Yesterday we couldn’t help snickering just a little at the Mashable infographic entitled “Rise of the Mommy Blogger.” The title made it sound like some kind of bad ’50s horror movie — not to mention that the images of cartoon aprons and girly colors they used were beyond silly. But “mommy bloggers” themselves are nothing to laugh at. According to a new study from Scarborough Research, 3.9 million moms in the United States identify as bloggers. The average mommy blogger salary is a not-too-shabby $84,000 a year. Moms who read or contribute to blogs are also 52 percent more likely to have college degrees than moms who don’t. Clearly these are some smart cookies who have figured out how to making blogging a business — so we wondered if these savvy mamas could teach us a thing or two about blog marketing.
The biggest thing us blogging for business mere mortals can learn from mommy bloggers is this: When it comes to marketing, you gotta diversify. Look at the top 10 mommy bloggers. All of them, from “The Bloggess” to “Dooce,” market their blogs and themselves in a variety of ways. Mommy bloggers know you have to throw a lot of spaghetti to make something stick, so that’s why you’ll see these bloggers everywhere from Google+ to PBS. The aforementioned Bloggess is such a masterful Twitter marketing maven that her tweets are almost like their own creative entity. Bottom line: If you want folks to read your company’s blog, you, too, should adopt this kind of no-stone-unturned marketing.
Another thing we can learn from mommy bloggers is to use our own experiences. Readers flock to bloggers with real opinions and stories. Hallow advice with no soul won’t be read, won’t generate ad revenue and won’t bring people to your brand. Like we’ve said before, you don’t have to tell readers your whole life story. But injecting your blog with personality is vital in this day and age. Top 3 blogger Catherine Connors, who pens HerBadMother.com, is a master at giving readers an honest look at her life (and in the meantime, she’s built an online publishing empire).
Finally, mommy bloggers can teach us blog writing robots how to turn our blogs into products. The best mommy blogs on the Internet are able to transcend the mom with the pastel apron blogging about cookies on her pink laptop. Instead, these savvy writers are giving birth to creative properties that can move into magazines, books and other revenue. True, not all of us want to be the next blogging superstar; heck, most of us mainly just want our blogs to look great and help drive folks to our sites. But why not aim for blog excellence in the meantime?
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