The words mommy blogger, for most people (including mommy blogger) is often seen as some sort of swear word of sorts.
For so many years I have watched moms fight against this label. They don’t want to be mommy bloggers. When they get asked about what they blog about, they put such a spin on parenting that the poor person who asked the question is left dazed and confused, questioning if there even is such a thing as a mom.
WHY? Why do mom bloggers do this?
Well there are a few arguments – “we don’t want to be labeled” or “we blog about more about being a mom”.
But there is a flaw in both of those. When blog awards come around, we are the first to moan about the fact that parenting/mommy bloggers are not included and guys lets face it, sometimes in life there needs to be a category and a label. You don’t see beauty bloggers freaking out about being labeled a beauty blogger! Not all labels are bad or negative.
If you have make the statement “I am more than a mom” then I am not sure you, your audience or potential clients know what a mom actually is. Every mother is MORE than a just a MOM even a stay at home mom who home schools. She is more than a mom! We are all more than moms and we ALL blog about more than mom stuff.
In my opinion I would rather be a mom blogger than a beauty blogger. Think about it for a moment. If you blog about beauty and then bust out a post about your sleepless night because your baby vomited all over you all night. Your audience are probably going to be WTAF?
BUT I can blog about that and then blog about a cool beauty product I found or even (not me but someone else) a post on how to do your eyebrows. A mommy blogger audience is more receptive to a variety of content because we all know we are more than just moms!
I have done posts for insurance sites, back in the day when I was a single mom I wrote for a dating site, I have worked with beauty brands, pet food brands alongside nappies and bottles because being a mom blogger is as restrictive as you make it.
The biggest reason many shy away from it is because there a perception that no one takes us, as mommy bloggers, seriously and for the most part in South Africa they don’t but we aren’t going to change that by not standing proud and saying “I am a mommy blogger”.
If you are a mother, you are a mother, you can not change that. If your blog is about being a parent, then you are a mommy blogger. Own it, be proud of it. Don’t make a travel post about your annual holiday and update your profile to “travel blogger” or a post about having a pedicure and change everything to “beauty blogger”.
Be a mommy blogger and be proud!! Write your posts about poop and how hard parenting is and recipes and whisky and homeschooling and adoption and maintenance and whatever the hell you feel like because you are a mommy blogger and you can write about anything because moms are about more than their children!!
If you are a mommy blogger, be a proud mommy blogger because if you take yourself seriously so will everyone else!
Nice one Laura-kim
Hear hear! I think that it shouldn’t also be so one dimensional. As a mommy blogger, we have far more to write about, but that being said, momming isn’t the one part of being a mom. For me, I’m sharing my take on being a working nerd mom, boom, and I write because I have things to share, if others don’t take me seriously then there isn’t much I can about it.
Love that validation thank you! Especially this week with all the hype about that you know who post dissing the mommy bloggers worldwide!
Catching up on blogs now…. Let me just add that the mommy bloggers are very influential here in the USA. Brands pay huge money to get their input in product development. Great post!
YES! it’s so much of this, and what Sharon said, too. I used to look down upon mommy bloggers, especially when they’d get invited to gaming/tech events. I still seem to apologize for my blog when I mention it to peers and PRs. But I do think that the more we take ourselves seriously, the more everyone else will have to, too. Also, it’s about being clear on the purpose of blogging – I love the support I’ve gotten from others in the community, and it’s such a relief to read other blogs sharing similar situations to what I’m going through. Mommy blogging is important, and we should be proud of what we do.
I agree in principle with everything you have said above. But there is a perception out there that Mommy bloggers are not serious bloggers, I was never more aware of this when someone made a comment to me a couple of weeks ago, not a verbatim quote, but it went along the lines of I should just keep my opinion to myself, keep quiet and go and write something about the color of baby poo! That last part, it’s verbatim. And it dawned on me that the general perception is that Mommy bloggers are not serious writers, we’re not creatives, we’re just a bunch of bitter woman with nothing better to do that sit around analyzing the color of our babies poo. Which is such bull shit.
The reason I’m trying to move away from the mommy blogger label is because as my children get older, I find I have less and less that I want to share about them and because honestly, I don’t want to be perceived as some dim witted, singular dimension woman who has nothing better to do than talk about vomit or poop? And I know and you know and we know as a community that that is not the case, but how do we change that perception of what a mommy blogger is?
P.S. THAT post from yesterday, the one we were all discussing, does nothing to help our cause at being taken seriously as bloggers either.