There are reportedly 4 million mom bloggers in the U.S. — passionate, increasingly influential women constantly communicating through social media.

BlogHer co-founder and COO Elisa Camahort Page, whose website draws 37 million unique visitors monthly, advises marketers to identify "focused mom blogs that share your passion—food, pets, child care, fitness, tech, whatever."  One caveat, she adds: "Mom bloggers are ruthless. The Silicon Valley adage, ‘Release early, fix later,' won't fly with moms. They have no patience for beta products or websites, and they don't give out second chances."

But they are one of the golden cohort sweet spots, and Mother’s Day is one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions of the year. Celebrations of motherhood date back to ancient festivals such as the Christian Mothering Sunday, the Roman festival of Hilaria, and the Greek cult to Cybele, but the modern U.S. holiday dates back to 1908 and Anna Jarvis’s memorial for her mother.Continue reading...

In the wake of a tainted infant formula scandal that killed six babies and hospitalized 860 in China in 2008, a New Zealand-based company came up with a way to capitalize on the market's fear.

But when the company chose what it saw as a simple local logo to help the product seem more foreign, little did it know that forces were set in motion that would unravel the whole scam.Continue reading...