So I’m back from Chicago. I wish I had been able to see more of the city. But when you’re there for a conference, it’s best to go to the conference. Still, by staying downtown, I got a to see the Chicago River, which is gorgeous! And I also loved seeing all the old buildings, like the Chicago Tribune building! One of the things about living on the West Coast is that there isn’t a lot of really old history, so it’s interesting to me, when I get to travel east.
But, tourism isn’t what I was in Chicago for. I was there to learn, network, and figure out how to better serve you, my readers.
I’ll let you know what I took away, what I wish was different, and you can let me know if I’m on the right track! And believe it or not, I’m going to tie it all up with a moral relating to money.
The Good
There were a lot, and I mean A LOT of women there. Some men, too. And everywhere I went, I was running into someone I knew from Facebook, Twitter, or some other online venue. And I met a lot of great women, too. I can’t wait to check out all the new blogs I learned about!
Spending time with Wanda from Walmart and the ElevenMoms was also a joy. I’m amazed at what a great group of women I’m privileged to be associated with, and seeing them face to face doesn’t happen often enough. So I’m extremely grateful to Walmart for sending all of us to BlogHer.
I also roomed with Linsey Knerl, who blogs at Wisebread and Lille Punkin’ Reviews. Since she’s a fellow frugal blogger, I really enjoyed bouncing ideas off her and getting her perspective on blogging, frugality, and life in general.
And as I’ve struggled with the direction of Being Frugal, I clarified something in my own mind during one of the sessions.
I always want Being Frugal to be a benefit to the readers, and I need to keep that first and foremost in my mind. As this blog has grown, I’ve been given a lot more opportunities and I receive a ton more email. I’ve struggled keeping up with it all, and in the process I’ve sometimes lost site of why I blog. I apologize for that, and I’ve renewed my commitment to bringing value to my readers, above all else. That’s the best thing I took away from BlogHer.
The Bad
There were too many people there. And I don’t intend that to be mean or exclusive. But here’s the thing. After all the tickets for BlogHer were sold, tickets were sold for Lobby Con. People who purchased tickets to Lobby Con were eligible to sit in the lobby bar and watch live streaming of the sessions. They were also eligible to hit the BlogHer cocktail parties.
The problem? The wireless internet was overwhelmed, and people had trouble getting online during a blogging conference. Not good at all.
The other problem is that there was a shortage of swag bags for regular BlogHer attendees. You’d get to a party, there would be a mob at the door, and swag bags would be gone in 5 seconds flat (that might be a little exaggerated, but you get the picture). I’m not sure whether that was due to poor planning on the part of the party planners, people who crashed parties, or people who got a little greedy and took more than their share.*
Which brings me to…
The Ugly
It all boils down to one thing. Swag. And this one thing had two problems.
Greed. I kid you not, but from one party, I saw someone walking off with 6 swag bags. I was shocked. It seemed like rather than learning about blogging, the main objective was to get as much stuff as you could get.
Don’t get me wrong. I like cool things as much as the next person. But that’s not the main reason I go to conferences. I want to learn. I want to be challenged. And I don’t feel I really walked away with much that was new to me. I would have liked to have seen less emphasis on parties and stuff, and more emphasis on the craft of blogging. Perhaps I just didn’t get what the conference is supposed to be about. Which is entirely possible. If BlogHer is supposed to be all about parties and swag, that’s fine. It’s just not a conference I’m really interested in going to again. I’d rather be somewhere where I learn how to bring value to readers, not value to me.
The other problem I saw was waste. As a frugal blogger, this drove me crazy. And it wasn’t really a BlogHer thing. It was more of a sponsor/vendor thing. Roses made out of socks look really cool, but when you’re handing out lots of them, it takes a lot of socks to make them. Which is fine, if the socks are actually usable. But Linsey and I took apart a sock flower to find this:
An unusable sock. And how many roses were there?
The Moral of the Story
It all boils down to this: Get your priorities in order and strive for excellence in your top priorities.
In the case of BlogHer, I think it would have been better if they would have sold the allotted tickets and done a great job serving those people, rather than trying to reach beyond their capabilities. If you are stretched too thin, mediocrity is the best you can hope to achieve. Excellence can only be reached if you figure out your target audience and serve that audience well.
Which brings me to this blog. I can’t be everything to everyone. So I need to pick who I’m going to serve well. Me, my readers, or my advertisers. I choose my readers.
I’m not going to quit taking advertising campaigns, but they must always be filtered through the lens of whether or not these campaigns benefit my readers. The ironic thing is, though, that by cutting down the number of advertising campaigns I will work on, I end up benefiting myself by cutting my workload. And I end up benefiting the advertisers I do work with by giving them less competition and more personal attention.
I promised I would tie this into money, so here it is. You can’t do everything. Trips to Hawaii, a trendy wardrobe, private school for the kids, your own home…It’s impossible. I read on a blog once (and I wish I could remember which one) that you can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want. Prioritize. Then take your top priorities and strive for excellence. The rest will fall into place.
That’s what I took away from the conference, and for that reason, I’m glad I went.
Do you strive for excellence in one or two things? Or do you tend to overextend yourself?
*I didn’t get to a lot of parties, and not all of them were bad. Two I attended that were done very well were the Social Luxe and the Energizer Suite.
Photo of Chicago by doug.siefken.
Photo of the unfrugal sock by yours truly.
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I am so with you on this post! And the blog post you mentioned… I wonder if it was mine..? http://www.skimbacolifestyle.c.....rsche.html
I love your honesty in this post. I keep reading from others how wonderful Blogher was and how great all the free stuff was. It was making me kind of wish I was there. I think your honesty in this post puts it in perspective and I wish others would do the same.
Lynnae, you’re always right on track with me – your blog is my all time favorite. I AM curious though – what was in those swag bags that someone would want SIX of them????
And I don’t feel I really walked away with much that was new to me.
That concerns me. I have already purchased tickets for the convention next year since it is in my neck of the woods. I was hoping to learn some wise and mystical secrets to improve my blogging, site traffic and communication skills. Free stuff I can get anytime.
@Katja – I don’t think it was your blog, though I do love that post! I know it was another frugality blogger. Just not sure which one…
@Lynn – it was nice to see other bloggers, so I don’t want to come across as if it were all bad. I just think it could have been better.
@Jean – I honestly don’t remember. I think there were some teddy bears and other kids toys in the bags from that party. So it was nice stuff. Maybe the person had 6 kids?
@Ann – I’m hoping that the BlogHer people learned from this experience. This is the only BlogHer conference I’ve been to, and my roommate said it was much better last year. Hopefully they will adjust. And I think what you learn has to do with your level of blogging experience, too. If you’ve already purchased tickets, go and make the best of it. Networking with other bloggers is great, and even if that’s all you get out of it, it will be worth it to go at least once. So don’t worry too much based on my post. It could have been better, but it could have been worse.
Thank you! That was a great blog. I don’t yet blog but have been wanting to try for a while now. I want to know what I want to write (my audience I am shooting for). Thank you again for this fabulous perspective!
I enjoyed this article a lot. It’s sad to read about people taking more than their share, but I guess it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. It still does shock me, though. I love the swag at conventions and would be very disappointed to pay my fee and find out it was mishandled. This just should not happen. As a matter of fact, I’ve never been to a convention where it was mishandled. I guess that either says a lot for the ones I have attended or speaks really ill of BlogHer.
Hooray for you for deciding what direction to take with your blog. I just dropped my giveaways because some of them were, well, not worth it. Then I find out way after the fact that sponsors are not always as good about shipping prizes as they should be. I just feel left with a bad taste in my mouth, you know?
@tammiegirl – Giveaways are difficult, for sure. I’m not going to drop them all together, but I’m putting together a strategy (in my mind, at least) that makes sure they benefit my readers. And I’m going to be selective about the ones I post.
And shipping is a huge concern. I’ve only had one problem with sponsors not shipping prizes so far, and fortunately it was just a problem with a missed email, not laziness on the sponsor’s part. Still, if I ever dealt with a sponsor that didn’t ship a giveaway in a timely manner, as promised, that would be the last time I deal with them.
Great blog post…it was our first BLOGher and we left excited at meeting all of the wonderful ladies but extremely disappointed in the lack on CONTENT…My hubby and I were both registered attendees…we tried the divide and conquer approach for classes and still came home with very little new ideas, new tools, new resources etc for our blogging.
The focus seemed to be on the SWAG, what parties people were invited to or not invited to, late night Blogher parties etc.
Positive meeting everyone – negative the expense we paid to come home with little to use for our blog etc.
“If you are stretched too thin, mediocrity is the best you can hope to achieve.”
That is a profound statement that can be applied to many areas other than a blog conference. Great insight!
Lynnae, I really appreciate your insight and honest feedback, even though I couldn’t attend Blogher myself.
I also wonder if we as a blog community have become so focused on the social networking (in person and online) that we lose sight of the blog itself. Something I am also refocusing in my own life.
Nice review of BlogHer! I’ve never gone and would like to next year. It’s good to know that the networking is fun, but it does seem like they’ve gone a bit overboard w/ corporate sponsors.
Great post!
I know that I will never be a power blogger (I’m going to school to be a special ed teacher, for crying out loud!), so prioritizing for me is huge. That said, I tend to do want to do EVERYTHING I can (personally and professionally) and it was The Man Beast who put a mirror up to my face and told you – you are not Supermom. You should stop trying because when you try, you become a worse version of yourself. Ouch. But he was right.
I will say that from a READER’S STANDPOINT – I will read blogs that pertain to me personally – either as a mom, a blogger, a writer or a frugal shopper. I like wit and content without being boring and dry. I rarely visit blogs that have a lot of vulgarity and never use it on my own site – I just don’t find that I need it…but I don’t know others for using it in THEIR blogs (I just choose to click away – and THAT’S OKAY. I don’t think every blogger can appeal to everybody. Those are few and far between)
You’re doing a great job :)
My post has the exact same name! And pretty much felt the same way.
I kind of can’t get over the whole roses made out of useless socks thing. Is there really a market for that?
Lynnae, I applaud your prioritizing with sponsorships! This is a difficult balance for so many bloggers and site owners – advertising money is great, but not at the expense of authenticity and useful content. There’s nothing wrong with engaging with sponsors and carefully selecting which brands your audience will relate to, but it becomes a problem when a blog turns into one long stream of ads. I know I struggle with keeping an appropriate mix of sponsored and un-sponsored content, and I’m sure lots of other people do, too. I’ve always enjoyed the balance you strike with your blog. Keep up the good work!
I must confess I was downtown without any conference passes of any type, since I’m local but poor, but if it makes you feel better (and your points were all very valid), we only went to events open to the public, and only to meet people while we had this rare chance. We got a few swag bags, of course, but nothing too special, for the most part– mostly advertisements and trinkets. No Socialuxe Oscar-type bags or free cameras for us. Even some people who registered didn’t get theirs, thanks to a few shamelessly greedy folks…
My wife helped packed the bags at the People’s Party, so we ended up with two of those once we reconnected, but the most exciting goodies we got were from BowlHer, for which I had registered before the conference. I was able to bowl a few strikes for Wal-Mart gift cards (which they started giving freely after overestimating their needs, apparently), so now we’ll get $40 of the usual stuff there instead of Target. Then it’s back to Target/Costco for us! Sorry, Wal-Mart, it’s not me, it’s you.
Anyway, this was a good post, and very true. But still, I hope they come back here another year after spreading it around for a couple years.
Lynnae, thanks so much for this post! I could not agree with you more. This statement sums up my BlogHer experience as well: “I would have liked to have seen less emphasis on parties and stuff, and more emphasis on the craft of blogging.” Like you, I didn’t learn much about blogging, but I sure did learn a lot about bloggers, and it wasn’t all positive either.
I enjoyed sitting with you at lunch on Friday. That was what I was expecting from the whole experience!
Thanks for posting this. I started to feel bad about not going to blogher(even though there is no way I could have afforded it) and your post shows me that the reason I wanted to go wasn’t validated. It’s nice to put faces(and voices) with blogs, but if i’m going to put time and money into going to a conference, I need to LEARN something. There’s always a party to go to anywhere in the country, but you can only learn from “the best bloggers” once in a good while, if you’re lucky.
It’s great to see that you’re planning on dedicating more to us readers. I love your blog and check in daily, and advertising really goes to the back burner when of thing of Being Frugal. I love the information and your outlook on the frugal world around us. That’s all I need from this blog :o)
There’s no place like home, heh?
Glad you brought back some new ideas and look forward to your
implementation of them.
So, for us really rural folks, what the heck is a swag anyway?
I’m glad your priorities are to focus on the reader. Yours is always
a very honest and heartfelt blog and your readers/commentors are always helpful also! Stay focused! And glad you are back!
@marci – Swag = bags filled with stuff. Generally put together by vendors, wanting bloggers to try their stuff.
A goodie bag. Freebies. Gotcha :)
Thanks :)
Great post Lynnae. So many bloggers that have returned from BlogHer have reported on the intensity surrounding people grabbing for swag. It’s so sad. Of course it’s fun to get free stuff, but seriously people chill out!
Oooh looks like someone’s got a dusting sock! Old socks are great cleaning devices.
You should read an article from “The Consumerist” about one of the attendees trying to extort a pair of crocs by telling the rep “..if you don’t give me shoes -I could totally write something bad about you on my blog.”
http://consumerist.com/5324719.....r-of-crocs
Lynnae, people are being asked to link-up their reviews here
@Ann – Thanks for the head’s up. I’m linked now. :)
Tell me they didn’t cut the socks! Gah!
Unfortunately, it sounds like the tone was set by the greed of those who put on the conference by opening it up to more people than could be accomodated. I am new to reading all of these blogs. Does Wal-Mart sponsor blogher or is it sponsored by a combination of vendors? Also, I find it ironic that Wal-Mart has an Eleven Moms group but seems to be one of the least mom-friendly store I shop.