How big and powerful is mom blogging?

Millions of women & moms now own their own printing press - their blogs.  These blogging moms are changing the face of publishing and advertising as we know it.

How big blogging is:

• If you were paid a dollar for every blog post that was written, you'd be a millionaire in a day [1]
• There are two new blogs started each second. [1]
• There are twice as many blogs as people in Mexico. [1]
• 22 of the 100 largest sites on the internet are blogs. [3]
• How many years it took to reach 50 Million Users: Radio, 38 years.  TV, 13 years.  Blogging, just 3 years. [3]
• There are 79 Million women in the United States online.  Over half of them (42 Million), interact with social media and 23 Million of them interact with blogs.  8 Million women in the US publish blogs. [2]
• The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is 55-65 year old women. [3]

And this is just the beginning:

• By 2012, the number of people reading blogs is expected to double (from 2008) to more than 145 million people—or 67% of EVERYONE on the internet in the US will be reading blogs at least once per month. [1]

And brands are taking notice, because:

• 85% of people who read blogs, make purchase decisions based on what they read. [2]
• Among women online, Blogs are by FAR the most trusted form of media.  4 times more women trust blogs than traditional advertisements. [2]
• If you were to go to Google and type in the World’s top 20 largest brands - 25% of search results would be links to user-generated content. [3]
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands [2]

Sources:

1.  Technorati State of the Blogosphere

2.  2009 Women and Social Media Study by BlogHer, Compass Media and iVillage

3.  Socialnomics blog and book

Awesome Mother's Day, with a little help from Twitter

I wanted to make my wife something Italian for Mother's day.  I found a great recipe on a random blog (everything I need to know I learned from blogs), copied it down, then headed upstairs to put the kids to bed. Afterwards I ran out the door, and of course I forgot the recipe.

I had my iPhone with me, so could have attempted to browse the web and find the random blog on the painfully slow cellular connection and tiny screen, but I would have surely become frustrated and given up.  Instead, I decided to do the modern day equivalent of "phoning a friend", I sent out a tweet:

About 30 seconds later, I got my first sarcastic reply (it was Saturday about 10 PM after all):

But about a minute later, I got a helpful reply

Monica, author of the amazing blog Pixel Perfect had linked to this amazing Chicken Brie Pasta (with pinenuts!).  It took me a long time to figure out what Brie Cheese is (they were literally kicking me out the door ... "sir, we're closed now"), but once I did I was in good shape.  Monica even sent a follow-up tweet:

Which was very helpful because I surely wouldn't have cut the rhine off given that one minute earlier I didn't know what Brie cheese is.  The pasta was AMAZING.  If I had any food photography skills, I would post a picture, but I don't.

I've never met Monica before, but that's the power of Twitter.  You can leverage an expanded circle of "friends".  Facebook never would have done the job because my "friends" are too small and intimate, and the newsfeed is "filtered" so you don't see things in real-time.  Twitter is real-time, which means 99% of my followers will never see my message, but that's okay, because 10 people did see it and one was able to help.

I can't wait till BlogFrog has an iPhone app and I can get quick answers from like-minded people in my favorite communities!  Thanks Monica, and thanks social media!