BlogHer’11 Recap
This past weekend I attended the BlogHer ’11 Conference in San Diego for the first time. Since this was my first time I wasn’t sure what to expect, though I have been to plenty of other conferences before. I brought Mr. VV with me and am SO glad I did. More on that in a bit.
The first day of the conference I took a session called Bad Blogger Pitches (The Other Side of the PR-Blogger Relationship) which was hosted by Stephanie Agresta (EVP and Managing Director of Social Media at Weber Shandwick. Clients include Unilever, Pepsico and Samsung), Stephanie Azzarone (President and Founder of Child’s Play Communications. Clients include Disney Channel, Warner Bros and Hewlett-Packard) and Stephanie Smirnoff (President and Chief Creative Officer at Devries PR. Clients include Pepperidge Farms, Proctor & Gamble and Gallo) and moderated by Liz Gumbinner (Mom101.com). Right away I realized just how mommy blogger centric this conference was because it’s pretty much the only reference they used when discussing anything. It kind of threw me for a loop because while I knew there were a lot of mommy bloggers in attendance I didn’t think all the sessions would be focused on them specifically.
I’m not sure I actually learned much new in this session considering I have been blogging three years already, but it was good to hear PR people reiterate some of the things I had suspected when you are pitching to them.
What to include when pitching:
- Explain to them why you are different, why your blog stands out from others in your niche
- Tell them about yourself, who are you?
- Mention all your social media channels including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube so they can get a sense of your community
- Tell them where you see your blog headed, what you are interested in in the future
- Show them other examples of your work with other clients
- They like to see high quality photos and/or video. From Stephanie Agresta “Production value matters. Not that you’re going to have huge production budgets to work with, but the HD cameras are very inexpensive now. So the higher quality, the more likelihood that content is going to be engaging.”
- Make sure you are posting regularly and frequently
- Tell them your metrics and DO NOT lie about them! Show them screen shots (that’s what I do) so they can see your numbers. Also they like to see demographics including the age, location and gender of your readers
- If you can find out your engagement metrics (such as how many people re-tweet a tweet you sent and how many people that then reaches) include that
What not to do when pitching:
- Write either a super short pitch telling them nothing, or a super long one telling them way too much
- Exaggerate or lie about your reader numbers
- Act too familiar with them. Remember this is a professional working relationship so don’t write as though you are their best friend if you’ve never met them
- Re-posting press releases. This was a huge no-no and surprisingly I know a ton of blogs that do this. They do not want to see what they already wrote posted on 50 different blogs. UPDATE: I misheard this and realized it after I read the transcript. They were referring to product reviews and press releases. When you are reviewing something don’t just re-post their press release, write your own review.
- Do not promise you will review something by a certain date or confirm you are attending a date and then not follow through. Follow through is very important!
My second day in the morning I took the How to Pitch Freelance Editorial Work from Some Busy Editorial People which was moderated by Julie Godar (Editor of BlogHer) and hosted by Barb Dybwad (Tecca.com), Nicola Bridges (Copley News Services) and Stephanie Wood (Parenting.com).
Again this was more mommy blogger centric, but I did pick up a couple things.
- Know the magazine you are pitching to very well. Don’t pitch them a story idea that has nothing to do with what they focus on or something that goes against what they normally publish
- Check out the topics that generate the most interest or controversy in their magazine and maybe try a pitch with a similar idea
- Include a working title of an article that is catchy and explains what the article would be about
- Again, don’t write WAY too much or too little. Keep the pitch to one page and use bullet points to outline your ideas
- Don’t email them on a weekend or Monday. Mondays are usually spent catching up for them and they are inundated. Try emailing them on Tues-Friday at lunch time. Most preferred email to phone calls
- If you don’t hear back it might mean “no”. Nicola Bridges said that’s the harsh truth; if you don’t hear back from her it means she’s not interested. However Barb Dybwad said that doesn’t necessarily mean no to her, it might just mean no for now and she will keep the idea on the back-burner
- Try pitching to a trade magazine. There are trade magazines for almost every industry and that could be a way to get experience and a foot in the door
- Offer to write a couple articles for free for the experience
The last class I took crossed over a lot of the information in previous sessions but I really liked the speakers and got a lot out of it. It was called Putting the “Professional” in Professional Blogging. It was moderated by Amy Lupold (ResourcefulMommy.com) and hosted by Janine Nickel (BuzzCooperative.com), Jessica Rosenberg (ItsJessicasLife.com and Tiny Print) and Linda Sellers (One2OneNetwork).
What I really took home from this session was:
- Watch what you say online especially on Twitter, Facebook, etc. If you do want to be taken seriously and work with certain companies which might have a very wholesome image to protect, they will not want to work with people who are dropping the F-bomb constantly (or that type of thing). They DO notice these things and you need to act professionally if you want to be taken seriously
- Make it EASY for people to find your contact email address. Don’t just have a contact form, include your email address somewhere obvious on your site
- Website design is important! If your site is in a hard to read font, color or has a silly or childish background they will be immediately turned off. Do not write in italics or bold. Also don’t center your text, “it’s not poetry” said Jessica
- Remember that nothing online is private. That includes emails, private messages, chat, etc. Anyone can take a screen shot of anything you say and post it somewhere, which can damage your reputation
- If you happen to have two blogs and one is totally non-risky but the other maybe is, just keep those two “personas” totally separate and most companies won’t have an issue with that
- Jessica mentioned she cannot stand seeing emoticons and “LOL’s” in posts so try to remember online-speak doesn’t belong in a post (and definitely not a pitch)
Something interesting that two of the panelists mentioned in the PR Pitch session and the Professional Blogging session was that they didn’t think bloggers should be sponsored (in other words paid) for review posts. They felt as though the second someone is paid for a review, the review can’t be taken as the true person’s voice. I totally disagree with this stance but I understand what they are saying. I think if you are a brand-new blog and people don’t know you then all the sudden you are doing sponsored posts, it can be sketchy. However, if you have been doing honest product reviews for years and have a following of people who trust you and you have built a rapport with, it can be done honestly. I don’t believe that someone I have been reading for 3 or 4 years would all the sudden turn into the type of person who only gives positive reviews for money if they weren’t already like that to begin with. If you have a positive history with your readers there is no reason to expect that all the sudden they changed and will start lying just because they have been paid. That’s just my two cents!
I did take another session which I was a bit disappointed in called Food Photography. I thought it would be more practical tips on photography, but really it was more of a photographer’s personal career-journey and I didn’t get much out of it. You might if you were very new to photography, but I didn’t find it very useful.
Would I go back next year? Most likely no. I am glad I went and got to experience it, and have no regrets but I think this conference might be aimed more at a different kind of person than myself. It’s definitely geared toards mommy bloggers so keep that in mind. Also I think a lot of the sessions would be very beneficial to someone with just a few months or maybe a year under their blogging belt, but not so much for seasoned bloggers. Also if you are very into socializing then this would probably be fun for you because there are a lot of parties and social events going on.
For me, I am a pretty mellow and quiet person and prefer small groups of people. I didn’t really find any opportunities to meet other bloggers, so I was on my own for the conference part. I suppose could have met more people if I was a more aggressive and outgoing person, but I’m just not. It’s not easy going it alone sometimes.
I hope you were able to get something out of this post!
-Kelly
Welcome! My name is Kelly and Vampy Varnish is a animal friendly beauty blog.
Great recap! It is good that you got away, even if the conference wasn’t super useful. Thanks for sharing!
wow, didn’t know it was so mommy blogger centric. glad that I didn’t scrounge up enough money to go, was considering it but really couldn’t afford right now. SO glad I didn’t waste the funds.
Great post-event write up
Informative! I probably would have had the same experience as you because I’m not quick to run up to people either lol
Thanks for the honest thoughts about this conference. Being a mom but not a mommy blogger, it would be annoying that find that most of the classes of a major conference geared toward that genre. Isn’t their more to blogging then about your kids? Seems silly for a huge conference to be so… limited. Anywho! Thanks girl!
Also I apologize for any typos as my iPhone is deciding that I have the grammar of a fish.
Thanks for sharing, I also enjoyed your blog about how to start a beauty blog. I have had a ‘family’ blog just to keep up with family members, and had no idea how complex it can be.
I do have one comment about sponsorship. While I agree with you in that I would still trust the blogs I read regularly regardless of sponsorship, I feel that disclosure is important. I think that the majority of bloggers would not deliberately give false reviews, but there is something to be said for the psychology of gift-giving. I work in health care and there is a concern that accepting a ‘gift’ from say a drug company could make you sway (likely subconsciously) toward a particular product. I’m not sure how big a threat this is in the cosmetics world, just a thought.
Hi Mel,
Yeah we legally have to disclose now anyway which I do at the end of every post
Did I get it right that they don’t like blogs that reblog the press releases? Didn’t they send the info to bloggers for that purpose, in the first place though? Great recap
Hi Halifax,
They don’t like it copied & pasted. They said that they have already written that press release so why do they want it re-posted a bunch of times over verbatim? So they said adding your own style to it is better than just copy & paste which shows no imagination, etc.
This is a very informative and helpful post. I too, get turned off when I come across bloggers who use the F-bomb and refer to their friends as “beetches”. That makes me not want to read someone’s blog. It just makes them sound unprofessional and uneducated.
I’m mixed on sponsored blogs. Yes, having a history of honesty helps, but I’ve never been able to squash that nagging doubt entirely, something not helped when reviews for that product line are seemingly always positive and/or the blogger tends to be positive to most things to begin with.
I guess I’m confused about re-doing a PR release. When I worked in advertising, it was not proper to have a media re-write it. That seems to be what the PR release is for; to have the company tell you about their new product/venue/idea, etc. I’m not sure how I would be able to write their PR piece for them when I haven’t even seen the item.
Thank you for the recap. I was very interested in how this conference would be. Maybe someday there will be a blogger conference meant for the beauty/makeup arena soon.
Thank you for summarizing what you learned – very helpful for those of us who didn’t attend! So much useful and practical advice!
I don’t trust sponsored reviews any more than I trust scientists who test/review drugs but are paid by the pharmaceutical industry. You write something negative then you are biting the hand that feeds you. If you want to keep getting paid you better write what they want you to write.
I do think even an honest blogger would try to find good things about a product and ignore as much of the bad as they thought they could get away with, instead of writing exactly what they think. I’ve even seen it happen with bloggers who start getting freebies, suddenly those reviews are never negative, even if let’s say an eyeshadow has crap pigmentation, they’ll say something like, “Perfect for a subtle wash of color in a conservative work environment.” When before they would have said, “It’s chalky, has little pigmentation, wore off after an hour, and it took me 5 swipes to build up this swatch so you could see it!” So some bloggers are scared they will lose their freebies, I’m certainly not going to trust them when they are scared they will lose their paycheck.
Hi Donna,
So if I wrote a sponsored post you would automatically think I was lying even though I have been honest for 3 years on all my posts? And the vast majority of what I review is sent to me for free and I write plenty of negative things. There are almost always positives and negatives about a product, very rarely is something completely negative.
If I saw that a post was sponsored, this is what I would think, “I do think even an honest blogger would try to find good things about a product and ignore as much of the bad as they thought they could get away with, instead of writing exactly what they think.” It doesn’t mean you or any other blogger is lying, but now your loyalty is split between your readers and making the rent. Lying would mean that you’re telling us that the product is the best ever, run out and buy it! even though you really think it’s horrible. I don’t think you or hardly any bloggers would do that. (I’ve only seen one blog that did something like that.)
I would expect many, maybe even most, bloggers to suddenly write waffling, kinder, gentler negative reviews if they were paid, and the product was really bad. So what if I think that you, and a handful of others wouldn’t change a bit?
I’m also not saying that I think all bloggers who get freebies write biased reviews, I trust many blog reviews where the blogger gets most of the products sent to her, including here. I do see the disclaimer at the end of the posts! lol I’m saying that I have seen it happen though, where the blogger had a certain style of review before and when they start getting sent products there is a difference in the reviews, especially when you can pretty much tell the product isn’t working for her but she’s trying to make it work and trying to find positive things to say.
Hi Donna,
I hear what you’re saying for sure and agree with some of it. For me I would be a lot more skeptical if someone was doing a ton of sponsored posts compared to non-sponsored ones. Otherwise it’s not even close to enough money to pay rent on, it would just be a very small amount extra. They definitely do not pay much, according to everyone who spoke at BlogHer!
I found your blog today while I was doing some research on the magnetic polish trend and I have been sucked in ever since! I’m pretty new to blogging so this post was extremely helpful. Really, thank you!
Yeah, I don’t think I’m crazy about sponsored reviews. I want to be able to think, “So-and-so said this was good, and why would she lie?” If she’s sponsored, I know why she’d lie. It would affect how much I trusted the reviews, even if I’d been a regular reader for awhile.
Part of my pessimism is because recently I stopped following one blog and I really liked the blogger and her reviews before, but I noticed she kept saying things like, “XYZ product has ‘positve attribute 1′, and ‘positive attribute 2′. I was so impressed I had to try it!” and then you see at the end of the post that the product was sent by PR. It annoyed me but I just rolled my eyes and figured, maybe she’s saying it was offered, she did a little research, liked what she saw, and accepted for those ‘attributes’. Until she was so excited that one of the attributes was that a percentage of the sales goes to charity… Yeah honey, 0% of your freebie goes to charity, if you really cared about that you would have paid for it.
I know this is a different issue, but I got being b.s.ed by bloggers on my mind at the moment.