Rise of the Mommy Blogs
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A new type of blogger is emerging in the minds and hearts of marketers everywhere. Her name, is the Mommy Blogger, and she represents some $1 trillion in household spending, a number that has Madison avenue and internet marketing firms salivating over the prospect of selling directly to her. There's just one, teeny, tiny, insignificant problem.
The mom bloggers aren't interested in serving as willing shills for products. Don't get me wrong - Mom Bloggers, like all bloggers (and all people), come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, as well having opinions on how best to, dare I say it, monetize their websites, from Adsense to Sponsorships to giveaways. But who exactly are these women - why are they writing, and what is needed to fully deliver on the promise of Mom Blog Marketing?
Conventions and portals and web design shops and marketing firms have all sprung up that promise to deliver the eyeballs of SAHM's, WAHM's, Christian Moms, Mom Webrings, Blog Chicks, Single Moms, and every other kind of (thankfully) self-labeled category. The promise is these shops "understand' the needs of mom bloggers, but I find that a bit hard to believe, because I've been researching this category for a couple of months, and have even made the plunge to momblogging myself (mom bloggers don't have to be female, or even moms, as long as they are talking about issues for mothers).
What I've found amongst the MB's is the same thing I've found in every other online grouping - that frequently misused term, community. Mom blogs form a community, each women being a node in a system, clustering around other moms, linking to the the most popular ones (and creating hubs), and injecting value into their websites, while extracting value for themselves.
Marketers who approach mom bloggers are faced with that most difficult of tasks - directly communicating to hundreds of individuals, all with their own point of view, their own thoughts on how to be approached, and their own strong feelings on whether companies should spend any time reading their daily thoughts to get information about the consumer view of the company products.
My views on this subject are pretty straight forward. Marketers have to be honest, they have to be helpful, and they have to actually be a part of the community. You can't understand Mom Bloggers unless you're one of them.
If you're new to the space, I suggest you begin at BlogHer. You can't go far without hearing about BlogHer, and they serve as a wonderful promoter of women's issues (and women bloggers in general). For those looking for parental advice - check out Parent Hacks, which does a great job stuffing the search engines with information that any parent should know. If you are a mom looking to share information with other women, or learn something in a safe community, then SheKnows is the place for you. If you want to know the hottest fashion trends, check out Mommies With Style. For personalities, consider Mamalogues, a St Louis based writer, mom and blogger. And of course, who could forget Club Mom, a great community that has all the tools you need to get started? You can even consider becoming a mommy blog yourself.
The best part, is this is just the tip of the iceberg. Technorati has over 7,000 bloggers self-tagged as mommy bloggers, and several directories give specific categories for moms.
So why do I write? Because, as I mentioned, I'm one of them. I'm now writing the Storkcalling blog, which is going to eventually move over to the Storkcalling.com domain when we build a new hybrid Typepad/Website designed by Franki. The goal is simple. Join the community. Blog on issues of interest to the community. And sometime soon, start writing about our own parenting questions, issues, and concerns.
The Storkcalling site itself is now a service for phone birth announcements. It's a division of Groupcast, a local telecommunications company that has been a client of Franki's in the past, and is now a client of Durbin Media Group. The Storkcalling service is for expectant mothers, and works to automate the phone tree that so many parents use after the birth of their child.
For $24.95, you can broadcast up to 50 phone calls to friends, family and supporters, letting them know the child is here, along with statistics and the time born. The service is a personalized message you create by calling into a Toll-Free number, and it works for anywhere in the United States or Canada. It's great for baby shower gifts, gifts from the office (if you're a boss and want to help out), and also is not a bad thing to buy for yourself, especially if you've been that dad in the parking lot trying to make calls out on a dead battery at 3 in the morning.
So world, here we come. I'm announcing our intentions because it's important to be honest and transparent, not just because it is the right thing, but because it's the only way to sell in the blogosphere. So come on over to Storkcalling.typepad.com if you want a great baby gift - and if you're just looking for information, well that's fine too. And if you're a mom blogger, say hello.
And if you're curious about Durbin Media group - check out the rest of the website.
-Jim
A new type of blogger is emerging in the minds and hearts of marketers everywhere. Her name, is the Mommy Blogger, and she represents some $1 trillion in household spending, a number that has Madison avenue and internet marketing firms salivating over the prospect of selling directly to her. There's just one, teeny, tiny, insignificant problem.
The mom bloggers aren't interested in serving as willing shills for products. Don't get me wrong - Mom Bloggers, like all bloggers (and all people), come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, as well having opinions on how best to, dare I say it, monetize their websites, from Adsense to Sponsorships to giveaways. But who exactly are these women - why are they writing, and what is needed to fully deliver on the promise of Mom Blog Marketing?
Conventions and portals and web design shops and marketing firms have all sprung up that promise to deliver the eyeballs of SAHM's, WAHM's, Christian Moms, Mom Webrings, Blog Chicks, Single Moms, and every other kind of (thankfully) self-labeled category. The promise is these shops "understand' the needs of mom bloggers, but I find that a bit hard to believe, because I've been researching this category for a couple of months, and have even made the plunge to momblogging myself (mom bloggers don't have to be female, or even moms, as long as they are talking about issues for mothers).
What I've found amongst the MB's is the same thing I've found in every other online grouping - that frequently misused term, community. Mom blogs form a community, each women being a node in a system, clustering around other moms, linking to the the most popular ones (and creating hubs), and injecting value into their websites, while extracting value for themselves.
Marketers who approach mom bloggers are faced with that most difficult of tasks - directly communicating to hundreds of individuals, all with their own point of view, their own thoughts on how to be approached, and their own strong feelings on whether companies should spend any time reading their daily thoughts to get information about the consumer view of the company products.
My views on this subject are pretty straight forward. Marketers have to be honest, they have to be helpful, and they have to actually be a part of the community. You can't understand Mom Bloggers unless you're one of them.
If you're new to the space, I suggest you begin at BlogHer. You can't go far without hearing about BlogHer, and they serve as a wonderful promoter of women's issues (and women bloggers in general). For those looking for parental advice - check out Parent Hacks, which does a great job stuffing the search engines with information that any parent should know. If you are a mom looking to share information with other women, or learn something in a safe community, then SheKnows is the place for you. If you want to know the hottest fashion trends, check out Mommies With Style. For personalities, consider Mamalogues, a St Louis based writer, mom and blogger. And of course, who could forget Club Mom, a great community that has all the tools you need to get started? You can even consider becoming a mommy blog yourself.
The best part, is this is just the tip of the iceberg. Technorati has over 7,000 bloggers self-tagged as mommy bloggers, and several directories give specific categories for moms.
So why do I write? Because, as I mentioned, I'm one of them. I'm now writing the Storkcalling blog, which is going to eventually move over to the Storkcalling.com domain when we build a new hybrid Typepad/Website designed by Franki. The goal is simple. Join the community. Blog on issues of interest to the community. And sometime soon, start writing about our own parenting questions, issues, and concerns.
The Storkcalling site itself is now a service for phone birth announcements. It's a division of Groupcast, a local telecommunications company that has been a client of Franki's in the past, and is now a client of Durbin Media Group. The Storkcalling service is for expectant mothers, and works to automate the phone tree that so many parents use after the birth of their child.
For $24.95, you can broadcast up to 50 phone calls to friends, family and supporters, letting them know the child is here, along with statistics and the time born. The service is a personalized message you create by calling into a Toll-Free number, and it works for anywhere in the United States or Canada. It's great for baby shower gifts, gifts from the office (if you're a boss and want to help out), and also is not a bad thing to buy for yourself, especially if you've been that dad in the parking lot trying to make calls out on a dead battery at 3 in the morning.
So world, here we come. I'm announcing our intentions because it's important to be honest and transparent, not just because it is the right thing, but because it's the only way to sell in the blogosphere. So come on over to Storkcalling.typepad.com if you want a great baby gift - and if you're just looking for information, well that's fine too. And if you're a mom blogger, say hello.
And if you're curious about Durbin Media group - check out the rest of the website.
-Jim
posted by James Durbin @ 7:36 AM PERMALINK
3 Comments:
If you are interested in finding Moms who blog, another great resource is Mommybloggers.com, a site that features different mommybloggers from all walks of life.
Your storkcalling blog looks great! I have posted one of your articles to Babblz.com, and will be looking forward to reading more!
We saw your mommy blog and it looks great.... we'd love to get you involved in SAHMAnswers.com. At the least it can send you a ton of traffic...
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