The Motherhood

Simple Actions Make a Difference in the Fight Against Child Hunger in America

May 19, 2016 by The Motherhood

Since 2013, The Motherhood has been a very proud supporter of the Child Hunger Ends Here campaign by ConAgra, which aims to empower a community of people to take on the fight against child hunger in America, changing the realities of hunger one meal at a time.

This year, YouTube sensation Kid President (aka Robby Novak) partnered with ConAgra to help bring awareness to this critical issue. Working with ConAgra, The Motherhood mobilized our network of bloggers to share Kid President’s video, helping trigger meal donations from ConAgra to Feeding America (with one view, like or share of the video equaling one donation). We were thrilled to hear we surpassed the goal of 100,000 meals in less than one week – amazing!

Kid President helps fight child hunger — Credit: Jon Morgan/AP Images for ConAgra

Over the past several years, in partnership with ConAgra, its agencies, retail partners and celebrity ambassadors, The Motherhood has engaged 136 bloggers as advocates for the Child Hunger Ends Here program, generating more than 1.2 billion overall impressions during that time. By taking simple yet impactful actions themselves, and encouraging their communities to do the same, these bloggers alone have triggered an estimated half a million meal donations!

That group includes a number of bloggers who have lent their voices, support and influence to more than one Child Hunger Ends Here campaign over the years, helping to make a continued impact on the fight against child hunger in America. In their words, here is why the program strikes a chord with them:

Anne, Upstate Ramblings
“Kids love helping others, and it is important to teach them compassion when they are young so it becomes a lifelong habit. My son helps out with a huge food drive run by the scouts every year, but we also make sure to drop off smaller amounts of food every month. Food pantries always need more supplies, and every donation, no matter how small, will be appreciated.”

Getting involved in the fight against child hunger in America — Image credit: Anne, Upstate Ramblings

Crystal, Cinnamon Hollow
“You know the saying ‘It takes a village to raise a child’? Well that saying comes from somewhere. We are a nation that is built to take care of one another. If the children of our future are suffering, guess what? We’re all suffering. It’s not too difficult to reach out and make sure everyone has enough food on their table. Actually, it’s REALLY easy. And all you have to do is shop for your own regular products. ConAgra, Kroger and P&G do the rest.”

Crystal, Simply Being Mommy
“Companies like ConAgra make it easy to help and get involved in the fight against hunger in the United States. I’ve been a huge supporter of the Child Hunger Ends Here program for the last few years and I invite you to be a supporter as well. I can’t think of a better cause to support than hungry children within our own communities.”

getting kids involved in the fight against child hunger in America — Image credit: Crystal, Simply Being Mommy

Donna, Blog By Donna
“It truly is inexcusable to me that here in the United States, the land of the free, the land of the plenty, the land where many of us waste food on a daily basis… we have children hungry. And children who experience even intermittent struggles with hunger may suffer serious, long-term consequences to their health, well-being and educational achievement. What’s more, being hungry robs kids of the promise of childhood – the ability to play, grow and learn. It’s easy for us to help end child hunger. Seriously… EASY! ConAgra Foods is partnering with P&G to build a community of people to make a difference …. this is a cause I will gladly support.”

Jennifer, Double Duty Mommy
“While I was [on the site] I also signed up to make a monthly donation. I feel good about donating because at least my family is helping our community every month even if we can’t always bring food directly into the food banks.”

Volunteers helping the fight against child hunger in America — Credit: Jon Morgan/AP Images for ConAgra

Kathy, A Mom’s Impression
“Ending child hunger is going to take a lot of people taking little steps. One of the easiest steps is helping ConAgra Foods by entering a code to supply a meal for a child. Join me today, and help end this epidemic in America!”

Lending Support in the Fight Against Child Hunger in America

The Child Hunger Ends Here program has set a goal to donate one million meals to food insecure kids in 2016, and everyone can easily participate by going to their favorite retailer and looking for the red pushpin and code on specially marked packages of ConAgra’s food, like Marie Callender’s® and Hunt’s®. For each eight-digit code entered at www.childhungerendshere.com from January 2016 through January 2017, ConAgra will donate the monetary equivalent of one meal to Feeding America, up to one million meals.

To learn more about the issue of child hunger and ways to get involved, visit www.childhungerendshere.com and click on the “How You Can Help” tab.

This post on the fight against child hunger in America is published in proud partnership with Child Hunger Ends Here. All opinions are our own.

Featured image courtesy of the Child Hunger Ends Here program.

#MeasurementMonday: Collecting Smart Data from Influencer Social Media and Blog Content

May 16, 2016 by The Motherhood

Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a significant rise in the use of the term “big data.” There are more tools and opportunity than ever before for collecting massive amounts of data online – but our abilities to make sense of and create value with all that data are still lacking. “Paralysis by overanalysis” plagues even the most sophisticated brand marketers.

This #MeasurementMonday, we are tackling the less quantitative side of marketing measurement: smart data and insights.

Before beginning an online campaign, insights collected through research can help shape a well-planned strategy. Social media marketing, especially in collaboration with influencers, can encourage the collection of smart data and insights. When campaigns are crafted in a way that creates authentic content and encourages natural conversation, the results will generally tell a robust story of how consumers responded to the information shared, what stuck out to them, and where they found the most value.

So, how can you cultivate these insights?

Unfortunately, there is not a simple formula for gathering data. Automated marketing tools and influencer marketing platforms do not rise to this level of sophistication in their reporting. In order to gather smart data, methods of data collection and storage must be consistent and timely, even across multiple channels and platforms. That data must then be aggregated into a single format and analyzed for trend recognition. Compiling insights from smart data collected during marketing campaigns requires a human touch, which at times can be tedious, but creates immense value when pulled correctly and presented in a meaningful way.

As a data-driven influencer marketing agency, The Motherhood leads brands in the process of cultivating, distilling and analyzing small data, and couples that with influencer-provided insights as part of our built-in feedback loop, to deliver meaningful ways to inform future strategy.

THREE WAYS TO collect smart data and insights IN YOUR Influencer marketing CAMPAIGN:

1. Allow creative freedom.

When given creative freedom, influencers generate content that reflects the thoughts of actual consumers. Influencer-generated content is created in ways that make sense to consumers and can teach brands a few things about how to connect with their target audience on a personal level. In the sponsored campaigns facilitated by The Motherhood, we often see an allowance for creative license bear fruit for the client – we advise giving influencers a selection of general themes to help shape their content and then allowing them to write in a way that is most authentic to them and engaging for their readers.

2. Tap niche communities through target influencers.

As influential leaders within their respective communities, bloggers publishing sponsored content can provide brands with a window into consumers’ minds – seeing how consumers react to their products or service offerings on a more personal level. Engagements (likes, shares, comments, etc.) on blog and social media posts are great indicators of factors such as reciprocity and shared value in a particular online community.

3. Facilitate natural conversations around a specific topic.

Influencers’ blog posts, tweets, contests and more can be crafted in a way that encourages feedback and ideas from real-life targeted consumers – so the brand can not only generate awareness of and interest in its products and services, it can gather insights on topics of interest from comments and replies to the online coverage.

At The Motherhood Inc., we focus on gathering smart insights and reporting them in meaningful ways to our clients. We listen closely to what our teams of influencers have to say and the feedback their readers share. Interested in creating an influencer marketing campaign that generates deep insights for your brand or company? We’d love to talk! Email us at contact@themotherhood.com to get started.

Continue following our #MeasurementMonday series and view past posts here!

The Motherhood Welcomes New Baby Luca!

May 9, 2016 by The Motherhood

“The moment a child is born, a mother is also born.”

The Motherhood team celebrated Mother’s Day in one of the most special ways possible, by welcoming the newest addition to our work family… Baby Luca!

Just in time for Mother’s Day, our director of marketing and business development, Serena Mounts, gave birth to her first child, Luca Thomas. We are so thrilled for Serena and her family and wish them congratulations and all the best!

Please join us in sending Serena well wishes as she embarks on this beautiful new journey called motherhood.

We hope you all enjoyed Mother’s Day! Big hugs to all the moms out there (and dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents and everyone else helping to raise a child) from the whole team at The Motherhood.

Celebrate Your Graduate with a Church Hill Classics Custom Diploma Frame

May 4, 2016 by The Motherhood

Photo credit: Danielle, Today’s the Best Day

According to a survey recently conducted by The Motherhood, 70 percent of respondents have never framed their college diplomas. After all of the effort put forth, and the time and money grads and their families spend earning that degree, no diploma should end up forgotten about, left in a drawer, or even accidentally destroyed! One solution is to protect and professionally display that achievement in a diploma frame.

This spring, The Motherhood teamed up with Church Hill Classics and a team of 15 amazing bloggers to celebrate their loved ones who are spring 2016 graduates – from husbands to children to nieces and nephews – by giving them the gift of a custom, officially licensed college diploma frame.

diploma frame — Photo credit: Kristin, It’s Free At Last

In their posts, the bloggers shared personal memories of their graduates and their accomplishments, graduation checklist suggestions, information about the importance of preserving diplomas in a high-quality frame and photos of their graduates with their hand-selected frames.

“The Motherhood [bloggers’] reviews, photos and posts are really helpful for us during our peak graduation season, because it gives us easy, visual and relevant content to share through our social channels,” said Church Hill Classics Marketing Manager Jessica Lombard. “The content creation from this program is a big benefit for us!”

To build on the conversation already stemming from the team’s blog and social media coverage, The Motherhood also hosted a Twitter party in early April, where the bloggers and other participants discussed ways to celebrate this season’s graduates and generated buzz around Church Hill Classics frames as graduation gifts.

The blogger team was then re-engaged in late April, just before graduation, to share additional social media posts and discount offers during the key sales period, reminding their followers of the best graduation gift idea – a beautiful custom diploma frame.

Overall, the campaign generated 16 blog posts and more than 1,200 social media posts, resulting in more than 45.5 million total impressions.

The Motherhood Wins at Iris Awards for Work on #HeNamedMeMalala

May 3, 2016 by The Motherhood

Photo Credit: Iris Awards

At Mom 2.0 Summit’s Iris Awards last Friday night, The Motherhood’s work on behalf of the film He Named Me Malala, in partnership with Women Online, Wake Up World Communications, the Malala Fund, Fox Searchlight Pictures and Participant Media, won the Iris Award for Best Sponsored Content.

Winners are chosen by popular vote, and we are thrilled and honored to be recognized.

Melissa Pezza of The Mommyhood Chronicles, one of the bloggers engaged by The Motherhood to participate in the campaign to spread the word about Malala’s mission and the release of the film, was on hand at the ceremony and saw the live announcement. She told us, “I was very thrilled to be involved in a campaign for an amazing woman who is not only a pioneer but such a believer in education that she lets nothing stand in her way. She is a role model for all women!”

After learning the news of the win, Monica Marino of Marino Bambinos – another of the bloggers The Motherhood engaged for the campaign – said, “Malala is truly a symbol of hope and a pillar for girls’ and women’s rights worldwide. It was an honor to play a small part in amplifying the release of her documentary film He Named Me Malala and I’m grateful to The Motherhood for including me in this incredible campaign. It’s also wonderful to see community recognition for this important work.”

Lori Pace of A Day in Motherhood agreed, saying of the program, “Helping to promote He Named Me Malala was an amazing opportunity, not only for me, but for my daughter as well. Being able to open the discussion of going against the ‘norm’ and staying with your passion no matter what happens is an important one. This campaign promotes all that is good about her story and I am not surprised that it won an Iris Award!”

During the #HeNamedMeMalala campaign in September and October 2015, The Motherhood and our partners worked with nearly 75 blogger ambassadors to share news and information, via blogs and social media, about the Malala Fund’s efforts on behalf of women’s education around the world, along with the release of He Named Me Malala in theaters across the country. We also screened the film in advance for 340 attendees in a dozen different cities. Tweets with #HeNamedMeMalala during that two-month period totaled more than 2,000 and reached 4.5 million users.

Congratulations to our incredible partners, in particular Morra Aarons-Mele of Women Online and Chrysula Winegar of Wake Up World Communications, and all of the bloggers who participated in the #HeNamedMeMalala campaign and share the credit for the Iris Award for Best Sponsored Content!

Influencer Spotlight Series: Muffy, Brown Mamas

May 2, 2016 by The Motherhood

The unapologetic truth, saying no to working for free and what brands can do better; Muffy, of Brown Mamas, is sharing it all with The Motherhood this month!

As our featured blogger in May, Muffy delves into some of the greatest challenges when working on brand programs, what inspires her and where she sees the greatest engagement with her content. She also offers great advice for those interested in starting a blog, and shares about one of her favorite programs.

Read more below and give Muffy and the moms at Brown Mamas a shout out at @TheBrownMama.

Love what you see?

Check out all of our Influencer Spotlights here!

How does the Blogger Spotlight Series work?

Each month, our internal team convenes and discusses our latest programs, stellar partnerships and top-performing influencers. It’s not about numbers, but rather, the quality, authentic content they’re delivering consistently. It’s about reliability, professionalism and partnership. We discuss our nominations for the month and ultimately decide on just one blogger to invite as our featured blogger. Stop back June 1 for the next blogger spotlight!