Posts from — February 2008

Social networking is definitely not limited to adults. As you can see, there is a wide variety of sites that are geared towards our youth and while the idea is to get kids participation by playing games, it is already setting the foundation for the next generation of social media users.

If you know of a site that your kids participate on that is not listed here, please leave a comment as this list will be updated throughout the year.

Must be at least 16 years of age:

Friendster PR 4 Online community connecting friends

Must be at least 14 years of age:

MySpace PR 8 A Place For Friends

Must be at least 13 years of age & in high school:
Facebook PR 8 Social Utility that connect people with those around them

Must be at least 13 years of age:

Hi 5 PR 6 Who’s in?
Xanga PR 7 A weblog community
IMVU PR 6 Chat with friends in 3D
There PR 6 Online virtual world
Chamber of Chat PR 6 Harry Potter online role playing game
Second Life PR 8 3D Virtual World
Runescape PR 6 Online adventure community
Pownce PR 7 Create a network of friends and share files, links & events
Jaiku PR 6 Share your activities
Tickle PR 5 Social networking through personal development
43 Things PR 7 Microblogging site to share with community
Bebo PR 7 Social network for sharing and entertainment
Gaia Online PR 6 Virtual community with games, message boards & economy
vSide PR 6 Virtual music community
Windows Live Spaces PR 7 Community of friends for sharing and blogging

No Age minimum but must have parents approval:
Imbee PR 6 Social Networking designed for kids 8-12
Active Worlds PR 6 3D virtual world chat
Boom Bang PR 4 Chat, make friends and explore a virtual world
Dofus PR 6 Mulit player online role playing game
Awol PR 3 Chats, games, diary, friends, & cribs
Sanriotown PR 6 Hello Kitty games, community, blogs and forums
Webkinz PR 6 Virtual pet community for plush pets
Club Penguin PR 6 Virtual world for kids
Marapets PR 3 Virtual pet site with games and chat community
Shining Stars PR 5 Chatting, naming stars and virtual star worlds
Neopets PR 6 Virtual world for pets
Endless Online PR 4 Community role playing games
Eternal Lands PR 5 Community role playing games
Furcadia PR 5 Community role playing game
Graal Online PR 5 Community role playing games
Guild Wars PR 6 Community role playing games
Hero Online PR 4 Community warfare games
Millsberry PR 4 Home building community

There are hundreds more of the community role playing sites for kids, they are all very much the same so I decided not to list them all here. These types of games are not may favorite nor are they the “best” as far as networking sites for kids goes. However, they do allow certain features such as chats and interactive situations with other kids online. You can see a larger list of these Massive Multiplayer Role Playing Game (MMORPGs) here.

The important thing to remember when it comes to kids and social media is that parents should always have a very good idea of the games, people and sites their children are involved in, no matter how old the child is. The terms and conditions of these sites are set for a reason, abuse of them only creates problems. I’m also a firm believer in having access to all passwords for my kids accounts. Kids will argue about the invasion of privacy but let’s face it, their privacy is not nearly as important as their safety.

For more information on just how radically the internet is transforming the experience of childhood, check out Growing Up Online by Frontline. Frontline has created a great conversation by taking families into the very public and private worlds that are being created online. They are raising important questions and giving parents a chance to talk.

Thanks to Brian, over at Nowsourcing, Social Media Mom has a new look, one that reflects her life and love of social media.

The biggest single change is the fact that I have switched from Typepad to Wordpress. I would love to take you through the process of getting this all set up, like Ben did over at Problogger, but honestly, besides adding some colorful widgets and repositioning them, I really don’t know all that Brian did to set it up.

Instead, I will give you 10 reasons why I decided to go with Wordpress:

1. Hundreds and hundreds of FREE, cool Wordpress themes to choose from.

2. Hundreds and hundreds of Plugins that make it easy for a non-coder like me to add functionality to my blog.

3. Everybody writes about how to make money using Wordpress. No one writes about making money on Typepad.

4. Great tips to protect your blog from hackers.

5. Continuous Wordpress support from around the web.

6. Inreasing my sociability.

7. Fabulous community.

8. Increase of Traffic.

9. RSS feeds

10. Search Engine Optimization

Whatever your reason for using Wordpress, the fact remains, there is so much more you can do with it than any other blogging platform. I highly suggest contacting Brian if you are looking to implement Wordpress in any way, and any compliments on my new look are highly suggested as well. (Just kidding - sort of)

Just wanted to give you all a heads up regarding a fantastic list put together by none other than Mark Dykeman of the Broadcasting Brain Blog. I agree with Mark, “every serious blogger needs to make at least one resource list post, right?” Mine is here.

Mark’s list is worthy of a solid bookmark as he researched as many social media blogs to find the ones that are devoted to discussion about social media, feature social media prominently within some of their posts, and have been active in 2008.

He ended up with a great list of what he considers to be 118 of the original social media blogs. Social Media Mom is honored to be a part of that list and look forward to him adding new blogs as they are found, evolve, and develop.

Thanks for the fantastic list Mark!

You may remember that last month I listed Cafemom as one of the Best in Mom Networking sites on the web. Well thanks to fellow mom blogger, Anne Marie, from My Readable Feast,
I was notified of some recent changes to the Cafemom site.

The idea behind Cafemom is to bring women together to actually network and promote one another through their targeted groups, and while their groups are great, this last week marks a step toward moms promoting each other in an additional way. Cafemom has added a tool that allows moms that are sharing ideas and interesting things around the web, a chance to vote on topics on their new “hot list”………

“Moms can “bump” submitted items that they think are
interesting and that other moms would appreciate. The more bumps an
item gets, the more likely it will be to end up on the Popular tab of
the Hot List.”

Currently the categories of the “Hot List” are current events, parenting, health, entertainment, recalls and alerts and offbeat news. Similar to other networks for moms that allow voting, you can submit your own information or something you’ve found on the Internet that falls into one of these categories. You can share your submission with friends and flag inappropriate content. The only drawback to voting and submitting items to the “Hot List” is that you do have to be a member of Cafemom to participate.

I sincerely suggest you check it out! Peruse the Hot List, see how many bumps some of the posts have and start connecting. You may decide this is a great place to start you’re own group and lead other women to sanity and support.

Tiny polls in 140 characters or less. Now, I have heard it all. Doug March, founder of Twittertale, forwarded me a link to the new micropolling site, StrawPoll……..

“The premise is simple: each day, we ask an interesting question. Reply to strawpoll
and tell us why you voted the way you did. StrawPoll tallies the votes
and displays the most recent reasons for each response. To get started,
all you need to do is sign into Twitter and start following strawpoll.

The founders of Strawpoll are Rob Goodlatte, a web and graphic designer, and Dan Romero, a student at Duke.

StrawPoll keeps track of the poll by voter percentage. Very fun. The poll they launched yesterday was what superpower you would rather have: invisibility or flight? I chose flight and so did 53 other people. Invisibility had only 39 votes. I guess more people would rather escape into the friendly skies than sneak around spying on people. I can’t wait to see where this site goes, I have always loved participating in polls.

I met Sharyn back in October. She had just signed up for Blogger Bootcamp and we met at the St. Louis Bread Company to discuss the basics in blogging, creating content and community building. You see, Sharyn is a work at home mom, running her own business and raising two kids. She owns FeeFiFoto, an e-commerce site that offers all kinds of photo-enhanced products.

Sharyn realized that to take her business to next level she would indeed need to dive into the world of social media by adding a blog to her already established website. She decided it was time to connect directly with her target audience, peers, and those who would gain something from her posts, moms. So, after a 6-week training course, she started a conversation with the mom bloggers.

At first, she was a bit concerned that no one would be interested in hearing about her personal life or her photo-enhanced products but through comments, emails, linking and various social sites, Sharyn has met some great people with similar interests and some of those moms, and dads, have become clients (me included).

The reason I am telling you about Sharyn is because of a recent post I read over at dawudmiracle about using a blog to sell your business. The key to blogging about your business, as Dawud so aptly explains, is the relationship……

“Blogging makes the relationship possible with more people, in more places and at more times than any other platform yet created.”

Dawud has created dozens of great relationships throughout the blogosphere that have opened opportunities for him that a static website just can’t offer…….

“Through the comment box, through email, through linking, and through many of the social services like StumbleUpon or Facebook,
I have had the chance to meet interesting people from all over the world.
People who share my interests. Some become colleagues or friends.
Others become clients. But all have come through social media…through
blogging.”

Sharyn is off to a fantastic start. She is a prime example of a WAHM that has totally embraced the value of social media and put it to work for her. She’s not focusing on the revenue as much as she is focusing on building relationships. Her blog is almost 5 months old and she is already averaging 3000 unique visits per month and she is a big user at StumbleUpon, MomBlogNetwork, Digg and Del.icio.us.

Social Media is not hard, it can be taught. It takes commitment and it’s not for everyone. Sharyn chose a blog to make her business more visible online, what are you doing?

Andy Beal is giving away an 8 GB iPod Touch to one lucky reader. DO NOT SIGN UP because I want to win and if you Twitter about the contest or if you blog about it, you get an even better chance of being upgraded to a 16GB or 32GB version.

Evidently, entry into the contest is quite simple; all you have to do is sign up for RSS updates or e-mail subscription. I already had Marketing Pilgrim on my RSS so I registered for the e-mail updates. That is a double does of fantastic Internet Marketing advice for me each and every day.

The month of January ended with my comprehensive list of Social Networking sites that are geared toward the growing group of mom bloggers. There was a big response and some sites have been added as this niche continues to grow by leaps and bounds. I will write more on this later.

What I really am interested in, however, are the sites for moms that promote not only relationships but have the ability to submit posts and vote. One site that seems to be making a real dent in this arena is the new, niche, social media site, The Mom Blog Network.

I mentioned, in my post, that the community of mom bloggers is an extremely engaging and rapidly growing niche and being able to identify the top mom blogs is very a valuable resource for those looking to enter, study or market to people in a particular field. Marshall Kirkpatrick, of Read, Write, Web, lists six different services you can use to identify the top blogs in a particular niche field. He compares the pros and cons of each site and while Marshall’s list is fairly comprehensive, he does note in his conclusion that,

“Nobody quite does what we need. Used in concert and with a little work,
these tools together can build you a pretty good reading list of top
blogs in any niche.”

I would like to suggest that The Mom Blog Network is on the right track to becoming the best place for finding blogs in the mom blog niche…….

“Moms are the ultimate internet networkers,” states Debra Aho
Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer.com. “They seek out other moms’
advice for what they’re looking for.” Most certainly, blogs are highly
effective for sharing information and establishing a critical voice
online. “89 percent of moms use the Internet at least twice a day,”
reports PME Enterprises, which produces the annual M2Moms™ marketing
conference. “In the evolution from ‘Web 1.0 to Web 2.0′, mommy bloggers
have grown their sphere of influence.”

Nobody knows about this “sphere of influence” better than fellow mommy blogger and founder of Mother’s Click, Andra Davidson. Andra saw the need for moms to have place that their posts could be promoted through syndication and at the same time offer an easy way to reach a wider audience and drive more traffic to their sites, so she developed the Mom Blog Network.

Great idea, but is it working? To answer that question, I went straight to some active mom bloggers in the community that have been using the Mom Blog Network for a couple of months. Here is what they had to say:

Amanda, from Pajama Mommy Community says,

“I just started using Mom Blog Network maybe within the last 2 months. I haven’t received any referrers. In my stats you have to give me at least 11+ click throughs generally to make it in my list of referrers. Mom Blog Network hasn’t given me enough to even register on my radar.”

Sharyn, from the FeeFiFoto blog notes,

“In the last couple of months I have received a few visits from the Mom Blog Network. Maybe 20 or so.”

Summer, from Wired For Noise doesn’t put much work into it……..

“I have my blog set to auto feed there so that my posts are up automatically and I get about 1 or 2 visits a week from them.”

Jenny, from The So Called Me, can’t seem to get her blog to aggregate to the Network…….

“I’ve gotten some decent traffic from them. No one that comments, but they have subscribed to my feed.”

My experience in the last month has been similar to those moms above. I have received exactly 28 visits from the Mom Blog Network and while comments have been at a minimum, I have gotten a couple of subscribers. The thing that I really like about the network, as Summer mentioned, is that once you register your blog, your posts are automatically posted on the network. So for 28 visits and no work done, it is really an easy way to generate a little extra traffic.The good news is, it’s real traffic, not fly by night votes. These are real moms looking for real content, and if they find something they like they stay for a while and quite often, become subscribers. So while the traffic may not come in hoards, the quality of the traffic is definitely what focused and highly specific social niche sites have to offer. What niche sites do you participate in?