The study found women rely heavily on both blogs and message boards when seeking advice and recommendations (Blogs: 21% of the total U.S. online population, 63% of the BlogHer Network; Message Boards/Forums: 38% of the total U.S. online population, and 92% of the iVillage community), especially when looking for information to help with the purchase of new products (Blogs: 22% of the total U.S. online population, and 59% of the BlogHer Network.)

BlogHer users are more active with the top three social media platforms vs the average woman online (Blogs, Facebook, Twitter). In addition blogs are only second to online search as the preferred media source for product purchasing information for BlogHer Network users.

"The twenty million users who visit the BlogHer Network favor blogs over every other media source for reasons both personal and pragmatic," said Elisa Camahort Page, BlogHer co-founder and COO.

"Even as the scale of overall social media usage continues to grow, blogs continue to be a highly reliable resource for all women online as they exert their control over the household purse strings."

Other highlights from the study include:

*Among the iVillage community, 73 percent say they are sharing topics on message boards/forums that they would not share on social networks. Of those, relationships (61%), health (45%) and work-related (39%) issues were the main topics they would not share on social networks.

*Message boards/forums are second only to conversations with friends and family as the preferred source of product purchasing information for iVillage users.
 

Over half (55%) of the women surveyed in said they participate in some kind of blog activity (publishing, posting comments, reading), and 53% use social networks.

But here’s the kicker: Women use social networks in the purest sense only; 75% use them to keep in touch with friends and family, and not so much as information sources or for making purchase decisions. That’s a major insight considering this is the half of population making 85% of purchase decisions in the US.

In contrast, women rely more on blogs for the business of life, and are twice as likely to use blogs than social networks as an information source (64%), for advice and recommendations (43%), and opinion sharing (55%). Women are 50% more likely to use social networks merely as a means of keeping in touch.

A third of those participating in social networks are loyal to just one and do no other social media activities on a weekly basis. There are likely infinite reasons for that, but it sheds a rather harsh light on why only 20% of women appear to use Twitter.

It could mean that most want all of the networking under one roof for convenience, and only desire one-to-many communication if it involves people they know and trust. It could also mean that Twittering is still considered a medium for celebrities, politicians, and digital hipsters; the survey found that women who themselves blog are significantly more active across all forms of social media.

"Bloggers have a broad reach in the social media population and the survey demonstrates that women who blog are the most actively engaged social media participants — constantly seeking out new ideas and ways to share their opinions about those ideas," said Susan Wright, president of Compass Partners.

And other women are listening, perhaps more than they are to traditional media. Thirty percent are watching less TV, 31% are listening to less radio, 36% are reading fewer magazines, and 39% are reading the newspaper less. 

Numbers like that indicate a huge shift in the media landscape: the sex making the most purchase decisions are rejecting traditional media in favor of online sources. Forty-five percent of women in the survey said they decided to purchase an item after reading about it on a blog; among the women in the more digitally savvy BlogHer network, that number is 85%.

Women bloggers are twice as likely to share a positive purchase experience on blogs and/or message boards and about 40% more likely to share a negative experience. So it’s a good idea to be very, very nice to women bloggers, especially since they are likely to carry significant influence with non-blogging women.

"At a time when the economy is top of mind for more than 70 percent of these active social media participants, women who blog are turning to online resources, including blogs, to help them make their day to day purchasing decisions," said BlogHer cofounder Elisa Camahort.

The results of the survey are concluded according the answers of 2,821 women in the general US population, 1,008 women in the BlogHer network, and 788 women in the iVillage network.  

As an ad network, Six Apart is competing with Federated Media Publishing, Glam, Blogads, and others. Here’s how it will work – they will get advertisers, bloggers put the ads up, and the two share revenue (not sure what the payouts are like, but I believe it’s typical to get 20-30%). Six Apart is working with Adify to provide back end support so bloggers can see their payouts and manage their account.

What I like about Six Apart is that they are targeting their services to the little guy (or gal). Even more popular bloggers struggle to draw big name advertisers that pay well. They may be bloggers with a loyal but niche following and are good at writing but lack the know-how or clout to draw advertisers.

Most ad networks have minimum traffic and audience requirements. In this case, publishers can reject blogs they don’t want their ads to show up on. The ad network is currently in invitation-only beta and it’s just for bloggers who use Six Apart’s Vox, TypePad, or LiveJournal.

They are also providing services that help with technical problems that most bloggers face – like how to migrate your blog to another blogging platform. If you want to migrate to TypePad for example, prices start at $199.

I’ve seen companies who don’t get blogs and blogging trying to do this themselves. Then they have to start over or they’re not getting the traffic or response from their blog that they should get. I’d recommend Six Apart’s new services (especially if there was an affiliate program) but what I’d really like is a similar service from WordPress.

Comments

Since about 300 people work for NBC’s iVillage, recent cuts amount to roughly 10 percent of the entity’s workforce.  This figure should show that the division isn’t imploding.  Still, it’s hardly encouraging, and iVillage doesn’t seem to have met with much success or possess a strong sense of direction.

    18 iVillage Employees To
    Lose Their Jobs.

In reference to Healthology, Staci D. Kramer writes, "A final decision hasn’t been made as to what will happen with the actual site itself.  What’s being shut down is the grants-based health education business, which doesn’t fit with iVillage’s core business model."  Those last three words are comforting, at least.

But she continues, "Regardless of what happens to the site, the content that’s been built up will be repurposed across the network, and the various content partnerships that have been established will be maintained."  Which hints at a sort of inexact corporate cannibalism.

iVillage has already achieved a sort of hat trick of bad news stories in the last ten days, but we’ll stay tuned in the quite-possible case that any more leaks out.

"In the Loop" won’t immediately vanish – some NBC stations should still show it through Friday, March 28th.  Low ratings seem to have doomed the television/Web production, however, and this development appears to be part of a pattern.

Michele Greppi recounts the way in which "[t]he show originated from Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla., when it debuted as ‘iVillage Live’ in December."  But, "In an attempt to boost the show’s anemic ratings, NBC News’ in-house production arm, Peacock Productions, took over the hour.  Peacock moved the show to Chicago in search of more celebrity guests; hired executive producer Marlaine Selip . . . and recast it with three co-hosts . . ."

So much for the attempt.  Still, even as a lot of the things associated with the iVillage name implode, Greppi adds, "station group executives are said to continue to believe in the concept behind the show."  There may, then, be yet another cycle of all this at some point in time.

We’d once again advise users, viewers, and/or potential employees to view such occurrences with a healthy sense of caution.

As everyone with a healthy sense of self-preservation realized some time ago, cuts are bound to become pretty common in a recession.  iVillage is owned by NBC, so there are the effects of the writers’ strike to deal with, as well.  Still, there are some odd circumstances surrounding these layoffs.

Adam Ostrow notes, "Looking at the Compete.com numbers, it appears that iVillage has had a significant drop in numbers over the past year, with uniques falling 35 percent.  Not so, according to our source, who says numbers are up about 12% year-over-year to 17 million unique visitors in January."

Maggie Shnayerson relays information from yet another connected individual.  "These people were good enough to agree to go to hell (aka Englewood Cliffs) and they got canned . . . .  Many of them were promised bonuses to move . . . but they had to stay until Dec. 2008.  Big bonuses.  20% of their salaries."

So, if these two rumors are true, we appear to wind up an unnecessarily greedy, yet modestly successful, company.  If they’re false, we’re likely looking at your average sinking-in-a-recession website.  Neither option looks too good, and we wish both past and present iVillage employees well.

This last week was a big one for Covario. They had their annual conference. They changed their name. They announced a 16M funding round. They rolled out some cool new products. And, drum-roll please, they announced a partnership with Semphonic.

Well, maybe that wasn’t the lead. But the partnership is an interesting one – especially since some people might think we are competitors. Fortunately, neither they nor I really see it that way. Here’s the thinking behind the partnership.

Covario’s solution requires companies to feed information about online success back into their reporting solution from the web analytics tools. Makes sense, right? But a lot of their clients (and keep in mind these are mostly very complex multi-channel enterprises) have a hard time doing this: not only do they struggle with getting the web analytics set up right, they struggle with figuring out what the proper optimization goals need to be.

That’s our bread-and-butter, of course. In addition, Covario’s clientele heavily overlaps our areas of focus. They have more technology and probably less Financial Services and Media than Semphonic, but the types of clients (multi-channel, international, complex) and the focus on sites without traditional eCommerce events is very similar. So we’ll be providing these implementation services to Covario clients to make sure they get the best advantage out of all that slick enterprise reporting!

And while Semphonic does have a SEM reporting tool, it’s nothing like Covario’s. CampaignTracker isn’t an enterprise data integration tool – it doesn’t even remotely tackle that function. It isn’t an Enterprise tool at all, and it isn’t for PPC or SEO channel management. It has a fundamentally different purpose, different price-point and different set of users. These two products may live in the same galaxy, but they don’t co-exist in the same solar system. And let’s face it, Semphonic is a consulting company – that’s the heart, soul, core (and revenue) of our business. So when we started talking together, I think both sides quickly realized a partnership was possible.

Best of all, I really like the people there. They are very easy to talk to and do business with. They are smart. And their customers obviously like them a lot. I think the whole corporate culture was apparent in InflectionPoint; it’s a culture that I like and suspect most clients will too.

Their similarity in style to Semphonic was very obvious at InflectionPoint. In fact, there were many aspects of the conference that reminded me of X Change. Since we started X Change, I’ve developed a whole new interest in and (grudging) appreciation of Conferences. I notice lots of things I never thought about before.

This increased attention is a bit ironic, because I mostly don’t like Conferences. I’m not much of a schmoozer; I don’t really enjoy speaking (funny, because I love talking!); and I’ll be honest and admit that I find most conference presentations a bit tedious. Then, after a long day of being kind of bored, I’ll return home to the obligatory mountain of emails we all get and have to do my work.

This complaining is mostly a way of getting to the fact that I thought InflectionPoint was pretty damn good. A couple of notable wins:

    * Extremely limited self-promotion

    * No speakers over breakfast, lunch, dinner

    * Very polite involvement by sponsors (no time-wasting fluff)

    * Outstanding attendees

Unlike most company conferences, the chest-beating was amazingly minimal – they let their customers do almost all the talking. A great strategy since the customers had really good things to say. This reminded me of X Change – but since X Change isn’t designed as a Semphonic customer-only event I think their restraint is even more surprising.

Like X Change, they didn’t pollute breakfast and lunch with speakers. I hate having to speak while people eat. And I hate having to eat while people speak. They served good food, too. Major kudos!

They gave partners sponsorship slots but didn’t waste everybody’s time with long-winded sponsor plugs. We don’t do any sponsor slots at X Change, but this was as nicely handled as I’ve seen. Good job by the sponsors as well.

Most important – they brought together a really good group of people. Part of this is the fact that their products play mostly to very large efforts in very large companies. So they get really serious people involved. The panel I was on included truly senior interactive marketing folks from iVillage, Lenovo and Siemens plus David Falls from DoubleClick. And that’s pretty typical of the whole Conference make-up. Outstanding.

I was deeply impressed by the sophistication of that group. Not something you hear me saying every day. I especially enjoyed chatting with Barry Kresch – whose particular challenges at iVillage are very common in our media client-base. It seemed like we’ve done a lot of similar work and come to similar conclusions about how to effectively measure media sites.

I’m still not that big a fan of panel presentations. They feel a bit like political debates – more sound-bites than real discussion. That’s why I love X Change’s Huddle format. But I’m glad X Change is special that way – we need some kind of special sauce!

Ultimately, what impressed me most about the conference was the emphasis on providing value to their customers. As a consulting company, that makes me feel very comfortable with Covario. Not every software company spends more time listening to their customers than talking at them. Not every? Not many.

It must have been an amazing, exciting, draining week for the people at Covario – with so much news plus a big conference.  Congratulations guys. I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Comments
 

Yep, that’s right, the same guys who give us a great Thursday night lineup (“My Name Is Earl,” “The Office,” “Scrubs,” and “30 Rock,” though I think they swapped the order), just gave Healthline, a medical search engine, a great wad of cash.  Other contributors include Aetna Ventures, LLC, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, and U.S. News and World Report.

There’s the financial side for you.  As for the operational aspects, VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall reports that Healthline “is focusing solely on health search, and is making surprising headway.  It has six million monthly unique users, and is the only search engine among the top-twenty U.S. health-related sites – with the exception of Yahoo Health.”

And to connect the financial and operational facets, we’ll go to an official press release from Healthline itself.  “Highlighting this financing round is a series of key operating alliances between Healthline and its strategic investors, including an agreement in which Healthline will provide its industry-leading search, navigation and content services to NBC Universal’s iVillage Total Health, a consumer health portal.”

Sounds like everybody’s coming out ahead.  I am worried about “Scrubs,” though – seems like the show came kinda close to being cancelled.  Perhaps Healthline could send some of the $21 million its way.

Meredith Vieira, the new co host of the Today show, is blogging her personal thoughts and backstory elements of her interviews on iVillage.

“There are a lot of things I might like to say on a personal level on the blog that I can’t on Today because of time or it might not be appropriate,” Vieira says. “So it helps me wind down and get some thoughts out that I wish I could have otherwise and let people see other sides of my personality.”

And of course it neatly ties the two new acquisitions together and leverages the audiences. Vieira’s arrival at Today attracted 6.9 million viewers. Now they’ve been directed over to iVillage to read the backstories on the Today interviews.

Who wouldn’t want to hear all the ‘real stuff’ we don’t get to see on the show?

And the link to ther blog is right on the homepage of iVillage – so their readers get corss pollinated to the Today show.

Then there is the launch of the daily talk show in December called “iVillage Live” that will be broadcast simultaneously on its local stations and on the iVillage Web site.

Community features such as online chat and blogs will be a big part of the online version of “iVillage Live.”

Don’t ya love it when a social media plan comes together?

Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Website Content Strategy blog: Information about the shifts in media consumption and the use of
technology in marketing and PR so business can stay in touch with
their rapidly moving audiences.

Founded over a decade ago by Candice Carpenter, iVillage barely survived the dot-com bust with stock prices falling to under $1 per share in 2002. Since then, the New York-based Web community has clawed its way back to a covetous 14.5 million unique visitors, as of January.

In addition to parenting tips, celebrity gossip, fashion, love, and diet tips, iVillage also features content from Hearst Corp. magazines Cosmopolitan and Redbook. Hearst Corp. holds a 25% stake in iVillage after a merger that also included Women.com.

“As this transaction demonstrates, we are committed to delivering content to consumers through distribution systems both traditional and new,” said Bob Wright, Vice Chairman and Executive Officer of General Electric and Chairman and CEO NBC Universal.

“Acquiring iVillage will enable us to bring our programming to a large and passionate online community.”

The deal comes on the heals of News Corp.’s monumental purchases of Myspace.com parent company Intermix Media for $580 million and IGN Entertainment for $650 million.

We envision connecting more deeply online, on mobile and on demand with key consumers throughout their various life stages – from their unique interests to their finances to their health and well-being,” said Beth Comstock, President, NBC Universal Digital Media and Market Development.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 86% of women ages 18 to 29 were online, compared with 80% of men in the same age group.

“This acquisition allows us to marry our on-air branded content with compelling new interactive functionality,” added Jeff Zucker, Chief Executive Officer, NBC Universal Television Group. “From the ‘Today Show’ to ‘Project Runway’ to ‘The Biggest Loser’ to all the health & medical and lifestyles segments we do every day.”

Tag: |

Drag this to your Bookmarks.

Add to DiggThis Yahoo My Web