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...

Procter & Gamble’s ongoing global "Thank you, Mom" campaign is getting a fresh push 100 days prior to the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games. Centered around a dedicated Facebook page, P&G is celebrating the power behind the glory, success and dedication of many an Olympic athlete — his or her mother — in the biggest campaign in P&G’s 174-year history, which will run from now through the end of the Olympic Games.Continue reading...

The general public got its first glimpse of "finely textured meat" (aka pink slime) almost a year ago, when Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution on ABC raised the issue with moms in a Los Angeles school district, but since then the hue and cry against the ammonia-treated filler has beent aken over by parents and nutritional advocates using, deftly, the free social media tools at their disposal.

The issue certainly caught the eye of Houston resident Bettina Siegel, who writes about kids and food on her blog, The Lunch Tray. Siegel posted a petition on Change.org on March 6th, rallying support to lobby Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to “put an immediate end to the use of ‘pink slime’ in our children’s school food.”

By the next day, more than 220,000 names had been added, rare for the site which launches 10,000 petitions on average each month. "It was incredible," said Brianna Cayo Cotter, communications director of Change.org, regarding Siegel’s petition. "In 10 days she made the USDA, the meat industry and major retailers all back away from it. Now the demand for pink slime has dropped so dramatically that some of the factories are starting to shut down."Continue reading...

Mormons, particularly Mormon moms, are proving to be social media ninjas. They're responsible for the meteoric rise of Pinterest, as the Deseret News has noted (and those wags at Gawker). They may not seem like your typical early adopters, but credit the group's social media savvy to the women of the church who glommed onto blogging early on. It's also opening up the LDS community and church brand to the wider world.Continue reading...

When most Brits hear the name "Alfie," they think of Michael Caine's skirt-chasing cad in the 1966 movie of the same name (with all due respect to Jude Law's reprisal of the character).

Now there's a new swinging Alfie out of the UK — chatting up his girl/friend Evie, about the benefits of Huggies' "drylock system" which promises to keep a baby's skin dry for up to 12 hours and help prevent leaks. He even has his own Twitter handle — presumably because he's too young to give out a mobile number.Continue reading...

Sixty-six percent of moms confess to hiding in the bathroom for alone time according to a recent survey commissioned by Procter & Gamble’s most iconic consumer brand, Ivory.

The national study canvassed more than 1,000 moms to garner insights ‘on the realities of their lives,’ and gave impetus to Ivory's new online social community, The Soap Dish, which is located at Ivory's Facebook page as a branded content/community partnership with Emmy award-winner actress and mom, Melissa McCarthy, whose star rocketed this year after her scene-stealing turn in Bridesmaids. 

"I grew up using Ivory and that smell always reminds me of when I was a kid," stated McCarthy in P&G's press release. "As a working mom of two, I love anything that simplifies my life. So when one bar of soap can handle backyard dirt, spaghetti hands, and the unidentified crusty bits under my girls' necks — I'm in."

“As part of Ivory's modern day makeover, which began with the unveiling of our new packaging design and advertising campaign, we sought to tap into the everyday opinions and attitudes of today’s busy mom,” said Jay Sethi, Ivory brand manager. “What we found was today’s moms have an unyielding desire for honest, down-to-earth, simple yet social connections with other women and moms.”Continue reading...

Disney is acquiring Babble Media, whose New York-based parenting website Babble.com and vocal community features web savvy, hipster-leaning and well-connected parents not unlike its co-founders.

Babble was launched by Nerve Media in 2006, which made a splash with Nerve.com, a website focused on sex, relationships and culture by husband-and-wife team Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman. They even spun a book out of the site's content with The Big Bang: Nerve's Guide to the New Sexual Universe, Sex Etiquette, and Full Frontal Fiction. 

Babble.com was named by TIME as one of the 50 Best Websites of 2010 and by Forbes as one of the Top 100 Websites for Women. A stable of 200-plus mom bloggers contribute fare in the usual range of parenting topics including pregnancy, child care, health, food and family activities, as well as lifestyle topics including home, fashion and family products. Which is all well and good, but will they live happily ever after in Disney's world?Continue reading...

“Word of mouth” may be considered the most powerful way to sell your product. But according to Toronto digital marketing consultant Sean Moffit, “word of mom” is even more potent, the Toronto Star reports. A 2010 survey by BlogHer and iVillage found that mom bloggers “are most likely to write about brands and … three-quarters of active online women rely on blogs for product information.”

Many moms started blogs in the weeks and months after their child is born in order to reach out during a time of life that can be difficult and lonely. Some, the Star reports, are finding it to have been an excellent business decision.Continue reading...