blog #4

Lauren Lemelin

Champagne and Chanel: Emily Herren

Emily Herren is a young female fashion and lifestyle blogger and influencer. Herren is also known as “Champagne and Chanel”, the name she has adopted for her blog and social media usernames. Herren graduated from Texas A&M in 2012 and currently lives in Houston, Texas. Her young, bubbly, and positive spirit has allowed her to flourish in the world of influencers. To learn more about Emily click here to read her blog! 

Where can I connect with Emily?

Herren's social media usernames and frequency of posts:

What I think Herren's life is like.

• Facebook: @Champagne and Chanel (1 post a week)
• Instagram: @champangeandchanel (1 post a day)
• Pinterest: @Emily Herren (3-4 posts a week)
• Snapchat: @champagneandchanel (1 post every two weeks)
• LikeToKnowIt: @champagneandchanel (1 post a day)
• Twitter: @emilyaherren (1 or 2 posts a month)
• Youtube: @Emily Herren (1 or 2 videos a year)

Here Herren is 3 out of the 4 pictures on my "For you" page. 

        As you can see Herren is visible on almost every popular social media platform. Although Herren is more visible on some platforms compared to others. She is most visible to me on Instagram. Herren has approximately 941,000 followers so her content is viewed by a large number of people. I like and engage in a lot of her content and check her profile often she appears on my timeline often. She is also visible on my Instagram feed through other users, many companies and brands that I love use her to endorse and market their products. For example, she has a partnership with Kendra Scott, my favorite jewelry brand, so Herren is featured in their posts which I see on my timeline and in my weekly emails from Kendra Scott. Herren is also visible and extremely active on Pinterest. Pinterest is a social networking site that allows users to discover new interests by posting images to their board or to others board. Herren is a major influencer on Pinterest as her beauty and fashion photos are constantly on my “For you” page. She also has many other people who engage in her "pins" are her posts have been shared up to 248,000 times. Emily is also very active and present on LikeToKnowIt an app that allows users to follow, discover, and connect with their favorite influencers. Herren uses this platform to allow her followers and supporters to “shop her look.” Herren increases her visibility and popularity on LikeToKnowIt through her Instagram posts. She does this by posting a link to her LikeToKnowIt profile in her Instagram captions. These links then bring users directly to a photo of the outfit with the URL to each article of clothing in the photograph. Click here to follow the link in that picture. These direct links are an example of Herren using "micro-celebrity" to endorse her popularity throughout various platforms. Micro-celebrity is a "communicative technique that involves people amping up their popularity over the web using techniques like blogs, videos, and social networking sites" (Marwick & Boyd, p. 121). This is an example of "micro-celebrity" because her Instagram captions increase her visibility on LikeToKnowIt as it allows her main fan base to access her profile directly and shop her looks through one click. They are also an example of

Example of one of her Instagram captions.

Herren is not as present on Youtube as her most recent video was uploaded a year ago and her most watched video received 144,000 views. This may seem like a lot of views, but compared to some influencers it is not, as some receive millions of views. Click here to watch her most viewed Youtube video.

What is the tone of her content?

Herren appearing bubbly, lively, and sophisticated.

Herren’s posts are light, helpful, inspiring, positive, and sophisticated. The tone of her posts support her username “Champagne and Chanel” as her content is bubbly, lively, and high class like champagne and Chanel. Herren’s content is very helpful as her content informs me of the latest fashion and beauty trends and the direct links to her outfits makes the posts valuable to me. Her content is inspiring as she tries new products and outfits that influence my fashion, beauty, and lifestyle decisions. I also find her content to be positive as she always appear confident and happy. Below you can see twelve of her Instagram posts all which are sophisticated, positive, and inspiring. 

Champagne and Chanel with others

Herren engages with other fashion influencers regularly. She spends a lot of time with other fashion influencers as she posts pictures or is tagged in pictures with them often. She even vacations with other influencers; there are many pictures on her Instagram of them on vacation, like the picture below. 

Herren interacting with other influencers.

Posting pictures with other influencers is her most popular way of interacting with other users. Although she does interact with other users and influencers on Instagram through giveaways with other fashion, beauty, and lifestyle influencers. For example, in the photo below the four influencers plus @champagneandchanel gave away expensive beauty and fashion products to randomly chosen users. These giveaways and partnerships help increase Herren's visibility and increase her interactions with users. Other than the giveaways, Herren rarely interacts with her followers that aren't influencers; users often comment compliments or questions on her posts, but she rarely replies. 

The giveaway she most recently did. 

How she can improve

Build relationships 
I believe that as an influencer, celebrity, affluencer, or company you need to establish relationships with your followers, viewers, and customers. Unfortunately I have never seen Herren try to do that. Many influencers will do live Instagram stories or Q&A’s on Facebook, Youtube, or Instagram to connect with their followers on a more personal level, but Herren never does. I think this is one thing she could definitely implement to improve her presence on social media. I also think she could follow some of her followers back as she has 941,000 followers, but only follows 1,533. This shows that she doesn’t care about connecting with or building a relationship with her followers and by following some of the followers it would make them feel more valued and appreciated.

Communicate with your followers.. If it weren’t for them, you would be a nobody! 
  I think Herren needs to do a better job at being responsive to her "fan base." I find it frustrating that she never answers her followers questions when they comment on her content or submit questions on her blog. For example, I commented on her picture and asked her where she got her purse as it wasnt tagged on her LikeToKnowIt page and she never replied. This was really upsetting and it truthfully felt like a slap in the face. 

Make a TikTok
TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms right now and I think she could benefit by having one. She could use it to create quick makeup or "OOTD" (outfit of the day) videos. By having a TikTok she would also extend her social media presence to another platform which would help her reach more people. 

Be more authentic
       I think Herren needs to increase her authenticity especially on Instagram. All of her content seems posed, unrealistic, and too perfect. Marwick and boyd state that in order for something to be deemed "authentic" something else must be "inauthentic" (Marwick & Boyd, p. 125). I am unable to label her content as authentic as I most of her content and photos seem inauthentic and unnatural. 

Marwick, A. E. & Boyd, D. (2010). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society 13(1), 114-                          133. doi:10.1177/1461444810365313