Friday, May 05, 2006

How women try to get to BlogHer

Last year's BlogHer revealed to me exactly how real a community bloggers can form. Women were offering their spare rooms, their frequent flier miles, and yes, cash, to help blogging friends (most of whom they had never met in person) to get to BlogHer.

The same thing is going on this year. You can troll the web and find women selling T-shirts and women who are feeling flush better offering to sponsor women who culd use a little help.

And this morning you'll also find two business BlogHers looking for sponsorship to make the trip.

Jeneane Sessum wants to go to BlogHer, and she's looking for a partner to help her...a corporate partner.

Yvonne DiVita is the subject of a terrific interview over at the blog Synergy, and mentions the same proposition.

Now what's in it for a corporate sponsor? Well, Jeneane has done it before and has this to say about it:
We were humbled and thrilled when Qumana decided to sponsor our SXSW trip. I had been using "Q" for several months before that, and I am the kind of user who generally has some opinions and ideas about the products I use. Sometimes I'm even right. ;-)

And I enjoy writing about the space, because Qumana is, in my mind, a writer's tool first, a thinker's pad, a way to make it easier to get the thoughts from head to pixels so that I can do it more often and without having to take as many naps. You can quote me.

Was the sponsorship worth doing? I would defer to Jon Husband for Qumana's perspective. For me, I wish I could sponsor them right back--in fact I am sort of am in the way that works best, because I continue to use Qumana and provide insight, ideas, and sometimes even good jokes, to the folks there.

Isn't this exactly the kind of customer evangelist savvy Web 2.0 companies say they want to cultivate?

I know, I know...some of you are going to think corporate sponsorship is evil. I so disagree. There are certain services and products with which I have fallen in love. Could I without a qualm in the world represent Apple? Yes. For that matter back when I used a Sony VAIO I was pretty enraptured about that too. Did I used to feel that kind of passion for my Palm? Well, despite how I take it for granted now, once I certainly did feel that thrill. TiVo? Don't even get me started! The list goes on.

When Guy suggested that companies who made blogging tools and services ought to be exhibiting at BlogHer, one clueless commenter assumed he meant because "women like to shop"! What a doofus. Guy had the perfect comeback: "Companies should exhibit at BlogHer because it is an inexpensive way to reach hundreds of bloggers who can spread the word about products and services."

And I would submit that sponsoring one active blogger like Jeneane and Yvonne would cost you so little (probably less than $1000) and get you one very talkative customer evangelist in your corner.

And as Yvonne likes to say: what's not to like about that?

Comments:
"[...] one clueless commenter assumed he meant because "women like to shop"! What a doofus."

Being that I'm the clueless commenter, I still stand by my comment: women love teh shopping.

Many stereotypes exist because they're true, even if we don't like them.
 
hi there Dossy: Many women do love the shopping, but I still think it is doofus-y to *skewer* Guy for (by your assumption) buying into that sterotype, and then coming here and defending yourself by use of the stereotype.
 
In Guy's original entry, he suggested that marketing at BlogHer would be a good idea.

In response to my comment, he completed the thought and gave his explanation why he thought so.

Since everyone's so touchy (hormones, I know ...) I decided not to pursue the logical following: how many female bloggers are influencers? While marketing at BlogHer might let you reach an audience, what benefit does that get you?

Thanks for not deleting my comment, anyhow. I appreciate it.
 
I would never have deleted that comment Dossy. I will say this: the questions about influence and purchasing power are valid, but you're not following too closely if you have heard about how:
-Women control the houehold spending dollar.
-Women influence or even control even non-stereotypical purchases like electronics and cars.
-Women do a ton of research online whether they ultimately end up buying online or in meatspace.
-Our own demographic survey of the bloggers in the BlogHer ad network revealed a population of highly educated, fairly high income readers who confessed to lots of buying online.

Two great resources:
I subscribe to MarketingVox and find they are always passing on interesting and useful market data like a lot of the above.

Plus some BlogHer bloggers demographic survey results are here.

Hope that helps.
 
"Plus some BlogHer bloggers demographic survey results are here."

Those are some very interesting numbers, and I'm glad they exist. However, I'm having a hard time making the leap between a survey of 2,900 BlogHer Parenting Network readers vs. attendees of the BlogHer Conference. According to Lisa Stone in Guy's blog entry's comments, "Nearly 20 percent of the people who attended BlogHer Conference '05 were men." Only 6% of the survey respondents were male. How many attendees were there to BlogHer '05?

The leap I'm having trouble making here is that the two populations (readers of the BlogHer Parenting Network and the attendees of BlogHer Conferences) are likely not a set with a large intersection and/or one is not representative of the other.
 
But your question is not do BlogHer attendees overlap with readers of BlogHer blogs, right? Your question is: are BlogHer attendees themselves influential?

And if you judge their influence by the audience they are reaching (the vast majority of which state they read every day) then yes, you'd have to conclude the bloggers have influence (and daily contact with) with a desireable target audience.

This is inspiring me to write an entire post about quantifying event attendace though. Stay tuned.
 
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