The Secret to BlogHer.com

I hear the kind of question raised by Kikibird all of the time, usually in Chatter where I only have 140 characters in which to explain. Or where I can type 140 by 140 by 140 and the message is all jumbled up and just not all that helpful. So here's a post that I hope will let everyone in on the secret of BlogHer...

The secret is, there is no secret.

Wait, don't go! I swear I'm going to explain and it's going to make sense to you once I'm finished and if it doesn't, tell me so and I'll try again.

See that's the thing, what I see as the secret to BlogHer may not be what you see because we are all individuals who are all here for different reasons.

BlogHer is the community for women who blog.

Our mission is the same as it was in 2005:

To create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community, and economic empowerment. (Note: we added the last three words in 2006, to support a request from the community. Read on...)

Our contributing editors and staff work every day to feature the work of women bloggers. We do this in our blog posts, in our headline rotations throughout the BlogHer Publishing Network, by syndication on sites like iVillage and AOL and USA Today.

Elisa, Jory and Lisa along with staff members (including our sales team) evangelize the work that women bloggers like you are doing on your personal blogs, in your professional lives, and here on BlogHer.com.

If you want to just come here and read what other women are blogging about, I guarantee you we'll have great blog posts by members, editors and syndicated bloggers that will meet your needs.

Here's a tip that seems a little obvious if you're a blogger but bloggers love comments and they are more than happy to engage you in discussion. If you only come to the site and read posts, we don't know you've been there and we can't visit you on your blog.

Our editors may never realize that you blog regularly about exactly the same topics they blog about, which means they may never have the opportunity to feature your blog. With millions of blogs in the blogosphere, it’s quite possible that your work will be overlooked. We don’t want that to happen, we want to know you’re out there and we want to showcase what you do.

Here's another tip for those who want visitors and Twitter followers and Facebook friends: Fill out your public profile so that it includes a brief description of who you are and links to your blog(s) or other online presences. People ask me all of the time how they can find bloggers who blog about X or who live in Y. Fill out those profiles and include tags that help people understand who you are, what you blog about, and what you care about. Make sure you upload a profile photo so others can put a face to your words -- and if you have a photo, and write a post on BlogHer.com, your work might be featured on our editorial home page or a topic page.

You don’t have to be stuck with just reading other women’s work and leaving comments, you can blog the topics that interest you, either a full post or a hot teaser with a link that pulls people into your personal blog. If you’re not interested in blogging in another place, then skip that.

If you want to talk very specifically about niche topics, then we may have a BlogHer Group that will meet that need. If not, you can start one of your own. (If you start one, you need to promote it! We will help you but we can't do all of the work for you. Here's a link to some tips for growing a successful group.)

If you simply want to add your blog to our directory of 2300+ blogs and never come back to BlogHer.com, we're happy to include you.

We launched BlogHer Chatter to give women bloggers another place to talk, often to people they don't already connect with on Twitter and Facebook. If you like, you can have those Chatters sent to your Twitter account. If that's not your thing then it's not your thing. It's ok.

Use the tools that help you meet your goals.

The Using This Site page includes links to individual FAQs and posts about all of the tools and how to use them. Click those links, decide which tools you're interested in, and start using them.

I recommend you use the tools more than once. I know this takes time but if you want to know whether a tool is right for you, you have to give it an honest try. Trying something once, in a social networking space, isn't always a good way to determine whether the tool or space works for you.

Here's a little personal confession, do NOT tell anyone...

When Blogger first launched, I thought it was the dumbest tool ever. In fact there's an online record of me saying such a thing but I will not tell you where it is.

When Twitter first launched I swore I would never use it.

I made those determinations after setting up accounts and trying each one for about five minutes. I went back to both tools a few times, tried them again for another five minutes each time. I didn't give either tool a real chance to work for me. I will never make that mistake, let me tell you. ;-)

The only secret to BlogHer.com is that it is what you make of it.

If BlogHer.com can't do something that you really want it to do, tell us. (denise@blogher.com - or click contact us down there at the bottom of the page.) Many of our tools are here because members of the community asked for them. We have CEs blogging about topics that were specifically requested by the community. We have sub-topics and tag categories because members of the community told us that they were important.

BlogHer.com is just like the BlogHer Conference which includes sessions and speakers and content based on what the community asks for. We may not be able to implement every request immediately but I promise you that every request that comes through my inbox, comments on the site, phone calls, and F2F requests is heard.

Now here's my question for you... What do you want from BlogHer.com?

Denise
BlogHer Community Manager