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This past weekend, we had the privilege of attending the 7^th annual BlogHer conference in San Diego, Calif. BlogHer ‘11 brought together leading female voices ranging from mommy, food and health bloggers, to journalists and corporate CEOs. With two full days of informative sessions, an elaborate expo hall and sponsored events,the conference offered insights into ways that bloggers want to connect with their readers, tools they’re using to push out content and how they want to work with brands.Through conversations with bloggers, listening to speakers and panels and spending time on the expo floor, we were able to take home several key learnings from this conference.

Blogs drive purchase decisions. It’s no surprise bloggers continue to influence purchase decisions among consumers, but this sentiment was wholly reinforced. According to the 2011 BlogHer Social Media Matters study, 80 percent of BlogHer’s audience has made a purchase based on a recommendation from a blog. This influence is supported by the trust consumers are putting into blogs they follow – feeling that they have a lot in common with the author. In fact, according to the same study, 73 percent of those surveyed said the blogger they follow “has similar opinions and attitudes,” 58 percent said they “feel they know the blog writer like a friend because we have so much in common” and 57 percent said “I have been reading the blogger I follow for a long time and we have similar taste.” These stats reinforce that it is increasingly important for brands to maintain strong relationships and look for opportunities with bloggers as they are undeniably trusted influencers for many consumers.

Facebook is the engaged modern mom’s media platform. Although bloggers continue to push out content with tools like Twitter and Google+, Facebook still leads as the most-used social media channel. It continues to allow bloggers to drive more traffic to their blogs and interact with their fans. When pitching or working with bloggers, look for opportunities to provide additional content for a blogger’s Facebook page, giving the blogger more content and providing another touch point for the brand.

Bloggers are open to being sponsored for blog posts. This emerging topic among bloggers came up again and again over the course of BlogHer, as many are looking for opportunities to work with brands on a paid basis. As brands continue to work with bloggers, it will be important to explore opportunities for sponsorship and content integration, as this seems like a direction that many well-established bloggers are moving toward.

Bloggers are communicating new technologies to their audiences. Several of the bloggers we chatted with are constantly pushing out new technologies and apps that would be useful to their readers. For instance, Desiree Scales, of The Bella Buzz, recently communicated a new app to her readers called Aisle 411, which helps people find the items they’re looking for, create and manage shopping lists, plan shopping routes, find product reviews and even earn rewards and dollars off for simply finding whatever it is they need. Be sure to research what tools bloggers are giving their readers to find new ways to offer up valuable content when pitching them.

Although experiential rules the expo floor, social elements extend engagement. Photo opportunities in a branded setting are still a good way for brands to get attention and interact with consumers – particularly at a crowded trade show. This year’s floor had everything from a Sesame Street stoop to an interactive bathroom. However, photo opps. alone do not create engagement, so across the board, brands used social media to extend consumer engagement. Gatorade offered green screen photos showing attendees getting doused with Gatorade - Bill Belichick style - and encouraged users to share the images on social media channels. Other brands offered photos with celebrities or icons, provided a hash tag and encouraged tweeting the photo to win a prize. Incorporating social engagement with an experience is a great way for brands to engage consumers, drive traffic to social media outlets and increase overall brand knowledge. As social media continues to thrive, you can definitely expect to see this type of engagement in the future.

The BlogHer conference was an eye-opening experience and it is not just for bloggers anymore; PR pros can definitely benefit from this informative conference.

Did you attend BlogHer11? Let us know about your experience.

--Emilie Valle, Account Supervisor, @Emilie_Valle
--Jessica Benjamin, Account Executive, @JessBenj

In-person editor meetings and press events have always been an integral tool for introducing media to our clients’ new products and campaigns; however, shrinking editorial staffs, busier schedules and tighter program budgets challenge us as marketers to consider new and more efficient ways of presenting information to the media.

We know the average American spent 32 hours a month online last year, so it only makes sense to interact with media through the same channel. More and more, brands are taking the traditional editor meeting out of the hotel boardroom and onto a live-streaming webcast, hosting virtual press conferences. This format can effectively communicate your client’s key product and campaign messages and offer a number of other benefits.

Avoid travel and scheduling issues
While New York and Los Angeles will always be central locations for media, more and more, editorial staffs are made up of freelancers and contributors who live all across the country. Gathering your contacts in one place may prove more costly and time-consuming than you may have anticipated. Hosting an online event removes this barrier and can also attract attendees who would otherwise not be able to attend due to personal or professional conflicts. Writers and editors who may be on the road for business or away for a family trip are more likely to log on to a webcast for an hour in the middle of their busy travel schedules – especially if your product launch doesn’t always fall in a “convenient” time of the year.

Widen your reach
Most brands are eager to reach beyond traditional media and engage with bloggers and social media influencers. A webcast is a great way to present your client’s information to this audience through a medium they are most comfortable with and allows your brand to interact with hundreds of contacts at one time. This may also result in instant coverage for your clients, with attendees posting about your client’s product attributes or campaign details directly after – or during – the virtual event.

Offer more content
The options for providing content through this platform are endless. Encourage social media chatter through a live Twitter feed, deliver digital assets like photos and videos or engage in real-time Q&As with attendees from across the country. You can even provide media who were unable to attend with an archived version of the press event broadcast – something that media who attended could benefit from, as well, by having the option to revisit the information on their own time.

--Emilie Valle, Account Supervisor

Disclosure vs. Style
No one wants to be the one who is made an “example” by the FTC - bloggers, brands and agencies included. However, the gray areas left by the FTC disclosure guidelines have many nervous. The truth of the matter is that if you are a blogger, brand or agency, and you already maintain a high standard of transparency, you are most likely covered. That means that giant red disclosure image you have on your blog, or are requiring bloggers to use, is the worst kind of unnecessary.

Image credit: LouisGray.com

Each blogger, influencer or online media maker has his or her own style, and it would be a real travesty if he or she ever had to alter that style to adhere to a set of government guidelines. Disclosing the blogger-brand relationships within the prose of a blog post or the dialog of a podcast effectively safeguards all parties involved in the eyes of the FTC. It also allows online media makers to keep their style as well as maintain an honest and enjoyable relationship with their readers.

The Elephant in the Room

So what if you are limited to, let’s say, 140 characters when telling your readers about a post in which you review or discuss a product that was provided to you by a brand?

This very tough question really has no good answer yet. The best Twitter solution presented so far has been to add a hashtag to a status update. WOMMA has a suggested list of different tags to explain different relationships. They include:

• #spon (sponsored)
• #paid (paid)
• #samp (sample)

An alternative would be to use the tag (client). This tag is used to disclose a relationship between a brand/company and the person tweeting.

Where do you stand when it comes to style vs. disclosure? As a blogger, do you feel you have had to change your style in regard to the FTC guidelines? Is there a good solution when it comes to using Twitter? We’d like to hear from you.

--Marcus Andrews, @Marcus_Andrews

Day 2 of South by Southwest brought (among other sessions) a discussion on "Measuring Blogger Credibility: FTC Regulation v. Crowdsourced Solutions." I attended this session because I knew it would be a great opportunity to hear unbiased opinions from bloggers about the new FTC guidelines. The session certainly did not disappoint on that front, but sadly (thought not unexpectedly) I don't think it helped lots of folks to better understand the guidelines.

It was, however, a diverse group that represented many different viewpoints; present were many bloggers, Brian Hall from Transverse Legal, a lawyer specializing in FTC guidelines, John Moore from WOMMA, one of the founders of cmp.ly, agency representatives and even an FTC lawyer that was participating via the twitter stream. Here's the quick rundown of what came from the discussion:

• No one felt the new FTC guidelines added additional credibility to a blogger who reviews products as part of his or her regular activities.
• The FTC guidelines have succeeded in "putting the fear of God" in bloggers, despite the fact that the supposed $11,000 penalties are actually a myth being spread by the media
• Most bloggers understand they need to disclose, and for their own sake, they want to in order to maintain credibility with their audience.
• However, there is no standard for bloggers to follow, and there are many questions around how to disclose across multiple technology platforms - particularly when dealing with micro-media such as Twitter and syndication of content through RSS to multiple platforms.

An interesting parallel was drawn between the frustrations of bloggers and marketers with regard to this issue and the frustrations felt when COPPA was first released. It took time, one participant noted, for the marketing community to figure out what the regulations meant. In time, marketers and agencies did what they felt was right, and set the standard for others to follow.

We at Cone have established our own interpretation of the FTC guidelines, and will be putting our recommendations into action across our client programs as they roll out in 2010. Over time, all of us in the communications world will certainly learn and evolve accordingly, as the question of disclosure works itself out.