The Motherhood’s Year in Review

December 22, 2017 by The Motherhood

We’re wrapping up an amazing and insightful year! We thought it would be fun to show you The Motherhood’s year in review, including highlights from events we attended and tactics, trends and tools we learned this year.

Take a look! Did you miss any of these top blog posts?

A Conversation with The Influence Marketer: Tom Augenthaler: The Motherhood’s CEO, Cooper Munroe, got a chance to interview the expert of influencer marketing, Tom Augenthaler! See what he had to share about credibility, scale, SEO, conversion and trust!
Huntington National Bank Spotlights The Motherhood CEO: Huntington National Bank featured our CEO, Cooper Munroe, this year! She shared the unique story of how our social media agency was built and how we’ve grown and evolved since our founding in 2006.
Influencer Marketing Days: Our Key Takeaways: After attending and speaking at Influencer Marketing Days conference in New York City, Cooper Munroe and The Motherhood team compiled and shared the top learnings from the event!
Team Creativity and Motivation: The Motherhood Style!: As a team, we made a commitment in 2017 to do outside, creativity-inducing, fun activities regularly. Be inspired from some of our team activities we shared on the blog!
Influencer Marketing 101: Deadlines, Commitments and Best Practices: Working with a large number of influencers at once can always come with unexpected issues. Here are our tips for making sure all goes according to plan!
Influencer Tactic: Extend the Value of Campaigns with Influencer-Executed Promoted Social Posts: When it fits into campaign parameters and goals, a beneficial yet often-overlooked, tactical add-on to influencer campaigns is paid social ads and boosted posts executed by the influencers themselves. Read on for ways this can be done!
Top 10 Influencer Tips at #BlogHer17: We attended BlogHer this year and were so inspired by the influencer tips shared throughout the conference! Take a look for yourself!
Facebook’s Declining Organic Reach: Tips for Publishers to Maintain Reach: Have you noticed a decline in your Facebook page organic reach this year? Here are a few tips for publishers to keep in mind when trying to maintain Facebook reach.
Everything You Need to Know About the Facebook Branded Content Tool for Influencers (Updated Nov 2017): This remained a hot topic in 2017 as Facebook made updates to their Branded Content Tool! Are you caught up on how to use it?
Wheelbarrows, Customer-Led Growth and H.J. Heinz: CEO Cooper Munroe shares a beautiful story from the town where The Motherhood HQ is located, and the business lessons that can be learned through it!
This Is Us and Why We Want to Hold Hands: As the TV show This is Us became largely popular earlier this year, Cooper Munroe drew insights on why we feel so connected to the show and the importance of authenticity and relatability.
Influencer Marketing: Make the Leap from Tactic to Brand Strategy: Why it’s crucial that your brand integrate influencer marketing into overall brand strategy — not just a one-off tactical basis.

We are so looking forward to a New Year and have exciting updates to share in 2018!

2018 Social Media Predictions And Marketing Trends

December 18, 2017 by The Motherhood

With the end of the year just weeks away, we’re excited to delve into what’s in store for 2018. Check out what we’re reading when it comes to what’s on the horizon for influencer marketing in the New Year.

Influencer Marketing Will Continue to Rise

By now, we’ve all seen firsthand, year after year, how influencer marketing continues to become an integral part of many marketers’ strategies. Large corporations, small businesses, and everyone in between are seeking out information and ways to leverage this smart strategy for their own brands. According to PR Daily, searches around “influencer marketing” have doubled in the first nine months of 2017, and in that same time span, searches for “Instagram influencer” have more than tripled.

Because the marketplace is so saturated, PR Daily also underscores the importance of having a clearly defined strategy in place for influencer marketing; a strategy that an influencer marketing agency – like The Motherhood – can help create and manage, so that it is a seamless extension of your overall marketing plan.

Augmented Reality Will Take a Greater Hold

Augmented reality has been around for several years now, but experts predict that in 2018, more brands will be using this technology to immerse their customers in their company’s offerings, thanks to recent technological advances from Apple (ARKit) and Google (ARCore) that make augmented reality applications more useable.

Social media ads are also predicted to incorporate augmented reality, creating experiences where prospective customers can actually visualize themselves with a product or service.

Instagram and Instagram Stories Will Continue to Be Important for Marketers

Just a year after they launched, Instagram Stories’ daily viewers surpassed those of SnapChat. Plus, those with more than 10,000 followers can also now add a link in their Stories, which on Instagram, has been a hurdle for brands to date (source).

This, combined with the fact that Instagram Story metrics are measurable, gives the platform a one-up on others from a marketer’s perspective, which is why we expect to see additional growth and interest in this platform in 2018 – especially for fashion brands and influencers.

Because more and more brands are disappearing from the news feed due to ever-changing algorithms, creating a stable of content in Instagram Stories is key to staying relevant and top-of-mind for brands, and can guide your followers back to your news feed to boost engagement with that content.

Video Will Be More Relevant Than Ever

Video dominance (including live video) certainly isn’t a new trend, and we anticipate that video will continue to be a favored medium. After all, video is expected to account for 80 percent of all consumer internet traffic by 2021!

Experts continue to agree that in our mobile-first world, attention spans are shorter than ever, so videos that demonstrate value – using a “show don’t tell” model – will be vital for brands wanting to stay relevant.

Also, in 2018, mobile video is anticipated to grow by 25 percent, and video consumption is supposed to decline on laptops and desktop computers for the first time ever.

Real-Time Access and Messenger Marketing Will See Growth

This year, Facebook reported that there are 100,000 active bots on Messenger each month, and that number is slated to grow. In fact, artificial intelligence (AI) is projected to grow by 53 percent in the next few years.

This type of automation and real-time access to brands is almost required in the social media era, where brands and consumers are “always on.” In addition to more brands incorporating that kind of access into their marketing toolkit, we’re likely to see improvement in the quality of those interactions, as well as the response rate.

We want to hear from you. What do you predict will rise of fall for social media in 2018? Tell us in the comments!

The Motherhood’s 2017 Books in Review

December 6, 2017 by The Motherhood

Is there anything better than getting lost in a really good book? The Motherhood team was lucky to receive a number of books published by amazing moms in 2017 — ranging from kids’ books to parenting advice. If you’re looking for a book recommendation, take a look at our book round-up here!

We Are Joined at the Heart by Yonette Belinda:

The first book on our list is a children’s book, and we think it’s destined to be a classic. In fact, Yonette received the Mom’s Choice Award for it — her first published work! The idea behind this book started with a poem the author wrote to her child when she was born. Her hope for the book is for its words “to comfort the hearts of children and affirm the love that each child deserves and needs. Its message is both symbolic and literal. Love never fails.” We love that!

101 Survival Tactics for New and Used Parents by Ruth Lambert:

As a mom of a blended family, Ruth Lambert takes a gentle, humorous approach to sharing how to make parenting a little easier. These 101 tips are based on principles from a child psychologist, Haim Ginnot, and were designed to help children think independently and make good choices, while still encouraging parents to retain control to prevent harm. With easy-to-incorporate tips, this book makes a great gift for expecting parents or, like the author, parents in blended families.

The Heart of Marriage: Stories that Celebrate the Adventure of Life by Dawn Camp

A longtime friend of The Motherhood’s, author Dawn Camp collected real-life stories about the highs and lows of marriage from fellow writers. This book reminds us that the “best” marriages aren’t always about being perfect, but rather, sticking together and growing together through both the difficult and celebratory events that life brings.

Restless in LA: A Novel by Robin Finn:

Public-health-professional-turned-writer, Robin Finn’s first foray into publishing is Restless in LA: A Novel. The main character of the book, Alexandra, is the wife of a work-obsessed husband and mom of three children. Her life is isolating, and when she accidentally reconnects with a former flame, she faces intense personal challenges and decisions. If you’re anything like us, you’ll have a hard time putting this one down.

Preschool Clues: Raising Smart, Inspires and Engaged Kids in a Screen-Filled World by Angela Santomero:

The last book on our list will debut in early 2018 (you can pre-order it now!). Written by the award-winning creator of Blue’s Clues, Super Why!, and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, in this book, children’s media icon, Angela Santomero explains that the preschool years (between ages two and five) are the most influential in a child’s life. Using research-based suggestions such as playing to problem-solve and using repetition, this book shares ways to help develop kids’ critical thinking skills, teach empathy and instill confidence at a young age.

Have you read any of these 2017 books yet, or do you plan on picking up a copy of any of them? Tell us in the comments!

These books were provided to The Motherhood. Opinions are our own.

DIY Bloggers + Brands: A Powerful Collaboration

November 28, 2017 by The Motherhood

Think about the last time you attempted a DIY or home improvement project. You started with a quick Google search to find instructions or tips online, right? More than likely, DIY bloggers or vloggers were the ones who provided the helpful information that helped guide your craftsmanship.

Humans are, by nature, visual creatures, and we seek out step-by-step instructions when learning or trying something new. So it’s no wonder that we seek out visual inspiration from blogs, Pinterest and YouTube. In fact, YouTube is the second-largest search engine, processing more than three billion searches each month.

Influencers are often the content creators behind these videos and social media content, which is why influencer marketing — which helps build a brand’s digital bookshelf and, ultimately, improves its search ranking — is arguably the most important channel for DIY and home improvement brands. Tapping creative DIY blogger experts puts your brand in an incredibly effective spotlight, helping inspire the bloggers’ thousands of devoted followers with out-of-the-box ways to use your product or service. Campaigns with DIY bloggers can result in shareable and creative content on behalf of your brand that reaches your target audience.

So just how in-demand are these types of advice-based DIY or home improvement posts?

According to Google, two of the main reasons moms use YouTube are for how-to videos and DIY ideas.
Home- and garden-related topics are in the top three most-searched topics on Pinterest.
Tutorial, guide and how-to pins receive 42% higher click through rates.
The second-most pinned category is DIY & crafts, followed by home decor.
In the last 30 days alone, online influencers within The Motherhood’s network have shared more than 50 posts about DIY home renovation, sparking more than 1.9 million impressions (which is about 64,000 impressions per day)!

By gathering these types of insights, home improvement and DIY/craft brands can make informed, strategic choices when creating an influencer campaign – setting the program up for great success. Some of our most valuable insights about DIY consumers come from the bloggers who are on the front lines of this space.

Jackie with I Heart Arts n Crafts, one of our favorite crafty bloggers, recently shared with us that she tends to “get lost browsing Instagram hashtags” since she finds great inspiration for her own projects there, and, although it is time-consuming to create videos, she says the engagement she sees on her YouTube how-to videos makes that effort “so worth it!”

Moving DIY consumers to action with influencer posts:

DIYers are not only looking to be inspired, they will often try what they see on blogs and how-to videos. In fact, it’s not uncommon for The Motherhood campaigns to have dozens of reader comments stating they plan to try what they see and read — whether it be a recipe, a house project or new product. They aren’t just inspired, they are moved to action on behalf of a brand. For the DIY space in particular, the readers are often already looking for ideas; 90% of DIYers research online before going to a store to make a purchase.

Just take a look at some of these DIYers’ comments from a campaign with The Motherhood:

And more powerful DIYer comments inspired from the Bower Power Instagram post (disclaimer: not a program with The Motherhood, but we admire their work very much!):

Interested in hearing our thoughts on getting your brand in front of home improvement and DIY bloggers and consumers? Contact us today for a customized recommendation!

Giving Thanks: Small Action, Big Impact with ShareTheMeal app

November 20, 2017 by The Motherhood

Giving back as a way to give thanks is very important to all of us at The Motherhood, as an agency and as individuals. And with Thanksgiving just around the corner, giving back is at the top of our minds right now.

This year, we hope you’ll consider joining us in supporting the United Nations World Food Programme’s ShareTheMeal app, an inspiring, global effort that’s already making a huge difference in feeding kids around the world: The app makes it possible for people to donate as little as $0.50 to feed a child for a day.

The UN World Food Programme’s important work was covered during a powerful 60 Minutes segment about the hunger crisis in Yemen earlier this week. (The ShareTheMeal app raised donations for Yemen in May and June 2017.) To see how using the app can help feed kids around the world, watch this one-minute video overview:

Here’s how you can get involved yourself:

Click here to get the app
Take a food photo (like you might anyway for Thanksgiving!)
Place a #ShareTheMeal filter on the photo (a special one will be available for the holiday)
Post to social media using #ShareTheMeal to encourage your community to join the global movement to fight hunger

For Thanksgiving, ShareTheMeal will be fundraising to help Syrian refugees in Jordan, northeast Nigeria, Haiti and Rohingya refugees, aiming to reach a goal of feeding 1,000 children for one year.

If you’re planning on giving back this season, we encourage you to download the ShareTheMeal app and/or sharing it with your communities, especially between Thanksgiving (Thursday, Nov. 23) and Giving Tuesday (Tuesday, Nov. 28). It’s easy and can be hugely impactful through our collective efforts. We will be using it and encourage you to join us!

Maximizing Holiday Influencer Content

November 14, 2017 by The Motherhood

Combining our extensive experience in brand marketing with our knowledge of the influencers within our network, we pulled together some of the most relevant and impactful stats for brands to keep top of mind as they are planning holiday influencer content and marketing campaigns.

Based on those insights, here are The Motherhood’s three quick tips to help maximize your holiday influencer content marketing efforts:

1. PLAN AHEAD

When we asked our influencers when they start planning holiday content, 61 percent reported they start planning two months in advance and 25 percent say they plan one month in advance. The holiday timeframe is one of the busiest times of the year for influencers, making it all the more important to secure a spot on influencers’ editorial calendars as early as possible and before they get filled up!

2. RESURFACE EVERGREEN CONTENT

Influencer content developed as part of an evergreen campaign can easily be repurposed and shared during the holiday season, leveraging trends and new uses for a product or service. This is an easy and cost-efficient way to extend the value of influencer investments you’ve made this year.

3. SECURE BRAND PLACEMENT IN ROUND UP/GIFT GUIDE POSTS

Holiday gift guide posts have become increasingly popular. In fact, 90 percent of our influencers are planning on doing holiday round up and/or gift list posts this year. Securing a brand placement in these posts is an excellent way to get your product or service in front of readers who are seeking holiday shopping inspiration. The challenge can be finding the influencers who are planning these types of posts. Working with an influencer network is a great way to efficiently identify influencers who will be publishing shopping guides that are relevant to your brand.