The Death and Rebirth of Mommy Blogger Culture
By: Sumner Payne
Tags: Influencers, Marketing, Strategy, Social Content, Moms

A beaming, sun-kissed mother gently caresses her infant son who floats peacefully in a bathtub full of fresh flowers. Candid laughs between a mother and daughter wearing matching aprons as they make brownies in an immaculate, minimalist kitchen.

The familiar tropes of ideal motherhood used by mommy bloggers and Insta-moms are the pitfalls of highly-curated influencer culture gone wild. But perhaps the biggest mommy blogger misstep today is in the name itself. By creating content specifically for moms, about moms, by moms, they’re pigeonholing an entire generation of moms as just that — moms. The entire mom-blogger-influencer sphere has become a saturated, “sea-of-sameness” bubble that’s out of touch with the times.

A new wave of real mom influencers and content creators is filling the void by giving modern motherhood a new voice

A new wave of real mom influencers and content creators is filling the void by giving modern motherhood a new voice — one that’s grounded in unapologetic self-expression and amplified through the multi-platform personal brands they’re building.

They’re creating, connecting, and interacting with each other in a dynamic, social community of their own making, where they wield enormous power over each other’s thinking. A new “user-generated and user-owned” hub for online mom culture is emerging within these decentralized, peer-to-peer channels, where anyone, anywhere has the power to be an influencer, and huge reach or follower counts are no longer proxies for true influence.

Now, real moms influencers have more power to influence behavior simply because they’re part of the same tight-knit audience networks they’re influencing. If just one hundred of these moms each reaches only two hundred people, they could yield 2x as many brand website visits vs. a mega-influencer with 25x the reach.*

In the post-Insta mom era, marketers must earn — not buy — their way into these digital word-of-mouth conversations. And the easiest access point is often the most overlooked: their own community of customers and fans. By activating the advocacy and influence of their loyal “mom tribes”, marketers can turn them into fierce brand evangelists whose collective power to “influence” is far more powerful than even the most famous Insta-moms.

What drives real mom influencers (vs. all moms)

Tastemakers using culture to mold a holistic version of themselves, not followers chasing the next best thing

Today’s emerging “real mom-influencers” are infinitely diverse in terms of demographics and lifestyle; “mom” is both too narrow and too broad a word to define them. They’re united by a shared drive to build independent, multidimensional lives and personalities that include but go well beyond motherhood, and they’re entering the mamasphere with hyphenated identities: They’re Moms, but they’re also Activists, Entrepreneurs, CEOs, Writers, Epicureans, and Artists who are thought-leaders and tastemakers across all different facets of culture, from business and politics to fashion and design. Social and cultural capital — not wealth or fame — confers influence, and it’s earned by having a unique, interesting personality or point-of-view or being the “first” to discover something new.**