Speakers: Jory Des Jardins, Elisa Camahort Page, Lisa Stone

Lisa: BlogHer is in its fourth conference year. The ad network reaches 8-9 MM uniques a month.

We are in the big time now.

Jory: Overview of conference operational/layout details. Vista goodies, Intuit goodies. Both have ask the experts sections. Will be giving away software and gift certificates.

Palm will be giving away two Palm Centros. Voxant. 360 PR.

Two tracks this session: Social Media Creation and Social Media Outreach (Ed note: I will be covering Social Media Outreach.)

Sessions will be taped. Ogilvy is taping the entire track of Social Media Creation. Will also have roving reporters so you can catch other sessions that you missed.

Sponsor Share This will do a quick demo of their product. We'll be building a page on BlogHer and testing it out.

Lisa: Talking about live bloggers (ahem). If you don't want to be videotaped, please let her know.

Elisa: WE LOVE KRISTY SAMMIS. Gina Garrubo, Megan Sullivan (I apol0gize if I misspelled their name) are our sales team in NYC. BlogHer has a NYC office.

Also: Party tonight, 6:30-8:30 open bar, apps. (Ed note: I'm so there.)

Real presentation begins.

Who is here:

• Largest portion in PR/marketing

What you're using:

• No dominant tools
• Combination of company blogs, blogger outreach, etc.

Birth of a new paradigm: User-generated publishing

• Growth in the professionalism amongst the blogs
• Embracing editorial standards and professional partnerships
• If you don't reach out to the bloggers, they may reach out to each other and ignore you
• Ex: Moms for Hillary vs. Momocrats
• Don't group women too much for the purposes of marketing to them -- they are not all alike
• Ask, don't tell

Is there a place for:

• Curated editorial?
• Editorial and ethical guidelines?
• Should companies join conversations already in progress?
• Have you measured ROI?

Where to find the conversations?

• Twitter -- it doesn't seem to matter what people are talking about, people are following them. Twitter's not a fad - go there to find out what's going on. Brands are constantly mentioned there.
• Second Life -- Last year BlogHer did the conferences in Second Life. Many parts of it sold out. As a company, you can donate space or islands in Second Life to have a presence.
• Widgets -- Our audience wants to get their work out there. The widget helps promote the conversation or the initiative, then it goes across the network. Any widget that promotes people's work is a valuable widget. It's getting more competitive to get widgets on people's blogs. You have to have a useful widget, and the blogger has to somehow identify with it to put it up.
• Reviews -- BlogHer has never had a negative review. There's a quid pro quo from people -- I'll take your product and I'll give you a balanced review. Marketers sometimes get upset because a particular phrase isn't use. Any balanced review is a huge success. Ex: Book reviews -- no matter what they said, the sales went up. Understand that getting bloggers to talk about your product has a huge value. Any way to facilitate the partying of bloggers is a win. People take pictures when they are partying. They put them up on Flickr. Be at their event and show them that you're interested in them while they are networking. You can still find photos of Dove swag from '06 on Flickr.

How to enter the conversation?

Ex: The Letter to Your Body campaign

• BlogHer started it because they noticed people were talking about this
• You can either dictate a conversation or just pay attention to what they are already talking about.

Ex: Menu widget - did a menu board on BlogHer for the foodies. Guilt season: Healthy Mind, Body & Wallet. Boca sponsored that, provided sampling and did a contest. It worked out really well - there were organic mentions of Boca (har, har) throughout the campaign just by virtue of Boca being there for the conversation.

Ex: New Adventures of Old Christine -- instead of asking the bloggers to write about the show, they invited the bloggers to a screening and Lisa Stone interviewed Julia Louis Dreyfuss.

Elisa: Blogging Surveys

• Pew and Forrester have done the last blogging surveys
• BlogHer wanted to do an independent, third-party market research party to join them and wanted to survey both the BlogHer population and the general population to show whether or not blogging was really moving to mainstream.
• 53% of US online women read blogs
• 85% Gen Y read blogs

Susan Wright of Compass Partners (did the survey with BlogHer)

• Saw the data that people were presenting last year, wanted to know what drives people to make the huge commitment to blogging that they do
• 5,000 participants in the survey -- makes the sampling very statistically relevant
• Blind survey to the general population
• Classified people into readers (at least weekly) and publishers (weekly blogging, read/post comments frequently). Readers are a more passive participant. This is a very active form of communication for Gen X (24-41)
• 36MM women in the US are actively engaged in the blogosphere weekly (it's gone mainstream)
• BlogHer network is way overdeveloped in the Gen X category, with over 50% of this group publishing as well as reading
• Bloggers: married/in significant relationship, have kids, 67% have completed college (Ed: note -- this is WAY HIGHER than the general population -- I am blown away by this statistic), 46% make more than $75k household, 45% are employed full-time
• Commitment: more than 50% of bloggers are still committed to the first blog they started. Gen X are the most loyal. Bloggers have some dissatisfaction with their blogging tools and are looking for new platforms. Elisa: There is a lot of fear about the blogosphere and how scary it is with trolls and flaming, trying to be anonymous and being outed. Less than 5% reported any of these as a reason to stop blogging. The media is hyping this a lot more than it is a real problem for people. The dissatisfaction with platform tools shows a real opportunity.
• >75% of people engaged in the blogosphere are blogging weekly or more often
• Where is the time coming from? Other forms of media: TV, newspapers, magazines. Not taking away from meeting people in person, etc. Nielson attributed a 10% drop in morning TV programming to women going to the blogosphere.
• Represents a shift: "We want what we want, when we want it." The blogs are there 24/7.
• Favorite topic: ME
• As people get older, they tend to shift to information topics versus following people's personal lives
• Motivation to publish: for fun, to express themselves and to connect with others like them -- it's the kitchen-table conversation, but it doesn't have to be in your neighborhood anymore
• Readers are looking for information, and they want to stay up to date on specific topics. Publishers are more about connecting, and the readers are really using them as a resource. Because the publishers didn't pick as their top reason to give advice, they have a very authentic voice and are viewed as being very reliable.
• Readers view publishers as being "highly" or "very" reliable
• How does that figure into purchase decisions? Results are consistent between publishers and readers. BlogHer network indexes double. People do take blogger reviews seriously.
• Elisa: Fear of a bad review -- most companies are not engaging. Whether you are engaging or not, people are out there talking. When the company actually engages can be a mitigating factor in any negative reviews or chatter. You as a company have the opportunity to be part of that communication -- you have the opportunity to respond.
• Passion, almost addiction (55% of those surveyed would give up alcohol before blogging, but not chocolate -- only 20% would give up that)
• These numbers prove that blogging has gone mainstream.