A prolific face on the Australian beauty blogging scene, Swatchgirl blogger Lara Hill is flying the flag high for our country thanks to her insightful and educational content. After being recently named on beautydirectory’s Expert Bloggers Panel, we sat down with Hill to discover how she got her start in beauty blogging, why there is still a place for both bloggers and traditional media, and the blogging industry in Australia.
How long have you been blogging for?
I've been blogging under the swatchgirl.com name for over four years now. Prior to that I had a loose collection of blogs that were about books and photography, but nothing particularly serious.
What inspired you to become a blogger?
Moving into beauty and grooming blogging was more or less a sensible career choice. I left beauty retail but I still had a deep abiding interest in all things skincare and colour, and the best way to keep involved with beauty without actively being in the front lines was to write about it from a consumer's perspective.
How did you get your start in blogging?
I just decided to do it! I made a decision to start with a self-hosted site. I spent about 10 minutes trying to find a simple one word name that sounded nice with a dot com ending (all the good names were taken, obviously) and put down some rules as to what kind of content I wanted to make, how regularly I wanted to make it, and what kind of scope I could comfortably cover. My blog was charmingly amateur when I started – and it probably still is, let's be real here - but I've stuck to those guidelines and they've served me well.
What were you doing before you were a beauty blogger?
I was in the beauty and grooming retail sector. I've worked for a variety of beauty doors as a make-up artist, manager and educator, and consulted on product development for a small handful of beauty start-ups. Beauty retail can be somewhat unglamorous but it gave me an excellent fly-on-the-wall education in a huge number of products, with exposure to thousands of different complexions and skin conditions, and a good grounding in how to articulate product information in a way that syncs with consumer wants and needs.
Is blogging your full-time career or do you also have another job?
I have a few jobs. I blog on swatchgirl.com, I write freelance about electronic entertainment, and I keep a non-beauty weekend job to get me out of the house every now and then. I'm also slowly working on a couple of ebooks about skincare and men's grooming.
How do you juggle the different roles?
With great flexibility and careful planning, at least in theory! The calendar app on my phone is a masterwork of time management. I'm careful about metering out enough time to pay proper attention to whatever I need to do in any given week, ideally without cutting into family time with my charming and very patient other half.
Can you describe your average day?
Most mornings I spend an hour or two shooting product images and putting together blog posts for the month ahead. Occasionally I'll step out for daytime product launches or I'll walk to Chinatown for lunch and catch up with a couple of other Sydney bloggers whose wise counsel is very important to me, but the rest of the time you can find me in my home office pounding away at my noisy keyboard until dusk or deadline, whichever happens first.
What would you count as your career highlight?
It's all highlights, honestly. I've built some excellent working relationships with people I respect enormously, and I've made some truly strong friendships with bloggers, readers, and established media folks I'd previously only read about in my university journalism classes. Beauty blogging can be a celebration of the frivolous and fun (and I love it for that), but it's also opened so many doors to people and opportunities that I never thought possible. Blogging is a wild, wild ride, and I'm glad I jumped in when I did.
How do you source story ideas for your beauty articles?
From anywhere and everywhere! Some of my most searched articles came from questions I encountered frequently as a beauty educator, and when I'm passing through a department store I like to (politely) eavesdrop on customers and salespeople to see what consumers are interested in right at this moment. I'm also a big advocate of the shower idea – it's amazing how many great ideas pop into existence when I'm standing there waiting for my hair conditioner to work.
Have you always had a passion for beauty?
I'm a late starter in the world of beauty – I didn't start wearing make-up until I was well into the 'something' part of twenty-something, but I was interested in the artistry and educational side of make-up for years before I decided to make it my career.
How do you think technology is changing the way people get access to beauty information?
The internet has been the great equaliser, taking beauty information from being something carefully dispensed by make-up brands and turned it into a hectic democracy where everyone has their own voice and the avenues to speak their own opinion. Customers are as likely to research a product by reading blogs and watching review videos as they are to source information straight from the brand itself, and clever companies have switched onto this change and embraced interacting with their customers, either directly through their own social media or by building relationships with bloggers. I think it's wonderful.
That doesn't diminish the importance of traditional media, of course. The glossies are incredible at lush aspirational spreads that create broad awareness of brands and products, while blogs and video reviewers provide more nitty gritty personal information about how a particular product works/feels/wears. They're equally important.
Can you describe the blogging industry in Australia?
Exciting, dynamic and very egalitarian. It doesn't matter where you're located or what your style is, if you're an Australian interested in blogging then the only barrier to entrance is your own level of enthusiasm. I think Australian blogs are refreshingly honest and unpretentious, with a sense of style and quality of production that stands equal to the biggest international blogs. Australian bloggers are unbelievably good at taking great photographs and writing clever authentic content.
It can be easy to think that Australian blogs are only talking to a limited audience or don't have international reach compared to the beauty blogging titans based in the US, but that's completely untrue. I strongly feel that Australian beauty, grooming and style bloggers are right up there with the best of the best internationally, and that's something to be very proud of. When one Australian blogger does well, we all do well.
What advice would you offer people wanting to get into beauty blogging?
The wonderful thing about beauty blogging is that it's not a finite resource – there's a place for everyone, no matter who you are or what you're interested in. Take some time to think about what you want to create and how much of a commitment you realistically want to invest, then jump on in. The best time to start a blog is now.
If you weren't working in beauty, what would you be doing?
If I stopped blogging tomorrow, I'd be off like a shot to update my training and assessment skills and move back into beauty and sales education. Beauty has been a part of my working life for a long time now, and I don't think I'd find it possible to completely leave such a vibrant, creative, fast-paced industry even if I really wanted to.
