I was recent at a blogging conference where attendees were encouraged to attend affinity sessions such as politics, home renovation, photography, etc. I opted into “parenting,” since that seemed like the best fit, even though my blog isn’t really about kids — it’s more about the politics of motherhood. I found myself in a group of mostly stay-at-home moms, a few who were trying to launch web-based businesses, but none who worked full-time outside of the home.
All of sudden I felt like I was back on the playground during maternity leave, meeting woman after woman who planned to take time off, and nearly none in my situation. When we went around to describe our blog, I said that The Mama Bee offered news, commentary, tips and support for and about women working in corporate environments. I got a lot of blank stares.
Strange, because according to the 2009 Women and Social Media Study by BlogHer, iVillage and Compass Partners, approximately 50% of moms who blog are employed full-time or run their own businesses.
Recently when I’ve mentioned my blog to people, many of them have said “oh, you have a mommy blog.” My vanity hurts a little at the term, because despite the statistics, it connotes a mother writing mostly about her family, making pithy or snarky observations and reviewing the latest baby products.
And yet, “mommy blogger” has become quite the buzz phrase lately. Mom blogs are now considered major viral marketing opportunities for dozens of products and services — from toys to financial services to food. And for sure, it’s a good thing that women and mothers — who it is estimated will control 60% of all wealth by 2010 — are being taken seriously by marketers.
But what are we saying when we make ourselves the mouthpiece for marketing companies? I talked yesterday about how the internet has both democratized and commercialized feminism. Inasmuch as the media is using feminist (and anti-feminist) rhetoric to drive traffic, we bloggers are also selling our souls for giveaways and product placements. Some of these marketing opportunities help to drive traffic and monetize sites, but for most bloggers the money to be made is not very significant. Companies are benefitting much more from this arrangement than writers, who are diminishing the value of their content in service to the marketing machine.
That doesn’t mean that there’s never a place for marketing in blogging — I think it’s great that there’s even some money to be made in this kind of enterprise, and blogs do need income to sustain themselves. I just hope that we can retain the value of our writing, and keep mom blogs from becoming just another tool for marketers to sell stuff.
Related links:
- An interesting post from Mom Market Trends asking Should Mommy Bloggers Be Paid?
- Hormone-Colored Days crowdsources a post about bloggers versus blogwhores and the power of swag.
- Guy Kawasaki reports on the Digital Mom Report, which examines how mothers are using technology.
- Predictions on the future of mom blogging from the Marketing to Moms Blog.
I think you raise some fascinating questions, and I also hate the “mommy blog” terminology. Can’t we come up with something better?
SAHMs are just trying to earn money. It seems to me that we know the drill (review stuff and get paid) – and that we can do our best to ensure that good stuff gets the attention it deserves. Maybe this does devalue motherhood – mommy marketing.
I’d rather we stop using mom- as a prefix for other words. ACK!! Great piece.
As a fellow blogger who happens to write about motherhood, not just the daily minutiae of being one, I completely sympathize. Even though I am a SAHM who freelances part time from home and could use the extra cash, I get an extremely bad taste in my mouth at the thought of selling out my blog to do product reviews and giveaways, and do feel a teensy bit irked when I see all these mothers jumping on the blog bandwagon in a desperate bid to make some money. In theory it doesn’t bother me and I don’t really care what other people do, but I use blogging as a platform for improving and honing my writing and take it quite seriously. So when others are doing it just to get free vacuum cleaners and give away Wii Fits to boost their site stats and earn a bit of cash, it does make me cringe.
This absolutely strikes a cord with me too. For 2 reasons: a)the “mommy blog” category limits what many of us do and cover. I love many of the mommy blogs I read, but we are focused on completely different goals. HOWEVER b) the notion that accepting product placement or advertising is somehow equal to “selling our souls” is disingenuous. Many of us who are also trying to make a living and pay the mortgage carefully vet those opportunities to insure they are relevant and are legitimately valuable to the audience. We offer advice, and new products is part of that process when carefully selected and tested.
TheOnlineMom
thanks for this great post – i recently started to blog about my job search (my first foray into blogging), and have been reading the much ado about “mommy blogging” and product placement (and the proposed FTC rules regarding blogger compensation). The term is certainly being thrown around quite freely these days, perhaps to the detriment of many insightful, smart, sassy, helpful and otherwise fantastic writers to have a lot to say. I called myself “jobmom” because it was descriptive – I’m a mom, who’s looking for a new job. But my writing is not centered around “mommyhood” and I don’t consider my (newbie) self a “mommy blogger.” Of course, at times, I write about my son, because he is a big part of my life. But being a mom, alone, does not define me. That’s the scary part of “mommy blogger” being in our lexicon – pigeon-holing people who have a lot more to say…
I think that most bloggers write their experience and according to a survey, moms are the one’s who are active bloggers.
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