ChasNote

From yesterday’s NY Times:

“Heather Armstrong’s wickedly funny blog about motherhood, Dooce, is more than just an outlet for the creativity and frustrations of a modern mother. The site, chock full of advertising, is a moneymaking machine — so much so that Ms. Armstrong and her husband have both quit their regular jobs…. advertisers are eager to influence the 850,000 readers, mostly women, who avidly follow Ms. Armstrong’s adventures. Although Ms. Armstrong will not disclose exact numbers, Dooce’s revenue this year is on track to be seven times its size in 2006, according to Federated Media, which sells ads for the blog.”

If the Times requires you to register, here’s roughly the same article at IHT.

JCPenney’s Linden Street line has teamed up with a half dozen FM authors to create the Home Style Guide, a group blog that pulls high-style decorating posts — chairs to build a room around or a DIY wood clock, for example — from Craftzine, Cool Mom Picks, Dooce, the Pioneer Woman, NOTCOT and others. JCPenney is the exclusive sponsor of the site (though they don’t control the editorial content), like they were last year on a similar site, FM’s Fall Shopping Guide. Featured Linden Street products are promoted down the left-hand column.

This expansion of the concept JCPenney piloted last fall suggests the “converational marketing” approach is working for them. Additional press on the earlier program:

Abbey Klaassen covered it for Ad Age, which requires registration so here’s a summary at ChasNote.

Steve Rubel gave it props in his year-end round up, from Micropersuasion.

Readers become subscribers, from ChasNote.

I forget who first used the phrase “Oprah of Oklahoma” for Ree the Pioneer Woman, but it works for me.

Not that the Pioneer Woman is the richest woman in America, nor does she dominate daytime television. But, like Oprah, she’s built a relationship with her fans that is cult-like in its fervor. When Oprah gives away Pontiacs, it’s national news; when the Pioneer Woman posts recipes featuring dairy products (as part of a sponsorship by the Dairy Council to promote 3-A-Day of Dairy), hundreds of readers comment on every post. This lasagna recipe, for example, elicited nearly 400 comments.

Ree, got any tips for little ol’ ChasNote??

(Credits: Matt Trotta at FM worked with the crew at Edelman on this sponsorship.)

Heather Armstrong of Dooce picked up several honors at the 2008 Bloggies, including Best American Weblog, Best-Designed Weblog, Weblog of the Year, and Lifetime Achievement. Congrats, Heather!

Ree of Confessions of a Pioneer Woman took home Best Writing of a Weblog and (for her other site, Pioneer Woman Cooks) Best Food Weblog. Go, Ree!

Ree’s Confessions of a Pioneer Woman is among several hip-young-women sites included in a conversational marketing campaign for Nintendo’s Wii. This week she replaced her “Give This Picture A Caption” contest with a “Share An Embarrassing Moment and Win a Wii” contest. She posted the contest today at 3pm Pacific; as I write this, 5pm Pacific, her readers have submitted 1357 embarrassing stories. (UPDATE 2/8: By 9pm yesterday when she closed the contest, 2992 stories had been entered.) Ree’s readers want their Wiis!

As part of HP’s continued efforts to make websites and blogs more printable, and to get customers more comfortable with printing projects in general, they’ve sponsored the photo sections of parenting sites such as Dooce and Confessions of a Pioneer Woman. Here’s the masthead at Dooce, where HP invites readers to share their own pet photos.

The Pioneer Woman hosts frequent “Give That Photo A Name” contests. Today’s installment solicited nearly 3000 comments in around six hours. (Yes, 3000 reader comments attached to a single post.) The lead-in to today’s contest, the Pioneer Woman alerts her readers to the new functionality added to her site as part of HP’s sponsorship: “Before I show you the prize, have you noticed the little ‘Print Pioneer Woman Photos’ blurb in my nav bar above? Here. Let me show you.” Followed by these screenshots:

Conversational marketing can be this simple. Simple yet well situated — right in the thick of an engaged conversation among 3000 web-savvy moms.

Not that Ree was hiding out before, but here’s a closer look at the story behind Confessions of a Pioneer Woman and The Pioneer Woman Cooks, courtesy of CNN:

It’s great to see Dooce and Confessions of a Pioneer Woman among the leaders in the “hottest mommy blogger” contest! (Pioneer Woman makes a second appearance in the “best photography blog” category too, as does Dooce in the “blogitzer” category for sites with the best writing.)

Boing Boing’s among the “best geek blog” list and Sweet Juniper’s on the “best parenting blog” and “hottest daddy blogger” lists.

Congrats!

We’re just a few weeks into JCPenney’s sponsorship of FM’s Fall Shopping Guide (see ChasNote 9/17/07), but today I came across an interesting stat: Among the top 5 URLs driving traffic to the Guide is Google’s RSS reader. In other words, visitors to the site like what they see, and they’re subscribing to RSS updates to the site.

FM’s Fall Shopping Guide, sponsored by JCPenney, rolled out last week. Earlier today, I searched for “fall shopping guide” at Google. Among the 44,600,000 relevant sites Google identified, the JCPenney-sponsored Fall Shopping Guide is the 3rd result. In the #2 position is a post at Craftzine, one of the participating sites, on a page where they tell their readers about the sponsorship program. Wow, what’s going on here?!

Here’s what the Fall Shopping Guide is:

“The Federated Media Fall Shopping Guide, brought to you by JCPenney and the new Chris Madden Collection, is debuting for the 2007 season, bringing together the most influential voices in the parenting, women’s lifestyle, travel & leisure communities.The Fall Shopping Guide features authors of the best and most influential independent parenting, cooking & home accessories web sites that exist today.”

The site aggregates editorial content from leading, independent sites affiliated with FM such as Dooce, Celebrity Baby Blog, Amalah, Parent Hacks, The Mommy Blog, Paper Napkin, Sweetney, Craftzine, Confessions of a Pioneer Woman, and The Pioneer Woman Cooks. JCPenney doesn’t review or influence the content provided by these sites, though the sponsorship includes banner ads and product promotions for the Chris Madden line on the Fall Shopping Guide site.

If Opening Weekend is any indication, JCPenney also gets the benefit of engaged audiences that come for the third-party content, but find themselves talking about the JCPenny brand. “Giving Up My Vanity for a Laundry Room,” a post from Confessions of a Pioneer Woman, published to the site on Friday, September 14. In four days readers have posted 77 comments.

One reader, a fan of Pioneer Woman, gives JCPenney full credit for the site:

“I never knew JC Penney even had a blog. But even moreso, I never dreamed I’d be reading it. And yet here I am. And there you are with your lime green countertop. And I’m going to have to subscribe to the dang thang to get the rest of the story. Darn you Ree.”

Another:

“As if I don’t spend enough time reading Confessions of a Pioneer Woman and The Pioneer Woman Cooks, now I’ll be checking in here regularly. Clearly, less sleep is the only answer!”

And:

“Ree, your writing is like crack cocaine to me (or how I imagine it would be anyway.) Last spring I stumbled upon your blog-I think it was the chocolate cake recipe before your ‘cooks’ site came along, started reading previous posts, and unless we’re camping in the woods away from internet connections, I MUST read it everyday. At least it’s a healthy addiction-provided I don’t cook your recipes every day. Thanks for all you put into it for all of us strange people who just can’t get enough of what you and your family are up to. I can’t wait to hear the solution to the vanity delimma!”

And:

“I am right there with OMSH. You’ve done it again Ree…and all of your faithfuls are following you. JC Penney has no idea what they have gotten themselves into do they?”

Or maybe — just maybe! — they do. By leaving the content decisions to established third-party authors, they allow the “sponsored” site to maintain the authenticity and active audience engagement that makes the participating sites themselves successful. Because the Fall Shopping Guide site assembles editorial (not advertorial) content, several authors, including those at Craftzine, invited their readers to have a look. When highly-influential, highly-trusted sites feel a sense of ownership over the project, it’s a winning formula for the marketer.

The FM team that built out this program includes James Gross, Sam Kahn, Matt Jessell and Pamela Parker. More on them here.

UPDATE 10/2/07: We’re just a few weeks into JCPenney’s sponsorship of FM’s Fall Shopping Guide, but today I came across an interesting stat: Among the top 5 URLs driving traffic to the Guide is Google’s RSS reader. In other words, visitors to the site like what they see, and they’re subscribing to RSS updates to the site.

UPDATE 10/4/07: Someone who’s enjoying the JCPenney-sponsored Fall Shopping Guide added it to social-bookmarking site StumbleUpon, and 500 StumbleUpon members paid a visit to the Guide. I have to admit, I don’t know much about StumbleUpon or the usage patterns of the self-reported base of nearly 3.6 million users. But if one-tenth of a percentage of them click through to the sites listed on a given day, that says 500,000 StumbleUpon users were exposed today to a free promotion for the Guide. Maybe a full percentage of StumbleUpon users click through, which would say 50,000 of them saw a link to the Guide. Either case, thanks for the love, Stumblers!

UPDATE 12/18/07: Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion applauds JCPenney’s Fall Shopping Guide sponsorship as a model for an emerging trend in digital media: brands “investing in creating their own content.”