Trends

Influencer Spotlight: Kristy, Mommy Hates Cooking

June 1, 2016 by The Motherhood

Video, value and vintage inspiration – Kristy of Mommy Hates Cooking tells all in this month’s blogger spotlight!

As our featured June blogger, Kristy dishes on what’s in and what’s out, along with why 2016 is the year for truly “living” and how she plans to implement that philosophy with her own family.

Dig in below to read more, and give Kristy a shout out at @MomHatesCooking.

Love what you see?

Check out 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 July 1 for the next blogger spotlight!

Work-Life Balance for Moms: Elusive or Achievable?

February 29, 2016 by The Motherhood

Work-life balance for moms: the debate on if and how this exists is one that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Women in the workforce – those who work from their home and out of the home – often face challenges in devoting adequate time to both their careers and their families, not to mention their outside interests. As entrepreneur and mother Randi Zuckerberg stated: work, sleep, family, fitness or friends – pick any three.

A global survey from EY reported that one-third of full-time employees say achieving work-life balance has become more difficult in the past several years. Not surprisingly, parents and millennials are among the groups who face the most pressure in this area.

Flexibility is Key for Moms

Working parents say that flexibility is of critical importance to their satisfaction and success in finding this delicate balance. The survey revealed that that having a boss and colleagues who support their flexible work arrangements is one of the top factors working parents seek in a job – and millennial parents are the most likely group to take a pay cut to have more flexibility.

For companies looking to protect profitability and morale by retaining valuable employees and reducing turnover, a policy of flexibility shouldn’t come with strings attached. The survey reported that the “flexibility stigma” and lack of telecommuting options are two of the top reasons employees quit a job.

Facing the “Flexibility Stigma”

The struggle to achieve work-life balance is multi-faceted: flexibility should not just be a policy on paper; it should also be ingrained in the culture and fabric of the organization so employees feel empowered to use that benefit. In many workplaces, there can often be an unspoken rule that even though the policy exists, employees may be perceived unfavorably for using it.

Consider the situation of a working mother whose daughter has a school play in the middle of the day: if she chooses to attend, there can be a feeling of guilt stemming from the judgment from her colleagues; if she prioritizes work, she’ll feel guilty for letting her child down. It can feel like a lose/lose situation.

Finding a Career with Work-Life Balance for Moms

As part of our partnership with Northwood Realty Services, The Motherhood had the chance to learn how real estate is a career that provides some much-needed work-life balance for moms. As one of the primary benefits of this career, real estate agents manage their own schedule and can work around their family’s needs. If you have to stay home with a sick child or want to chaperone a field trip – Northwood Realty Services empowers moms to make it happen.

Northwood Realty Services values the unique skills that working mothers bring to both their families and their careers. The company is always looking for a few good moms, and here are some reasons why:

Multi-Tasking: “If you want something done, ask a busy person.” As many moms know, there is only one of you, so you have to figure out a way to get everything done. With real estate, agents have to juggle many balls at the same time – an open house and a closing on the same day, for example. Moms have a ton on their plate, and they’re some of the best time managers and multi-taskers out there.
Empathy and Understanding: Buying and selling a home is a huge decision that greatly impacts a person’s life and finances. Clients appreciate when someone is able to listen to their concerns, understand their needs and keep them calm throughout the home-buying process. Who better to practice patience and grace under pressure than moms?
Connectedness: Besides family and friends from before they had kids, many moms participate in playgroups, “mommy and me” classes, go to playdates, etc. This is a great way to get connected to new friends and build or expand a network of potential clients.
Passionate: Mothers are passionate for what they care about and will fight for things that matter. Northwood Realty Services seeks out people who advocate for their clients and who are passionate about what they are doing and helping people.

Visit NorthwoodForMoms.com to learn more about real estate as a family-friendly, flexible career choice that welcomes moms.

This post on work-life balance for moms was created in partnership with Northwood Realty Services. All opinions are our own.

Featured image courtesy of GotCredit.

Snapchat for Brands: Worth the Investment?

February 16, 2016 by The Motherhood

Marketers looking to use Snapchat for brands, take note: 2016 is shaping up to be a banner year. This relative newcomer to the social media space is reported to have as many as 200 million users who send a staggering 700 million photos per day. And potentially following in the footsteps of social media giants Facebook and Twitter, Snapchat is a platform that many analysts predict will go public in 2016.

Given Snapchat’s swift growth, many marketers are eager to explore potential ways to tap its millions of active mobile users for brand awareness and engagement. Particularly for those wishing to reach moms, the question remains: is using Snapchat for brands worth the time, money and creative energy required to stand out on a platform in which content has a limited lifespan among users who are primarily 25 years of age and younger?

Our answer in 2015 was “generally, no.” However, in our continual evaluation of the social media space, our 2016 standpoint is evolving to “not quite yet, but it’s coming.”

Snapchat Adoption Among Moms

With engagement and responsiveness being two of the top qualities that lead to reader trust, bloggers with multiple social media platforms are focusing most of their energy where their audiences are most active. So far, Snapchat hasn’t made the cut.

In The Motherhood’s recent survey of more than 600 bloggers, Snapchat ranked the lowest in terms of platforms that brands request bloggers use and platforms that bloggers recommend brands use. Many influential social media moms reported having Snapchat on their mobile devices, but they use it very casually and aren’t convinced of its usefulness in connecting with the communities they’ve worked so hard to build. Less than two percent of bloggers surveyed have used Snapchat for influencer campaigns, but nearly half think there is a future in collaborating with brands via this platform.

While The Motherhood’s research revealed that 80 percent of consumers are more likely to purchase a brand they saw on social media, it appears the same isn’t holding true for Snapchat. A survey from Column Five and News Cred reports that branded promotional content isn’t making an impact on their purchasing decisions: a mere two percent reported that they “sometimes” buy something they saw on Snapchat, while a staggering 98 percent answered “rarely or never.”

Snapchat for brands — Image courtesy of AdWeek.

Via Wired, ComScore shared that while Snapchat has grown 59 percent in the last year to 40.3 million U.S. adult users, it has grown 69 percent among people age 25 to 34, which many think is approaching the tipping point for a social media platform to move from niche to mainstream.

If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It

With adoption among the adult demographic expected to increase, and with bloggers optimistic that the platform will pick up steam, what’s next in terms of Snapchat for brands?

Just as bloggers try to strike a balance between nurturing the platforms where they find the most value and building a following on new social channels, brands are also weighing their options. Should they focus their marketing dollars on platforms on which they’ve achieved measurable, repeatable success, or test relatively unknown waters?

Currently, one of the most limiting aspects of Snapchat for brands is the lack of ability to measure and target. While other social media platforms deliver data that help marketers analyze and adjust content and delivery, it can be difficult to prove a platform’s value without being able to benchmark and track performance.

However, the rumored release of an API could change the game. Digiday summarizes some of the benefits of a Snapchat API:

“An API would help measure performance of content on Snapchat, get better insights into the type of people who are watching, where they’re located,” said Nick Cicero, CEO of Delmondo, an agency specializing in Snapchat analytics and influencers. “It would also enable brands to create more content with influencers.”

Delivering Messages That Matter

To The Motherhood, the heart of influencer marketing is looking at where a brand’s consumers engage online and how they naturally interact, and including a brand in that conversation in a relevant, authentic way. For centuries, moms have been sharing ideas and advice with their closest networks of friends in a deeply personal way, and in the modern digital age, The Motherhood helps brands be a part of those conversations online in a way that evokes trust, advocacy and action.

As The Motherhood’s social listening team continues to monitor and evaluate usage of Snapchat for brands, we’re also tapping our proprietary database to hear and apply what our nationwide network of moms is saying. The Motherhood’s campaign recommendations always reflect the platforms and message delivery we know will resonate among consumers.

If your brand would like to discuss ways to work together on an influencer marketing campaign based on our consumer insights and always-on social listening, email us at contact@themotherhood.com.

Featured image courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons user AdamPrzezdziek.

Super Bowl Brand Showdown: Which $1 Million Branded Emoji Won the Day on Twitter?

February 8, 2016 by The Motherhood

If you tune into the Super Bowl mostly for the commercials, you are not alone! In a recent study, nearly 1 in 4 viewers admitted to watching the game specifically for the commercials. At The Motherhood, we are fascinated by the new commercial trends and brand strategies around the event that we see crop up every year. For Super Bowl 50, we were especially interested in Twitter’s new advertising option for brands: a $1 million branded emoji.

Twitter started offering branded emojis back in Fall 2015, so it’s no surprise that the company is continuing this option for some of its highest paying advertisers — especially right in time for the #SB50 social chatter!

The way it works is simple: when users type a certain hashtag into Twitter, it will trigger a custom-made emoji. For example, type #SB50 into a tweet and you’ll see a football emoji appear. In fact, Twitter released several new emojis just in time for Super Bowl tweeting:

Brands partnered with Twitter to release their social emojis prior to the big game in hopes that when their commercial aired live, their hashtag – accompanied by a custom emoji – would stand out in the conversation online. The branded emojis come with a hefty price tag, but with 73 percent of Super Bowl viewers using a second screen to check social channels, the investment may have been well worth it. Here are the four brands that paid big bucks for a new kind of Super Bowl advertising — and the results, according to The Motherhood’s social listening team:

Pepsi, the official sponsor of the Halftime Show, also owned a Promoted Moment during the game’s break. The hashtag that triggered the musical notes and Pepsi can emoji was tweeted more than 431,000 times (including retweets) by more than 235,000 people yesterday. It was a clear winner among the branded emoji hashtags, generating more than 1.2 billion impressions.

Budweiser’s #GiveADamn came in as the second-most-mentioned branded emoji hashtag on Twitter, with 29,000 tweets (including retweets), 25,000 contributors and 85.8 million impressions. The #GiveADamn campaign has a strong anti-drinking and driving message, hence the new emoji with a beer bottle and car keys being dropped. For every tweet with the hashtag, Budweiser is donating $1 toward Safe Ride programs.

Bud Light’s commercial with Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen was a parody of the presidential campaign, encouraging people to support the #BudLightParty. We also noticed Bud Light received several celebrity endorsements on Twitter during the game. The campaign hashtag with the bottle cap emoji (resembling a political badge) was tweeted more than 11,600 times (including retweets) by 9,600 Twitter users, generating 62.3 million impressions.

Coming in with the fewest number of branded-emoji tweets was Verizon’s #Minute50 hashtag. This hashtag triggers a clock emoji with 50 minutes on the clock, symbolic because the company has been giving away prizes (everything from free data to Super Bowl tickets) to Verizon customers every hour on the 50 minute mark since January 24. #Minute50 received fewer than 500 tweets (including retweets) yesterday from 440 Twitter users, resulting in 4.2 million impressions. However, we want to note that because this campaign has been running for two weeks, yesterday’s tweets likely don’t accurately represent the overall reach and effectiveness of this campaign.

What’s next for branded emojis?

We look forward to seeing the other emojis, branded or not, that Twitter will reveal in the future! We’re anticipating many more to come for future events (think summer Olympic Games, the presidential campaign, etc.).

A note on Facebook: Although the Twitter branded emojis (naturally) do not appear on Facebook, use of the above hashtags on that platform was high. Again, #PepsiHalftime was by far the most used of the four. However, we found that the most shared link was to Budweiser’s #GiveADamn ad and also had the highest percentage of female users.

Did you tweet with any of Twitter’s branded emojis during the Super Bowl?

Highlights from the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES)

January 11, 2016 by The Motherhood

This year, more than 150,000 people attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where annually, the latest and greatest in technology makes its debut. Among the plethora of newly launched gadgets, a few specific trends emerged from the show. Read on for highlights from 2016’s CES:

CES Debuts New Smart Home Developments and Connected Devices

It comes as no surprise that more and more manufacturers are ensuring their products are internet-ready to streamline the customer experience. In fact, it is estimated that 15,000 of the 20,000 new products presented at CES have sensors that make them internet-capable.

One of the most buzzed-about connected products that debuted last week is the LG Signature Refrigerator, an appliance that takes convenience to the next level. The refrigerator’s doors open with a wave of your foot, and a knock on the door makes the opaque surface transparent, saving energy when you need to browse your fridge inventory.

Since its launch in June 2015, Amazon’s voice-activated assistant, Echo, has been paving the way for centralized smart home automation. Last week at CES, we saw several manufacturers launch Echo-compatible products and apps that make the “smart home” concept even more of a reality.

For instance, TrackR’s Bravo ($29) is a small Bluetooth-enabled tag that you can attach to your keys, wallet or virtually anything else. As a result of Echo’s new integration with Amazon’s Echo, users will be able to ask Echo to help find their missing, tagged items.

Ford drivers will also soon be able communicate with in-home systems that are set up with Amazon’s Echo from their car. That means one day, drivers will be able to activate their home security systems or shut off their porch lights from the road.

Photo credit: Business Wire

360-Degree Video

Another emerging trend to watch is 360-degree video. With this technology, viewers can get a dynamic, holistic view of an event or subject on screen (as an example, check out this red carpet footage from the Golden Globes). During CES, Nikon and GoPro announced their plans for consumer-grade 360-degree cameras.

Users can currently view these videos on Facebook and YouTube, but until recently, there weren’t many manufacturers creating affordable cameras to shoot the spherical content.

While it will likely be 2017 before these new, 360-degree cameras hit the market, we’re eager to see how brands and consumers adopt the technology.

Wearables for Every Member of the Household

Smart watches and fitness trackers took center stage during CES, but other wearable companies debuted and shared exciting updates, too:

Owlet recently released the wearable sock baby monitor that gives parents peace of mind. The smart sock tracks babies’ heart rate and measures how much oxygen is in their blood. Bluetooth technology shares the information to the parents’ smartphone in real time.
Sensoria, a line of smart fitness clothing, debuted smart athletic shirts and a sports bra during this year’s CES. The clothing line includes embedded sensors to improve running by tracking speed, pace, cadence, foot landing, distance and more.
WELT by Samsung looks like a standard belt, but it tracks physical movement and monitors eating habits. Made by Samsung’s Creative Lab, the WELT is still under development and currently unavailable for retail purchase.
WonderWoof and WonderMeow are bringing pets into the wearables game. These Bluetooth-enabled bowties for dogs and cats track pets’ steps, sleep and play activity.

Photo credit: Owlet

Autonomous Automotives

During CES, automakers addressed self-driving cars, and more specifically, why they aren’t ready for widespread adoption. One of the reasons they shared: These autonomous cars have difficulty managing inclement weather and unexpected occurrences. The lack of consumer trust in autonomous cars is another hurdle for car manufacturers.

Nonetheless, Volvo announced that the first semi-autonomous car will be available for sale in the U.S. later this year.

We can’t wait to see how these trends take shape this year. What technology trends are you most excited to follow?

Featured image courtesy of Consumer Technology Association

Blogs Motivate and Support New Year’s Resolutions

January 6, 2016 by The Motherhood

Have you set any New Year’s resolutions for 2016?

Approximately 45 percent* of Americans make New Year’s resolutions, but only about eight percent are successful in reaching their goals. Among resolutions for 2016, the top categories included:

Self improvement or education-related resolutions (47 percent)
Weight-related resolutions (38 percent)
Money-related resolutions (34 percent)
Relationship-related resolutions (31 percent)

The Motherhood analyzed anonymous Facebook conversations on the topic of New Year’s resolutions leading up to the start of 2016. Here are some interesting points we uncovered:

Top general topics mentioned included: family, friends, health and religion.
The most-shared links included links to fitness/health sites, travel sites and blogs.
People ages 24-35 are most actively talking about their resolutions on Facebook.

Most of us know that New Year’s resolutions can be hard to maintain. As this FastCompany article states, it’s because resolutions often require changes in habits, which are difficult to make (or break)!

Finding Support Online

From our perspective, blogs, social networks and other online communities have a huge opportunity not only to serve as a source of information and motivation, but also to help with accountability and support for those wishing to make a change in their habits. In fact, of the most-engaging links about New Year’s resolutions on Facebook, four of 10 were links to blog posts. Further, the most-shared blog post link included a free printable to help people define goals for 2016!

Last year during this resolution-making time, Kentico Software released survey results that showed one-third of those who made New Year’s goals planned on searching online for products or services to help support them in their endeavors, and 38 percent planned to turn to sites or apps that can help them track their progress throughout the year. (Apps such as Charity Miles and StickK help hold users accountable by tracking progress while adding a charitable aspect.) Furthermore, the report stated that 26 percent planned on using blogs and other sites to help them achieve their resolutions.

We recently saw the supportive nature of the online blogger community in action during a campaign we hosted on behalf of a weight loss client. During the first half of this blog tour (second half results are not yet available), 91 percent of blog post comments and 83 percent of Facebook comments showed support for the influencers’ weight loss, demonstrating a strong sense of community, as well as the involvement and interest of the readers.

Bloggers: What is your experience with your online community support system and New Year’s resolutions?

*University of Scranton, December 2015