BlogHer.com is a great resource to help bloggers network, market their blogs, learn and more. While BlogHer is primarily dedicated to female bloggers, there are a variety of conferences and other resources that male bloggers can take advantage of as well. The co-founder and COO of BlogHer, Elisa Camahort Page, took some time to answer questions to help About.com's Web Logs readers learn how to effectively use BlogHer.
What is BlogHer?
BlogHer is the web's number one guide to and source for women bloggers. BlogHer's mission is to create opportunities for education, exposure, community and economic empowerment for women bloggers. To that end, we've built a media network that includes a news and community hub at BlogHer.com, a conference series that will hit eight cities across the United States in 2008, and an advertising network that now numbers over 1400 bloggers as affiliate members.
How can bloggers use BlogHer to promote their blogs?
There are several ways members can work BlogHer...perhaps most directly any member can blog directly on BlogHer. There are forums, and you can also blog on the site. Many members use this ability to post teasers to their work over on their own sites. It's a way to let the entire community know what you're up to. You can also list your blogs in our directories. We are the single largest resource for finding blogs by women. In addition, BlogHer works very hard to give the linky love to bloggers. We have over 60 contributing editors focused on over 20 hot topics, from tech to food to parenting to politics. Every week they're pointing our members to what's going on out in the blogosphere.
Our BlogHer Ad Network members have headlines featured in every ad that shows across our network. Every blogger big or small gets featured equally often, and as a member of the network myself I can tell you that I notice the bump when one of my headlines is featured.
Finally, we have an open call for ideas to speak at every one of our conference events, and we are incredibly dedicated to featuring new and fresh voices. We have a track record of featuring about 80% new speakers at every event. The point is to shine a spotlight on the diverse talent and quality that is out there in the blogosphere, and that means constantly refreshing who you're listening to and reading.
What is the most important thing for a new user to know or understand about BlogHer when they first visit the site?
That there is a lot of information and a lot of conversation going on, because we don't silo a woman's interests. But at the same time it's OK to focus on the topics you are most interested in. You can get RSS feeds for only certain topics, bloggers or sections of the site. We notice that our members hop from subjects serious to silly, commenting as they go, but if you only care about one or the other, it's OK to focus.
If a new user is overwhelmed and not sure where to begin when they first visit BlogHer's website, what advice can you give to help them navigate through everything that's offered on the site? Could you give a suggested roadmap of what to do on the site to get the most out of it?
I would start with our post about using BlogHer.com (called, "Using This Site"). This post does a great job of pointing out some of the lesser-known features on the site, like newsletters, tags and ways to share links with outside social networking sites. Once you read that post you'll want to:
- Register as a member,
- list your own blogs in the directory and
- start surfing.
Could you describe how BlogHer memebers can post their own blog entries on the BlogHer site and how that can help them?
Like I mentioned, you do have to be a registered member to blog on the site, so do that first. Then click on the button that says "Create content" and go to town. Members do this to promote their own writing and work. Members do this when they don't want to start an external blog yet, but they want to experiment with moving beyond commenting. Members do this when they want to express something they don't think fits with their usual blog content.
What types of forums are available on BlogHer and how can bloggers use them?
Our most active forums are the ones about the conferences, the one where people can post jobs and gigs (and we know many folks who have landed professional blogging or community management jobs from this Forum) and the ones that are blogging about blogging.
What is the BlogHer advertising network? What makes it unique from other advertising options available?
The BlogHer Ad Network is our network of affiliate bloggers. We are different for a few reasons. First of all we believe in helping all boats rise, so we accept quality bloggers of all sizes. We present these bloggers as part of a bundle, so we don't pit individual bloggers against one another by having blogs cherry-picked for advertising. We provide promotion to our bloggers to, again, helping all bloggers grow their traffic and get their word out. We're also CPM-based, not CPC-based, so you are not reliant on people clicking on the ads to generate revenue. We allow bloggers to opt out of any ad campaign, and to opt out in advance of whole industries or individual companies as they see fit.
From the advertiser's perspective, we are here to build a bridge. We are all bloggers ourselves, so we understand both sides of this relationship. We can directly address concerns they might have about perceptions that the blogosphere is some wild wooly wilderness. We have strong editorial guidelines in place, and we have humans who are actively reviewing the blogs in our network to make sure everyone is meeting our guidelines for blogging frequency, topic relevancy and content quality. We're presenting a truly unique opportunity to join the conversations that real (and influential) women are having out across the very long tail of the Internet. Women control over 80% of the household dollar, so the value in reaching over 8 million unique (and uniquely engaged) users via the BlogHer ad network is extremely high!
