If you didn’t attend the BlogHer conference in San Diego earlier this month, then you missed out on rubbing shoulders with the online world’s digital elite: women who blog.

The site was founded by BlogHer president and CEO Lisa Stone (pictured) whom I was excited to meet at the M2W conference in Chicago in April.

Stone and her team have gathered a powerhouse of females bloggers on their site and now leading brands are lining up to showcase their products through this dynamic medium.

One company that is smart enough to see an opportunity to connect with the 20 million female bloggers on the Blogher network is Procter & Gamble, which will partner with the media network with a year-long program called “Life Well Lived.”

The program includes both a P&G-sponsored hub at BlogHer.com and specific product engagement opportunities for around 10 P&G brands across a range of individual blogs in the network.

If you look at BlogHer.com, the site uses the thematic verticals: “Looking Your Best,” “Getting Organized,” and “Getting Happy,” with P&G sponsorship of content featuring appropriate products.

Bloggers will also lead discussions, sample and review new P&G products, and P&G will continue its major presence at BlogHer conferences around the country.

Program launched at conference

The one-year program launched at the San Diego conference where P&G was a lead conference sponsor, and whose exhibition is a “house” in which 23 of its brands are spotlighted. The four-day conference is one of six BlogHer events this year.

The program is the first one-year partnership that the six-year-old blog network has signed.

“We have been very fortunate to have Procter & Gamble as a sponsor in the past, and last year they were a lead sponsor of our conference as well,” BlogHer President and CEO Lisa Stone said.

According to Stone, while the company’s hub is a “central place to kick off the conversation around everyday solutions that P&G is well known for,” the goal is to work with brands and bloggers “to develop authentic, insightful conversations that become persuasive dialogue.”

80% of readers buy on blogger recommendations?

She said that for three years, 80% of the BlogHer reader base has reported purchasing products based on blogger recommendations.

“There’s a level of earned trust between readers and blogger.”

Other major brands that have tied up exclusive sponsorships with BlogHer properties include Gatorade, which sponsors a sports section on BlogHer.com, and book publisher Penguin, which has an exclusive content and sponsorship deal with the book review section of the site. The site only reviews Penguin books.

“That said, we want real thoughts, and our book reviewers should be able to say whatever they think so there is no editorial control over the reviews,” Stone explained.

According to Stone, 60% of the 25 million or so people who read the BlogHer network have kids under 18.

She adds that the percentage of BlogHer aficionados who earn at least US$75,000 per year is greater than that of the general public and that readers also over-index for having an entrepreneurial mindset.

“They are Gen X, and they are the ultimate consumer. They are foodies, they love to shop; they are also tech-savvy.”

A P&G spokesperson says that while the digital program includes an advertising component, “the biggest part is the actual content. Each of our [involved] brands has an opportunity to provide something to engage the group of bloggers. And that is overlaid with the central hub BlogHer is creating, which really talks about ‘life well lived,’ that is sponsored by P&G but not product-specific.”

Trying to connect with women on an authentic level is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses today, especially those without a dedicated gender intelligent culture.

This struggle was certainly played out on the big screen this week following the launch of Kmart’s campaign to launch its new low cost pricing model. Sure, the ad has hundreds of women in it but they didn’t connect with me, or many women who have told me they feel disappointed by the retailer’s effort.

Why?

First, Kmart and its ad agency broke the golden rule of marketing to women. It  focused on price instead of the feeling or experience that women would receive in-store.

Sure, the research will probably point to the fact that the target demographic is experiencing an economic squeeze and for them low prices are important. This may be true to a point, but there is an overwhelming body of global research that reveals women want to feel valued by brands that back up service with acknowledgement and recognition.

Kmart might say that their ad campaign shows women having fun in their stores (more about that later) but when I visited a Kmart store last Monday, women were waiting at the sole checkout for service because three staff hadn’t arrived for work. The lone staffer was apologetic and stressed and these female shoppers with their trolleys, children in tow and tight schedules, weren’t laughing.

Second, for some reason the TV ad depicts women doing unnatural things. It actually shows mature women careering down the store aisles on children’s bikes with tiny helmets on their heads. Now, like you I have been in many stores during my time, but never have I seen a sight like this nor have I felt compelled to grab a childs toy for a joyride.

It is unrealistic and whatever the gender of the creative director behind the ad, they certainly don’t understand that women prefer to chat together over a coffee or a wine, with the aim of sharing insights and experiences.

The underlying competitive tone of this ad pitches women against each other to get the best deal and of course price. This outmoded thinking comes straight from a monocultural perspective where everyone is always fighting for the best outcome.

Finally, as Kmart is part of the Coles Group, the ad feels like it has imported a large group of female extras from the Down, Down, Price Are Down, campaign and tweaked it to fit Kmart’s new model.

Some women will be attracted to shop in Kmart for its low prices, wide aisles and clean environment; these are pluses that women can see at a glance. But if they really want to cut through and kick-start sluggish sales, the Kmart advertising and marketing department needs to do much better.

When I attended the MarketingToWomen Conference in Chicago earlier this year, I was overwhelmed by the data that showed it was women who were investing their time, experience and money in creating sustainable communities on the internet. And it was the men running businesses who were eagerly trying to tap into this wealth.

Now the figures are in. In a post this week, Aileen Lee, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers revealed that   Comscore, Nielsen, MediaMetrix and Quantcast studies all show women are the driving force of the most important net trend of the decade, the social web.

According to Comscore women are the majority of users of social networking sites and spend 30% more time on these sites than men; according to Nielsen mobile social network usage is 55% female.

Women have migrated away from the traditional retail models and into gender intelligent cyberspace. This is fact and Australian retailers know it, keenly.

Last week I suggested that the Australian retailers who continue to describe their shoppers as “consumers” start to smarten up and identify who really holds the power to make or break their businesses and call them by their gender: women.

Women flexing their web muscles

Not surprisingly, it is in e-commerce, where the female purchasing muscle is really being flexed. Lee has dissected sites like Zappos ($1 billion in revenue last year), Groupon ($760m last year), Gilt Groupe ($500m projected revenue this year), Etsy (over $300m in GMV last year), and Diapers ($300m estimated revenue last year) are all driven by a majority of female customers.

 According to Gilt Groupe, women are 70% of the customer base and they drive 74% of revenue.  And 77% of Groupon’s customers are female according to their site.

Have a look at this trend: Women even shop more on Chegg, a site which offers textbook rentals on US college campuses attended evenly by both males and females. Renting would seem an equal opportunity money saver, plus it’s better for the planet.

But according to Chegg, females are 65% of renters a decision which requires a little more advanced planning.  Chegg’s research shows women are more inclined to plan ahead than men. And, they seem to care more about saving money, and are more likely to be influenced by a friend’s recommendation.

Horsewomen of the net

Not surprisingly, engines of the consumer web Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Twitter are  dominated by women. Lee suggests that we now make that  “horsewomen”.

Facebook’s, COO, Sheryl Sandberg, has highlighted  how women are not only the majority of its users, but drive 62% of activity in terms of messages, updates and comments, and 71% of the daily fan activity.

 Women have 8% more Facebook friends on average than men, and spend more time on the site.  According to an early Facebook team member, women played a key role in the early days by adopting three core activities—posting to walls, adding photos and joining groups—at a much higher rate than males.  If females had not adopted in the early days, I wonder if Facebook would be what it is today.  And we all know that where women go, men follow.

Lee also points out that more  women use Twitter, despite a reputation for being a techie insider’s (ie male) product.  Women follow more people, tweet more, and have more followers on average than men, according to bloggers Dan Zarella and Darmesh Shaw’s analyses.

Brian Solis’s analysis on the social net gender divide shows females are the majority of visitors on the following sites, which he calls “matriarchys”:  Twitter, Facebook, Deli.ci.ous, Docstoc, Flickr, Myspace, Ning, Upcoming.org, uStream, Classmates.com, Bebo and Yelp.  The one “patriarchy” site he notes, where males outpace females:  Digg.

I have not yet spoken to a retailer or marketer who doesn’t agree that women are their primary purchasers. The sticking point appears to be their lack of either will to change or understanding about what to do.

Frustratingly, they are continuing to seek advice from agencies and consultants where the male monoculture continues to dominate. We saw this in the lack of research into the female market by Y&R when it presented concept for a new campaign to PICA earlier this year.

Now is the time to start to build gender intelligent know-how into your business, all it takes is a decision.