Blog Spotlight: Intern Chic

If you’re an intern or looking to start your summer internship soon, then check out the newest blog just for you! Intern Chic provides fashion interns with advice and news to increase their knowledge of the fashion industry specifically tailored to those just starting out. Unlike websites that only provide fashion internship listings, Intern Chic uniquely offers much more.

Intern Chic is divide into a few sections. Tip Dujour features weekly fashion internship advice from site creator Ashli Townsend. The List is a compilation of mini-profiles on fashion industry elite, complete with name pronunciations and Chic Facts. The Chic Calendar keeps interns in the know with the hottest fashion events of the year and Chic Listings showcases the latest fashion internship job opportunities.

Then, there’s Chic Speak, which is a dictionary filled with stylish terms necessary to speak the language of fashion. Intern Chat allows interns to connect and discuss past, current and future internships. The Trends section keeps interns up to date on the latest from the runways. Finally, Style Daily serves as the site’s fashion news blog.

About the Founder

Intern Chic was created and founded by “professional intern” and Los Angeles native, Ashli Townsend (@fashionablyL8). Ashli has completed a variety of internships, including Mattel’s Barbie Design Department, Baby Phat’s Design Department, as well as at a host of notable fashion PR firms. She ultimately decided to share the knowledge she gained while interning with the masses via Intern Chic.

Ashli says Intern Chic was created with fashion interns in mind, but benefits anyone striving to stay in the know with the fashion industry.

Blog Pitching Tips

On June 3, 2008, Allison Blass from the MWW Group, was kind enough to speak in our Advanced Public Relations Writing class. Our class was particularly interested in her immense knowledge of social media. Blass had started exploring the world of social media early in her career by starting a blog. She then became an expert in all forms of social media by landing a job with MWW Group as a new media coordinator in New Jersey. She works on health and lifestyle accounts, such as Vitals.com, FreshDirect and 1-800-Flowers.

Our class was interested in pitching to bloggers and spent the entire hour discussing the topic. Blass first explained the importance of blog research and how to “blog hop.” Blog hopping is when a person goes from one blog to another by way of one’s blogroll. Noticing that many people have linked to or featured the same blogs reveals which ones are popular and relevant.

Blass also recommended that we tally our blog research with an Excel spreadsheet. This enables us to compare blog authority according to a set of criteria. She stressed that the ranking on Technorati is a poor indicator of popularity.

Blass gave us a few tips to remember when pitching to a blogger:

1) Find the correct contact information. Do not rely on database records for e-mail addresses; they can often be incorrect.

2) Check out the “About” section on his or her blog and relate back to it in your pitch.

3) Include an interview opportunity, link to the press release, or link to multimedia in the e-mail pitch. It is important to give the blogger as much as possible for them to get hooked on your story.

4) Monitor Technorati and Google Blog Search after you send the pitch.