Transcription of interview with Wendy Hirchhornwith on March 24, 2014.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Wendy Hirchhorn is a media relations expert and started a company called Wendy’s Bloggers.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Hirchhorn on Arutz Sheva
Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: Tell us a little bit about Wendy’s Bloggers.
Wendy Hirchhorn: Wendy’s Bloggers started from my experience as a public relations consultant
for national and international companies and about 5 years ago, one of my clients with
the company called Balance Bar which was one of the original companies that made energy
nutrition bar.
It was around that time that I started getting calls from Women who calls themselves mommy
bloggers and they wanted samples of Balance Bars to try and what they’ll do is they
would write reviews about them and post them on their blogs.
I started to think deep into this blogosphere of women who are primarily stay-at-home mom
between the ages of 20 and 50 who started their blogs as a way to connect with other
moms around the United States and they wrote about families, saving money but really where
they excel was reviewing products and recommending them to millions of other moms who started
to read their blogs, follow them on their social sites by Facebook, Twitter and then
later on Pinterest and Instagram and all the other social sites that are available
Douglas Goldstein: Why would these mommies want to write all of these reviews?
Wendy Hirchhorn: Moms bloggers can recommend products to other mom and when they come across
a product that saves them time because most of them are running around taking kids to
soccer games, rehearsals and all kinds of things, taking care of family life etcetera
and finding products that are value, inexpensive but have a high quality to them that’s what
they want to recommend.
There is nothing stronger than one woman recommending a product to another and because of the social
aspect of it, there’s a lot interplay.
So women will write back comments on the mom bloggers site asking questions about the product
or maybe sharing their own experience if they have used the product or something they like
to try.
So you get to see all of these on their sites as well.
Douglas Goldstein: I know you have an Israel connection.
How does Israel fit into the picture?
Wendy Hirchhorn: My background also included working with Hadassah, The American Technion
Society, Israel Jewish agency and I know some working for Israeli organizations that in
the United States, the Christian community embraces the Israel.
They refer to it as the “Holy Land” but I know that they are always looking for positive
stories about Israel.
In my mommy blogger community and I have a network of several hundred mommy bloggers,
it’s just by coincidence, nothing that I went out of my way but 99.9% of my mommy bloggers
are Christian and they hold Christian values very high in their lives and they try to live
good decent lives.
So I knew from my work with Israeli organization that the mommy bloggers, we probably embrace
trying products from Israel.
I contacted Fischer Pharmaceutical which I know is widely popular in Israel under the
brand name Dr. Fischer and I did speak with Dr. Eli Fischer.
We talked about what I do and he told me that he was striving to brand his name in the United
States.
He thought that Mommy Blogger would be a great way for him to tap into the US market.
Two months ago, I worked with Dr. Fischer and we had 35 mom bloggers review several
of the Dr. Fischer products from his baby line and it was tremendously successful.
The mommy bloggers were very excited to be getting products from Israel where they hold
it in high regard.
They believe that there are high standards for purity in Israel and that the products
were first time being introduced in the United States and they were being part of these whole
initiative.
They truly love the products which of course is the key to the recommending of other mom
and as the result of this, we had more than 2 million impressions of people reading the
mom bloggers blogs and I would say about 90,000 social interaction for the mom bloggers run
on their websites what we call a giveaway.
So whatever products the mom bloggers received, one of their readers was able to win the same
products.
They entered a contest that teaches mommy blogger run on the website.
It’s phenomenal and we’re only talking about 35 women who will have the opportunity
to review these products and it just spreads like wildfire and that’s the beauty of the
internet.
As a result of this, we’re doing a second initiative in time for mother’s day which
is celebrated in the United States in May.
Douglas Goldstein: When you tell us the business side of this, why are people joining up with
you and how does someone become one of Wendy’s Bloggers?
Wendy Hirchhorn: In the United States, there are more 4 million women who consider themselves
to be mommy bloggers and so it’s still like the Wild West.
There is no accreditation.
Anybody can start a blog and call themselves mommy bloggers.
It’s up to me to really to use their blog to review it, to read what they write, get
a feel and actual numbers of their traffic, how many weekly or monthly visitors they get,
how many page views, what they’ve done for other brands and once I review their website
and I feel that they passed my very high standards, I will invite them to join my network.
Some mommy bloggers hear about me and will contact me and ask if they can join and they’ll
recommend some of their fellow mom bloggers as well, but the idea is that I want to only
have who I consider to be the best of the best mommy bloggers and that means they have
to write well, they take great photograph because all of them photographed the products
they’re reviewing.
Some of them actually do videos and I want to make sure that they blog regularly.
I don’t want to have a mommy blogger who may be post a review once a month, that’s
going to keep traffic to her site.
She has to post at least 3 or 4x a week, sometimes even more.
Douglas Goldstein: From her point of view, from the mom who is getting involved in doing
this, is this a business that she runs herself or is it really just helping the companies
to spread the work?
Wendy Hirchhorn: It’s a business that she runs herself.
In other words, every mommy blogger runs her own blog and I think of them because of my
work in public relations and media relations as the editor of their own little magazine
and they have the opportunity to work with brand and products that they like and review
them.
What I do is I serve as a channel to them to get to brand that they could not get to
on their own.
For instance a mommy blogger just could not contact Dr. Fischer and say “Hey, I like
to review your product.”
It’s just not going to happen but by working through me, they have access to this brand.
A mommy blogger in my network has the opportunity to review great brands and that’s what she
wants.
She wants to be able to review products that are going to get traffic to her site.
She also wants to be a brand ambassador so she
also wants to be able to work with Dr. Fischer again since he has 500 products, she wants
to be able to review more products.
So it’s in her best interest to also make sure that there’s traffic flowing to www.dr.fischer.com.
Douglas Goldstein: How can people follow your work?
Wendy Hirchhorn: You can come and visit me www.wendysbloggers.com or shoot me an email
wendy@wendysblogger.com.
They can also call me and the number is New York, 212-826-8790.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel.
Securities offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA,
SIFMA.
Accounts carried by National Financial Services LLC.
Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
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