Beauty Editor: Melissa Williams-King

In our series on Women of the Web, we chat to beauty editor Melissa Williams-King, as she tells Thread about her job at MSN Beauty Clique and beautydirectory.co.nz…

In our series on Women of the Web, we chat to online beauty editor Melissa Williams-King, as she tells Thread about her job at MSN Beauty Clique and beautydirectory.co.nz…

Melissa Williams-King
Beauty editor, MSN Beauty Clique – beauty.msn.co.nz
Social events coverage – beautydirectory.co.nz

1. What is your background?
I’ve had 10+ years in magazine publishing (Girlfriend, Cleo, She, FQ, Taste, Kia Ora, New Idea…), although some of that included online projects. My first ever job actually (in 1995!) was for Seventeen Online in the US and I wrote a column called Daily Cafe. There was no such word as “blog” then, but that is what it was. It was all about office happenings, celeb spottings and trends.

2. What is your website, what’s it all about, and when did it launch?
I work for MSN’s Beauty Clique as Beauty Editor, which has been running now for about two years. It’s a fun daily dose of celeb beauty looks, how-to stories, new products and beauty trends – both weird and wonderful. It’s very popular, partly because of the great content but also because the MSN homepage gets tons of traffic that then comes through to Beauty Clique. I also cover beauty launches for beautydirectory.co.nz, which is an industry site that connects beauty companies to media. Basically my job is to upload photos and commentary for beauty’s social pages – you’d be surprised how popular the galleries are! I also cover NZ industry news for them. I don’t have my own blog anymore – three websites was too many so I stick to two for now.

3. What is your goal in doing it?
For Beauty Clique, it’s pure entertainment with a dose of practical advice, such as how to achieve the latest trends. The weird celebrity beauty looks get a lot of hits too! For beautydirectory.co.nz, the goal is to keep media and the beauty industry informed about new product launches, beauty trends and industry news. We are their one-stop-shop for beauty industry information.

4. How are you finding it different already working on the web compared to your long illustrious career in print?
It’s great now that I can work from home, and also to get such instant feedback from what’s posted. I love the immediacy of it. Instead of seeing a beauty trend and planning a magazine feature that comes out in three months, literally I can spot a cool look on a beauty blog and write my own spin on it to be posted that afternoon. It’s just much more relevant.

5. What from your career in print do you think still applies to your new life online as a blogger?
Basics like research, spelling and grammar, fact checking – although it’s easy to be a bit slacker on these seeing as you know you can easily fix a mistake in an instant.

6. What differences and/or benefits do you think we hold as older bloggers compared to the young bloggers in fashion? Any observations as a Gen X blogger to add?
I just think there’s room for everyone – I’ve seen style blogs dedicated to fashion for the over 70s that are really cool. It’s the “long tail” theory in action – on the internet whatever your specific interest is, there will be something dedicated to it. While I like beauty blogs that cover celebrity and “youth” trends, I also get a lot from ones that are very specifically targeted (eg just for curly hair.)

7. Any other points?
I still love reading some types of magazines, but I do think the internet is slowly taking over. There is so much to read and so many cool new sites like Pinterest to play on. Now we need to take care to ensure we step away from the screen at some point in the day! I read that 2012 is the first that online ad sales have overtaken print ad sales in the US, so it won’t be long until that happens here.

Megan Robinson, 11 January 2013