A thought popped into my head one day late last year. Â What products are beauty bloggers talking about? Â I read about a dozen beauty blogs and I know what they cover, but are they representative of the overall beautisphere? Â I decided to apply a bit of science to it and carry out some research. Â If anyone wondered why my blog was a bit quiet in December, Â I can now reveal what I was up to.
I have selected 100 blogs and Youtube channels that I hope constitute a reasonable sample from the large chunk of the internet that specialises in make up, personal care, body decoration and all things slappage in general. Â I have got 50 blogs and 50 Youtube channels. Â I think the ratio should probably be more skewed towards Youtube to reflect the amount of influence, but practically speaking reading blogs is a lot quicker than watching videos.
I have picked a mixture of well known and smaller scale reviewers. Â I don’t want to reveal who exactly is on my panel, but quite a few of the names will not come as a surprise to anyone who is interested in this kind of thing. Â But the majority have some kind of audience but don’t pull in huge numbers of readers or viewers.
Creating this panel took quite a long time. Â There are many blogs that are started and then abandoned. Â Some morph into personal journals. Â I also needed to exclude ones that were obviously intended simply as money making ventures. Â Youtube reviewers, or beauty tubies as I call them (there doesn’t seem to be a generally agreed name yet) in particular were a nightmare to find. Â I began to dread the opening lines “hi everyone, sorry I haven’t posted anything for a while but….”
But I now have my panel that I hope reflects what I am looking for and I am meticulously going through the posts and videos and compiling a list of what products people have reviewed. Â I’ll let you know what I have discovered in a future post. Â But I have already learnt a lot even before I have fully finished the exercise.
For a start, boy are people interested! Â There doesn’t seem to be any category of product that someone somewhere hasn’t taken the time to share their opinion about. Â And there are so many brands out there, some of which I had never heard of before. Â All of them get some attention. Â I was expecting to see colour cosmetics get more coverage. Â Lipsticks and eye shadows make for nice photos and there is quite a lot to be said about them. Â Fragrances are under represented for the opposite reason. Â How exactly do you describe a smell?
Some things came out of it that I wasn’t particularly looking for. Â Anyone who thinks educational standards are declining should look at beauty blogs. Â Almost all of them are written in beautifully worded and expressive English with very few spelling and grammatical errors. Â (Though do watch those apostrophes!) Â The text-speak generation doesn’t seem to me to have lost the ability to communicate or to use language correctly. Â In fact it made me a bit sheepish about my own writing skills.
But the most striking thing is just how many products beauty bloggers and beauty tubies look at. Â British Beauty Blogger recently made the point that niche brands are doing well against a background of falling sales across the board. Â I wonder if the growth of the curious beauty blogger out to find something new to write about might be a factor in this?
Anyway, I’ll get back to work crunching the numbers to answer my question so I can do a post that reveals what UK beauty bloggers and beauty tubies are talking about.
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Time to spill the beans on your findings Jane 😀
I do this myself, hunt for niche brands or things that not everyone & their mother has reviewed already. Surprisingly this draws in lesser numbers than a review on something ‘popular’.. so not everyone is willing to let the big commercial numbers go just yet.
Ha the number of times you discover a blog and then suddenly it’s gone.. empty.. abandoned.. or the stupid ‘sorry I haven’t written in ages, but I’m back now’.. only to see them never come back.
One of the keys to growing a beauty blog with a big following is just to keep doing it. The Beauty Brains started out small but then continued to grow mostly because we just continued to write. Nearly all of the biggest beauty blogs at the time when we started are gone which means ours is now one of the biggest.
It’s hard to continue to find content every day if you are a single blogger. But if you are interested in continuing to grow, that is what you have to do.
Actually Colin, you’re probably one of the old-time beauty bloggers too. Great job on keeping it going all these years.
Interesting – look forward to reading the results. I’ve noticed the same as Philippe.
Who’s on your panel! Spill! Fascinating stuff though. Very glad in particular about your comment on grammar.
This is so interesting Colin, I can’t wait for an update on your findings.
There seems to be a word missing in the bit where you’re talking about the text generation and how they mostly use correct grammar and punctuation… Lol
This is so cool.
It’s true what you said about many beauty bloggers being good writers. Sometimes, even when I’m not interested in a product, I still read the post because I’m entertained with the writing and the story-telling.
Same goes true for youtubers. Sometimes I follow some of them for ‘entertainment’ not for information 🙂
@Perry Thanks for the kind words, and although I don’t follow it that is good advice about keeping the content flowing. I think the Beauty Brains has a bit more going for it than simple volume though. It is a great format and very clearly written as well.
@Charlie I am afraid my lips are sealed, but I am planning to reveal some of the products so you’ll probably be able to guess some of them.
@Thanks for spotting that Sonya. How embarrassing. I have corrected it, so if anyone is looking for what Sonya is talking about you won’t find it.
be sure to check out one of the most read beauty blogs in Canada:
Beauty: BUSTED!
http://www.yummymummyclub.ca/blogs/dan-thompson-beauty-busted/20130129/clinique-dramatically-different-moisturizing-lotion-busted