Can Fashion stay still for SEO?

Because of fashion's transient nature, writing a press release around the subject can seem redundant. Nevertheless, when it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO), where keywords are concerned, knowing where content is going is vital. For the copywriter, producing content that is both topical and driven by keywords becomes an artistic endeavour.

The planning and construction of press releases around keywords, in basic theory, goes against the grain of a newsworthy release and suggests a kind of conflict: how can the now in fashion be pinned down to a PR for later?

When writing for fashion, every copywriter must obey those guidelines gospel to every press release: stay newsworthy.

With this in mind, it might be more useful to consider fashion as a character, rather than a subject. Inquisitive by nature, fashion is constantly merging and meeting up with various Sub, Pop, Street and Catwalk cultures as a way of feeding itself.

Fashion - often condemned as vacuous, indulgent and superficial - can hold as much cultural significance as Art, Music and Literature, each borrowing from and influencing the other. What else so clearly soaks up every nuanced movement happening at street level and in social consciousness?

The relationship between fashion and the people who wear it has always been mutually inclusive: fashion is those thinkers that bring it to life. B-Boy Fashion from New York in the 70s and 80s -its brightly-coloured sportswear and affordable, canvas trainers used to breakdance through Brooklyn with ease- illustrates perfectly just how a street-level movement became elevated to iconic fashion status.

Fashion can both divide and unite, and in doing so maintains its newsworthy position: something in fashion is always happening. From season to season, trend to trend, fashion cycles say something worth writing about. It invites the writer to ask questions: for instance, why is there a current recall to 50s fashion, of Mad Men nostalgia? Does this movement reflect reassuringly traditional values in an uncertain modern world as well as an aesthetic love of bold prints and pearls?

In obvious addition to this, any news and data straight from the horse's mouth - The Brand- can and most emphatically does, form its own press release - one of many reasons why open dialogue with a client can be so valuable. To any fashion topic, brand voice adds a distinguished, authoritative stamp on industry news. The writer can helpfully make much use of client data within a news release, integrating it with changes in trends, celebrity-endorsed pieces and any other fashion-focused events in film, music and pop cultures. It gives the client a relevant voice within the wider industry and makes the press release a newsworthy one.

In short, the right research can infuse any pre-planned content with topicality - with cultural relevance, brand authenticity and authorial stamp. The beauty of fashion is that as a character, its ever-shifting persona picks up ideas for the writer. The writer's job is then to make it related and relevant to the client, and seamlessly weave those keywords into something worth reading to make, in effect, the character a charismatic one.

Anna Whitwham

Copywriter

Anna works with the copywriting team at Greenlight. Her focus is largely on fashion clients, New Look, Next and Laura Ashley. Anna studied English at University of California and worked as an Arts and Culture journalist for The Daily Bruin. She is studying for her PhD in Creative Writing at University of London, which informs and complements the variety of writing styles employed in her work.

Brands , Copywriting , Fashion , PR , Retail , SEO

3 Comments

Greenlight

18^th Jul 2012, 03:56PM

Thanks, Matt! I agree. I certainly think fashion is the absorption of cultures, moods - created by communities. We need only look at Punk as an example. Born from a subculture of tribal passion, it rejected the mainstream customer and took fashion under its own wing. Subcultures can raid and mock the mainstream and the mainstream assimilates it back. Of course, these movements are always cynically assimilated by the dominant culture and become mainstream and fashionable. Celebrities want to be tied-in to the movement, and do the work for the writer! By which time the subculture has usually moved on. Thanks so much for opening the debate further.

MattyMattMatDWright

15^th Jul 2012, 11:03AM

I agree Anna fashion is a personality, a character of a moment in time that represents the wider culture and community... even represents the target audience if that's not too coarse. Don't you think though that fashion is best represented with extreme emotions and optimised with the emotion of the minute that a brand's culture and community revel in? In my opinion this reduces the need for potentially expensive celebrity ties and instead joins up all communications into a ball of seasonal emotion adored and taken under-wing by the customer. Awesome debate, thanks Anna you rock. Matt www.honed.co

Victoria Galloway

12^th Jul 2012, 01:20PM

The art of fusing what some might call a 'technical science' with an artistic specialty cannot be boxed or pigeon-holed. Great insight into how true SEO copywriters can essentially tame a bucking beast to produce pieces that harness their subject's newsworthiness, and shape a evolving narrative into material that excites and effects both journalists and page rank.

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