Correction on July 21: The address for a new Sesame Street site was listed incorrectly. Information on the site can be found at SesameStreet.org.
SAN FRANCISCO--On the tech conference circuit, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google are the typical deep-pocketed sponsors. But when the tech is geared toward women, the pockets are those of Chevrolet, Macy's, and K-Y Jelly.
Here at the BlogHer 2008 conference, nearly 3,000 female bloggers are surrounded by the very mainstream-brand advertisers that the Internet media industry has clamored to attract for the last 10 years. It takes just a few moments to notice the stark difference in marketing pitches.
A women's luncheon with Rocco DiSpirito was sponsored by olive oil maker Bertolli.
(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)The 7 a.m. yoga sponsored by food maker Boca...cupcakes courtesy of Sesame Street...a luncheon with hunky Chef Rocco DiSpirito hosted by olive oil company Bertolli. Typical tech conferences host a coffee break at 10:00 a.m. But at BlogHer, it's milk and cookies brought to you by the dairy industry.
Not to downplay the tech. Nintendo sponsored a Wii Fitness booth, and iRobot, a new sponsor in 2008, showed off its autonomous vacuum.
Why is this important? Internet advertising is still struggling to pull its weight, despite the Web's fast audience growth and widespread usage. Much of the complaint from ad-dependent Internet publishers is that brand advertisers--those companies that could afford to buy expensive display ads or sponsorships--have yet to fully embrace the Internet in lieu of TV, outdoor, or print. The largest brand advertisers like Coke or McDonald's spend only an estimated 2 percent of their budgets online, though the Internet in general captures about 8 percent of the total advertising dollars spent annually in the United States.
Sesame Street hosted a salon with the puppeteers behind its famous characters.
(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)BlogHer's conference at least shows that more Main Street companies are paying attention to women online. (BlogHer recently teamed with NBC Universal's iVillage to better sell to these advertisers.)
"This is a hugely important audience for us," said Ellen Lewis Gideon, vice president of corporate communications for Sesame Workshop, which is here promoting a new Web site for toddlers set to launch this fall.
In fact, that's the marketer's argument across the board. Women, particularly mothers, wield enormous buying power in the home, and women are increasingly spending their time online. What's more specific to this conference is that women are often blogging about products, services and programming within a community of their peers.
Gideon added: "Moms are the caretakers, and they have a loud voice for us."
Jory Des Jardins, co-founder of BlogHer, said that in the four years since the company started the conferences, it has drawn more and more consumer goods makers every year. This is the biggest year yet for BlogHer, she noted, both in terms of conference-goers and advertising sponsors.
"We're much more consumer than we've ever been, especially in the parent space," Des Jardins said.
No scantily clad booth dudes here.
(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)Google and Yahoo used to be sponsors of the events, she said. But they're mysteriously absent this year. Microsoft and Hewlett Packard are sponsors, though, hosting free 10-minute massages in the "makeover pavilion."
New sponsors this year include Starbucks, Turner's TNT network, K-Y Jelly, and Macy's, which is hosting a party Sunday at the close of the event. These companies spend anywhere between $10,000 and $150,000 to be part of the conference, according to Des Jardins.
Michelin, also a new sponsor of the event, is "greening" the conference by buying offsets for 200 tons of CO2, or the amount that it expects is created by BlogHer 2008. That means it will plant trees to offset those emissions, according to Des Jardins. Similarly, GM sponsored the free use of hybrid cars for women who wanted to carpool to the conference from across the country.
Sesame Street bought a salon room at the conference, with cupcakes, children's videos, and the actual puppeteers for Grover and other Sesame Street characters. The company is promoting its newly redesigned Web site for toddlers at SesameStreet.org, set to launch in October.
Sarah Graesch, a mom blogger, chalked up all the new consumer advertisers to mom's buying power in the home.
"We spend a lot of money," she said.
Nintendo hosted a Wii Fit station to let women test-drive its exercise-oriented games.
(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)SAN FRANCISCO--The modern woman, per the popular '70s television commercial, was once "bringing home the bacon and frying it up in a pan." Now she's also writing a blog.
As many as 3,000 women are here at the fourth annual BlogHer Conference 2008, which opened Friday, to talk about their lives, their businesses, and their blogs. And in some cases, they're all one and the same. Despite the popular perception that women bloggers are all stay-at-home mothers, many women here run their own businesses or work full-time, and they use a blog as a personal outlet, a connection to a community, or as a way to boost their career.
Women filled the seats and lined the back walls at the Friday session on do-it-yourself promotion for their blogs.
(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)Jamie Risdon Lentzner, for example, is the founder of Foster City, Calif.-based Jamie's Painting Design, a design shop, and she writes a blog about what it takes to run your own business. A first-timer to the BlogHer conferences, she said that she felt a bit overwhelmed because of the lineup of polished writers and the sheer volume of women.
"It feels like I'm rushing a sorority," Lentzner said.
It can be easy to be fooled by an event with free massage, a Sesame Street salon, and cookies-and-milk breaks. But the women at BlogHer's conference range from well-known food writers and media lawyers to political pundits and technology entrepreneurs. For them, it's not enough to succeed in a chosen career anymore; these days, they contend, the well-rounded woman needs her own blog, too. That's why many of the women here are trying to figure out how to make money from their blogs.
Women's voices are commanding more attention on the Internet. And the number of female bloggers is rising. This week, BlogHer, whose network has grown from 180 bloggers last year to 2,200 this year, teamed with NBC Universal's iVillage.com to promote its content across mainstream sites including BravoTV.com and Oxygen.com.
An estimated 13 percent of women on the Internet write a regular blog, according to a new report from Forrester Research. That's up slightly from the 12 percent of adults who blog, but is still eclipsed by the 15 percent of online mothers who blog.
"Today, American women are not only the most powerful consumers in the world, we're also the power users of Web 2.0 and social-media technologies," BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone said.
Many of the women here are trying to figure out how to turn their blogs into a business. Among the more popular sessions on Friday were those on how to syndicate or promote a blog. The session "DIY Content Syndication and Promotion" had women lined against the walls and strewn across the floor.
Blog-marketing panelists recommended services like Twitter and Kirtsy, a "Digg for chicks," to promote their sites. (Kirtsy lets users recommend favorite products and links.) They also suggested the Wordpress plug-in Disqus to promote discussion on their sites, and Word Tracker for researching snappy headlines that will help drive traffic.
Esther Brady, a popular video blogger about weight loss who landed Weight Watchers as a sponsor, recommended using tools like Blip.TV to film episodic videos for a blog, instead of YouTube. Blip.TV's terms of service are more lax than YouTube's with respect to use of copyrighted material, Brady said.
Sarah Braesch, a mom, blogger, and contributing editor to BlogHer, traveled over the last week from Washington D.C. to San Francisco with several other women to attend this year's conference.
(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)For bloggers who needed advice about defamation, the tax code, or how to make money, there's someone here with an answer for everything.
Sabrina Parsons, for example, is the chief executive of software company Palo Alto Software, and she runs a blog called Mommy CEO. She was among several women Friday who doled out advice on running a regular blog.
"At the end of the day, you need to decide what your business is. Are you going to charge for freelance, charge for advertising, or do it as a hobby?" Parsons said. She encouraged attendees to write a one-page business plan for their blog and conduct some research on the Internet to figure out details on advertising.
"We're lucky we're living in the age of the Internet where you can find everything out on the Web," said Parsons.
One of the big issues for some women who are bloggers is finding a way to combine the personal with the professional.
Charlene Li, for example, a former analyst with Forrester Research, said that professional women often use a blog to fend off a feeling of isolation in their work life, or help express their passion for personal interests like cooking, biking, or politics.
Li herself wrote a blog for Forrester about technology, and she writes a blog about her personal and family life. Each blog carries a slightly different tone of writing.
But now that she's left Forrester (Friday was her official last day), she's been thinking about whether she will combine her professional and personal writing in one place. "People know me in slightly different contexts," said Li.
Vicki Mote Bodwell, founder of New York-based bedding company Warm Biscuit, likes that she doesn't write about her business on her blog, KidsBeddingBlog.com. Instead, she sees it as a cathartic exercise and a way to connect to other like-minded parents who are into a low-tech lifestyle, without cell phones or television.
"It's a way to connect philosophically with others," Bodwell said.
For Anne-Marie Nichols, the tricky part is managing her time. She is a freelance copywriter and maintains at least two blogs of her own.
"The question is, how much time can you give without getting burnt out?" Nichols said. "You need to set goals. Are you going to make money or just do it for fun?"
The opening morning at BlogHer 2008 encouraged as many as 1,000 female bloggers to network after breakfast.
(Credit: Stefanie Olsen)
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