My key takeaways
We’ve all heard the impressive statistics about women and the online world.
- Women are the majority of internet usage now – 53%
- The fastest growing group on Facebook is women.
- Women who are on the internet trust the internet information more than other sources
I attended BlogHer ‘09 in Chicago and the focus of this conference was specifically on women and blogs. More than 1,400 bloggers, marketers, media reps, and PR practitioners were in attendance. This is the fifth year for the BlogHer Conference and the largest to date. BlogHer was created in 2005 with a mission “To create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community, and economic empowerment” according to their website.
During the course of three days, I learned so much and it helped put many of the stats we all hear into context. I attended Blogher ‘09 not as a blogger but as a marketer trying to better understand the incredibly powerful world of women bloggers. The conference is set up in two parts; Blogher Business and BlogHer ‘09. BlogHer Business is directed to marketers, blog writers, and other social media practitioners who are interested in reaching women online. BlogHer Business highlights best practices and case studies for connecting with women online, specifically in the social media space. Following BlogHer Business is BlogHer, which offers blog writers many tools such as technical labs (called Geek Labs–what a great name!) education workshops, intense breakout sessions focused on hot blogging topics and lots of opportunities for networking, connecting and just plain socializing.
I attended both and was overwhelemed by the experience. From a business perspective, I learned a ton and have many great case studies and best practices to share (the top takeaways follow). As a woman and mother, I was encouraged by the sense of community, support and camaraderie these women share. You may have seen some less than flattering articles or posts about bad behavior (especially as it relates to “swag”) by the women in attendance. But overall, the women I met were smart, ambitious, considerate and they were in attendance to learn, share and become better at their craft.
At the Business conference, five case studies were shared and each used social media to build successful marketing programs. These case studies were presented by the actual marketers who developed and ran the campaigns–having a first person perspective made the cases more real especially when the marketers spoke of the challenges they faced–internally and externally.
Key takeaways:
- The scale of social media continues to grow. We are experiencing mainstream adoption of social media and blogs. Forty-two million U.S. women participate each week in some form of social media activity; status updating (Twitter), message boards/forums, blog activity and social networks (Facebook, MySpace).
- Women bloggers are the most engaged users of social media.
- Before starting any social media program, listen to what is happening in the social media space. And once you start your program, continue listening and make adjustments based on what you hear. Take small steps as you begin.
- Get all key stakeholders on board before launching, especially those in legal. And provide ongoing communications to all, not just marketing.
- Just because you do business in a highly regulated industry (like insurance or pharma) doesn’t mean social media programs are off the table. Allstate Insurance presented a very successful program that has lead the way for a number of additional social media efforts within the company.
- Measure and quantify success. This could mean number of online engagements, conversion to leads, new customer acquisition, viral impact, etc.
- A lot of attention is placed on offering incentives for bloggers (and consumers) to participate in marketing or product review programs. If the topic/product is relevant to the blogger, the incentive to participate is not that important. Be authentic and transparent in your communications, let conversations develop naturally. Which leads to my last take away;
- The proliferation of product reviews and “swag” has attracted the attention of the Federal Trade Commission. Watch this fall for proposed guidelines that specifically mention “blogs, discussion boards and street teams,” forms of media that were not considered the last time the guidelines were updated (in 1980). These guidelines will call for disclosure of paid relationships: “material connections between the endorser and the advertiser should be disclosed.”
I have already marked my calendar for BlogHer Business and BlogHer ‘10 which will be August 5,6 and 7, 2010 in New York City. Maybe you should check it out too?
