What is Word of Mom?

Since starting this blog, I have discovered that blogging is more difficult than I expected. My admiration for those who blog faithfully has greatly increased, with a special spot held to mom bloggers because as a busy mom and entrepreneur, I find it incredibly difficult to squeeze more time out of day to write something inspired (in a peaceful, writing-condusive environment). I've been seeking advise from fellow bloggers about how to get through my "Bloggers Block" and have heard some fantastic suggestions. While I contemplate implementing vlogging (video blogging), some structure to my posts and peer blogger support, I have been watching the online mom blogger world join together to support one of their own - again proving the power of the word of mom.

Online sadness and heartbreak was projected worldwide last week when a 17 month old Madeline Alice Spohr died. I didn't know her or her family; I had never even read the family blog (written by mom blogger Heather Spohr of www.thespohrsaremultiplying.com) until numerous mom bloggers tweeted their shock and heartbreak and I just had to find out what they were all talking about. I was instantly in tears and emotionally distraught the next day as bloggers worldwide expressed their sorrow and started blogging about their grief. I couldn't stop reading, nor could thousands of others. These are the best of the worst kind of blog posts. They hit you in the gut and make you think about your own life. You relate in some small way to someone you've never met but now feel some sort of kindship to because of an experience, emotion, reaction. You see the bigger picture more clearly, realize that sweating the small stuff is stupid and discover that seeking support from your community is not defined by borders.

Mom bloggers came together to support one of their own. When floods of visitors overpowered the Spohr's website and their server dumped them for going over-capacity, mom bloggers banded together to get it transferred to another server (it was twitterer @princessJenn from Canada who came to the rescue, btw). In mere hours housands of dollars (there was a tweet about hitting $10,000 by mid-morning) were raised for the Walk of Dimes in Maddies's honour and teams across the USA have been formed to Walk For Maddie http://sarcasticmom.com/walk-for-maddie/

This universal support system, this innate ability to relate to another person soley based on the joint experience of loving a child, is the foundation of word-of-mom. I don't think even Maddie's mom could have envisioned the impact her experience would have on moms worldwide. When it comes to spreading messages, especially when its for the greater-good, moms are the influencer and source.

My thoughts continue to be with the Spohr family.

Marketing 2.0

While media outlets crumble and collapse because their conventional business model is broken beyond repair (due to a weak economy, changing consumer habits and online competition), mom bloggers across the nation are debating the demand to become better marketers, generate revenue, and question how to maintain editorial integrity while accepting advertising, free products and sponsorship.

Simultaneously, as Ted Murphy details on

his blog, Forrester Research released a paper about ‘Sponsored Conversations’ which proposes that marketers consider paying bloggers to create transparent and genuine content about the brand.

Bloggers are the influencers that traditional media outlets once were. The problem is that unlike their conventional counterparts, bloggers have to do everything – write and edit the content, SEO, solicit and listen to PR pitches, generate interesting promotions to increase and engage with readers, decide how to work with an advertiser – which has some mom bloggers questioning their role and how the competitive online marketplace could perhaps push the non-aggressive-marketing-mom-bloggers into obscurity. Most are adamant that they are writers first-and-foremost and the focus on how to make their blog bigger and better is a distraction from their true focus – to share information and offer insight in a well-written manner.

For those of us who want to work with mom bloggers in order to increase brand awareness and develop a stronger online presence, we must contemplate how the evolution of online content and influencers will push our conventional marketing approaches into uncharted territory; while also taking into consideration how marketers can support bloggers to remain true to their original intentions so that their readership doesn’t dwindle beneath the demand for a bigger and better approach.

Mabel’s Labels recently conducted contest for a blogger to win a trip to BlogHer’s annual conference. They asked bloggers to answer the question – What have been the rewards and benefits of participating in the blogging community?, which generated over 100 blog posts across North America. Ten finalists were chosen and then an online poll (where bloggers solicited readers via their blog, twitter, facebook to vote for them) determined the winner. This is a fantastic example of how to support (mom) bloggers in their writing pursuit while creating a buzz for your own company online; taking a traditional sponsorship activity to a whole new level.

I question whether sponsored conversations will be accepted by bloggers and readers alike – perhaps seen as a transparent yet obtrusive advertising method. Will readers simply ‘tivo’ past these conversations as they have with their cable channel ads, does this develop a pay-per-placement system and those with the biggest budgets win, will bloggers and marketers who adopt this system lose credibility with their readers?

Moms Are All a-Twitter!

I started twittering just before Christmas 08 and quickly became a twitter-evangelist. Within 24 hours of creating a profile, I was "followed" by two Mom PR experts (based in the USA), made direct contact with a woman who runs a number of mom blog networks and within 48 hours I connected with two new (prospective) clients. It became quite apparent that twitter is the place to be to engage with peers, clients and like-industry influencers and monitor the competition.

For those companies who want to connect with the mom-market, twitter is the mom-mecca of social networking. As long as you are honest, transparent and actively engaged in the community, you will experience significant results.

When I spoke to Annemarie Templeman-Kluit, founder of yoyomama.ca and yoyobelly.ca, about the impact twitter has had on her business, she cited twitter as one of the biggest referrers of website traffic (more than facebook, which they’ve been on for years). Her participation on twitter was also the reason she was recently interviewed by Canadian Family Magazine. “We've connected with people we would have never found any other way - we've connected across Canada with experts like Ann Douglas and Alyson Schafer, we've been interviewed by Canadian Parent Magazine about mums & technology, we've gotten advice on what we can do with kids with colds & coughs now you're not supposed to give them kids' cough medicine - and it's all thanks to twitter,” said Templeman-Kluit.

Twitter also provides a porthole into the lives of mom bloggers around the world. There’s no way anyone can read the thousands of mom blogs each and every day but with Twitter, you can get quick updates on the daily lives of some of the top mom bloggers, engage with them directly by relating to their mom-life trials and tribulations, send them congratulatory tweets when they win something, and support them by re-tweeting relevant posts to my own followers. That’s one of the best first steps into developing a relationship with these key mom influencers.

Also consider that most media outlets are on twitter, especially those specializing in the mom-market. Twitter is providing a foot-in-the-door to your next media pitch! Most of the outlets use a logo as an avatar(something that does irritate me but that’s for another post), which gives them the freedom to have multiple people tweet and participate in tweet-versations however, in the rare cases like with @yoyomama_van, you will see a photo of the person behind the tweets. In any case, you learn nuances of the editor, writer or researcher that are almost impossible to obtain unless you personally know them. You will learn what they like/dislike, their own daily struggles and how they like to engage with their followers. I have seen media tweet a call for people to be interviewed and products to be submitted. I've also seen companies subtly pitch Annemarie and receive a warm response. Note of warning: do not spam the media by sending them a link to a press release via twitter! Twitter is about learning, sharing, and engaging with your followers. If you spam, you will quickly be blocked or un-followed.

Twitter is easily the best business tool I have found to network with peers, clients, influencers and competition. It does require time and effort but so does any aspect in building a company/brand.

What’s stopping you? Get on Twitter today and when you do, send me a tweet @limelitepr

PS - Having trouble getting started, read this post on "Think like a Toddler and find your voice on Twitter", by Darren Rowse.

The ROI Conundrum

I was recently asked by a prospective client how we can demonstrate ROI within mom-market PR activities. Measuring the Return On Investment is a hotly debated topic within the marketing, PR and social media community because there isn’t an easy answer. There simply isn’t an accurate way or single, standard calculation that will prove the results achieved through PR and marketing equate to a higher value than the money it took to achieve them.

When it comes to spending dollars and cents, most business owners believe that in order to be profitable, there must be tangible proof or money made in order to justify money spent.

For results in traditional media, the PR industry measured impressions – how many articles/news reports and the size/length of the coverage – but it struggled with how to measure the quality of those impressions. You can compare an impression size and placement to the advertising value (how much would it have cost to place an ad that size) but as we all know, editorial is valued higher than advertising because there is a third party (reporter) involved. People read articles, listen to radio commentaries, watch TV news reports while they are likely to tune-out advertising. The question is (and still remains) how do you put a dollar figure on an intangible ‘higher value’ quotient?

In 2006, the CPRS (Canadian Public Relations Society) created the MRP system www.mrpdata.com which is said to measure any type of editorial coverage, provide clear metrics to evaluate media coverage, track total reach and cost per contact. This system “allows its users to qualitatively evaluate editorial tone and article content”. But, as some will say, MRP is not ROI.

For Social Media activities such as blogger outreach, facebook, twitter - all venues where moms converge and connect – the question of ROI is even more difficult because there isn’t a direct link from interaction and engagement (which is what you are doing with SM) to sales but rather an indirect link.

So, how do you ‘prove’ ROI?

I found a great discussion by a couple SM leaders - Jason Falls and Katie Delahaye Paine - which I encourage you to read & watch. But, to summarize their thoughts (which I agree with) here are few things to consider:

“The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.”

“Ultimately, the key question to ask when measuring engagement is, ‘Are we getting what we want out of the conversation?’”

The way we handle this ROI question at limelitePR is we develop a benchmark so that we can determine if our efforts are effective. It's not like we don't want to measure things, it's just what and how do we measure them. So, we start by asking and answering questions like:

• Are you part of the online conversation – how much & where?


• Are your competitors part of the conversation – how much & where?


• What are people/moms saying about your brand?


• Are people/moms commenting on your blog? Are there certain topics that generate more response?


• How are you part of the mom community?

Once we have a benchmark, it's then possible to track and see the growth we’ve achieved through social media and traditional media PR tactics. It also provides us with information on how we can be reactive with our communications.

Really, the definition of ROI is in the eye of the beholder. “Return” is all about what you want to achieve and then developing and implementing a plan that will raise awareness, gain loyalty and ultimately put your brand into the hands of your consumers – moms.

If you want to learn how big brands are using Social Media, check out this presentation by Graco’s Lindsay Lebresco at Blogwell San Jose. She walks you thru Graco’s social media strategy and the tactics they've used.

A Savvy Strategy for Method

In this age of engagement, blogger outreach should be an integral part of your public relations plan especially when it comes to moms. Between 50-60% of all moms name blogs as their favourite form of online media.

So what does it take to gain a blogger's attention and trust? Mom in the City blogger recently posted why she love Method - as a company, product, brand. Here are some key points but I encourage you to read the entire post to get more details and ideas on how you can step up your own efforts.

1. Method marketers are friendly, respectful and enthusiastic about their brand.

2. Method is innovative

3. Method is responsive to moms overall

4. They have a wonderful line of products

5. They consistently connect

6. They treat me as an individual

7. Method never asks me to write about the things that they send me

Pitching Value

Results of a new study from Miller Zell, an Atlanta-based retail consulting company, reinforces what a lot of us already know - moms are in charge of household purchases and the family budget. What's most interesting is the study shows that the current economic downturn has moms changing the way they shop including "eating-in more often, with 68% saying they spend less at restaurants; changing channels, with 50% moving from premium grocery stores to discounters; and trading down, with 87% switching brands at the grocery store and a third buying private-label clothing." The report's author then recommends that companies need to "ramp up their value message".

Simultaneously, media outlets are focusing on value stories. In Canada headlines such as "Be Fashionably Frugal", "Buy the Best Quality You Can Afford", "Budget Friendly Family Meals" have been popping up in newspapers across the country. Each article listed a number of great value-conscious ideas that readers can easily implement in their life.

To take advantage of this universal state-of-mind (value is #1), start thinking of ways that your brand presents value-based ideas and promote the details to the media in a Top 5 List. Let's say your company produces eco laundry products - distribute a list of Top 5 Ways You Can Save On Your Laundry Bills (wash in cold water, spin the clothes twice so they dry faster and use less power, etc).

You are more likely to garner media and blogger attention if you provide a context to your brand that is useful and relevant to their readers/viewers lives and moms will value your brand even more because you are providing them with useful tips they can apply to their busy life.

How to Reach the Mom Market

I watched this interview with Tricia Mumby on "Word of Mom" marketing a number of months ago but was recently reminded of it (thanks to a posting from Mommy Blog expert Jennifer James). Tricia gives some good insight into how to reach moms; a must see for anyone who wants to tap into this market.

"At the recent CMA From Mass to Grass conference, Tricia Mumby from Mabel's Labels gave a great case study on the power of "Word of Mom" marketing. Here, she spends a minute busting the myth that you can't find women online and offers a suggestion on one way to reach these powerful moms offline."