25th August 2010 (0 Comments)

It doesn’t matter where you are in the world Social Media Mums are everywhere – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Blogs and are becoming a force to be reckoned with! They are a growing and influential population on the internet, who carry strength in numbers, making change happen. Big brands cannot ignore them but instead go out of their way to engage with them. Mums like to shop, bank and play games and search for health information online.

Recently, Coke was forced to pull its Facebook campaign for its Dr Pepper brand, after ‘mum pressure’. ‘eMarketer’, digital marketing intelligence for business estimates that by 2012 there will be 39.6 million American mums online. While, a 2009 ‘comScore’ survey states that a UK mum spends the same amount of time as an average internet user- an average internet user spends 27.3 hours. TrendsSpotting’s, May 2010 showed in India, 1 in every 3 internet user is a woman and 41% are mums. Starcom MediaVest Group and Microsoft Advertising published findings in May 2010 from a survey across eight Asian markets; Malaysia had the highest number of mothers engaging in online social communities across the entire region – Singapore held the second highest spot.

The statistics are endless. Mumsnet a popular UK website whose members discuss child care, education, safety and health celebrated its 10th anniversary very aptly at Google’s UK headquarters this March. Justine Roberts and Carrie Longton, the savvy founders were flattered by suggestions that their 850,000 members could swing the UK’s 2010 general election – MumsNet has clout and the two main political parties used Mumsnet to influence voters.

The influence of this community was felt by the vitamin brand Haliborange who had put up a fake post. The Mumsnet audience retaliated by sending out negative rumours about the company that were so widely shared that they appeared at the top of Google search results for the brand. Along with the mum online communities there are events. In September 2009 there was the BlogHer conference which drew over 1500 mummy bloggers – there are 82 million mums across the US of all ages; 26 million of them are mummy bloggers who work at grassroots, with loyal followers who can change the course of a brand and its products. The ‘Mom 2.0 Summit’ was held in February offering mums advice on how to wield influence; it is now booking 2011! There are other blogger conferences out there including Disney’s, who launched a site in 2007 focused on mums as it wanted to become a trusted brand. It now hosts the ‘Disney Social Media Mums Conference’ which has engaged high-profile social media speakers Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki. Mums are combining forces to harness the power of the web and technology to build their own personal brands, and are extending their role they’ve long held as information seekers and relationship builders. Social Media Mums aren’t afraid of new technologies – they are nearly 25% more likely than average author to blog!