Brands pay style blogger Jordan Reid to blog and tweet about using their products.
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In certain parts of the blogosphere, the murky line between opinion and promotion has led to backlash. Brands like McDonald's and KFC have sparked consumer wrath on social media for using gifts and all-expenses-paid parties to curry favor with bloggers and gain favorable reviews of their products. Last month the FTC stepped up efforts to delineate between advertising and opinion on social media by requiring Twitter users to disclose their sponsored tweets. But bloggers who consider themselves curators and stylists, not journalists with an ethical obligation to keep advertising at arm's length, tend to skirt the rules. "Some people call out very specifically if they're writing a sponsored post," says Kelley Lilien, a design blogger who says her site Mrs. Lilien draws 75,000 monthly unique visitors. She earned $120,000 last year for promotional gigs, she says, and works with brands like Juicy Couture and Tory Burch but does not always follow the convention of labeling sponsored posts. "I don't love to do that because I don't like the way it looks or sounds, especially because my stuff has an irreverent style and tone," says Lilien. She does occasionally mention in her write-ups that she "partnered" with a brand.
As more microstars climb their way out of obscurity, it's easy for some to believe it takes only a laptop, a camera and wi-fi to do the same. But the door to microcelebrity isn't open to just anyone in her pajamas cranking out style tips or secrets to extramoist banana bread. Reid started out as an actress with short-lived television gigs on Law & Order, ER and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. She moved to New York City from Los Angeles after her relationship with Rob McElhenney, one of Always Sunny's co-creators and stars, fell apart. Having established a marginal level of television fame, she was snapped up by Julia Allison, a Star magazine contributor and minor Internet celebrity, who was starting a blogging site to incubate microcelebrities.
Reid soon struck out on her own and took to writing missives about her "semi-disastrous but pretty blissful" life as a fashionista, crafter, mother and wife. (She married a former musician with the indie band Harlem Shakes in 2008.) A producer from Better TV, a syndicated lifestyle television show produced by Meredith Corp., reached out after seeing a video of Reid remodeling a lamp in her one-bedroom apartment. A few segments for Better TV turned into an offer to run her own YouTube show, Jordan in the House. The show, produced by Meredith's Digs network, spun Reid as a "domestic diva" who had ditched "her Manhattan walk-up for her first 'real' home in the suburbs."