Mom Market Trends   

Any of you who are regular readers know that Child's Play Communications hosted it second annual Bloggers Brunch last week and that the event featured a panel presentation titled, "What Does a Mommy Blogger Want?" My plan was to review the video of the presentation and summarize some tips -- but one of the bloggers in attendance did such a fabulous job on her own blog that I thought I'd send you there instead. For great advice on working with mom bloggers to reach moms, please visit Mariana at Riding with No Hands and check out her post, also called "What Does a Mommy Blogger Want (Bloggers Brunch Recap)" here.

The Bloggers Brunch, held at a private club in New York City, was designed to enable bloggers to connect in person with our clients and each other — as well as to enjoy a lovely brunch (complete with “momosas”), great giveaways and raffle prizes that could not be beat.

I would like to say a special thanks to a  long list of folks who joined for the event:

First, to our panel of leading mom bloggers, who addressed the topic “What Does a Mommy Blogger Want?” offering insights into the issues and trends that affect the momosphere today, as well as advice on how best to interest mom bloggers in your...Read More

Millennial Mom 101, a new study by Mr Youth and RepNation Media, compares moms' and college students' use of social media and finds that the two groups are similar in 4 key ways:

They multitask with multiple technologies. Both groups view technology as a way to easily integrate all the different aspects of their lives. Moms see technology as a solution for managing home life efficiently, and they welcome tech just as much as college students do.

They build communities to ease transitions. Those communities provide them with support systems, as students in one case and parents in the other. Interestingly, moms are more likely to be on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter than the general population, and the majority are likely to visit social networking sites several times a day.

The...Read More

For yesterday's issue of Engage:Moms, I wrote an article about the growing trend of moms online to meet "live-and-in-person" offline. I thought I would share it with you, below.

Much has been said about the growing community of moms online. Far less has been noted about the fact that for many of these blogging, tweeting, Facebooking moms, their favorite activity of all is connecting offline - not virtually, but in person, or as they often call it, "IRL" (In Real Life).

While the momosphere began as a way to communicate with other mothers across the country without ever leaving one's home, more and more moms are indeed leaving their homes and often tr...Read More

I felt no need to rush to post on last week's revised FTC guidelines. The momosphere has been so preoccupied with them for seemingly so long now, their formal announcement felt more like overdue confirmation than breaking news. 

For anyone who has somehow missed the turmoil of the preceding months, the FTC has now updated the guidelines for consumer endorsements and testimonials to include bloggers. To quote from the Agency's own press release, "the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service." 

For all those mom reviewers who have been posting clear disclosure statements for months...Read More

At Mom Market Trends, we like to periodically highlight the mom bloggers we work with on a regular basis. Today, I’d like to share a Q&A with journalist and blogger Melissa Chapman, who blogs for She Knows, Kids in the City, Time Out NY Kids and WCBS-TV.

You contribute to a number of blogs and web sites  Tell us a bit about your background and how you got involved in all of these ventures. 

I started out as a hard news journalist after I graduated from college, although I always knew I wanted to get into feature writing. I wrote for some NYC dailies and a few trade publications, but when I got pregnant I just couldn’t see myself schlepping on the subway to get into the city each day. Luckily my husband was completely on board with that and I was fortunate that I could take off f...Read More

Today, mommy bloggers are stars — even in the movies. Yesterday’s New York Daily News pegged a story about the growing power of moms who blog to the upcoming launch of the film Motherhood, in which Uma Thurman plays a mom who blogs about her life. I was tickled to be quoted in this story, alongside spokespeople for BlogHer, General Mills and Procter & Gamble. Although the reporter did refer to Child’s Play as an advertising agency — we’re not; our expertise is reaching moms through PR, social media and marketing communications — we enjoyed the article and thought you would too. Please see below.

 In Uma Thurman’s latest flick, “Motherhood,” out Oct. 23, she plays a frazzled West Village mom raising two kids and chronicling it all ...Read More

I was delighted to share an audioconference panel on marketing to mom bloggers last week with four top blogger moms: Liz Gumbinner of Cool Mom Picks, Liz Thompson of This Full House, Christine Young of From Dates to Diapers and Beyond! and Renee Aka Mekhishom of Cutie Bootie Cakes. The presentation, hosted by Bulldog Reporter’s PR University, was designed to share best practices.  Some takeaways from these terrific bloggers:

Understand their time constraints. We all want them to post our news immediately. Remember — they’ve got kids to take care of.

Get to know them before pitching them. Read their blogs and understand what those blogs are about.

Devel...Read More

Last week, on the blog Everything PR, Phil Butler posted a rant on the subject of mommy bloggers. Apparently it was sparked by a news release he saw about yesterday’s Bulldog Reporter PR University audio conference on pitching mommy bloggers. I spoke on that panel, as a publicist who has successfully worked with this audience for the past few years.

He begins by blasting the organizers of the event for positioning the mom blogger, in their press materials, as the “holy grail” – his term, not theirs. Yet for most companies, mom is, appropriately, just that – the...Read More

There are 21 million moms engaged in social media on at least a weekly basis, and about 11.5 million of them are writing, reading and/or commenting on blogs.

On Wednesday, November 11, in New York City, Child’s Play Communications will hold its second annual Bloggers Brunch, an opportunity for companies to connect directly with leading mom bloggers in an intimate atmosphere, conducive to conversation and personal connections.

This year for the first time, the Bloggers Brunch will kick off with a panel of leading mom bloggers, who will discuss best practices for reaching moms through social media. They will share their insights and answer the questions you have about how to work with this target market most effectively. They will also discuss how the “...Read More

I was delighted to be quoted in last week's Computerworld blog titled, "Why K"NEX brands loves mommy blogs." The author talked about how toy companies such as K'NEX Brands value working with mom bloggers. In the article, K'NEX chief marketing officer Barbara Rentschler is quoted as saying "We raise awareness much more with mom blogs than we did with advertising." In the story, I answered questions about how Child's Play has created visibility for K'NEX through our Team Mom blogger network. The article looks at some of the current hot topics in the momosphere -- payment for posts, pending FTC regulations and more -- in a way that I believe was both fair and thorough.

I thought you might find the article informative.  For the full story, visit here.