Post-BlogHer '09: A Reminder of the Power of Listening to Influentials - Jory Des Jardins - MediaBizBloggers

It39s become part of our annual processthe week following the BlogHer Conference when articles and posts about the event begin to emergeto take it all in and let it inform our planning of next year39s event And given that we hosted 1500 bloggers this year there was an awful lot to readWe continue to read wrapups of the event until we reach the end of them to make sure that everything is being addressed And we send out a postevent survey for good measure Because you see we practice what we preach to brands when it comes to working with bloggers We listenWe had to get good at this listening thing even when it meant hearing the negative Back in 2006 when our conference entered its second year bloggers weren39t used to the attention brands were starting to give them and some responded to it and the custom swag by lashing out against the idea of having brands represented in any way Though this group wasand still isin the minority their coverage made its way through the BlogosphereI wrote my own response to this coverage a post that asked the community what does it mean to sell out Do we let brands invade our personal blog space or avoid them altogether Or do we invite them in when discussing them makes sense for our readers The responses indicated that many feel that the extent to which one works with a brand is a line that a blogger must draw for him or herself There are degrees of partnership with brands and some degrees are inappropriate but brands themselves are not the threat It39s how we manage our relationships with them that mattersThis is why despite the fact that BlogHer has its own network editorial guidelines for our members we don39t recommend enforcing a single code or approach for the entire blogosphere on how bloggers must work with brands This was something I had to repeat often when press asked me about the quotPR Blackoutquot an initiative that began online on a momblog collective that suggested Mombloggers in particular quotnot blog ANY giveaways ANY reviews and Zero press releasesquot for a week in August This initiative was suggested for several reasons but in large part to address the quotburnoutquot experienced by bloggers who have been pelted with requests to review productI thought that this quotburnoutquot was a construct at first My mind went to a place where many experienced bloggers go If you write with integrity how is working with brands a problem But when I moderated a panel about blogger and brand relationships at BlogHer this year and asked which bloggers were experiencing said burnout I saw a small army raise their hands One elaborated quotI was new to the whole blogging thing and just didn39t know that if someone sent me stuff I didn39t have to review it I felt obligated And I39m horrible at saying noquotMany perhaps new bloggers nodded their heads in solidarity At that point I realized that we still had a lot of work to do helping brands and bloggers better understand best practices for authentic wordofmouth that passes the FTC smell test with flying colors It also made me realize how hard it must be for brands who want to encourage authentic word of mouth but who don39t have a single standard to enforceOther postevent hubbub involved some of the unofficial parties scheduled around our event something that the conference has become known for despite the fact that we don39t plan or control them Brands and blogger subcommunities have smartly leveraged the physical comingtogether of 1500 female influencers to plan private sometimes lucrative affairs Issues arise when these brands discover a few cardinal rules of playing in this space Rule 1 Be inclusiveNikon bore some antibrand sentiment from an incident that I can39t even call a mistake it was more a choice that other brands should consider when creating events for bloggers and Mombloggers in particular Two bloggers were not allowed admittance in the reportedly swanky wellrun affair due to having their babies in tow quotDue to the time of the event the noise level the availability of alcohol and the proximity to water we determined that from a safety perspective children should not attendquot says Althea Haigh of MWW who blogged the event and whose agency produced the event for Nikon Still one of the bloggers responded with a flip quotnikonhatesbabiesquot in her Twitter feed unleashing a brand39s nightmare of reactive tweets and posts from people who were there and who weren39t saying in essence quotWhat she saidquotI thought MWW39s response in a smart wrapup of the incident was a good one They shared what they learned from the experience and while many would argue that Nikon should not have had an event that excluded babies in the first place the fact that the agency took a stand and defended it is powerful In the discussion that ensued in the comments they generated more than their share of support from other bloggersThis kind of listening is hard Brands hear things they may not want to hear but I39ve seen brands come out the other side as heroes depending on how they react There39s an art to listening while respectfully holding your ground if the issue is pertinent to the brand While many disagreed with the decision to not allow children in the space MWW was clear that they thought it wasn39t safeamp8212no apologies They were responsive while still being patient enough to allow bloggers to come to their own conclusionsAfter hearing often conflicting accounts on quotswaghaggeryquot and the overwhelming glut of nonBlogHer afterparties we reached out to the community and asked for their feedback Boy were there opinions and revelations in the hundreds We discovered that though swag offered at some of the parties seemed excessive the sponsors were appreciated and they offered suggestions for reducing clutter and misunderstandings We also discovered that two of the best loved sessions were about storytelling and humorwriting and it reminded us that our community is a community of women who write nearly every day And they want to talk more about that craft and learn more about it Something after five years that we may have taken for granted We welcome our annual jolt of listening And we39ll achieve a blueprint for next year39s event in the processWe believe that every brand needs to put itself into this place of strategic vulnerability in order to thrive in the marketplace Seeing it play out at our annual conference made us certainAs cofounder and President of Strategic Alliances for BlogHer Jory Des Jardins is an innovator in online advertising women39s media and Internet entrepreneurship Jory can be contacted at jorybloghercomRead all Joryamp8217s MediaBizBlogger commentaries at Jory Des Jardin MediaBizBlogger

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Post-BlogHer '09: A Reminder of the Power of Listening to Influentials - Jory Des Jardins - MediaBizBloggers

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