Surveys: Survs.com Results

Today Marita got back to me with the results of the survey I mentioned in this post here.

Here is a little overall preview of it, however I will avoid including the link with full results she had provided for the privacy reasons, but it's available to me and there's plenty of information to analyze. Definitely worth taking a look at, so thank you, Marita!

Blogging Pros and Cons

Image source:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2010/11/how_has_blogging_changed.html

Blogging Benefits: LFW

During the past week I got lucky enough to attend a few shows and presentations at London Fashion Week. I am still trying to understand how everything works, but this season I definitely learned a lesson relying on my own experience and having spoken to blogger friends- when it comes to the shows, don't wait until you get noticed and invited and apply yourself at least a month in advance. Having applied as press just a few days in advance, I still got about 10 invites, but all of the biggest shows would be fully booked. The full coverage of the events I managed to attend can be found on my personal blog here and here.

Presentation: Assessment Criterias

   Content 

   1.  Your research area  

         ‐    why your issue is current and important. 
         ‐    Your hypothesis – see above 
         ‐    show evidence of your knowledge of this topic by quoting from 
              newspaper articles, TV programmes, library books, websites 
              (secondary research). 
         ‐    How did  you refine your research area? 
         ‐   Justification for the kinds of questions you asked your network. 
              Were they neutral, were they qualitative or quantitative?


    2.  Networks  

         ‐ What is a network? 
         ‐ What does your network look like? Centralised, decentralised, 
         distributed? Use Martin Raymond chapter on networks to help.  
         ‐ How and why should we use networks for research?  
         ‐ How did you use your network for this particular research? 
         ‐ What are/were your network’s limits? 

          ‐ How diverse is your network? 
          ‐ Weak and strong ties. 
          ‐ Connectors.  
              
     3.  Your  results  

          ‐   what does your research tell us that’s new? 
          ‐   Was it predictable or were there any surprises?  
          ‐    Show your audience in graphs and tables what your network 
              thinks.  
          ‐    Did you get any interesting comments – what were they?  
          ‐    Is it the same as the current thinking in the media or books or 
               have you identified a new trend?  
          ‐   What is the ‘zeitgeist’? 
           
      
     4.   Reflection  

          ‐   What worked and what didn’t work. 
          ‐   Was your network adequate to answer your questions? 
          ‐   Were your questions successful in gaining the information you 
               needed? 
          ‐   Were your results skewed by your network? 
          ‐   What would you do differently next time?

Interview: Blog Partnerships From Brands Perspective - Answers

Wow! I have to say that answers on these questions exceeded all my expectations as I haven't expected brands to be so willing to reveal their thoughts to me, but in fact- they did and they told me more than I could wish for!

I have received the answers from 5 different PR agents of 5 different brands. Since the answers were extremely open and wordy, I have included all of them inside this post.

Interview: Blog Partnerships From Brands Perspective

Having looked at my network model again, I realized that I haven't approached all of the weak-ties in it- brands that I collaborate with, to be exact. I do know them through my blog and email business conversations, but we are not familiar enough with each other and they are from all over the world and of all ages. I felt that I needed to correct that mistake, so I wrote to few of brand represents with following questions:

There are a lot of brand partnerships in today's market, when companies send out free things to bloggers. What do you think of this practice? (e.g. Is it mutually beneficial? Does one side benefit more than another? Please explain)

How much more/less effective are blog collaborations rather than magazines/printed editions?

Since I've managed to cover readers/bloggers attitudes and opinions on the matter, I felt it was essential to get brands side as well. In fact, writing this post made me realise that the link between these three parties could be easily represented by a circle model "brands-bloggers-readers-brands" if that makes any sense (the brands send free clothes to the bloggers- the bloggers demonstrate the clothes to their readers- the readers purchase clothes from that brand- the brand sends more clothes to the bloggers). Don't know if anyone has come up with this thought before, but I find it quite interesting!