Representatives of major corporations such as Kodak, Southwest Airlines and Johnson & Johnson were in Park City on Saturday to connect with hundreds of bloggers and social networking aficionados from across the country.
They gathered at The Canyons Resort for the 2011 Evo conference on women in social media. The sold-out Evo event — short for evolution — put the spotlight on the growing number of women who write blogs or have developed followings on Facebook and Twitter. Increasingly, these women are being tapped by companies like McDonald’s and Pepperidge Farm that now consider blogs and social media important brand-building and marketing tools.
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Why companies are turning to blogs
Research shows bloggers are increasingly viewed as trusted sources of recommendations:
More than half of active U.S. blog readers have made a purchase based on a blog recommendation.
Companies have found that a special blog promotion involving a familiar blogger can be just as effective a marketing tool as a celebrity endorsement.
Sources: Nielsen Co., BlogHer Inc.
The top categories of items consumers turn to blogs for recommendations are electronics, computer hardware/software and movies.
Blogs aren’t the only type of sites growing in influence. After only two years, daily deal sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial are used by more than half of women who are online. Location-based apps like Foursquare are now used by 16 percent of all adults who are online.
Sources: Nielsen Co., BlogHer Inc.
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The conference was created by Utah bloggers Rachael Herrscher, who owns and runs TodaysMama.com, and Jyl Johnson Pattee, who operates MomItForward.com.
"Women’s voices are influential, and companies understand that," Herrscher said.
Conference attendee Lisa-Marie Leihy, of Tampa, Fla., who writes for travel-oriented website Trekaroo.com, has served as a "Snow Mama," or brand ambassador, for Park City Mountain Resort, chronicling her efforts to learn to ski for a nationwide audience. She came to the Evo conference in part to learn more about developing her own personal blog.
The conference, in its second year, is among a number held nationwide each year to connect bloggers and social media users with companies, such as the larger BlogHer conference, which will be held in San Diego Aug. 5-6.
Some bloggers and those with followings on Twitter and Facebook will serve as product spokespeople; others will hold online "parties" to help develop a company’s brand and image.
Many of the bloggers in attendance have thousands, even millions of visits to their sites each month.
Keynote speaker Jason Pollock, a consultant and filmmaker, said that given how fast and far information is disseminated via social networks, even a blogger with only several hundred visitors per month can make a big impact for a company.
Molly O’Donnell, director of marketing communications for Kinect for Xbox 360, was at the conference to connect with "mommy" bloggers. Utah has some popular bloggers who write about family issues, including Heather Armstrong, who writes at Dooce.com
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