Moms are all a Twitter
Annemarie Tempelman-Kluit, founder of yoyomama.ca and yoyobelly.ca and Sue Sinclair, founder and chief executive mom of Raspberry Kids demystified social media for Moms at the May 29th momcafé event “Moms are all a Twitter” in Vancouver.
Moms are not only on Twitter – they are on Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, Flickr, Squido, Youtube, My Space and more. Moms are the queens of multi-tasking and multi-social-mediaing! For instance, during the presentation, Sarah from @yoyobelly was live tweeting using the #mctweet, collecting Twitter handles and posting on www.momcafenetwork.com
Definitions of social media
• Social media are primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings
• Online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other
• Social media is the collection of tools and online spaces available to help individuals and businesses to accelerate their information and communication needs
• Our definition – connecting with others in various online communities
momcafé poll results
How often you’re online
Few times a day – 35%
Once an hour – 30%
Nonstop – 26%
Websites you frequent the most:
Facebook – 48%
Twitter – 26%
Blogs – 17%
Flickr – 3%
Biz related sites – 39%
Mom related sites – 22%
LinkedIn – 13%
Sue and Annemarie focused on Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Squidoo and Yelp as they seem to be the most used social media applications with moms and what they have used for their businesses.
Sue started blogging in July of 2008, chronicling her journey as a fledging mompreneur, which helped build a bit of a presence prior to launching. Here are some of Sue’s blogging tips:
• Blog every 7-10 days
• Length isn’t important, quality is.
• Relevancy to your business, consider the audience you have or want to attract
• Personality, mine is a mix of biz/personal as most “mompreneurs”, very different for corporate
• Make sure you read, comment on other people’s blogs, credit other people’s blogs.
When you are a mompreneur, it is natural to blur the lines when it comes to social media, but if your organization is very corporate, it is not as though you are going to blog about your four year old’s issues with potty training! Consider your audience.
Think of blogging as a legacy, permanent record, diary, journal, outlet. Benefits can be many, SEO, a release, another way to get the word out.
Word of caution, this is a permanent record and a rule we used to use in the call centres was to ask yourself “Would I be ok if this call was played on the 6pm news?” - Sue follows the same guideline for her blog.
Sue was online and received a Google alert about someone who blogged about Raspberry Kids. She contacted them and immediately gave them a discount code. Within 40 minutes they had placed an order and wrote some more about their experience with Raspberry Kids.
Annemarie just launched Yoyodiaries which is a group blog about the ups and downs of raising kids while raising a business as she wanted an opportunity to write stuff that didn’t fit into their regular editorial (where are they now), plus biz tips, plus parenting adventures too.
Two local mummy bloggers were in the audience today – Keri from crunchy carpets & Gwen from left coast mama (sure there are lots more too).
Headlines that grab: my son just threw up on my keyboard/I want another shower.
Facebook:
It’s all about friends and people you know.
Sue and Annemarie explained the differences between groups and pages, and personal versus public pages. Facebook is a great opportunity to get involved and find old friends. It’s also a great place to advertise as all the moms are on Facebook.
The benefits of Facebook is that it is more visual, there are various applications and you can write over 140 characters. For instance, Bopomo Pictures went from three to 128 fans in less than a week and now has over 490 fans. Bopomo has a great brand, leveraged a photo contest, maintained consistent marketing and promotions with lots of events and specials.
Twitter:
Twitter is for people you want to know as opposed to Facebook is for people you already know.
You can use Twitter to find people you want to connect with, learn from, interact with. I follow all my interests – moms, social media, media, friends, parenting experts, celebrities.
Twitter is not bitter, people will tweet you to help cheer you up. Follow Friday – eg. #followfriday
Everyone’s first tweets are “Just trying to figure out this Twitter thing”
Create a bio, add your demographics, personalize your page and upload your picture. Try to maintain a good ratio of followers to followees.
Twitter Tools:
Tweetdeck: RT, DM, public timelines, sort groups
Twitterberry: Live tweeting
Twit pics
Serch.twitter.com: search who is talking about you, what is relevant to your business or industry
Hootsuite: Time your tweets, multiple users tweet on the same account.
Mr. Tweet: suggestions as to who you should follow, you can also recommend people.
Twitter examples:
Annemarie used Twitter to get advice on how to sooth her child’s cough without using cough medicine and Canadian Family tweeted her to let her know about an article they just wrote. Then, they asked Annemarie to participate in a story about moms and technology.
The Globe and Mail printed an article about raccoon moms which then got a lot of playtime by real moms on Twitter at #racconmom.
Sue and Annemarie created an informal, spontaneous girls or moms night out at #VMNO/gno and a bunch of moms just got together by hearing about it via Twitter.
Many events are promoted on Twitter including the momcafe event on Twitter.
Sue has had a number of people tweet her about seeing her van for Raspberry Kids.
Sue tweeted HGTV about some new room decals which they then profiled in an article.
People also use Twitter to look for content for their articles, online newsletters, etc. It’s a great way to respond and get your ideas heard.
@stylekid effectively uses Twitter for market research – they ask lots of questions and incorporate the answers into their blog
To conclude:
Social media is here to stay and it’s always evolving.
If you enjoy social media for personal use, you can do as much or as little as you like.
If you are involved with social media for your business, it should be as much a part of your marketing strategy as any other activity.
It isn’t something you do once and check off your list, it is an on-going and integral part to growing your business.
When you are using social media, ask yourself, is it right for me? For my business? How much time am I spending doing this? Is there a better way?
It is a cost effective way to build your brand, it can expedite the amount of eyeballs who are exposed to your brand / business very quickly if done effectively.
Social media is a lot like labour, millions of women have gone there before you and survived and you will too.
@raspberrykids
@yoyomama_van
@yoyobelly
Sue and Annemarie will be launching a contest soon that will showcase different social media applications, collaboration between the businesses, fun and hopefully demonstrate the viral nature of social media. Watch for the contest details in their blogs, Twitter and Facebook.
http://blog.yoyomama.ca/2009/06/mums-are-all-a-twittered/
Questions:
Q. For your Twitter profile, is a picture or a logo better?
A. It all depends on whether you’re using Twitter for personal or business reasons and how you want to brand yourself. Annemarie uses a photo but Sue uses her logo for RaspberryKids.
Q. Should all these moms be tweeting when they are looking after their children? They tweet about changing diapers, baths, etc.
A. It’s the same as moms who are using their cell phones. There is a slow time on Twitter – early evenings when a lot of families are spending time together, bedtime routines, etc. Twitter is great for work-related communication, it’s also a great way to update your husband on what you’re doing with the kids.
Q. With running my business, etc. I’m too busy to tweet – is it ok to hire someone to tweet for me?
A. It depends on what your priorities are – some business owners hire people to tweet for them and others would prefer to tweet themselves.
Q. With having to update the website, blog and now Twitter, is it okay to use the same message?
A. It’s important to have your message in as many places as possible as not everyone will go to all the places.
Q. What’s the optimal time to tweet moms?
A. Twitter is very busy between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. as well as in the evenings. Since there are different timezones, times to tweet, and that messages can be retweeted, there really is no optimal time.
Q. Is there a tool for linking Twitter and Facebook?
A. Yes there’s a tool. Tweetdeck is also good.