BlogHer’s Elisa Camahort Page: Tips for First Time Blogger (VIDEO)

[ 0 ] May 1, 2012 | Elisa Camahort Page

Watch Elisa Camahort Page, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of BlogHer.com, the Web’s leading guide to the hottest news and trends among women in social media, speak with genConnect’s Randi Zucker about the mission for the site and her advice to women just starting to blog in the video below:

ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: Absolutely. So BlogHer is the largest community of women who blog and use social media online. We started six years ago. We actually started with a conference for 300 women, realized there was a huge community of passionate women out there who wanted to connect, and from there, launched a company. My two co-founders, Jory DesJardins and Lisa Stone and I started doing more events, launched blogher.com which is the community hub, and launched a publishing network where now we work with over 2,500 bloggers and reach 25 million unique visitors a month.And our mission is to create opportunities for those women who use social media to pursue lots of things, but education, exposure, community, and definitely economic empowerment.RANDI ZUCKER: And when this started in 2005, did you have any idea of what this would have become?ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: No. It was very a different landscape in 2005. People were still asking who was going to ever blog. And people definitely had an impression of bloggers that was that we were all sort of the unwashed masses in our pajamas in front of the computer screen ranting about politics. In fact, women blog about everything under the sun.But not only that, statistically the women in our community are heavy media consumers of all media, not just online but TV and movies and magazines. And the women in our community are statistically more likely to go out and be social than the average woman online. So the impression was actually very, very different from the reality.RANDI ZUCKER: Now speaking of being social, there’s now social networks out there such as Twitter and Facebook. How has that affected the landscape of women who blog?ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: Yes. When we started, there was no Twitter. Facebook was still just for college students. Like I said, really different. Speaking as a Twitter-holic, we bloggers love our Twitter and Facebook because it’s a great tool for bringing more people to find our work. And whether we’re blogging about causes we believe in, or blogging to establish ourselves as experts in various topics, or simply blogging to get support around an issue we’re dealing with, there’s nothing better for bringing more people to have conversation than to make sure you’re also promoting it on Twitter and promoting it on Facebook.The women in our network reach 25 million five via their blogs. They reach another 8 million at least who are additional fans and followers and adherents to what they’re putting out on those other sites. So it’s a great halo effect.RANDI ZUCKER: And what advice do you have for a female who’s looking to be introduced to this whole blogging community?ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: Technically, you have a lot of options. You have free tools. You have tools that cost a little bit of money. You have really user-friendly tools and more complicated tools. You can start blogging on BlogHer. You can use Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, Squarespace. There’s a lot of tools. Some of them as easy– they look like you’re using a word processing tool.The most important thing is to blog about something you can imagine would be interesting for you to talk about for years to come. Because if you have an interest in growing your audience and maybe even making money from your blog, consistency and sticking to it and longevity are actually really important. And it’s a lot easier to accomplish that if you care about what you’re talking about.So I certainly know people who have started blogs about I’m going to do a Britney Spears watch blog because that’ll be really keyword popular and I’ll get lots of traffic. And that’s one approach. But for most of us, we would rather blog about something we care about and feel passion for and are excited to get up and talk about every day. If that’s Britney Spears for you, awesome. But for a lot of us, it’s something a little closer to the heart and personal.RANDI ZUCKER: Thank you so much for your time here at South by Southwest.ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: Thanks, Randi.RANDI ZUCKER: It was great to speak with you. And enjoy the rest of your week here.ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: Thank you so much.RANDI ZUCKER: And this is Elisa Camahort Page. The best place to reach you?ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: blogher.comRANDI ZUCKER: blogher.com. And we’re going to be here for the rest of the week interviewing key speakers and attendees at South by Southwest such as remarkable women like Elisa.

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Tags: Advice, blogging, BlogHer, co-founder, COO, Elisa Camahort Page, SXSW, technology, women

Category: SXSW2011, Videos, Views on the News

About Elisa Camahort Page: Elisa Camahort is a co-founder and COO of BlogHer, managing its events, marketing and corporate operations. A marketing executive with 17 years of experience in Silicon Valley, Elisa left her life in high tech product [...]
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BlogHer’s Elisa Camahort Page: Tips for First Time Blogger (VIDEO)

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