In last weekend’s Sunday Times magazine, India Knight wrote about the difference the online world has made to women’s lives. She looked at how the internet celebrates the minutiae of existence as if it mattered a great deal, offering a world of kinship, help, support and solidarity for women.

India describes the (sometimes over) sharing of Mummy (and Mommy) Bloggers as an act of extreme generosity, sharing the good times as well as the bad, both trifling and huge, silly but important, dull but gripping, ephemeral but permanent – and universal.  As she puts it, if its frankness, extreme or otherwise, that you’re after, you’re spoilt for choice.

So how can online online reputation building and engagement specialists like OnVisible reach out to these bloggers and their communities of readers?  By being every bit as frank, open and honest as they are.  Sisterhood Central has conditions of entry and they involve behaving like any good friend would.

posted by gemmaT

It was interesting to see today the buzz created online and offline about Dr David Walsh’s comments that women should endure more pain and use less pain relief during child birth. Well,  actually that’s not really fair, he didn’t quite say that, and he said a few more things besides too.

But he did say child birth pain can be good, and he’s a man! How would he know what it feels like! And of course that was what the media focused on.  Dr Walsh started his morning with the usual round of Radio 4, BBC Breakfast, and it didn’t take long for the social media wheels to start turning.

As you would expect the online parenting community (well the mums anyway), mummy bloggers and parent Twitter followers didn’t take long to get fired up. So by lunchtime when he was due on Radio 2’s  Jeremy Vine show, I was eagerly anticipating him taking questions from the show’s enthusiastic (opinionated?) listeners.

First he was running late. Then he decided he couldn’t speak to the show. Had he been spooked by the quick reaction online to condemn him?

Who knows.  Perhaps he had expected that the detail of what he was saying would be covered and understood, that his experience would mean more than his gender. But I’m afraid two things were working against him:

1) The media love a good ruk and want to get mummies fired up by his comments

2) Child birth and motherhood are bloomin tough, and the last thing we need is anyone else saying we are not getting itright (on top of grannies, mother-in-laws & competitive mums).

I’m not going to comment on where I side (not on this blog anyway), but I will certainly watch with interest how the debate moves forward online.

Once again the social media mummies are in the news.

Charlotte Renwick

Two of the top five UK ‘Mummy’ bloggers have seen their success translated to the printed page – Wife in the North and Petit Anglaise (who is based in Paris but still classed as a UK mummy).  And over in the US, last year 25 ‘Mommy’ bloggers collaborated to produce Sleep is for the Weak, ‘a naked narration of Life After Children’.

It’s another clear indication that Mummy/Mommy Bloggers are a popular and powerful force, but don’t make the mistake of thinking they are interchangeable. 

With a larger audience of readers to aim for and earlier mass uptake of broadband, the Mommies were always going to enjoy more impressive visitor figures (Confessions of a Pioneer Woman averages over 10M page views a month) than their UK counterparts. 

But there also appears to be different traffic drivers for the US and UK blogs.  In the UK, forums like MumsNet (which now have their own book deal) and NetMums (ditto) provide a first point of call for information and advice, with blogs mainly relegated to more of an entertainment role.  However in the US, mommy bloggers have expanded their remit and joined forces to build their own portals like AlphaMom, complete with searchable advice columns on pregnancy, parenting and homemaking.

Culturally, the British have always been a bit more reserved and not so quick to overshare their birthing horror stories or relationship problems and this seems to apply to commercial partnerships too.  While big Mommy bloggers like Amalah happily blog about their Hewlett Packard and Sony swag, the tale of the Mummy Bloggers who were treated to an all expenses paid trip to the US to experience the Disney magic for themselves resulted in national press stories about the ‘Disney Seven’ and a flurry of blog posts clarifying what bloggers thought was appropriate behaviour by brands and their PRs.

It’s important we remember that online content is still generated by people who live offline and are influenced by the technology, culteral norms and environment in whichever part of the world they live in.  Engaging with bloggers and forums needs to reflect this and understand each blogger’s policy for PR contact.

posted by gemmaT