At Edelman, we receive a lot of pitches from bloggers looking to connect with the brands we represent. With some bloggers now making six figures from their blogs, this isn’t going to stop anytime soon, and it’s no surprise that there are now multiple conferences focused on the business of turning blogs profitable.
An article by Jennifer Mendelsohn in tomorrow’s New York Times Style Section (posted online today) profiles Bloggy Boot Camp, a professional blogging seminar targeted to women. Sadly, the article is accompanied by the demeaning headline, “Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Too Busy Building My Brand.” Let’s face it: clever articles are accompanied by inappropriate, sensationalist headlines. This is par for the course in the age of Twitter. Unfortunately, both the headline and the tone of the entire piece are somewhat frustrating to me as a woman, an executive and a long time blogger.
I invite you to read the full piece and form your own opinions, but sentences like “bringing together participants for some real-time girly bonding” might very well stop you in your tracks. As I write this, my husband (and fellow Edelman executive Michael Wiley) is at SXSW. Would Mendelsohn classify that experience as macho bonding? Or would she write that he is attending a conference for the purposes of education and networking? Why do people, including Ms. Mendlesohn, continue to refer to networking among women as girly bonding? I seriously doubt the participants at Bloggy Boot Camp were wearing jammies and braiding each other’s hair. However, from the tenor of the piece, it was pretty easy to jump to that conclusion. Tiffany Romero, a co-founder of the conference is described as steering the proceedings “with the good-natured sass of a sorority social chairwoman,” and Mendelsohn notes that Romero went barefoot most of the day. Relevant? I don’t get how.
Moving beyond the sorority party comparisons to the meat of the article, Bloggy Boot Camps are one-day sessions created to educate bloggers on the ins and outs of blogging professionally. I have never attended one of these particular conferences, but I have to wonder what really goes down at one. I think it is terrific that women want to get together to share tips on making their blogs more lucrative and well-read, but I question some of what I am reading here. Were attendees really drinking mimosas out of SIPPY cups? And while I am sure there was time spent covering the basics of how to better utilize Google-friendly keywords, were the attendees doing so only to “get 28,549 views of [their] tutu-making tutorial?” Is that what the “mommy bloggers” are covering these days? I must be really out of the loop.
There are some interesting points made in this article that are buried in all the fluff, and I am going to make the assumption that this one-day seminar was actually quite a bit more useful and rewarding than comes across here. Mendelsohn points out that “bloggers and corporations are still forging the proper boundaries of their relationship, groping through uncharted territory.” This is absolutely true, and the complex nuances of this situation deserve more column space.
As I mentioned, my team gets contacted by a lot of bloggers who want to be sponsored. The ones who resonate are the ones who have a story to tell in a unique way that will make our brands a little more human. Does increased Google traffic help? Sure thing. But content is king. Bloggers should focus on providing interesting and well-written content first, and traffic-making schemes second. I am unclear on whether this was covered at Bloggy Boot Camp.
I am in agreement with Mendolsohn’s point that “mothers often prefer the warts-and-all experiences of other moms online — and the ability to discuss them interactively — to the dry, inflexible pronouncements spouted by experts in books and parenting magazines.” Where I struggle is in how these relationships are frequently described by the press. Is it possible for moms to form bonds online without the accompanying “girly” descriptors? Can we continue to support each other both online and off without the sorority house comparisons? This article tells me we aren’t quite there yet, but one can hope…
Tags: blogging, Bloggy Boot Camp, Danielle Wiley, Jennifer Mendelsohn, mommy blogger, New York Times, sponsored, women
