauty Reporter, Glamour’sbeauty
blog and Vogue Paris’beauty
vertical as part of their daily media diet. Plus, many of the most prominent bloggers started as print
editors. However, digital media has an entirely different relationship with products and readers.
“A magazine is like getting advice from a doctor, but a blog is like getting advice from your best friend.”
— ashley weatherford, august skin
Magazines speak with authority, while bloggers tend to make everything personal. “You don’t see the words ‘I’ and
‘we’ a lot in magazines,” says Weatherford. “But with blogs, entire posts are built around how products make us feel
and how we apply them in daily life. A magazine is like getting advice from a doctor, but a blog is like getting
advice from your best friend.” Says Colville Somma, “I also think bloggers have the freedom to write pages and pages
about smaller brands, or never write about the big brands, which is not necessarily the case when there are big ad
revenues involved, and that gives us a lot of freedom.”
