Last week, I was completely energized after attending Blogalicious a women’s blogging conference. I was on a panel—The Truth About Brands & Bloggers—but truly considered myself more of a student than a teacher for the weekend. Through a number of candid conversations with my fellow panelists and impromptu chats with some prolific bloggers, I got a refresher—and crash course—of what’s on the minds of brands and bloggers as we continue to work together in the space. Here are the Cliffs’ Notes on what I found most relevant and inspiring. Special thanks to my rockstar panelists Nancy Martira,Ted Rubin and Don Moore, the fabulous women of Blogalicious who invited me down and of course the brilliant bloggers who schooled me all weekend.
From Blog Squads to Ambassadors and Brigades: A lot of buzz words can surround the blogosphere as brands and bloggers partner together. From content campaigns, to ambassadors, brigades and squads the list can read like something out of a super hero book. Then there are your twitter parties, tweet ups, sponsored posts and content campaigns all working to support an overall theme, message or conversation. But from what I have sensed and seen in the space, we’ll see a shift in the year ahead, where the bloggers move from a supporting role in a marketing communications plan to the star of it. We’re already seeing national mainstream brands like TJ Maxx lead the way and I predict we’ll see more bloggers take center stage in 2012. Nancy Martira and I were on the same page here and she encouraged both bloggers and brands to brainstorm something big together (there were a lot of head nods)!
If Content is King, Engagement is Queen: One of my fellow panelists Ted Rubin said this during our panel and it was met with applause and laughter. Although I teased him for pandering to the almost 100% female audience, I must say he was truly spot on. The last few years brands have spent time building their social media profiles, but now that they have these audiences, making sure they are engaged, listened to and thanked is key. Working with bloggers is a terrific way to humanize a brand, create winning content and build a community where consumers will gain value and stick around.
People Share Awesome: This quote was from Don Moore, and while it sounds like common sense, for those of us work in the space we know it is not always so common. As brands and bloggers work together more, it’s increasingly important to work on campaigns and creative ideas that their readers and consumers want to share. No one wants to be the brand that takes over a blog with sponsored content that becomes the dullest thing on the menu? The content that bloggers create and share, on behalf of brands should be as awesome as the content they organically share. That means not pushing bloggers to create overly commercial messages and content. We all win when we move from marketing to people to moving them.
