There was too much happening there over two insightful days for me to sum it up in one post. There were several great presentations by a variety of people on things being done in the realm of blogging, social media, social media-based marketing and PR, and other topics. Do click over to BlogHer's page to get a run-down of some of the presentations. Among them were:

• Research by BlogHer showing the habits of women bloggers. More of them are blogging, and more frequently. Their top motives for blogging are: fun, self-expression, and to connect with others. That's just a few of their findings.
  
• Jennifer Cisney of Kodak's Thousand Words blog talked about how the blog expresses the brand. It is, simply, passion for photography.
  
• General Motors (a client of ours) talked about the success it had with an event for the Manic Mommies community that shifted perceptions about the brand and engendered goodwill between the brand and the participants.
  
• Heather Gorringe is a delightful presenter, the chief brain behind Wiggly Wigglers, creator of a web site, blog and podcast for a company that sells worms from Herefordshire, in the U.K. Ok, it's not just worms, it's earth-friendly gardening supplies of all kinds. What was most remarkable about Heather, to me, was her down-to-earth manner of reducing what are seemingly complex marketing problems to the very simple process of "having a chat." She makes the new media landscape as approachable as an English village.
  
• Graco talked about the success it had with bringing bloggers to an event, and made the very important point that while people distrust companies, they trust individuals. They communicated through their work in this space that Graco, the company, is also people, and wants to relate, person to person, to its customers.

Those are just a few of the high points, as I said. One of the big messages I got from the conference was the recurring theme that in approaching bloggers, it's not about you, the agency, the brand, the company, it's about them, the blogger, the customer. Even a casual survey of social media shows we're living in a consumer-centric world. Talk to these bloggers, as Susan Getgood said, the way you'd talk to your customers.