Community journalism from a New Zealand fashion & beauty blog
Starting from a passion for fashion, a mother of two and business woman decided to create Thread, a blog for her proximate community in New Zealand in hopes of encouraging people to interact and share common interests.
Megan Robinson has created one of the first populated fashion blogs home to all things fashion, beauty, and culture.
“I enjoy shopping and looking at interesting stuff on the web, so thought that others would enjoy it, too,” Robinson says. “I talked to various people and had an overwhelming response.”
Before the desire to become a fashion blogger, Robinson ran two clothing boutiques, one in Hamilton called, Sun Clothing, and one located in the North Shore called, Thread, which was the inspired name for her blog.
The website launched in 2001 in Auckland, New Zealand, after Robinson decided on the idea, concepts, and the vision she wanted for her organization.
New Zealand is ranked 13 in the 2017 World Press Freedom Index because of its thriving media freedom. This allows bloggers like Robinson to be able to produce content with little influence from outside sources. She can give her honest opinion on reviews of fashion, music, movies, make up and beauty, and cultural events.
There were challenges and many factors to consider as she made her vision become a reality.
Back then, there was no WordPress, which makes it easier to create a successful platform to blog. She had to create it all in HTML code. According to Elucidat, using HTML codes poses issues including how well the performance of the HTML code works with your browser’s compatibility and the fact that the user’s computer will render the files which is not so great when trying to protect your intellectual property.
With technical challenges to take into consideration, Robinson also had to choose what content she wanted to share with the community.
“There a few types of stories we feature on the website: regular columns and reviews,” Robinson says. “My regular columns include, ‘The Week on Thread,’ which is a summary of highlights of events, launches and parties I have attended and ‘On My Desk,’ which is a collation of new products in beauty, makeup, and skin care to cross my desk. For reviews, I will do articles on fashion shows and so on that I have gone to and had photos taken of models by photographers.”
The types of stories prevalent include NZ Fashion Week and what trends are in right now, cultural stories on music and art events happening in the community, and lots of reviews on popular beauty products and brands.
With these stories, she gets help by encouraging people to come write for her regardless of their expertise on fashion. Thread’s website writes, “You can be a student or already employed in any industry, and just want to fulfill a desire to get your work published in a popular fashion/lifestyle e-zine.”
Robinson gets people emailing her most weeks about their interest in writing for Thread. This gives the website a community feel with the respect to having many different voices being able to give their opinion on the local and global events.
Giveaways are also an important aspect of Thread. With the advertising they have online, some brands and events promote by allowing Thread to hold a giveaway for them.
Thread is a proximate and affinity journalistic community growing in traffic within the past few years to a circulation of more than 5,000 views per day. It currently has 4,568 members who receive a weekly E-newsletter to be updated on new stories.
Although all are welcomed and encouraged to subscribe and be a part of the experience, Thread is aimed toward woman within the age of 18–34. Statistics from the Thread website show that 72 percent of their viewers are between their aimed at age demographic and 80 percent are female.
Robinson holds a high standard for improving her online presence along with interacting with her audience. She is active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, email, and Google+ where she shared videos from events such as Fashion Week.
You can find every article published on Thread on their social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. There are 5,181 followers on their Facebook page and 5,527 followers on Twitter, where she replies to tweets and posts quite often. She is also becoming more popular on Instagram with 11.2K followers where she posts inside pictures of her life and the events she covers allowing her audience to feel connected.
As a journalist sharing her passion and interests in fashion, beauty, and culture, Robinson is clear on what she wants to see for the future of Thread.
“I would hope to grow the audience and increase engagement on social media with the followers so it is more of a conversation on the platforms and readers feel interested and want to return,” Robinson says.
