Weblogs: Fashion's Affordable Focus Groups
Weblogs, or blogs, as Internet-speak has “buzzed” them, have actually been around for years, tracing back to the Web’s early days of public electronic bulletin boards (“BBs”).
A blog, in simplest terms, is a forum for the discussion and exchange of ideas. The Web site publisher invites visitors to engage in any of many different kinds of “dialogs.” There are picture blogs, sound blogs, video blogs and combinations thereof. Blogs help brand products, increase dialog within industries and offer publishers a compelling way to learn about their customers.
The king of the fashion industry bloggers is New York’s Ernest Schmatolla and his long-established “Daily Fashion Report,” a spinoff of his “LookOnline” Web site. At www.lookonline.com/blogger, shops, events, runways and gossip abound in a lively, photo-augmented, text-rich and easy-to-read format that is updated every few days and is well-fed by a staff of savvy reporters. It’s a joy to experience the grass-roots fashion voyeurism, insider commentary and entertainment value offered here.
While traffic reports on blogs have not yet been monitored, Cambridge, Mass.–based Forrester Research, the Internet’s leading marketing research source, said, “Although Weblogs are currently used by only a small number of online consumers, they’ve garnered a great deal of corporate attention because their readers and writers are highly influential.”
Forrester goes on to say that blogging will grow in importance, and at a minimum, companies should monitor blogs to learn what is being said about their products and services. “Companies that plan to create their own public blogs should already feel comfortable having a close, two-way relationship with users,” the research company said.
Some nifty software has come along lately that makes this Web-savvy, do-it-yourself style of focus group easy and cheap. If you want to build your own blog, the chronological posting of messages ultimately needs to be effectively managed, automated and presented. Blogger (www.blogger.com), now an independent unit of Google, offers a completely free blogging system that is a snap to get going. So does Chicago-based ENewsBlog (www.enewsblog.com). Bedford, Texas–based eBlogger.com offers similar software with a free trial period that eventually graduates to a modest monthly fee.
