Journalist Spotlight: Bright & Shiny, Julie Gilbert

Julie Gilbert is editor-in-chief at Bright Shiny News, an online women’s magazine on style, celebrity and entertainment news. She spoke to us about the magazine’s positive take on celebrity gossip that sets it apart from its competitors (and makes for guilt-free writing), how Cameron Diaz inspired a new social media marketing plan for the site and on why Julie hopes Princess Diana didn’t mistake her for a stalker. 

Why should people read Bright Shiny News? What makes it different from other entertainment and celebrity magazines?

If you need a fifteen minute fix of entertainment, style and beauty and a pinch of lifestyle, then Bright Shiny News will be right up your street. We try as much as possible to see the brighter side of life and make it as light and upbeat as possible.

As to what makes it different, it can only be our positive outlook. We found a gap in the market and that was for giving the rich and famous a break and just reporting nice news and interviews rather than trying to dish the dirt.  We wanted to be a good read for everyone and steer as far away as possible from the negative salacious gossip route that seems to saturate the market these days.

It does make us slightly different to most of our competitors but it’s difficult to be completely original unless you really want to go niche or off the wall, but then you only cater to a select few.  It’s the best uniqueness we feel we can offer.

Are you missing out on a large chunk of readers that read entertainment news for idle gossip?

Not at all.  To be honest I was a bit dubious when I first found out about the website and thought it would be a challenge but the research that was conducted behind the scenes before I accepted the job showed me there was a lot of interest in a less negative attitude to celebrities, and it certainly appealed to my nicer side.

There are so many magazines and websites out there who cater for people who like to see celebrities pushed off their pedal stalls. Even if we wanted to go down this route, the questions we would have asked ourselves would be is there room in the market for another general site? The Daily Mail and The Sun really do have the market sewn up.

For me this is guilt free writing, I love it! I also don’t think you have to follow the crowd; you need to stand out from it.

Since the launch in 2011, what has been the most popular content on your site? What drives traffic to it?

Entertainment news is always a draw but we do find our celebrity interviews are really popular. We’ve recently launched an editor’s column which I write every week and the numbers are steadily creeping up. It seems opinion pieces are very popular right now.

We find we get quite a bit of traffic from social media. Hash tags can definitely generate more unique visitors and you can see huge spikes in traffic. We ran a Cameron Diaz hot at 41 gallery and saw 250k uniques to the site in just a few hours. We are currently working on a marketing plan to really utilise this medium to its full potential.

As well as social media, marketing campaigns, advertising and word of mouth are great traffic drivers.  We are now finding we get a lot of organic traffic as we build our loyal readership.

However, we’re always on the lookout for new ways to generate traffic; it really is the name of the game.

How important is social media in sourcing, verifying and sharing stories? What is the downside?

It’s a great way to keep tabs on breaking stories and make sure we keep ourselves in the loop and to ensure we don’t miss anything we should be covering. We pretty much immerse ourselves in social media whenever we get a spare moment.

We utilise social media but we don’t rely on it. One day it can generate an amazing amount of traffic like with the Cameron Diaz gallery but other times you will only get a few thousand views from each story you put out there.

Saying that, it’s a great way of your loyal reader keeping tabs on you and can be a great way to target a new audience.

Describe a typical day at Bright Shiny News?

No day is typical!  We usually start the day with a team meeting and see who will be covering what. Then we typically get stuck into researching the latest news stories. If there are any PR events one or two of us will attend.  Typically I tend to attend with one of the features writers.

We also like to brainstorm throughout the day. If someone has an idea of something that might work, they put it out to the team and get a general feeling of whether it’s a good idea or not.  All ideas are welcome.

How do you work with communications teams? Do you have a good relationship with PRs? What do you wish they did differently?

PRs tend to be the back bone of the business when creating certain types of content. It is essential to form a good relationship with them and make sure they know just as much about you as you know about their products. It saves time and energy for everyone.

For example, we don’t cater to kids so we won’t be writing features appealing that that demographic no matter how many of our readers have children themselves. It just doesn’t work for us.

We have great PR contacts but we’d never not listen to new companies to make sure we’re not missing a trick.  Sometimes the phone can ring of the hook with PRs trying to get you to cover a story. A perfectly put together email will definitely get noticed more.  A descriptive subject title, a through press release and images really help make our job easier.  You are more than likely to get a response from us that way rather than trying to call us. Mailing products over to us also gets our attention.  We religiously open our post every day no matter how big the pile of mail is.