It was with great pride (and a touch of bewilderment) that I took in a recent piece on the HuffPo, entitled Mommy Bloggers Are Going to Rule the World. The writer, Kari Henley, attended Blissdom several weeks ago, and the post included her impressions and take-aways from the mom blogger conference.
What attracted me to this post in particular was… well OBVIOUSLY the title. After reading it, what occurred to me was that it had really been a while since I’d read something that actually credited mom bloggers with something other than being greedy, family neglectors who all look for something in exchange for nothing.
Because blah, blah, blah.
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In a recent post on the New York Times Motherlode blog, Lisa Belkin ponders whether Mom bloggers are jinxed, since it seems every day there is another mom blogger facing disaster.
The disasters, I assure you, are real. But is this the question?
I mean, come on. Everyone, at some point, faces adversity. Every person - no matter how rich, how gorgeous, how lucky, finds themselves face-to-face with a struggle. Whether it materializes as a health issue, a death, infertility, or divorce, no person on this earth ever gets away scot-free.
But bloggers are blabbers. They have a platform to publicize their most private moments - and readers eat it up.
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I am just back from a vacation in sunny Florida with my kids. For one week, it was just myself, and two little girls under the age of five. Sure, there were some grandparents around to feed them candy at bedtime and buy them pretty much whatever they chose at the toy store, but at the end of the day, it was just them and me.
Me with them.
Them against me.
Needless to say, I was NOT reluctant to return to my out-of-the-house job today. I was not reluctant at all. If you have kids then you know what I mean.
If you are a mom blogger who works from home, I salute you. If the majority of your day is spent filling the requests of small people – for water, for help getting the game started, for help getting the color to stay inside the lines – while you try to write something of value for the dozens of brands and topics you have committed blog space to, I commend you.
Because for one week, I could hardly vacation properly, so preoccupied was I in tending to the needs of small people.
To all you work-at-home-moms, this one’s for you.
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Four years ago I came upon this advice:
If you have a website (like a blog) that you claim copyright for, and the information on that website is updated regularly, then as soon as a change is made on that website, you should update the copyright statement for the new year.
I've proactively updated all my blogs copyrights every January 1st figuring that it couldn't hurt.
What, you don’t have a copyright on your blog? Just add one at the bottom - Copyright © 2006-2011 by My Cool Blog. All rights reserved - or something to that effect. (Remember, I’m not a lawyer and I don’t play on on the interwebs.) While it doesn’t protect you from the jerks who scrape your content, it does make your blog look a teeny bit more professional.
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A 27-year-old man from my hometown of Montreal disappeared last Saturday night outside of a popular restaurant, never to be seen or heard from again. On Tuesday morning, his body was discovered in the nearby icy Lachine Canal. There are no leads, no explanations, no clues.
I no longer live in Montreal but was made aware of this horrific situation on Monday morning when I checked my Facebook. Dozens of my friends’ status updates had been changed to reflect the disappearance and the search efforts. A Facebook page was created to keep the community aware of any updates, search parties, and ways to help. By the time his body was found, the group had 1804 members in about 24 hours.
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2010 was the year of Social Media. It seems like everything revolved around social media and so many things – from fantastic to horrific – arose as a result. The power of social media cannot be denied, and below is evidence as proved by the events of the year:
The Good
Tutus for Tanner. On an August morning in New York City, 150 women and men bloggers donning tutus set out on a philanthropic run to raise awareness and funds for Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). Suffering from the illness is the nephew of a prolific blogger, Catherine Connors (Her Bad Mother).
Old Spice. Through a series of hilarious viral videos, a stale brand was made new again and regained its status as a household name in 2010. By creating a character that people liked, and combining that with the exact elements needed in order to ensure this campaign would go viral, Old Spice succeeded in setting the example of how using social media creatively can breath life into any brand.
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Catching up on my RSS reader, I saw that once again, all hell had broken loose stemming from a snarky post written by a controversial blogger. Just another case of drama in the mom blogosphere. It’s the usual sideline entertainment so I won't bore you with details. Instead, I want to point out something about influence – and not so positive influence at that.
As I was following the story, I landed on the front page of a mom blog I’d never read before. I started reading this blogger's thoughts on the bloggy firestorm and her thoughts on mommy bloggers.
She’s a new blogger who had won a trip to mom blogging conference awhile back. In her post, she talked about her surprise at many of the attitudes that surround blogging and that were present at the conference. For most of us, we’re immune to the bad that comes with the good in blogging. Instead, we know who we’re interested in learning from, who we keep at an arm’s length, and who we’d like to meet and befriend. All in all, a very convoluted business. (Sounds crazy, right?)
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People are super curious about bloggers. I'm constantly being asked things like, why did you start your blog? How do you keep up with it? OMG, you got that for free??
I never really thought about it, but blogging is new to most people and below are some of the thoughts I've come up with in thinking about these questions. I've been a blogger for, oh, three-and-a-half years now. But I've been a writer all my life and these days, and there doesn't seem to be a big difference.
Except there is.
My blog has become an extension of me. It has taken on a life of its own and has grown into an entity that I could have never imagined. Unlike the newer bloggers who design their blogs with a goal of product reviews or junket jumping, when I started writing The Daily Grind in May of 2007, I had one goal in mind - to write.
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There seems to be this new phenomenon occurring in the blogosphere. Every day my inbox seems to have an influx of pitches asking me to blog about a topic or product or service for the chance to win a gift card.
The latest “opportunity” was a call-out for bloggers to write about a particular topic. The first 50 QUALIFIED participants would receive a $50 gift card.
These are the instructions bloggers must follow in order to “qualify” to maybe get paid for their work:
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