Mashable: 3 Key Location Trends for Moms

My latest Mashable post, 3 Key Location Trends for Moms, is live. The post discusses the various ways that moms are integrating location-based services (LBS) into their lives. To check it out, click here.

Interview with (Díga)Mama Blogger K. Emily Bond

K. Emily Bond is the author of (Díga)Mama, a travel and mommy blog chronicling her move from New York City to Seville, Spain. (Díga)Mama, which translates literally to "say mom," is a thoughtful reflection on expat motherhood and life in Spain, dotted with colorful photographs and tips for travelers. In addition to (Díga)Mama, Emily has for worked for O, The Oprah Magazine, Ladies' Home Journal, and The Village Voice. She's also written for iVillage, The New York Observer, BUST, NewYorkMag.com, the Huffington Post and a host of other publications in the US and abroad.

How did the decision to move to Spain come about?
Once I started complaining (a lot!) about New York, I knew it was time to consider moving to another city. I thought we’d end up in Sydney since my husband lived there for such a long time. Not a bad place at all – a gorgeous city! – but too far away, particularly since we had a newborn at the time. I couldn’t be that far away from my family. We ended up choosing Seville because I have a sister here and she has a son who’s about two years older than ours.

Spain, and Andalucia in particular, is a rather insulated place. What I mean is that it’s not that easy to assimilate to life here. But Seville is a great place for children. We have a green market at the end of our calle (street), bakeries around the corner, numerous parks and, above all else, lots of old women that shower Ezra with attention…it’s just a really nice lifestyle for us and a ton of fun for our son.

What has the transition been like? What was your biggest surprise?


Like I mentioned, it’s not easy moving to Andalucia. It’s very different from the United States and it takes time to get used to things like siesta hours and the accent. But this region has opened up quite a bit since the first time I visited my sister here in the mid-90’s. There are new conveniences, like Ikea. But, for example, unemployment is notoriously high at 20%. We thought we could take advantage of cheaper rents because of that. Of course, we pay a fraction of what we paid in New York, but given the Euro against the Dollar and all that, it’s not as good of a deal as we thought it would be. Another cosa (thing), which is really more of an annoyance than a surprise, is that the juntas (government offices) seem to be in competition with one another to make the simplest of processes as confusing and frustrating as possible.


What is your favorite thing about Seville? What activities would you recommend to families who want to visit?
It’s incredibly family-friendly here. There are bars next to parks and it’s not unusual to see entire families out until midnight, especially now that it’s so hot outside making it impossible to take your kids to the park during the day. For us, the energy in the streets is invigorating. If Ezra is in a bad mood all we have to do is take him on a walk. He loves to watch what the old people are up to, what the dogs are barking about, what music the dreadlocked hippies on the Alameda are listening to, what the flamenco singers are singing about. He’s into all of it. I am not one to keep him out until midnight, but like every other Spanish kid he cannot get enough of the calle.

You're a writer, and you've spent your career writing for newspapers, magazines, and websites. How does blogging differ?
I love how fast it all is! But it’s really important to treat the content you produce for a blog with the same care, quality, and accuracy that you would for a newspaper or magazine. I’m a one-woman-band so that makes it difficult at times. And I’m a mama, so I suffer from a time-deficit most of the time. I end up with typos!


Also, while I would never (ever!) reference Wikipedia for a traditional article, I do sometimes find myself traipsing over there for a quick Wiki-fact when I need one for (Díga)Mama. Wiki-facts are very different from real ones, though, so I stay away from them as much as possible. I use them for confirmation more than sourcing. It’s a big pet peeve of mine when writers use Wikipedia.

 If (as is my dream) someone reads about something on (Díga)Mama and decides to visit that place, I want it to be as true to the experience I blogged about as possible. The point-of-view on the site is specifically mine; but a lot of what I write is still service-journalism.
 With a blog, you do have a little bit more leeway, yet you have to be twice as vigilant about how you end up presenting that information. Once you hit publish, which is ultra easy on Wordpress and other blogging platforms, your content is out there for better, worse, in accuracy or not. That’s a lot of responsibility and something that every writer and blogger should take very seriously.

What are your plans for (Díga)Mama going forward?
I’m going to devote more time and energy to (Díga)Mama this summer. Right now it’s hosted on Wordpress, but I’m going to move it over to a different server in the coming months, once I boost my traffic. I’m also going to focus more on networking with other mom and travel bloggers to push traffic that way, too. Eventually, I’d like to enlist other expat mothers to contribute content. In the meantime, (Díga)Mama – that would be me talking about myself in 3rd person again! – can also be found blogging for The Stir at CafeMom.

Word of Mouth Influences 81% of Moms' Purchasing Decisions

eMarketer recently released the results of a survey of online moms by EXPO, a video review site. 92% of respondents reported trusting consumer reviews' product descriptions, while only 8% trusted the description provided by the manufacturer, meaning that moms are12x more likely to trust consumers. Word of mouth also highly influenced respondents' purchasing decisions.

In a list of possible sources,  81% of moms surveyed reported word of mouth influencing a recent purchasing decision. It ranked second, after in-store promotions such as special sales (86%). Respondents unsurprisingly ranked traditional sources, such as newpaper inserts, consumer information magazines, and TV broadcasts high on their list. But nearly a quarter listed email advertising and 18% claimed that banner ads impacted their purchasing decisions.

Companies Should Use Mobile to Reach Women

With the smart phone battle underway, the US mobile Internet population is increasingly drastically. eMarketer estimates that 29.2% of mobile phone users log on to the Internet from their phones at least once a month, up from 22.3% last year. According to  BIA/Kelsey and ConStat, many of those qualify as “heavy” users—those who go online via mobile more than 10 times per week. And their online activities- researching products and services, purchasing items, and using mobile coupons- closely mimic the top online activities for women.

According to Rick Ducey, the Chief Strategy Officer for BIA/Kelsey, "Consumers have basically doubled their use of the mobile platform for non-voice communications....This represents a fundamental and rapid shift in media use, which needs to be considered in determining the appropriate mix and spending levels among local platforms. Media companies that do not currently offer a differentiated mobile advertising option had better get there quickly.”

Mobile advertising could be a particularly effective tool when targeting women. Smart phones are making the lives of women increasingly easier, with synchronized calendars, mobile applications, and the ability to access the Internet on the go. Forward-thinking companies would have the first-mover advantage to effectively women, particularly young women and moms.

Clorox and Toys R Us Take Charitable Programs to their Facebook Pages

Some key elements of a successful social media campaign are engagement, relevance and uniqueness. Two major brands have adopted that philosophy in their latest Facebook Page campaigns. Clorox Clean Up and Toys R Us are reaching out to moms through charitable programs. Although these companies have traditionally been involved in sponsoring clothing drives and donating to children's programs, particularly around the holidays, this is the first year that they are promoting these activities, and incorporating moms' support, on their Facebook pages.

Clorox Clean Up has created an application on their Facebook page where users can nominate a local non-profit program for children. The application, called Bright Future, allows fans to nominate their favorite local non-profit until November 29th. The charities will compete for one of five $10,000 grants and the winning organizations will be featured in People Magazine.

Toys R Us and basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal have been working together on the Toys for Tots holiday drive for several years, and this year, they've expanded the program on Toys R Us' Facebook page. Toys R Us has promised to donate $1 of toys for every new Facebook fan. Once a user becomes a fan, they are encouraged to publish the story to their newsfeed in order encourage friends and family to join the campaign as well. So far, over $25,000 were raised, and Toys R Us' fan count is up to over 350,000.

I think these campaigns are a win-win situation: They promote the brand and corporate social responsibility. What do you think? Should companies use charities as a marketing tool? Comment below.

Relevancy is Key When Targeting Women Online

Online marketing firm Prospectiv recently conducted a consumer survey targeting women online. The study, which surveyed over 1000 women, found that relevancy is crucial when it comes to marketing communications online. The results also pointed to some key differences between women with children and those without.

Some of the highlights:

• Women want to see information that is relevant to their lifestyle. This is particularly relevant for mothers: 45% of mothers said they are most interested in receiving marketing information that pertains to their lifestyle, vs. 30% of non-moms.


• Moms are more flexible than non-moms about email marketing. Only 20% of moms said,
  "Don't send me anything at all," while 35% of non-mothers said the same.


• Nearly half of respondents (45%) to the Prospectiv survey said that brands can communicate with them most effectively through product samples offered online. Respondents who are mothers were more in favor than non-mothers of product samples (47% vs. 38%, respectively.)


• 39% of survey respondents said trying a sample would most likely get them to purchase a product. The other options were: having a coupon to use, necessity, or receiving a personal recommendation.


• Coupons were also viewed as an effective marketing tool. 53% of the women surveyed had
  clipped coupons and 18% had redeemed online coupons in the past year.


• 35% of repsondents said they are reluctant to share information such as email address, age, and gender, but 71% would share that information to receive discounts, promotional offers, and coupons.

Interview with MyHeritage Marketing Director Mario Ruckh

I recently interviewed the MyHeritage Director of Marketing, Mario Ruckh. MyHeritage is a social network for families that, among other things, allows users to create family trees and connect with relatives in a private, personal way.

Can you provide a brief overview of the company?
MyHeritage was started in 2003 by Gilad Japhet. We initially started as a software program for building family trees. We still have it, it’s called Family Tree Builder and has been downloaded more than 4 million times by now. From there we expanded the family tree concept to the Internet. That way, I can take that tree and show it to my family, see what they think and see if they have anything to add to the family tree. That is how MyHeritage.com got started in November 2005. Since then the site has grown to a full social network innovating technologies like face recognition for you personal photo collection. By now we have more than 33 million registered users and 350 millions profiles, making us one of the leading family social networks.

How do you think the site became one of the largest family social networks on the Web?
The main success factor is the need of families to share photos and family information in a private network. Everybody has those cousins and uncles he would like to stay in touch with, but doesn’t find time to. Family social networking is a fun way to stay updated with the whole family bunch at once.We generally believe that family just is a different space and a different kind of relationship, as compared to business relationships and your friends. So you don’t necessary want to mix them up. Family relationships are more private; they are more limited, more precious. It's not something that everyone can access. It’s more control, more protected. You don't necessarily want to share all of your photos with your families.

Can you speak a little bit about the women using your site?
Well, it is as much as 70% of our US users which are women. They are one of the three big user groups on MyHeritage. They are often younger women who have kids or are about to have kids. We actually have three main user groups. One is core genealogists. They are older and above average male. And the third main group is what we call the young family networker. They are college students or young professionals studying or living far away from their family that don’t want to cut off family ties. They want to share photos with their family.

You have 23,000 new users a day. How have you been expanding your audience? What marketing initiatives are you using, or is it all viral growth?
We have a very viral product, where relatives invite relatives. You invite your uncle and he invites his wife, and so on... We also see a lot of traffic from natural search be it on family sharing or networking topics or on genealogy or family tree related topics. There is also our family software downloading. Additionally, we do post advertising, work with different events as well as bloggers and media people.

MyHeritage recently announced some new tools. Can you tell me a little bit more about them?
The first is mobile uploads. Everybody in your family gets his or her own email address, and whatever photo, video or document they send there, will be published to your family site. You can do that with any mobile device that is capable of emailing photos. It’s great as it helps to share family events as they happen.
We also launched the automatic photo tagger, which organizes your photo collection by people. It finds all the faces in your photos, groups those that are of the same person and lets you quickly tag them with a name from your family tree or a new name. After you identified all family members at least once you can turn on automatic tagging, so people in new photos will mostly be tagged automatically.
Lastly, the interactive slideshows provide several options for viewing your photos. We offer a presentation that pans over your still images and zooms into people's faces while fading from one image to another, or a photo stack that is kept in a nice Polaroid retro style. There is also Cover Flow, a very aesthetic way of flipping through your albums in a horizontal arrangement.

I noticed that all the new tools are related to photo sharing and uploading. Why did you focus mainly on the photos?
We've seen from our statistics that photos are a core part of what people want to share with their relatives. Moms want to share photos of their new kids, for example, or youngsters who move to a new city want to share their experiences. They are very important to what people want to share with their family, and MyHeritage is the ideal space where people can do that, as opposed to sending lots of pictures via email. We believe in an easy way to share photos with your relatives. On the site, you can upload several photos at a time or send them in an email. And it makes sense to be able share photos via mobile as well, so you can share family events as they happen. Instead of sharing them with everyone, you can share them with the people you actually care about.

Any examples of how the tools will impact your audience, especially women?
As mentioned when we talked about the audience, photos are becoming more important. With mobile devices capable of sending photos to the net instantly, they became part of our everyday life. We hope that families enjoy the new tools, that they will help them to bring their families closer together, and that they share their enthusiasm with friends.

Lastly, is there anything else you’d like to share?
Thanks a lot for the interview and your blog in general. We really enjoy your female perspective on social media and your smart comments on women’s needs. Finally, we also have a blog about family social networking that also has all the news about MyHeritage as a company and that can be found here:
http://www.myheritage.com/blogs/companyblog/

Moms Use the Internet Beyond Parenting Advice

According to recently released eMarketer statistics, over 34 million US mothers go online at least once a month. That number is expected to reach 36.1 million by 2013. And although 45% of online moms use the Internet to shop for their children, they also go online to shop for themselves (44%), plan trips (39%), and research products (49%), among other activities.

“Moms visit parenting and family Websites, but they also regularly view news, weather and political content online,” says eMarketer senior analyst, Debra Aho Williamson. “They shop for their kids—and themselves, and when they find something great for their family, they talk about it, not only with their family and friends, but often with a much broader online audience.”



In the joint Cafe Mom/Razorfish "Digital Mom" report released last February, the mothers surveyed were most likely to have shopped online for clothing and accessories (40%) or food and cooking items (31%). Parenting and baby gear only accounted for 26% of moms' online purchases.

Says Williamson: “Moms constantly seek and share advice, and they are routinely doing so online. Often they simply reach out to family and friends but as more of them use social media such as consumer review sites and blogs, an increasing amount of the information comes from strangers.”

CityMommy Connects Urban Moms, Locally

CityMommy is a social network for moms based on location. It connects urban mothers in Los Angeles, Portland, North New Jersey, San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, Central Coast California, North Alabama, Jacksonville, Northeast PA, Chicago, Atlanta, NY, Boston, Long Island, Southern NH, South Florida, Wichita, Houston, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, and, most recently, Palm Springs.

City Mommy offers moms the opportunity to interact with forums and groups, and provides them with photo and video sharing capabilities, like other mom-focused social networks. What makes CityMommy unique is the location-based offerings it provides. Each user that signs up selects their region, and after registration, is redirected to that region's microsite. The microsites have sections for events and offer discounts to local stores in a "Shopping" section. Most impressive, though, is the thorough directory that covers everything from preschools and pediatricians to midwives and local parks.
CityMommy will expand to additional cities throughout 2009. If you're interested in starting a CityMommy site in your city, contact Dayna at dayna@citymommy.com

Mashable: Attract and Engage Social Media Moms

I recently wrote a guest post for Mashable, "How To: Attract and Engage Social Media Moms. Check it out here.

Digital Mom Report: Must Read for Marketers

Cafe Mom and Razorfish recently released a Digital Mom report offering extensive data and advice about moms' usage of emerging technologies and social networks.

Some interesting findings:

"More digital moms today interact with social networks (65%) and SMS (56%) than with news sites (51%), and just as many can be found gaming online or via a gaming console (52%). These findings demonstrate just how mainstream these new channels have become."

"Digital moms of children 12 and older, versus moms with children under 12, are more likely to watch online video (40% vs. 34%), game (57% vs. 51%), read online consumer reviews (38% vs. 30%), and watch or listen to podcasts (13% vs. 9%); while moms of children younger than 12 are more likely to use social networks (67% vs. 62%)."

"Moms may be moms, but they are also women with interests beyond parenting. When asked to select the top items researched or purchased online in the last three months, most digital moms selected Fashion/Clothing (40%). This was followed by Food/Cooking (31%), Baby/Parenting (26%), Banking (22%), Electronics/Computers (21%), Travel (21%) and Medication/Medical Condition (20%). However, women with children under the age of 5 were significantly more likely to select Baby/Parenting (46%)."

"Online communication channels like search (50%), websites (50%), referrals from friends/family (31%) and other social influence channels are more widely used and trusted for learning/researching than any other sources. Magazines are also highly influential (29%) in this phase of purchasing, although other traditional channels like TV (26%), newspapers (22%) and radio (18%) are not as widely cited as having influence."

"Moms reported spending 18.5 hours per week online, including an average of 8.1 hours on the social networking site CafeMom. Moms are clearly deriving value from the social networking experience. Four out of five moms surveyed by CafeMom said social networks have had a positive impact on their lives. Some of the most valuable benefits cited include staying in touch with people they know, connecting with others like themselves that they do not yet know, expressing themselves, having fun, as well as getting information and advice on a wide range of topics from parenting concerns to purchasing decisions."

Tumblon Combines Developmental Advice with Social Network for Families

Tumblon is a site for parents of young children, enabling them to record developmental milestones through stories and photos. Users can create a “Family Blog”, post status updates for each child, upload photos, and add stories. The social networking component is lack-luster, but what makes the site unique is the plethora of age-appropriate developmental information available for infants through elementary school-aged children. There is even a weekly developmental milestone breakdown for newborns up to three months.


Developmental resources are broken down into five categories with separate overview pages: cognitive, social & emotional, speech & language, fine motor, and gross motor. Each overview page offers an easy to understand list of milestones, suggested activities, and recommended articles. Additionally, Tumblon has a smart business model- suggesting age-appropriate books, toys, and gear. Even though Tumblon is only in Beta, there are already several links to purchase items directly from the site.

The social networking piece that Tumblon offers is unoriginal and has been attempted on a much larger scale (Disney’s Family.com, Gotkidsnetwork.com, etc.) but the high quality developmental information, combined with the clever business model, may carry Tumblon through.