I found out about Coutorture through Julie's blog, Almost Girl, and since I liked what she had to say and she appeared to have the same values as I do, I decided that she could be someone good to partner up with. Not to mention I loved the philosophy and what the community stood for. Now I did seriously consider leaving Coutorture after all the drama that happened at New York fashion week last fall. However, I'm the type of person who will give a person a second chance. I wasn't there and don't know everything that went down except from what I read on other people's blogs. However, that's all in the past and I don't like to dwell on what coulda, woulda, shoulda happened. The past is the past and let's just leave it as that.
Some bloggers I know have brought up the issue that they don't get much support from Coutorture in terms of their posts being picked up by the Editors. What I know from my experience in blogging and being part of other blog networks is that you need to provide posts that are high quality. Entertain people, give a good product review, or give your readers something intellectual or philosophical to think about! Furthermore, since Coutorture doesn't post celebrity-related articles, that pretty much cuts out about half of the fashion blogs out there.
What I like the most about Coutorture is the access to videos and photos that bloggers can use to help with their editorials. That said, I only wish that the videos were longer. Most times we only get about 30 seconds of footage. Granted, I could find other videos on YouTube, but I'd like to just offer one video within a post. Besides, YouTube videos can sometimes take forever to load.
If you have something to say about the Coutorture network or Julie Fredrickson and would like to leave a comment below, please let it be constructive and professional...No negativity need apply!
Thanks for your insights Maria. I can always count on you for clear thinking.
One reason so many of the videos are only 45 seconds is that IMG the managing body of Fashion Week does not allow any media outlet to publish more than a 45 seconds of runway footage. And then to top it off you can only run 5 shows a day. It generally costs tens of thousands of dollars to get permission to publish anymore. Sadly we don't have that kind of money so we stick to the rules! So shows in the tents are restricted. But if you notice off site shows we let go a lot longer!
Now for some blogs not having their content featured there is often a technical aspect at work. Sometimes blogs change feeds and don't tell us (trust me this happens enough to frustrate me) sometimes our sourcing can't handle a certain feed (until our acquisition by Sugar Inc we didn't have a lot of time to maintenance often) and sometimes we just aren't picking up on something or it isn't sourcing in. Technology breaks and we need to know!
The solution? BE AN ACTIVE MEMBER! Email me or Sarah Conley. We are on IM 12 hours a day. Reach out. Don't let stuff simmer. We love getting complaints because that makes us stronger.
And the good news? Now that we are part of Sugar Inc we can help get the celebrity posts that we otherwise do not feature in our editorial onto our sister sites like Fab, Pop, and Bella.
Posted by: Julie | October 22, 2007 9:54 PM | Permalink to Comment