LIVEBLOG: Breakfast Featuring Brand Expert Sandra Miley

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THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011, 9:00 A.M. PDT

PATHFINDERS DAY BREAKFAST FEATURING BRAND EXPERT SANDRA MILEY

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Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) or captioning are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

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>>ANNOUNCER: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the first annual Pathfinder. Get your yummies. Have a seat. Our program will start in about two minutes. Thank you.

(Standing by.)

>>ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. Welcome to the stage, BlogHer cofounder and COO, Elisa Camahort Page.

>> ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the first BlogHer Pathfinder Day. Thank you so much for being a part of it. We are really excited and hoping to learn so much from you about what we can do for future Pathfinder Days and expand the Pathfinder program. I wanted to start by telling you a few things about why we planned this day and our thinking behind it. So you can kind of understand what we had in mind. Like I said, anything you want to share about how to take that further, we are very interested to hear.

So this is our seventh annual BlogHer conference.

(Cheers.)

>>ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: Anybody here been to all seven? Oh, congratulations!

(Applause.)

>>ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: That's Susan Getgood and Kari Dahlen. And anybody else? No? Six! And Skye, Skye Kilaen. And the first person I met at the hotel was Tricia Soto, who has been to all seven as well. I thought that was a good omen for the whole trip that that was the first person I saw and gave a hug to.

Back in 2005, we had 300 people in Santa Clara at the Tech Mart. When we start the regular conference tomorrow we will have 3600 people and we now have really stretched out to four days, starting with today with Pathfinder Day, and going through Sunday when Ford is doing a family picnic.

And the event has changed a lot over the years from when the first year Google and Yahoo kicked in a little money along with other Silicon Valley tech companies to help us do the conference to today when you are able to go to the Expo Hall tonight at 6 o'clock and you'll see almost 100 sponsors in everything but your small regular booths to 2500 square foot home that PG & E built. The presence and what they allow us to do has changed over the years.

Along with that and the growth comes a challenge for two different groups of people. The first is newer bloggers. I want to start a blog, or I just started a blog and I really like it and there's so much potential here, but I am oh he not sure how to harness it, and how on to focus my efforts -- and there's so much you can do. So much you can do. So many networks and tools and topics I'm interested in. There's so much. How do I focus my efforts? How do I figure out what is really important to me? Where do I go from here and how do I find my path there? It's not that different for bloggers who have been at it for a while. They have been at it for a while, built up a community and they find they have been doing pretty much the same thing for a while. They are like hmm, I feel like I should be doing more or I would like to take it to the next level on are need to change something up because after you have been doing it a few years, you hit a little bit of a wall or you hit a plateau and you're like: Where do I go from here? What do I want to do with this? How am I going to get there? Where is my path to get there? Both new bloggers and veteran bloggers can hit that same point: Where do I go from here? What do I want to do? How do I get there?

They want to do it in a more focused, long-focused, way that allows them to really spend the time. You know, the big BlogHer conference, we have nine tracks of programming. We have a session -- every topic under the sun is being covered in some way. There's so much variety and there's so much diversity. It's harder to spend, immerse yourself and really focus. And there's so much going on in so many ways. Again, the opportunity to focus. It's hard.

It's like, let's create this pre conference day, cap the attendance and break it into paths. And cap the attendance on those paths so you are really in a smaller environment, that you are in a focused environment, that you are taking this day to really just think about yourself and ground yourself and center yourself and what you want to get out of the in next two days.

We really hope after going through this day you will have a much easier time figuring out what to let yourself be distracted by over the next two days. You'll have spent this day really focusing on your path. So that's the thinking behind Pathfinder Day. And one of the things that we really wanted to do is provide both tangible actionable information, just the nuts and bolts in the morning, but also give people a chance to talk about their paths and their journeys in the afternoon in a more free form way and to hear from some bloggers who have been further down this path, when they came to a crossroads how they made a decision, but to let all of you who are in that path talk about where you are, why you signed up, what decision you are thinking you need to start to make and the crossroads you feel like you're facing either now or in the future.

We wanted to give that variety of experience as well. You have both just the facts and you really got to open up and talk a little bit in the afternoon.

In the meantime, we also wanted to bring a couple of great speakers to sort of put a, wrap a big bow around the whole thing and kick it off with great perspective and at lunch give you some confidence to move forward into the next session where we are all going to talk a little bit more openly amongst ourselves.

So I wanted to start by introducing this morning's speaker, Sandra Miley. So Sandra is from the Silicon Valley, where I'm from. She helped both companies and individuals work through brand strategy. She worked with companies like Adobe and Cisco and Oracle and Nokia, but she also worked with executives at these companies. And why we invited Sandra and why what she has to say is so valuable no matter what path you're on, she knows how to apply that thinking around brand and apply it to your own self and your own goal. Whether you're on the Change Agents path or Life Changers path or Business path, any of the paths, understanding who you are, what you want, how to articulate it so you can go out and get it is really what personal brand is about. She has some of the best practices that she has worked with top people and top companies to help you achieve that.

So Sandra will actually take Q&A as well. She will come up and do a short presentation and do Q&A. We have a mic in the room, when we're ready for questions, I hope you'll come up and ask. Help me in welcoming Sandra Miley to BlogHer's Pathfinder Day.

(Applause.)

>>SANDRA MILEY: Thank you, Elisa. Your opening resonated with me personally, because the exercise of going through and reevaluating where you want to go when you're at these crossroads is a really healthy thing to do every year or two.

So with that I will take you through a process ... hold on. We're going to go over here. Here we go. All righty.

So we are here today, and I'm personally thrilled to be here because building brands and helping companies in particular is close to my heart. It's something that, when I'm looking at my own career, I do what Elisa just mentioned -- is reevaluate where I want to go and do that tune-up.

Before I get started, I did want to ask everybody in terms of, and get a sense for where you are in your own understanding about brands. For those of you who feel like you know what you're doing but may be a little confused, put a hand up? Okay.

For those of you who feel completely lost, this is your time to admit that. Your hand? All right, cool.

For those MBAs in the room who read the books and know what they're doing, and I'm looking at one person.

(Chuckles.)

>>SANDRA MILEY: Put your hands up.

Still lost? Any takers? We have one over there, okay. Please keep your hand up. And what I want you to do is with your other hand, just reach down and grab a stack of cards because you are going to need to give these to the people who feel completely lost. And those people who feel completely lost are going to need to match her and find her over the next day or so.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm a brand marketer. I'm not raising my hand because I know everything about blogging.

>>SANDRA MILEY: That's okay. You have knowledge and we want you to share that.

She knows something, is on to something, and she can help you. That's the benefit of being here today. I think to what Elisa mentioned, this is a fabulous opportunity. You are here on this day with 200 people, 230 people today who are dedicated to helping you. This doesn't happen that many times in our lives. Certainly in my life, you know, main a couple times every few years that you get surrounded with people who are dedicated to helping you pursue your goals platform so I just want you to recognize how lucky you are to be in this room.

Individually, though, as bloggers, the skill that you can write and you know how to blog, you are incredibly lucky to be living at this time in history. Ten years ago, the tools that one needed to build a personal brand didn't exist. In fact, corporations, it was the realm of corporations. You spent millions of dollars.

Today you can do it on ten dollars. You can do it for free. You can go to Google, buy ads starting at ten dollars. You can do metrics, monitor your reputation. You can do something about it. But the real dilemma that all of us face is because these tools are accessible to everybody, everybody is doing it. So the question comes back to what Alexandra said earlier: How do you stand out and differentiate yourself? That's what I'm here to take you through, a pragmatic approach on how you can differentiate yourself so that your audience can find you and you can find them. When you get that right, it becomes very intuitive and it happens very naturally.

Okay. So let's get going. So if you're taking notes, you might want to just draw this diagram. This is the one boring marketing diagram that you are going to see throughout my entire presentation. It's a basic venn diagram. Three bubbles. Put your name on one. Put the audience at the top. We want you to be maniacally focused on your audience. Put your market or your space in the middle. That's your position. That's your sweet spot, okay? I want to take you through a little process and take notes as we are going through it. You can start filling out these bubbles.

So the first step really starts with looking at you. And what you want to do is, you really want to think about what it is about you that's authentic that makes you stand out. The first law of brand strategy is that if a brand is not differentiated, it's not a brand. It's a commodity. And this can be really hard for us all to do because particularly as women, we are socialized to stay with the flock, stay with the group. It's very, very hard for any of us to see ourselves as we are seen in the eyes of others.

So this is where you are going to need the help of your friends. You are going to need the help of people you really trust to give you honest feedback. What I want you to do while you are here and when you go home -- don't rush this, by the way. This is something to be thoughtful about -- is find out what makes you shine in the eyes of others.

And I'm really serious about that because, in fact I was just having a conversation with somebody about this. And really talking with them about that, and helping them articulate it.

You just can't do it on your own. I can't do it for myself but I can help other people. We need to help each other.

So really taking the time to do that. Personally, I believe that we all have an inner genius. And it can take a lifetime to find that genius. But it doesn't have to take a lifetime to find that genius if you reach out and you ask people to help you and identify what is your genius.

So that's the thing. That's your task and again, give this some time. This is not something that is done purely in a day. You are going to get a lot of these nuggets over the next few days, but you really need to percolate on this one. This is where you're going to find that authenticity.

The next stage when you're looking at in bubble we are going to call you is to really think about what you are passionate about. Passion is key. And passion when it's combined with authenticity is a very potent combination. The reason why passion is so important is because when you build a brand, it's a very slow process. You have to build awareness, which is slow. You have to build interest and consideration. You have to build reputation. These are very, very slow processes. It takes hundreds of touch points.

Malcolm Gladwell actually put a number on how long it takes somebody to become an expert in an area. It takes approximately 10,000 hours, which is 40 hours for five years straight. So it's going to take passion to survive five years to become an expert. And becoming an expert in today's market is really what it's all about. Discovering that expertise because this relates back to your authenticity.

So finding your passion, tapping into it, and letting that sustain you and using that as your fuel is what you need to identify.

Okay? The next stage, and I'm just looking around this room and probably identify different characteristics earlier, is to really overcome the tendency that people have to try to be perfect. I work in the corporate world primarily. That can be a reforming experience.

(Chuckles.)

>>SANDRA MILEY: Because the nature of corporations is to fit in. And the nature and how we are socialized when we are growing up again is to fit in.

And so through life you are constantly being molded to fit in and to become something potentially that you are not. And this is the influence of our parents sometimes. So what you need to do he owe I know I'm talking to myself here. I work with this every day on myself ... is really accepting yourself for who you are and accepting those characteristics which somebody may perceive as a quirk or less than perfect.

And saying: That's okay. That can be my signature. In fact, Alexandra and I were just talking before I came up. She was mentioning to me about a year and a half ago before she started blogging, she was trying to be somebody different. She has fabulous curly hair that I would die for but she was trying to straighten out. That's what women in her community did and she was trying to fit in. The first impression I had when I met down and she sat down. I said wow, she's creative. I hope she sits next to me. Lo and behold, we started talking and she said she wanted to be thought of as creative.

So her blogging experience, she is letting out that uniqueness that inner character signature speak for her before she opens her mouth and people are getting the right impression. I commend you, that takes a lot of courage and I think it's great. Keep it up.

Again, think about these things that can be your signature characteristic and rather than removing them, highlight them. Because the vast majority of people can't do that. And it takes courage to say: You know what? I'm going to let my hair be curly and wild, I'm going to have that gap tooth. It's not just only superficial. We're talking about a lot of other things, too. But use this as your character, your signature trait because it is going to help people connect to you.

Now, the flip side of this is just to think about when people do try to be too polished, what happens is they turn their audience off. They are an active turn off. This is how you lose your audience. We all know this. We know that authenticity is really important.

I wanted to make the point because our brains are hard wired for human connection and humans connect to people that when they can see a trait when you can accept yourself as being human and you're comfortable in your own skin, you tell me that I'm okay, too. We start building a connection.
Again, celebrate these things. These are really, really positive. They are going to help your personal brands be sticky.

So that's the bubble that really, to think about yourself. So moving on to your audience or the community that you want to reach, the first thing that you really need to think about, and this is something I think a lot of people overlook when they are building their personal brand because they jump right in, especially when you blog or express yourself. You really have to think about who you want to reach. As individuals we have limited time, energy, and resources and we have to be very focused. And we have to make really clear decisions on who our audience is and what makes these people tick. There's a couple of dimensions of this. The first one is a fairly flat dimension. We call them the demographics. These give you ... age, gender, location, things like that.

The next one is far more insightful. It's the psychographics. The psychographics will tell you, you know, what makes this person happy? Where do they go for influence? Where do they go for information than and reference? How do they like to consume information? What is that tone of voice that is going to resonate with them? Are they online? What is the mix between online and offline? In blogging that's important to know because you can be anyone behind a screen. So understanding if they’d like to meet you offline and in person is really important information.

Ultimately what you want to do with this information is not only identify where and how these people work, but really you are scoping it out. For most of us, our audiences may be regional, a couple hundred thousand. Maybe a few people are national. Many of us, far more of us, we have very local audiences and if you think about it, you might have two layers of audience.

In fact, I was talking last night with one of the speakers and she has two levels of audience. She's got her Hollywood audience and then she's got her national audience and they have very different drivers and very different motivations. She needs to understand how she has to appeal to both of those.

Ultimately at the end of the day when you analyze and you really, really focus on who your audience is, how they organize, what their needs are, and what their needs that are not being met today, you learn a lot by this process and you can find out exactly where, how you can meet them on what platforms and in what situations. So in is a really important step. It's something that certainly on a business level you should be doing continuously because this changes very quickly. And these patterns can change very quickly.

The next step, that next bubble is to spend some time analyzing the lay of the land. Now, what the lay of the land is really looking at, who is working in your space? For example, if you are blogging about health and beauty, who is in health and beauty? If you are blogging about self esteem, who is blogging or communicating in the world of self esteem?

If you are really lucky, you are going to find that there's no one in your space. That's rare. If you have that situation, my advice to you is to move incredibly quickly, right?

(Laughter.)

>>SANDRA MILEY: Because what happens is, believe it or not, there are blank spaces because the markets are constantly evolving. And the market doesn't like a vacuum. It will fill it very, very quickly.

If when you look at your space you don't see anybody that's doing that, move fast because time is going to be very quickly -- you are going to need to capture mind share very quickly. If you are like everybody else, what is going to happen, you'll find a lot of people there. You're going to find a lot of organizations there as well.

When you look closely at what they're doing, you may find that through how they are communicating or how they are behaving that they are not recognizing something. And this is where you start mapping and matching your audience to the space and looking at the gaps and looking at the overlaps.

So what I want you to do when you look at this space, I want you to start gleaning ideas that you can use and you can fold into your own brand. I want you to identify the gaps. It's called the gap analysis, okay?

So in some cases what you might find is that the gaps may be incredibly obvious. But in a lot of cases they can be very nuancical. If you want help with this, this is a fairly analytical process. Sometimes when you're too close to something, it's hard to see. When somebody is farther away, it will be more obvious.

Definitely have somebody who is not as close to it who is very analytical help you identify that so you can see it clearly.

So with these three bubbles fairly defined, the next step is really to define your niche and this is really how you position and differentiate yourself. In today's market it is really defining the niche and establishing yourself as the expert or the voice within that niche that is unique.

Now, obviously in the case of Palmiers, it's -- I know which one I'm going for. I love chocolate!

(Laughter.)

>>SANDRA MILEY: That just talked to me. I want that one.

But in the case of blogging, I thought the story behind BlogHer is very interesting. When Elisa and Jory and Lisa were asked a question, and they were asked, "Where are the bloggers?" and so they put together a conference and asked women to show up. You all showed up, and you've shown up for seven years straight.

Today you are the largest community of women bloggers with 25 million -- that's million -- unique visits per month. That is huge. Staggeringly huge!

To me, this is one of those rare opportunities where the market gap that the entrenched leaders don't see is a massive blind spot. To not see 50 percent of the population that was sitting next to them?

(Chuckles.)

>> SANDRA MILEY: I'm stunned by that. I still can't believe that. So you're lucky. Very, very lucky.

The other thing, but most cases are very nuancical. In fact when I was talking to Jess Weiner last night, she was mentioning in her case when she thought about what was authentic to her and what, her focus is really around self he will esteem and she has a very unique background that helps her resonate very specifically with her audience. It was really about her tone of voice. That's a very nuancical thing. She is not coming from a medical point of view, not a celebrity talking about her population. She is taking people through her personal experience.

She was mentioning to me, when she went through the exercise very organically on her own she had an epiphany. Her audience started finding her. Very rapidly they started finding her. This is why, I have case study after case study after case study in my own life and other people's lives. That when you get really focused on this, things start happening because you start standing out. And your audience now can find you because you are talking to them in a way that resonates with them. Like no one else.

And this is the power of positioning and getting it right. And going back to what Elisa said, this is something that should be done continuously. You don't want to go overboard, but I would say good healthy cadence would be do this for yourself every two years and help those people who want to build their brand, help your friends, those mentors in your life, or mentees, help them do it about every two years. About every two years is the cycle of refresh, right? And especially if you are all very, very intelligent women, at about the two year mark people need to take that next step in their career. They get bored, you know? We move on in school every 12 months. Make sure that you do this continually. Don't let yourself become stagnant too long because the market will move. If you don't do this, you might get yourself out of whack with where you should be.

So now we've gone through this process of positioning. You know that you are maniacally focused on your audience, how you're unique and how you can start matching your unique gifts with your audience in ways that no one else is doing.

The next basic step but a really, really important step is to articulate that in an elevator speech.

This is important, you can do it in a mission statement, not an elevator speech. But this forces you to articulate it, get it on paper and you can use this as a filter because what is going to happen and what happens to us all because we have all these tools, we have all these opportunities passing us on a daily basis is that you have to be able to map these opportunities to your mission or elevator speech. If you can't do that, what happens is you spread yourself too thin and become ineffective.

Again, being very, very focused on where you're going and being able to write it down and so that when the opportunities come your way you can make sure that you take the opportunities that are available.

It's perfectly fine and healthy thing to do to say no to the things you just can't reach; that you would love to do but are one click out. Those things at the end of the day, you know, are going to take time away from other things that you really need to do.

Definitely, you are empowered to say no. It's a good thing to say no. Just make sure that you're really focused on where you're going so everything you do follows this.

In my case, obviously you know I'm a brand strategist. What I specialize in doing is breaking down really complicated ideas or technologies into very consumable easy to understand ideas so that people can take action on them. They can articulate them. They can act on them. When they start doing that, things start happening in their lives. The time to results start shrinking because all of a sudden they focused their energies. If there's one thing that I say to the executives and the corporations I work with it's: Focus, focus, focus. It's a hard thing to do.

You will hear that a lot this day, but focus is key.

The last bit I wanted to leave you with, and this is really important when it comes to building a personal brand. Obviously with the products and companies, it's important as well, but more so with people.

Personal brands are dependent on, highly dependent on your reputation. Reputation is about trust.

Now, there's a very interesting time component. When you think about reputation, this is how it works. What you do today is how people will remember you, how people remember you is how they are going to talk about you, which influences your reputation.

The interesting thing is that 80 percent of purchase decisions are based on memory. When you combine that with word of mouth, it goes even higher.

So what that means is every interaction matters because you can't afford to have somebody remember something that's out of sync with where you want to go.

This is a point of reference. If you have a bad experience with your manager, it takes about 11 positive interactions to overcome one negative interaction so that personal interaction with the people who work around you is critical as well.

That is the power of memory. Memory influences a tremendous amount.

You have to take your reputation very, very seriously. I like to think about this as fundamentally the Golden Rule. You all were raised on the Golden Rule and sometimes we read about it in the paper every day. We are reading it with Rupert Murdoch right now, he forgot about the Golden Rule. His reputation is damaged.

People are talking about their mother friending them on Facebook Facebook. I think it's a great thing to friend your mother on Facebook. Welcome it. She is going to keep you remembering the Golden Rule. You are not going to do the stuff you might be doing ... obviously we are all older than our 20-something counterparts, but you see this.

I think having your mother on Facebook keeps you to a higher standard. And the thing with reputation is that because trust matters so much, you need to operate and you need to act with the highest integrity every single day.

I'll tell you, yesterday I had a challenging day and my mentor said your integrity is being challenged right now. Don't let your integrity, don't let anybody take away your integrity. That's the best advice she could have given me at that moment. I think this is the thing, protect your integrity. Do the right thing every single time. And over time, 25 years, five years, however long it may take, you will build a reputation. And that reputation is very, very powerful. So again, don't give in to temptation. I'm preaching to the choir here. Remember the Golden Rule. It's easy to forget the obvious, and sometimes the obvious just needs to be said, okay?

The last bit, and this last thought I wanted to leave you with is that when you are building a brand, a personal brand, it takes tremendous courage. This gets back to this idea that we are socialized to be together. We are socialized to be part of a flock. Women especially. We can be hard on each other. You know, if you stand out you get nipped. The Belgians have a saying that the tall poppy is the first to get cut.

When you build a brand, you have to be very courageous. You have to be the first bird and you have to know where you're going because once you are that first bird, the flock will start following you. You will find a flock. Trust me, the flock will find you.

Over time, you'll be a part of a flock again. Have the courage to be the first bird or be the bird that got there first. And trust me, others will finds you. Thank you.

(Applause.)

>>SANDRA MILEY: Questions? Dying to know what you want to think.

>>ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: There is a mic right there. We are recording everything for the virtual conference. Please use the mic.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have questions in every session I'm in. I have two. The first one, you talked about the focus with the audience and stuff. My question is, do you recommend focusing like defining the audience you want? Like these are the people I really wish were attracted to me.

(Chuckles.)

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: Or the audience that seems to be attracted to you?

>>SANDRA MILEY: Now, that's a really great question. I see there's a misalignment there. That's an important question because if you find you're at tracking a different audience than where you think you are, you need to reconcile that.

Either you need to adjust the ideal audience you want or you need to change who you think, how you're positioned, okay? And in fact, I love the Jess Weiner story because she was mentioning that when she was starting out that she wanted to appeal to a very broad audience. In trying to appeal to a very broad audience, she wasn't appealing to anyone -- obviously, she was. She was very successful. She wasn't resonating as strongly as she has recently. So I think you have to again be very clear on what's realistic. A great example, I think, is NPR. Remember when NPR lost all of their funding, their endowment and 95 percent of their funding evaporated overnight. 5 percent of it came from listener donations.

What they did, they had a brilliant strategist. They immediately focused on who their target audience was and what that audience really wanted to hear. So they got rid of, you know, the banjo guy. They got rid of a lieutenant of that programming. That we all had to wait through and the programming started getting phenomenal. They got really great content.

They focused on producing really great content. What happens was, through that process they earned back that 95 percent funding through, completely through listener donations because they figured out who their core was. They focused their content on that core. They grew that core. So their core is actually far larger than it was even -- was it ten years ago when they lost their funding? They've done a phenomenal job of growing out from that core.

Another great example is what Toyota has done with Prius and focusing first on the vegan market and growing out from there. They were the pickiest of the picky and they had certain features and they knew when they got that audience, they would get to the larger audience. Next question?

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: My second question, you talked about getting somebody to help you do a gap analysis. I get it for something like a corporation like you, but for a blogger, are there people, do you hire somebody.

>>SANDRA MILEY: No, no.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: I know smart people, but I don't know that they can do a gap analysis.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Here is what I would do. I would look at the area you're blogging in. I'm going to take food, chocolate, in fact. I love chocolate and I would start doing searches. Do searches for other people who come up. Actually, I'll give you a better example, a real life example. After the birth of my son, I took some time off. I wanted to get back in the brand strategy business, but I didn't want to be a brand strategist. I wanted to focus on an area that was interesting to me, mergers and acquisitions. I did a search and found there was no one in the field other than a guy in Canada. I love Canadians! And if you just do a search, start searching and poking around.

You'll find out exactly who is doing something similar.

And male, female, wherever they live, doesn't matter.

And collect this list. And this becomes people to watch. You know, follow them on Twitter; follow every single person on Twitter. So you're listening in to what's happening and you are going to pick up a lot because you are going to start seeing what workings and what doesn't work. Again this is the mapping of what works to your audience, and what you can do that they are not doing uniquely to your audience.

It's that intersection. Does that help?

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, thank you.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Okay.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: This was actually a prelude to my question. I worked in academics a long time and we talk about that gap thing. If you are going to do research, do original research. I remember my adviser once said: Remember, when you find a gap. There are two things. One, nobody has done it because they are not as smart as you and two, nobody has done it because they don't care. Nobody cares about it. You know what I mean?

How do you know when you are going through and you are finding these spaces, is it a vacuum that exists because there isn't enough interest? Or is it a vacuum because nobody has thought to innovate? Do you understand?

>>SANDRA MILEY: I totally get it.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: How do you assess that?

>>SANDRA MILEY: That's a great question. If it's interesting to you, trust me, it's interesting to other people. We were just talking about that. So there are always people like us that have similar interests. If it's something that you are interested in, there's probably very high likelihood that there are going to be other people in it that are very interested in that. And that is defining your audience. And so it may just be a couple hundred people. But if those couple hundred people are rabidly interested in this thing, that's great. Doesn't have to be that many.

In my case there's probably only 2,000 people in terms of who I would work with and who I really need to know personally. That's a really finite number.

And I think that knowing that, again, validating your instincts that you're on to something is really important.

Things are constantly being invented. Just because somebody hasn't recognized it doesn't mean that it is not valid today because things change all the time.

So, anything else?

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: I've got one for you. I see brands everywhere, gaps everywhere. You know, and I've developed some of them culturally.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Good.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: But I'm not really good at monetizing.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Oh, okay.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: So making this knowledge that many of us have, because we are first adapters. This is a great room of innovators.

(Cheers).

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: So there's kind of a disconnect.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Right.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: Between having the idea and making it actionable. And I know you're in brands.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Right.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have three brands right now and how do you evaluate? What is the next step, I guess, is what I'm asking.

>>SANDRA MILEY: How do you define the value?

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah.

>>SANDRA MILEY: So the basic thing is a commodity is a commodity. There's no perceived value differentiation. So you have, it is not a brand. This gets back to the original idea.

If you can't assign a value to it that is beyond the commodity, maybe it's not differentiated enough.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: These are differentiated enough. I'm a symbiotic anthropologist by training; so I wrote the books for the MBAs.

(Chuckles.)

>>SANDRA MILEY: Oh, okay.

This is an interesting one. I think if you could find a way to look at that gap between anything similar that is not valued and the value of where you are, and you can find out, you can do like a small easily, a small, get ten or 20 people, find out what they would pay for something like that service. Test it out and start seeing what the response is.

I think the tendency is, I keep on coming back to this. You don't have to figure it all out yourself. You can ask. We can easily get a focus group together of people who are your targets and have them tell you. I think getting back to the idea of blind spots, cover your blind spots. Know what you're good at and not good at. And find people who cover your blind spots and bring them into your world so they can help you figure that out. Maybe if you know somebody who is financially oriented or would be an ideal target.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have been a peace activist for ten years.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Oh, okay. So there's a brand marketer over here. I'm willing to guess she has an MBA. I think this is the thing. Because you are really getting into social, sounds like social cause versus business.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, no, I'm -- my network are peace activists, but I need to ... and they are my friends.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Oh, don't monetize friends!

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: No. But I figured out ways to monetize, but I'm ready to go beyond that. That value niche, I don't want to work for a corporation. I want to create all this myself. And so how ... I'm sorry, I'm just trying to figure out the next steps beyond brand.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Well, the thing is

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: The value.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Let's talk separately.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Hi.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm Brenda from Sydney, Australia!

(Applause and cheering).

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay, the question is about reputation management. I have a network of bloggers in Australia and I have 1600 or so members. Anyway, my question is, when do you start to engage? Because I was a victim of Internet bashing. It was so bad, I was at the point, I talked to the lawyers, how do we deal with this? It's hurting me and my brand.

Hey so when do you start: Hey, you cannot do that.

>>SANDRA MILEY: So how do you handle that?

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Well, in corporations they usually, it's handled by PR.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: I don't have that budget, obviously.

>>SANDRA MILEY: That's okay. I think if it's being said online about you and it's libelous, you can ask somebody to take it down.

If it's accurate fact checkers, they need to be accurate and accountable. I would just contact those forums that are publishing it and say

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's a blogger.

>>ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: We have a lot of experience with this kind of thing. So if someone says something, a lot of times if people are expressing their feelings and their feelings are very negative, a lot of times it's not worth it to engage. You can't change someone's feelings. You can't, you know, they are allowed to express their negative feelings. When there is inaccurate data and you decide it's worth it to correct, you can try first by e mailing them privately and saying: Look, I know you have a problem with me, but this fact and this fact is wrong. I'm giving you a chance to just correct that without doing it publicly. If not, I'll good comment and I will try to correct that.

You have to say, how important is this factually inaccuracy? If they are saying something hyperbolic that you don't think people will believe anyway, sometimes it's just not worth it. In general we have this philosophy of shun the troll.

(Chuckles.)

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: They want the attention, they want the light. Keep them under the bridge in the dark. Encourage, back channel all your friends and network and followers and everyone you know and say: Don't give them the satisfaction. And just keep them in the dark under the bridge.

And that, either, they may even escalate for a while because they really, really, really want the attention and the sunlight. Eventually the vast majority of times they go away.

Now, we do have a panel Friday monk at 10:30 about cyber bullying, which you are planning to go to because there are times when they cross the line and it's legally actionable. We would never say not to take legal action to protect yourself if it's crossed that line. But understanding where that line is, especially in your legal, where you live, is important and so there's, that's a different matter. But if it's normal Internet trolling, Lisa likes to say shun them like the Amish.

(Laughter.)

>>SANDRA MILEY: That's good, good advice.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. Thank you. I want to speak to the piece you talked about, authenticity. And just tell a quick personal story and ask a question.

I'm Jennifer and I too have stopped straightening my hair about a year ago. And I'm a blogger, a writer, and stand-up comedian. I have two blogs, a mommy blog and feminine smut blog that represent the dual parts of my life. And I, two weeks ago I had the opportunity to perform stand-up comedy at my 20th high school reunion and it was great. I was at the reunion two hours before I performed and people said "You have big balls to perform stand up comedy at your own high school reunion." Coincidentally where I stood was where I got married, but I'd gotten a divorce two years before.

And the authenticity comes easily at the high school reunion. And everybody said it was great. Once I was done performing, I was the star of the reunion. It was lots of fun and lots of people who were also getting divorced cornered me and told me their own personal stories.

But my question is, not online, but in dealing with people in my own town who are not comfortable being their authentic selves and are critical of someone who is being her authentic self, what is one good line when they say: How can you be the mother of two children and be writing about sex toys and things like that?

I follow the Golden Rule and I'm the deer in the headlights when I confront these people because I don't want to say anything mean, but I want a good, polite response.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Okay. So here is my philosophy.

When people are asking you a question that is not a sincere question and they are trying to assert their own opinions ...

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: Oh, okay.

>>SANDRA MILEY: You don't have to answer every question.

>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Thanks! Bye!

(Laughter.)

(Applause.)

>>SANDRA MILEY: Don't need to go into it. There are times you are not going to win. Choose your battles. Not going to win. Anything you say, I think the fundamental thing is, when people are asking you that question, and this is hard to do because we are all living in the moment.

But when people are asking a question that is really values based, you somehow are triggering their values. There's nothing you are going to do to change their values, they had them their whole life. They have been brought up on them.

For you to engage, you're just going to get in an escalation. You don't need to go there. There's nothing positive that can come out of it for either of you. Say thanks for letting me know and go on your way and change the topic.

What do you think?

>>ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: Somebody here was talking about, asking a question isn't always trolling. You get to know where the line is, answering questions. But to your point sometimes you know they don't really want an answer. They want to change what you are doing or thinking or feeling. Just like you can't change someone's feeling, they can't change yours either. You can change your mind about thing, if it's values based, totally agree. That was our last question. I'm coming up here to say thank you all.

>>SANDRA MILEY: Thank you!

>>ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: Okay! So if you have been to BlogHer before you know we run a pretty tight ship. We like to be on time. That usually means you're getting to food on time which is good. All the paths are in these rooms along here. We'll get started in just a few minutes with the morning workshops. Thank you for a great morning session. And go on your paths.

(Applause.)

(The session concluded.)

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Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

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