Going After Bloggers: A conversation with Sherry Petersik co-author younghouselove.com

10|6|2009

According to a Universal McCann research report, 77% of Internet users read blogs. Approximately 184 million have started their own blog. And even as blogs near the saturation point, the blogger-marketer relationship is still pretty much undefined. Is an "old-fashioned" banner ad as close as you can get to blogvertising without upsetting these new citizen journalists? Can brands and blogs coexist peacefully?

We took these questions to blogger Sherry Petersik. She and her husband, John, met
and fell in love in New York City while working for an advertising agency. They moved to
Virginia, got married and fell in love again – this time with their home.

The potential of their humble brick ranch turned the house into quite the project. The
couple began blogging their remodeling and redecorating adventures at YoungHouseLove.com(YHL), mainly to keep family and friends in the loop. Readers glommed on to the stylish couple’s quick-witted posts and savvy designs. YHL’s audience grew as the home progressed and now gets more than 80,000 hits a day.

The blog is now Sherry’s full-time job (and John’s demanding part-time gig). The Petersiks’ projects have been picked up by numerous media outlets, including CNN, HGTV’s "Rate My Space," The Nest Magazine, ApartmentTherapy.com and RealSimple.com. (The day after we spoke with Sherry, she was mentioned in a New York Times article about decorating.) They’ve recently been tapped for a monthly column in Better Homes & Garden’s (BH&G) Do It Yourself Magazine.

POV: How should brands approach a blogger?

SP: A lot of marketers come to us and say, "We know that text link ads work. We want a text link ad in your post."

Text links might work for other blogs, but our readers really respond to giveaways. And if we can do a post spotlighting a product and give one away, that raises the excitement level a lot more than a link hidden in a post. We’re okay with tooting a company’s horn if they’re going to reward our readers in some amazing way, but our content is our own from our own experiences. We don’t sell that. We have sidebar ads for sale.

Companies will respond, "We don't want to be in your sidebar. Sidebar ads don’t work."

We have stats showing that our readers are all over our sidebar because we put a lot of rich content over there. Our sidebar is not just an ad graveyard.

Listen to bloggers when they say, "This works on our site and here are our stats to prove it." Don't be so rigid. Flexibility is key.

POV: So beyond the more "traditional" banner ads, what does your blog offer marketers?

SP: We do a video each week that can be sponsored. We just started doing a sponsor shout-out post each month letting people know what brands keep YHL up and running. But really we love it when marketers come to us and let us use our creativity. We’re conceptual people with agency backgrounds. You just have to ask.

POV: Do you have any success stories from working with brands?

SP: We did a really cool project with BH&G and The Home Depot. Five bloggers were given $500 gift cards to The Home Depot to makeover their porches. The public was invited to vote for their favorite porch online. The Home Depot got a lot of mentions on some pretty high profile blogs. BH&G got tons of hits. Throughout the voting, our blog and MakingItLovely.com were jockeying for the lead. At the final tally, both of us had more than 20,000 votes. It was great content for our blog and a lot more fun than a brand merely sponsoring a blog post. It really benefited the advertisers as well as the bloggers. That’s really what we’re looking for in brand partnerships. It’s got to make sense for both parties.

Listen to more of the conversation here.

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