Posts Tagged "Social Networking"

Moms love Pinterest.

The hottest new social media program around, Pinterest is a “virtual pinboard” that allows users to create online collections of things they love and share those graphics and accompanying content easily with others. Moms can create “boards” on the Pinterest site, then “pin” original graphics they have created or “repin” graphics found on others’ Pinterest boards or elsewhere online.  The program enables them to discover, group and share everything from crafts to home décor to favorite fashions.

TechCrunch recently crowned Pinterest 2011’s “Best New Start Up,” and in February alone, Pinterest saw 16.23 million unique users.  TechCrunch also reported that 80% of Pinterest’s user base is female.

With that as background, at Child’s Play, we decided to go a step further and see exactly how interest in Pinterest played out specifically among moms.  Feedback from 250 moms across the country not only showed that many moms were using the program, but how and why. Key findings:

• 96.7% of moms surveyed (all active bloggers) said they were using Pinterest.
• Top 5 reasons why:
  • It’s just fun (90.0%)
  • I like organizing my interests (67.8%)
  • I like looking at beautiful things (67.0%)
  • Makes my blog, Website, Facebook or Twitter stream more interesting (55.7%)
  • It helps me drive traffic to my blog or Web site (53.5%)
• About the same number (68.0% vs. 65.3%) said they used Pinterest on their blog and on Facebook, respectively.
• The number of Pinterest boards each mom had ran from a low of 1 to a high of 83, averaging out at 18.
• “Food/recipes” was by far (91.4%) the category/subject moms pinned the most. Others in the top 5 were “Crafts” (74.5%), “Home Décor” (55.5%) “How-To” (52.7%), and “Fashion” (39.5%).
• Fewer than half of moms (42.3%) used Pinterest to plan events, with 78.7% of that number planning a child’s birthday party.
• Interestingly, of the moms surveyed, only 4.1% just pinned original graphics, 5.5% only repinned others’ graphics, and the vast majority (94.5%) did a combination of both, with a quarter (25.1%) also creating original graphics specifically for pinning.
• About two-thirds of moms (66.5%) both pinned when they came across something of interest and pro-actively searched for items to pin.
• Moms’ top sources for repins:
  • Blogs of friends (65.5%)
  • Craft sites (49.0%)
  • Foodies (45.0%)
  • Their own blog (40%)

For marketers, Pinterest presents an opportunity to connect with moms by offering tantalizing visuals for them to pin and repin and creating Pinterest-based contests and other interactive activities to further engage this audience. This approach not only develops an additional social media connection but, because pins link back to their source, also drives incoming links to the brand’s online presence, impacting SEO.

Asked who was doing the best job among companies currently engaged on Pinterest, moms mentioned Land’s End, Kraft Foods, Real Simple, Totsy, Home Depot and Disney Family Fun, among others. Kudos were given to those who pinned a variety of topics both from their own sources and others, who offered helpful recipes and who added great photos.

Energizing, exhausting, overwhelming –yes, I’m talking about BlogHer, the world’s largest conference for women in social media. More than 3600 women (and a few courageous men) turned out last week for 2 days of networking and education, with a strong dose of primping and pampering (false eyelashes and a hand massage, anyone?) thrown into the mix. Each blogger had her own agenda, of course. “Newbies” came to learn how to get started, more established bloggers to see old friends and explore new corporate partnerships. Some bloggers spent all their time at the keynotes and seminars; others passed some hours sightseeing or at the pool. And of course, there were parties. Lots and lots of parties. It was, after all, BlogHer.

So how was this, my third BlogHer in a row (not counting BlogHer Business and local meetings) different from those in the past? For one, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak on a panel, called Bad Blogger Pitches (The Other Side of the PR-Blogger Relationship). More on that in a future post. In addition, based on the subject of my panel and some similar ones, there seemed to be more of a focus on professionalism — helping bloggers to realize that if they want to go beyond blogging for pleasure, if they want to turn their blogs into a profitable business, they need to understand what brands expect in return. Brands themselves, meanwhile, showed more thoughfulness in their approach to bloggers. Whether that meant offering the chance to settle back in a cozy room and cook up S’mores with Hershey or relax in a spa-like setting with HTC, some companies focused mo

 I can’t keep myself from smiling at the new TV ad from Toyota for Venza, all about the boomer generation’s lack of “sociability” in social media. In the commercial, a daughter laments the paucity of her parents’ Facebook followers. Interacting with online followers, in her view, is living. The commercial then shows scenes of her parents having a blast mountain biking with friends in real life (after driving to meet them in their Venza, of course).

Which brings me to one of my favorite questions: Do moms socialize in real life more as a result of social media, or less?

There’s no doubt that overall socialization, in the broader sense of the term, has improved as a result of social media. A University of Texas, Austin, survey of 900 current and recent college graduates concluded that Facebook provides opportunities for friendship, intimacy and community and in general causes us to be more social.

 But does networking on line make moms more social off line?

One dad — my husband, bless him — was a late convert to social media. His sole connection: Facebook. He started with it to “get up to speed” for work. And now… He spends a lot of his time not only catching up via Facebook but also meeting some of those folks he’s connected with– high school classmates or former work buddies – over lunch. I’d say that, for him, social media has created additional real life sociability.

I, on the other hand, definitely communicate online more regularly with people outside of my day-to-day circle, but don’t necessarily see them in person. While there is only so much time in the day to do anything – work, sleep, eat, take care of the kids – I wonder if that online time could be better spent over dinner or drinks either with those social media friends or others.

Blogging began as a way for women to connect with others virtually – then grew to conference after conference designed to bring them together in real life.

There are even new apps out there designed to take us away from the screens and into more “live” sociability. One called Sonar is said to link with your Facebook, Twitter, and/or Four Square account and send you alerts when you have a friend nearby. The idea behind the app, according to the founder, is to create a personal interaction and perhaps a friendship.

 Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together, has a skeptical view of the Internet’s impact on real sociability. She believes that technology is dominating our lives to the point that it is causing us to become less human and providing us with a false sense of the real world.

 Moms, what is your take on social media? Does it make you more social in the real sense of the word – or less?

Marketers, what programs do you have to help bring friends together, live and in-person?

Now here’s a clever way to exploit the popularity of social media — talk trash against it and target the moms who love it.

There’s a new ad campaign called The Log Off which encourages moms to cut back on all that social media time and shift it instead to something more important — like playing with their kids.

The ad, designed to encourage what  its creator called “online moderation,” features a  lip-synched song  in which children are “pleading with their mommies to get off Facebook and play with them,” according to Social Times, and “really puts the guilt trip on moms who spend too much time on Facebook.”

Whoa.

While the ad was clearly designed to generate as much attention as possible (“Hey, let’s go bash some moms in social media and see if anyone talks about us!”), it does raise a few questions.

Ladies: Are you, in fact, spending way too much time on Facebook? IS it taking away from quality time with your kids? How do you feel about that and what, if anything, have you done in response?

Does social media really impact moms’ purchasing decisions? 

Here at Child’s Play Communications, we knew from our experience connecting companies with moms in social media that the answer was yes, but we wanted to offer greater insight into how and to what degree social media influences what moms buy. Toward that end, we commissioned The NPD Group, a leading market research company, to conduct an in-depth survey of moms across the U.S. based on a series of questions we developed.  The just released  “Social Media Moms: How Networking Impacts Purchasing Behaviors” provides a comprehensive understanding  not only of  what motivates moms’ purchasing decisions but also of moms’ overall use of social media. Following are some key finding:

•  79% of all moms in the U.S. with children under the age of 18 are active in social media
•  Of these moms, about one in four (23%) said they have purchased a children’s product as a result of a recommendation from a social networking site or blog. 
•  Online recommendations have even more impact among the most frequent social media users: 43% of active social media moms who use these sites on a daily basis have purchased a children’s product as the result of a recommendation from these sites.
•  More than half (55%) of these moms said they made their purchase because of a recommendation from a personal review blog.
• 40% of these moms made a purchase because of a  Facebook recommendation.

 The NPD Group fielded an online survey to members of NPD’s online panel and to members of the Child’s Play Communications online panel. The two different sources provided data to create both a holistic view of U.S. moms and their interaction with social media, as well as a deep-dive into the behaviors and preferences of social media moms. The complete survey is available for purchase from NPD.

 Clearly, moms nationwide are making purchasing decisions as a result of the information and advice other moms are providing through social media.

How about you? Have you made a purchase as a result of a social media recommendation? Was it from a blog? What did you buy and why?