Students wins Cosmopolitan Award for Best New Fashion Blog

BA (Hons) Fashion and Brand Promotion with Journalism, 2007

Knowing that she wanted a career in the fashion industry, Emma decided to combine her creative writing skills with her love of fashion and chose to study Fashion and Brand Promotion with Journalism at UCLan. Emma says: “I wanted to learn more about the marketing and branding side of retail, yet wanted to strengthen my writing skills. I figured after three years I would know which way I wanted to go and would have sufficient skills for this.”

After graduation, Emma began working in visual merchandising to keep on top of trends whilst also writing for magazines and online sites on a freelance basis. She then went on to work in a fashion photography studio in a marketing role whilst still freelancing.

Three years after graduating, Emma decided to set up a blog, ‘What Emma Did’, featuring mostly fashion and brand news. The blog has now transformed into a full lifestyle site, featuring fashion, beauty, travel, fitness, food and health. In mid-2015, Emma launched a dress boutique on the site, selling a collection of dresses so that her readers can continue to enjoy the blog whilst shopping at the same time.

In 2010 Emma’s blog won the Cosmopolitan Award for Best New Fashion Blog which gave her lots of coverage and enabled her to cover London Fashion Week on behalf of CatwalkQueen.tv and Osoyou.com. She also did some guest blogging for the likes of Matalan and Republic. Following this, the blog was signed by media agency Handpicked Media who provide paid work and advertising opportunities.

Due to a lack of solid income from her blog, Emma decided to travel to Australia to work in Sydney for a year and gain some more life experience. Upon Emma’s return, the blogging world had really picked up, forcing Emma to work harder than ever to get her blog back up and running again.

She landed a job at an SEO and PR agency in Manchester, but it wasn’t long before Emma went full time with her blog and now runs whatemmadid.com as a full-time business, working alongside her Instagram and YouTube channel. She has also recently been named as one of the top ten Manchester fashion and lifestyle bloggers.

Emma says that her course at UCLan gave her valuable industry skills, and gave her the confidence to present her work. She says: “My course gave me such varied skills that not many others have; marketing, design, Photoshop, graphic design, journalism, editing and online writing to name a few.”

When asked what advice she’d give prospective students who may wish to pursue something similar, Emma says: “My advice is that the future is digital, whether you love it or hate it. Sharpen up your web knowledge and have a side line in the online world. Try to understand SEO and content writing as much as you can, which is incredibly valuable for any type of business. These skills will make you employable.”

Emma says her greatest achievements since graduating from UCLan “are winning the blogging award from Cosmopolitan and being featured in various press such as Cosmo, Manchester Evening News, More and Grazia, to name a few.”

Read Emma’s blog; Powder Rooms

25 February 2019