Let's talk about Blogher '09.

First, congratulations and thank you to Lisa, Elisa, Jory and their dedicated team for creating and hosting an event that means a great deal to a growing community of people. From location to sessions to ticketing to sponsors, producing a multi-day event for 1500+ people is an enormous task and I thank them for doing it.

By now, many bloggers have posted their opinions on the swag (yeah, it was pretty crazy), event-related dramas (nikon as the new motrin), and the black hole called wifi at the venue. I'll skip all that.

I'd rather share my observations of the community/event from the business side of the blogosphere.

As you probably know if you're reading this, I lead the social media and PR practices for creative ad agency Red Tettemer. I started specializing in social media in 2005, when I worked for a consumer PR agency in NYC and transitioned from my previous career focus on traditional media. Prior to that, I blogged privately from 1998 on (unrelated to my job as a PR person at the same time).

I frequently work with a wide variety of bloggers on behalf of clients, although that's just a small part of what I do.

When I started working with bloggers, I mostly represented tech clients and the bloggers I worked with were primarily, ex-journalists who left traditional media to blog. Working with them wasn't much different from working with traditional media. The same level of professionalism applied, and they understood common industry things like NDA's (non-disclosure agreements), product loans/review units (common practices to garner coverage), embargoes (agreed upon future date that the journalist will publish confidential information, usually in exchange for exclusivity on the announcement), advances (confidential pre-launch information provided to a journalist to prepare to publish a story on an agreed upon date, which is not necessarily exclusive but shared with limited non-competitive media outlets at the same time), press events, deskside briefings, etc.

What was a wake up call for me at Blogher, is the enormous number of attending citizen journalists who had no knowledge of journalism fundamentals. I wasn't the only one surprised at this observation, a journalist assigned to cover the event ended up standing up and commenting during Geekmommy's session, schooling the much of the audience on these fundamentals (sharing basics like: review units are a common practice, you have to receive them to review the product, don't feel badly about "accepting" free product).

Now, one could argue that the attendees weren't citizen journalists but rather hobbyists. In my opinion, in this economy, if you're paying $200 for a conference pass, plus airfare, and $200 a night for a hotel room for 3 nights, this probably is more than a hobby. For that kind of spend, if it's not a business now, you want it to be.

So here's my advice for the new and inexperienced:

• Take a journalism course. Seriously. At your local community college, attend a lecture, read some books. There are best practices, ethics and guidelines. See how they can adapt to your blog if you are reporting on things/people. There are also legal guidelines to be aware of in reporting.
• Present yourself as a professional. If you're seeking to generate revenue from your blog, then it's your business. You are your own product. Speak like an adult and with confidence, so that I can believe in your product and walk away feeling I NEED to work with you.
  
• Don't make noise, make a good impression. I can't tell you how many bloggers wasted money on print materials (postcards, flyers, etc) promoting their blog, that they scattered around the venue on tables and chairs like a college band playing a local bar. They generated meaningless leave behinds that just added waste. The real winners were the people who participated, contributed to conversation and connected with the rest of the attendees.
  

My last observation is for both marketers and bloggers. There were many attending bloggers who were "sponsored" by a brand (meaning the brand covered their travel and/or expenses) or acting as brand ambassadors for a brand. Unfortunately, in many cases, neither the brand nor the blogger were experienced in this tactic, leaving many of us bewildered by friends or new acquaintances shoving brochures or products into our overloaded bags with little to no explanation on what they were, what we were supposed to do with them and why.

I've been fortunate enough to work mainly with Fortune 500 brands throughout my almost 15-year career in marketing, so this next observation completely baffled me. I've always briefed/educated a brand ambassador on our brand or product in advance of an event and had a laid out plan that provided meaning as well as metric for measurement, which was agreed upon by the brand and the ambassador. At the end of the event we both analyzed results and benefit to the brand.

I have no idea how a brand ambassador shoving a postcard or soap sample into my laptop bag intended to deliver a measured ROI (return on investment).

If I were a brand manager that would be the first or second thing I'd be thinking about when fleshing out a sponsored blogger approach.

Additionally, if I were a blogger interested in a long-term partnership with a brand or company, I'd be asking myself what value I could bring to the brand as an ambassador, and how that could be measured as a success to secure an ongoing business relationship/revenue stream with them. Being able to track, measure and prove success is not only the way to advance your own brand, but also something critical for bloggers to do & own during a time of corporate america layoffs and revolving executives. In short, if your marketing contact moves, you need to be able to show the new executive how you moved the needle for the brand in the past, so that you can continue to do so in the future.

Questions? Hit up my comments.

And Good luck!