TheMommyBlog

New Video Blog Series Showcases Revealing Conversations with Prominent Digital Media and Technology Experts about Travel, Adventure and Life Outside of Work

SAUSALITO, Calif. (Business Wire EON/PRWEB ) February 19, 2008 -- Doug McConnell, longtime host of “Nissan’s Bay Area Backroads” on KRON-TV, and host of OpenRoad.TV with Doug McConnell -- The Traveler's Video Guide to the American West (www.openroad.tv), and OpenRoad.TV co-founder Carl Bidleman have recently launched a new video blog series called “Life Outside the Box” (http://openroad.tv/blog/category/life-outside-the-box).

In the ongoing feature, McConnell meets up with successful people in the world of digital media and technology and invites them to talk about their favorite places and activities when they finally get a break from the computer. The series will soon expand to include interviews with interesting leaders from a variety of backgrounds.

...Previous “Life Outside the Box” profiles include conversations with... Mindy Roberts, author of “The Mommy Blog”; Natalie Zee Drieu, senior editor of craftzine.com; Guy Kawasaki, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author; and Brad Day of “Weekend Sherpa,” an e-mail newsletter on outdoor pursuits in Northern California. read the article »

I picked up my deadtree version of AdAge, and found to my surprise, a great case study on the use of blogs by J.C. Penney. The key was aggregating content around a community of blogs (in this case, mommy blogs), and reaping the search engine rewards without investing heavily in their own SEO.

The site aggregated content from blogs such as Heather Armstrong's Dooce, The Mommy Blog and Confessions of a Pioneer Woman. JC Penney didn't have rights to review or influence content. The site launched mid-September; a few of the contributing bloggers mentioned it on their blogs, some did not. But traffic started to grow. Federated execs started to notice traffic coming from places such as StumbleUpon, a social-bookmarking site, and RSS readers, which meant people were beginning to subscribe to the content. read the article »

Retailer Aggregates Content From Blogs and Lets Readers Talk Among Themselves; Google Results Soar

Published: January 21, 2008
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Classically trained digital marketers know what to look for when it comes to measuring the impact of a campaign: number of impressions, click-through rate, cost per acquisition and maybe a study from Dynamic Logic or Insight Express to gauge lift in consumer perceptions. But sometimes there is another, unexpected outcomes to content-focused campaigns: organic search equity.

Yes, search equity is all about link love. Creating -- or aggregating -- compelling content online and letting readers use social-media tools to share the content can goose Google results for brand or related terms. It's something bloggers have known for years, but marketers are really just beginning to employ.

One case study: Federated Media and JC Penney teamed up to launch the Fall Shopping Guide, a collection of content from popular woman-focused blogs prominently sponsored by the retailer's Chris Madden Collection.

Earning subscribers
The site aggregated content from blogs such as Heather Armstrong's Dooce, The Mommy Blog and Confessions of a Pioneer Woman. JC Penney didn't have rights to review or influence content. The site launched mid-September; a few of the contributing bloggers mentioned it on their blogs, some did not. But traffic started to grow. Federated execs started to notice traffic coming from places such as StumbleUpon, a social-bookmarking site, and RSS readers, which meant people were beginning to subscribe to the content. read the article »

Are you contemplating, going through or recovering from divorce and the issues around it? Here's a new Web site that can provide help, advice and community for you.
Visit divorce360.com. read the article »

The National Center For Health Statistics (NCHS) says that there are approximately 2.2 million marriages in the U.S. every year. Some of those marriages work out well. But a big percentage of marriages - up to 1.4 million per year - end in divorce. read the article »

Former Bankrate, Inc. COO, today launched Divorce360.com, a resource and community site focused on divorce issues from contemplation through post divorce. Series A venture funding from Austin Ventures and private investors.

North Palm Beach, Florida. December 4, 2007: www.divorce360.com launched today with the intention of helping the approximately 1.3 million people per year who are facing divorce. read the article »

Last month Johnson & Johnson’s Children’s Motrin brand launched Code Orange, a site that invites parents to share experiences of “that slightly scary moment when our kids develop a high fever. A Code Orange moment can happen any time, but doesn’t it always seem to kick off just when you have something planned for your child or your family? That’s the time to take a deep breath, call your doctor and reach for Children’s Motrin.” read the article »

Doug has a delightful chat with Mindy Roberts, author of The Mommy Blog, and hears about her notion of a perfect day around the San Francisco Bay. read the article »

SAN FRANCISCO & SAUSALITO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BabyCenter, LLC® and Federated Media Publishing, Inc.(FM), today announced that they will jointly build, market and distribute a federation of the Web's best blogs for current and expectant parents.

The "Baby Center Parenting Federation" will include a dozen of the leading parenting voices now affiliated with FM, including Heather Armstrong of Dooce (www.dooce.com) and Danielle Friedland of Celebrity Baby Blog (www.celebrity-babies.com).

The companies also announced that parenting sites SavvySource and Mommy Track’d are joining the federation today. Savvy Source (www.savvysource.com) enables parents to learn and share ideas on how best to help their children learn and grow. Mommy Track’d (www.mommytrackd.com) is dedicated to informing and entertaining time-crunched moms as they tackle the daily tug of war between work and home. With the addition of these sites, the federation now includes 14 leading online parenting resources. read the article »

I was reading one of my favorite sports bloggers, James Mirtle (who is also a writer for The Globe and Mail), who brought up an interesting feature by Tim Lemke in The Washington Times about the Washington Capitals hockey team's relationship with new media outlets. The Capitals are by far the most advanced team in professional sports in granting access to bloggers. Many of them have been granted full-season press credentials to Caps home games, giving them the same access as traditional sports media.Hockey_mci_center_2

As Lemke points out, traditional media coverage of hockey has dwindled in recent years, particularly as most news organizations have been hit with budget cuts. “Blogger Nation,” as they are affectionately called, looks to fill the void left by the mainstream press. Many Capitals blogs, such as Eric McErlain’s Off Wing Opinion, Jon Press’s Japer’s Rink and John Keeley’s On Frozen Blog, are among the most popular blogs in the sports world, attracting tens of thousands of unique visitors each month.

Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, the former AOL executive who might even rival Mark Cuban as a tech-savvy sports owner, responded to the Times article on his blog, both questioning the “self-fulfilling prophecies” of mainstream media’s programming choices and pointing out the blogosphere is only getting bigger.

He says, “As was once said, ‘Others go to where the puck is; I go to where the puck is going to be.’ We helped ignite a blogosphere because it is where ‘the puck is going to be.’ It was that simple.”

It’s not just in sports that bloggers are beginning to gain access. This year, CBS invited 11 influential “Mommy Bloggers,” including Mindy Roberts and Sara Fisher, to visit the set and interview the cast of “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” the Julia Louis-Dreyfus sitcom about a single mom, to promote their new fall lineup. Here’s a video of their visit on YouTube:
read the article »

MINDY ROBERTS
www.TheMommyBlog.net

I write online for two reasons. One, It's a gift I give to my children; I do not make scrapbooks, I am a miserable keeper of photo albums, and I barely keep the baby books updated. It's something I hope to pass on to our children and their descendants so that they may have the unique opportunity to see into their childhood in a way that birthday party photos and school portraits could never convey.

Two, I blog for therapy – it's cathartic, and largely responsible for my being upright today. I had very bad post partum depression (four times!), my marriage was disintegrating and the combination just got to be too much. read the article »

Watch out for the "5th guy." And whatever you do, don't shake his hand.

The "5th guy" is the person who doesn't wash his hands after using the restroom — unlike the roughly four out of five adults who do. He's also a character introduced in a Florida Department of Health ad campaign last spring and about to arrive in other states. You can meet him (electronically, thank goodness) at www.5thguy.com. But be warned: He's gross. He walks around an office carrying a urinal — making it clear where his unwashed hands have been...

...Mindy Roberts, an author, blogger (themommy blog.net) and mother of three, went higher tech and bought a motion-sensing automatic soap dispenser.

Except for the day that her daughter dipped her head too low while brushing her teeth — and got an unplanned shampoo — it's working nicely, Roberts says. "It's a gadget, so they think it's cool to use. Plus it makes a noise. Whenever I hear that zzzzz, I know they're washing." read the article »

Over the past few years, communications professionals have flocked to the Web to better understand the interests and media important to Millennials. While sites like MySpace and Facebook garner a lot of our attention, niche social networks and online media provide rich insight into a wide array of demographics. Mommies have begun to form an important and quickly growing community online. Do a simple Technorati blog search for "mom" and you'll find over 18,000 mommy blogs. According to USA Today, these mommies spend over $1.7 trillion a year and now comprise about 52% of the online population. Here are a few recently launched sites that will help you explore these mommy communities and understand why they are as important for you to follow as their Millennial offspring:

Cafe Mom: a leading social network for moms to stay in touch and make new friends

Minti: a social network and article advice site for moms and dads to share parenting tips

The Mommy Blog: Mindy Robert's blog about her adventures and experience as a mom

Urban Mamas: a blog founded by Portland-based moms that includes advice, tips, stories and a family friendly community events calendar

Urban Baby: a site and e-mail newsletter with product recommendations for hip urban moms and kids

Daily Candy Kids: a site and e-mail newsletter with product, fashion and services recommendations for moms and kids

Healthy Habits Healthy Kids: a busy parents' guide to getting kids to "eat right, sleep well and be happy"

We'd love to hear from you. Post a comment below with links to your favorite mommy and parenting sites on the Web. read the article »

The Mommy Blog - Put a daily dose of humor on your to-do list with this refreshingly honest, often hilarious look at life with kids. read the article »

An excerpt from the interview:

FPP:  In your experience, what are the elements that are generally required to make a potential blook?
Cheryl:  In the first 30 or so blooks that I looked at, excluding web comics, it came down to three things:

• Quality of the writing- many blook authors began as freelancers or columnists such as Lori Smith (A Walk with Jane Austen) and Tracey Henry (Suburban Diva).
• High-level connections - Melinda Roberts (Mommy Confidential) is a member of John Battelle’s Federated Media Parenting and Entertainment Network. She is also an online community advisor to ClubMom, Johnson & Johnson, The Disney Internet Group, and MothersClick.com, where she is also a resident blogger.  Judith O’Reilly (Wife in the North), a former London Times writer got a deal after blogging only six weeks because she got linked to by “big” names.
• Lots of traffic - David St. Lawrence (Danger Quicksand) gave away 50,000 free books. Okay, he self-published. Mim Smartypants had 3,000 regular readers. The Japanese fellow who wrote The Train Manhad a million readers. But it’s also the number of comments that indicate how engaged the readers are. Eunny Jang announced her book deal and got 173 comments!
read the article »