In addition to being Ackermann’s Director of Social Media, I am also a mother of four children, and a blogger. I’ve been blogging since 2002, and when I first started, I assumed that my mother might read my blog, and if I was lucky, maybe a few of my friends would take a look. But today, between my personal blog and the working mom-focused blog I write for Babble, I have a respectably sized readership.
And of course, I’m not alone. Tens of thousands of women with children, collectively referred to as “mommybloggers,” now share an audience rivaling that of network television. Some very talented bloggers are even able to support their families entirely via the ad revenue from their blogs. Not surprisingly, the popularity of parenting blogs makes those of us who write online about family life a rather attractive target for marketers who want to gain access to our audience.
In the past 24 months, there has been a lot written in industry publications about best and worst practices in pitching to moms-who-blog. Given the attention being paid to how to reach out to this marketing niche, one would imagine that the folks handling momblogger pitches would be getting the hang of it by now. Unfortunately, as a blogger who receives several queries a week from brands, businesses and the agencies that represent them, I can tell you that most of the emails I get asking me to review, advertise or promote a product on my blog seriously miss the mark.
The misfired pitch that gave me the biggest chuckle in recent months was the email I got asking me to review/promote a particular brand of infant formula. Clearly, the person who sent me this email (which started, as they all do, by telling me that the writer was a “big fan” of my blog) hadn’t put much effort into developing the blogger outreach list for this product. If she had, she would have discovered that in addition to being a blogger, I have written a book about breastfeeding, and that I’ve written a number of articles and essays on why I believe it’s unethical for infant formula to be advertised directly to consumers. Sending me a pitch to promote infant formula was about as productive as sending Sarah Palin a pitch asking her to promote Barack Obama on her PAC’s website.
Takeaway for marketer: Don’t just take a quick glance at my blog and assume that just because I am a mother, I am like every other mother in my views, interests, tastes and opinions. Dig a little deeper when deciding whether I am a good target for your pitch, perhaps even using that amazing search engine technology to which we all have access today. And furthermore, you need to be very aware of any potential controversies or “issues” attached to your brand or product within the parenting blogosphere so that you don’t inadvertently reach out to those mombloggers who are simply never going to be in your court.
When I have a great experience with a product or brand, I am happy to blog about it. But the only thing a totally misfired pitch is likely to generate on my blog is a post intended to amuse my readers. And I sort of doubt that’s what the company behind the pitch had in mind when they hired someone to send me the email.
