Lauren Conrad: "My Business Plan For Lauren Conrad Online!" (Forbes Lifestyle Part 2)

Lauren's second post for Forbes Lifestyle is up! Read it below:

"Hello again Forbes Lifestyle readers,



I just posted a blog entry on LaurenConrad.com about my personal tips for decorating your home titled, Interior Design: 5 Things You Should Know. Keeping a daily blog is a fun way to connect with fans. It’s also a key component in understanding my audience and providing an online platform for my various projects.



Both of my websites serve as the backbone for other business endeavors. While LaurenConrad.com is a place to continue to broaden my personal brand online, TheBeautyDepartment.com is a joint venture that acts as a springboard for developing a line of beauty products.

LaurenConrad.com is now an online community but it wasn’t always an interactive site. Like most celebrities, my page used to be an online press portfolio. But as my list of projects grew I realized I needed a website that would act as a hub for all my projects instead of just a vanity page. I teamed up with EQAL, a great new social media company that currently helps run my website. Their technology platform has allowed me to transform LaurenConrad.com into a one-stop online lifestyle destination by making it an interactive experience instead of a static profile page.

I worked closely with EQAL to design the website. By utilizing various graphic details (such as Polaroid film insets, bow cursors etc.), classic fonts, soft color schemes, textures and clean layouts we created an online identity with a fresh yet effortlessly-chic aesthetic. The new LaurenConrad.com has also consolidated my audiences, making it a desirable space for advertisers and a vehicle that has helped us reach the ultimate goal of monetizing the site.

My favorite part about the revamped LaurenConrad.com is the blog element. The daily blog chronicles my interests—everything from fashion, beauty and interior design to food, travel and even party planning—while housing my current musings. Some of the content is based off requests or ideas sourced from the community. I like to include postings that highlight  members. For example, I recently asked readers to share photos of their Fourth of July inspired manicures. By the next day, the site was flooded with photos of red, white, and blue painted nails. To show my appreciation for their efforts, I did a Member Spotlight: Patriotic Polish post where I showcased three of my favorite photo submissions.

I think it’s important to add a participatory element when blogging. It encourages readers to engage and gives you the ability to reactively create content based on community interest.

In addition to LaurenConrad.com, I collaborated with my hair stylist, Kristin Ess, and makeup artist, Amy Nadine, to create a second site called TheBeautyDepartment.com. Through daily posts, we provide expert tips on all things beauty. Many of the posts are syndicated to LaurenConrad.com as well for cross-site promotion.

One of the main motivations behind creating TheBeautyDepartment.com was to use it as an opportunity to get familiar with our market. Our target client seeks knowledge and know-how; she wants to learn how experts accomplish various beauty looks so she can try them at home. She is a woman of all ages and is hungry for “edu-tainment,” which we provide through fun yet instructional visual posts. With the information gained from online polls, reader response and site analytics we continually educate ourselves on our target demographic. Ideally, we would love to create a beauty line—whether on our own or through a partnership—and our long-term goal is to integrate our own products into tutorials with options to purchase through an embedded link.



Branding yourself digitally is not an easy task. Needless to say, extending my online scope has been an exciting process. My sites have already experienced tremendous growth (we already have more than 16,000 registered users participating in the LaurenConrad.com community) and I’m looking forward to the endless opportunities they offer.

What are your thoughts on new media’s impact on expanding celebrity brands? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.



And don’t forget to check back in on July 28^th to read my blog post about what it takes to develop and launch a fashion line!"

Forbes Lifestyle: Meet Lauren Conrad! (Part 1)

For the next four months, Lauren will take Forbes Lifestyle online readers on an exploration of the fashion business, inner workings of a celebrity web site, the publishing industry and she will share her knowledge by giving you tips about beauty and style! I'm very excited about this project, can't wait to see what Lauren's life is really like as an entrepeneur! Read her first post below:



MEET LAUREN CONRAD

"When a portion of your life is highlighted in the media, people have difficulty seeing the rest. In my case, becoming a designer wasn’t always the central focus of Laguna Beach and The Hills but it’s been my lifelong dream.

Many of you are probably wondering why you should take a person like me seriously as an entrepreneur. For me, it’s pretty clear: I run two clothing lines, two web sites and a book franchise on top of directly managing my brand and endorsement deals. I’ve made a career out of allowing cameras to capture my personal life but that doesn’t make me “just another reality star” looking to start a clothing line. People often forget that I am a person who was documented for more than six years while pursuing a dream to make it in the fashion industry. The friends, the drama, the adventures, unfolded around that.

In Pictures: Meet Lauren Conrad, Inc.

Sharing my life publicly has given me the opportunity to pursue my ambitions while providing brand recognition, consumer trust and personal resonance. But a successful enterprise can’t just run on fame. Like any businesswoman, I think about long-term business plans, social media, brand strategy and how best to connect with my fans. Though I’m in the early stages of being a fashion entrepreneur, I’ve quickly learned a thing or two about staying true to my brand, creating my own path and turning setbacks into windows of opportunity.



Protect Your Brand

Understanding and safeguarding your brand is invaluable. My situation is unusual because I am my brand and every decision I make affects it. Case in point: When I first started working with Kohl’s I knew was teaming up with a well-oiled machine—Kohl’s knows their customer and they know what she likes. Because of this, I was designing a clothing line within certain parameters, stifling the creative process. It became frustrating.



For example, I like to wear a lot of chiffon, which is a sheer, lightweight fabric. I wanted to design a couple of chiffon blouses, but Kohl’s research said that customers wouldn’t buy a see-through top. We had the option to line the top with a non-transparent fabric, but that would have increased costs and gone over the target price point. Instead of accepting that the customer might not understand how to wear the piece, we decided we would educate her. We made tags with styling tips that read, “I love lightweight tops. I layer mine over a camisole and pair it with jeans.” Our solution ensured the clothing would perform well in stores while staying congruent with my brand. I asked Kohl’s to trust my knowledge about my fans and they were ultimately open to hearing my point of view. Their emphasis on collaboration has made for a great, healthy partnership.



When it comes to brand integrity, I’ve also learned that you don’t have to take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself. Be selective. If I decided tomorrow that I wanted to become a singer simply because I could, it wouldn’t make any sense and people would have trouble supporting it. Be honest with yourself and stay true to your interests—your fans will follow and will respect you for sticking to your guns.



Stay Connected

Staying in touch with my fans, the people whom my businesses cater to, is integral to what I do. I like to use social media as a way of reaching out and maintaining relationships. Whether it’s a Twitpic of a dinner I’ve made (yes, I do cook!) or a blog about affordable ways to decorate your apartment, I share my ever-growing list of interests online.



After recognizing the power of social media, I launched two websites just a few months ago: LaurenConrad.com and TheBeautyDepartment.com. LaurenConrad.com is a fully functioning social networking community where people can create their own profile pages, participate in the forums, make friends with like-minded tastemakers and stay up-to-date on my musings with my daily blog. It’s a place where I can directly connect with my fans and reach out to a formerly scattered online audience (spread across Facebook, Twitter, etc.) in just one place. Connectivity is key—everything I post on my website is syndicated to Facebook and Twitter and vice versa.

Create Your Own Opportunity

I have been fortunate enough to spend time speaking to thousands of my fans through book tours and personal appearances. Here, I get the chance to meet the young ladies who purchase pieces from my clothing line with their hard-earned paychecks and ask for my books for Christmas. It is during these encounters that they ask: “Where did you get that nail polish?” or “What size curling iron do you use?” After being barraged by so many of these fashion and beauty questions, it made sense to develop TheBeautyDepartment.com and build out LaurenConrad.com to serve as a communication platform.



Through these sites, I am able to present potential business partners with web analytics that show what my fans are interested in and how we could potentially channel that momentum into successful products and partnerships. Web data is valuable and one of the most important lessons I’ve learned recently is that information is a passport to success.



Transform Setbacks

When I was told that MTV would not be moving forward with a show surrounding the development of my clothing line, Paper Crown, I was disappointed. MTV said the show wasn’t the right fit for their audience and in retrospect, I realize all of the pieces didn’t fit together as nicely as I had hoped. Due to the nature of the fashion industry, most people were reluctant to allow cameras into their work place and many thought the show cheapened the brand because of the stigma attached to reality shows. I was also concerned that what might be entertaining on television may not be perceived as good business sense.

When it was decided we would not be moving forward with the project, we were faced with the challenge of providing our own publicity for Paper Crown in a short amount of time. We got the word out through various social media channels, in addition to a cover we booked with Lucky Magazine, which featured Paper Crown pieces for the cover shot. Sales for our first season were beyond our expectations and we landed an account with Nordstrom. Even though the TV show failed to materialize, we were able to transform the setback into a marketing success and an opportunity to establish credibility.

Being a young businesswoman is a challenge, especially when you’re an alumna of the vacuous world of reality fantasy. I am proud of the fact that I have parlayed what could have been a fleeting reality career into viable business ventures. Over the next few months, I look forward to sharing my experiences and discoveries with you from the perspective of a young, modern entrepreneur."

You can sign up here to ask Lauren a question or leave her a comment!