Somehow I missed the announcement that BlogHer Food ended. It lasted eight years.
I felt a little bummed and flashed on the first BlogHer Food conference in San Francisco, where I spoke on a panel about voice with a shy Ree Drummond of Pioneer Woman. Since then I spoke at BlogHer Food conferences around the country, surrounded by lots of excited young bloggers, mostly women. It was always the biggest food blogging conference I attended. Is it the end of an era?
To find out more, I asked BlogHer founder Elisa Camahort Page, who reigned at these conferences since they began.
Here’s what Elisa says about the change, and where food blogging is going and why:
Q. Why did you merge BlogHer Food with the general BlogHer conference?
A. Over the years, our audience bifurcated, and our food-focused community chose between the annual conference and the food conference. But food is our largest category. We felt the annual conference really missed out by having fewer food focused community members and brands.
Also, the lifestyle category (travel, fashion, beauty, home, entertaining, etc.) has overtaken multiple kinds of content creators, so food-focused folks augment their content with other kinds of lifestyle content now. Other kinds of lifestyle bloggers, including parenting bloggers, are covering food regularly. So we see a tend towards lifestyle generalization, not niche-ifying.
We decided to try merging BlogHer Food with BlogHer this year, for both our attendees and our own sake.
Q. I’m concerned that this new format will make it hard for food bloggers to find each other, because BlogHer is so gigantic. A big part of these conferences is networking.
A. There is a dedicated Food track, so I expect it will be pretty easy to find your food tribe. In addition, the Going to #BlogHer17 Facebook group is a hive of activity, including threads that connects attendees by their various categories, so people can get to know who’s going and connect beforehand.
Q. Are there too many conferences that cater to food bloggers now? Did that factor into your decision?
A. That was not at all a factor in our decision. We’ve been the most sizable food blogging conference since we started, and have had no trouble maintaining that.
Q. How many food bloggers are part of the BlogHer community?
A. We’ve had 500-600 attendees at BlogHer Food the past several years. We have hundreds of food-focused bloggers in the SheKnows Network (the parent organization).
BlogHer cofounder Elisa Camahort Page managed BlogHer Food since it began eight years ago.
Q. How do you think food blogging has changed, since you started this conference eight years ago?
A. There are several key ways:
- The “lifestyling” of the food niche is a clear trend. Celebrities are hopping on the food bandwagon, adding a food focus where they never had one before
- The reliance on visuals and visually-oriented social platforms continue to drive traffic
- Video. People resist, but video is the Borg, and it is coming for us all
- Food blogs have gone through the same epic sea change in online monetization as all other blogs, including the rise of programmatic advertising, and larger, more animated ad formats.
Q. Any final words of advice about food blogging and how to stay current?
So many folks want to leverage food’s importance in our daily lives and in our identities. Food bloggers should learn from and leverage the best practices of other blogging categories. It never hurts to cross-pollinate. They can learn from fashion and beauty bloggers, for example, as both are highly visual, and both often have a service (how-to) element to their content.
* * *
So, good-bye to a separate BlogHer Food. A few other food blogging conferences are on hiatus: Camp Blogaway and Eat, Write, Retreat. For a list of conferences, see this page. Do you have a favorite event? Tell me which one and why.
It is the end of an era in a way – always a shame to see things ending but it’s good to know the reasons why, so thank you to Elise for sharing. I’ve never attended a BlogHer Food conference, though I’ve blogged for almost 7 years and it has always been a dream to go. I did cross the pond once to attend IFBC in Seattle and that was great fun. It’s a sign, I suppose, that it’s time to diversify and spread our wings a little bit more.
Have you been to Food Blogger Connect in London? I’m not even sure if it’s still going, Ren.
Going to conferences can be an expensive proposition. If you are speaking you may get paid, you may get your conference paid for or something in between. If not, you have travel, incidental expenses, and the expense of the conference. Are you going to get enough out of it to shell out the money? Will you get enough out of the conference to justify the expense?
I think attendance may be down due to all of the online classes/courses that are available now. If you are on a budget a class to help you in a specific area is a much better deal, than unknown speakers, and quite honestly the presentations vary a lot. Some are informative, others have you watching the clock hoping the speaker will be done soon.
I think that the conferences suffered from many of them having the same exact classes/discussions. Many of those discussions were often held by the same people. I think I have heard, How to Work with Brands, Be Your Brand, and some of the other topics so many times with very little creativity injected to the conversations. If you weren’t going to network with other bloggers you were doing yourself a disservice.
It would surprise me if the brands were getting a lot out of working with the bloggers there as well. As someone with a couple years of experiences of running booths at tradeshows, I think it would be hard for brands to fully capture the ROI that they would have sponsored the conferences.
I have found that some of the smaller conferences, or even local groups to be more beneficial and much more helpful when it comes to technical aspects and current trends.
On another note: I also believe Mixed has fallen by the wayside as well.
You make some really good points, Stephanie. I too am tired of the same presentations on the same subjects with the same information. And many people are not good speakers, which makes it even harder to get through the presentation. Most of why I go now is to speak, network and get new business. I like IACP for this reason.
Yep, it looks like Mixed is definitely gone. Thanks for letting me know.
And good to see you recently at Food Wine Conference.
I went to BlogHer Food 2016 for the first time last year. I had already been to another lifestyle blogger conference twice. I was so disappointed in the BH Food conference. There just wasnt the energy and there wasn’t the high level of friendliness and generosity of sharing Too much emphasis on celebrity speakers. I had already decided I would not return. There’s a big difference in the outlook and attitudes of the lifestyle bloggers and those that I met at BH Food. And now it seems BH is getting into politics. Count me out.
Blogging conferences have evolved into something different, which is a normal thing, I guess. If you’re not into the monitization aspect then there is less for you. The celebrity speaker thing at BH is interesting — Chelsea Clinton will be a speaker this year! It’s a different vibe, that’s for sure.
I missed the announcement that BlogHer Food was closing down, too. I first attended when it was in Seattle and attended again the first time it came to Austin. In both instances I made many great connections. Camp Blogaway was a real favorite and because of its small size there was a very strong feeling of camaraderie. I’ve kept in touch with many of the folks I met there, too.
As many of the sessions presented are repeated at various conferences, the networking really IS the reason I attend any conference now. It’s a chance to connect with our tribe. With BH’s larger conference format, I think I would get lost and overwhelmed just by sheer numbers. Like the title of E. F. Schumacher’s book from the mid 70’s, IMHO “Small is Beautiful!”
We have been to many conferences over time and so perhaps the reason we go is different from why new bloggers go. We like the connections and the networking and perhaps they are looking for general information and monetization. I hope there’s room for both, but I get invited to speak less often — there’s less interest in writing and it’s all about video now. I find that interesting because it’s hard to make any money from video, yet making money and growing your brand is a big focus of these conferences. Food blogging is still a hobby for most bloggers.
Hi Diane, I went to BlogHer Food in Chicago a couple years ago and overall loved the experience! It was my first in-person food conference and I found it so valuable to meet other bloggers in person. Side note- I also met you briefly after your panel discussion!. =) It’s sad to hear it is ending, but it makes sense why they are merging. Thanks so much for the update.
My pleasure Christin and thanks for saying hi. Good to know that you enjoyed it so much. These conferences can be wonderful experiences for first timers.
Dianne Jacob….thank you for darkening your script….it is not too dark and not too light…it is PERFECT!!!!!!
Actually, I could not darken it. I looked into it and the darkness of the type is determined by a reader’s computer screen, believe it or not! I’m glad it’s working for you, Maria.
I was there when you first spoke Dianne! It was so neat that first year to see so many great talents. I came back one year as a panelist, but must admit that it lost it’s zest for me. I wonder if BlogHer on a grander scale might offer a little more?
Oh my gosh, you were in the audience! It’s fun to know that, Alisa. Re the big BlogHer, it’s an experience. Imagine several times as many young women who are very excited. They blog about fitness, fashion, breast cancer — all kinds of things. You never know who you’ll be sitting next to in a session. And the booths are dizzing in their amount and variety. The year I went, there was a booth of baby clothes next to makeup next to knee supports. Some of everything.
I’ll admit I’ve never attended a BlogHer event (as a man the name always bugged me). But I did hear through the grapevine how useful these conferences were to food bloggers. So I am surprised to hear they are watering down their audience especially in a time when online content is trending more and more to niche (https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2014/03/31/encouraging-high-quality-niche-content-in-an-ad-driven-world/#bd9c345786b3). GREG
Huh. Fascinating article, Greg. Thank you. Re the article, food bloggers hardly ever blog about celebrities! So I guess they are doomed. To Elisa’s point, lifestyle bloggers also they blog about food, so they are general bloggers who wouldn’t attend BHF.
I did find the move odd, but on the other hand, BH doesn’t have separate conferences for moms or fashion bloggers, so why food?
In case you didn’t see this, BlogHer Food is back! 🙂
https://www.blogher.com/blogher-food-19/
Oh wow! I didn’t think it would come back. Thanks for letting me know.