It’s a short, eight question survey for parent bloggers and it will feed our latest research project. If you haven’t taken it yet, would you? It’d be a huge favor and pop over and take it? The survey is here. We promise to share the results once the study is done!

Oh, and as an added bonus, if you complete the survey and are interested in participating, there are drawings for prizes that include baubles, books and fabulosity.

The first 2 winners (Jenny & Erica) have been randomly selected and notified. Jane, tell them what they’ve won!

There are 3 more prizes. And they’re fab, too.

We know you’d do the survey just to be awesome, but a little incentive is nice too. N’est pas?

Here’s another link to the survey. Just so you don’t need to scroll up. I’m nice that way.

Influence measurement platforms like Klout, PeerIndex, Twitalyzer and others claim to be able to identify “influencers” and, if you don’t dig too deeply, you might think they’re right. But to our way of thinking, while we have great respect for the some of the creators of these services and the tools they’ve developed, there’s still a lot missing. Numbers – or data – in and of itself, does not knowledge make. And, logically, numbers, algorithms and the like don’t in and of themselves define influence.

Hypothesis: Forget influence: We need knowledge and insights to make good decisions. Period.

How do we get there? Business analytics have historically been considered the quantitative analysis of data for decision-making. It’s nothing new. But the type of data has expanded beyond a controllable universe. And the qualitative data can be infinitely useful and can’t or, more importantly shouldn’t, be overlooked.

Data is not knowledge. Data is data. Knowledge comes from understanding the subtle and not so subtle trends and irregularities in the data. In context.

And once you have properly analyzed contextual data then, and only then, are you ready to consider things like influence.

Let’s Talk Knowledge

What kind of knowledge consumer are you? Some of us revel in the deets. (Wendy) Some of us revel in the revelations (Shelly). Some of us live for the process and some for the result.

How do you get what you need without spending your days as analysts? How do you determine what information is valuable to you, what influencers matter for a particular campaign or what contextual revelation has the most significance? We’re sure you have better things to do. Like your job. What do you need and what don’t you need?

Analytics for Better Strategy and Decision Making

Start with analytics. Please don’t overlook the importance of what you already have (or should have): website analytics, newsletter statistics, blog stats, friends, fans, etc. There’s a lot to learn by looking back to learn about profitability, customer interaction, market shifts and use to predict and plan for future success.

You can’t analyze everything. You can’t hire a big enough staff or find enough time in the day. So how do you decide what and how to consider? What are the REAL business questions? What can you take action on? What are (we know, sigh) your objectives? Well, here are the steps we recommend:

Listen 

Simply reading and hearing what people are saying in aggregate is not the same as listening. You don’t need to be a trained researcher to know that people say things for a reason – there’s context there. Understanding the drivers, the size and influence of the voices and why it matters will lead you to better insights.

What do you need to know? 

• Know your customer
• Know your company
• Know your strengths
• Know your opportunities
• Know your competitors

Why do you need to know? (pssst, this is that pesky “goals” part)

• Affect change
• Reputation management
• Become engaged
• Improve (sales, community citizenship, ROI, reputation, position)

Insights for strategy vs. insights for insights

Tools get you to the data. But the data isn’t the story. Tell your story and back it up with good solid thinking.

The Seven (or more) Stages of Social Analysis

We believe that what has so many people tripped up is that we’re all used to getting information input, categorizing it, and drawing conclusions. Well, folks, that doesn’t work in qualitative social analysis and here’s why…it’s fluid. No sooner do you have a universe of results to analyze, oops, whaddya know — there are more to consider.

Top that with the sheer volume and sets of universes that could be considered – shut the front door. Don’t get discouraged. Recognize the one true thing when it comes to data:  You’ll never have it all and you’ll never be finished. Never.

And as you’re doing all that discerning and learning, keep in mind some important considerations that can be extremely beneficial in helping you draw out useful knowledge:

• Demographics – Who is talking? What are the differences by gender, by age, by geography?
• Online geography – Where is the conversation happening? What are the differences by platform, by network? Similarities?
• Influencers – Who is affecting the conversation strongly? How can you learn from them or even involve them in your success?
• Who are those influencers connected to, talking with, sharing with?
• Content – Are people asking questions? Talking to each other? Talking to your brand? Talking about your brand? Recommending? Criticizing or complementing?
• Common themes, keywords and phrases, messaging that resonates.

It’s about context

Data alone is just data. Data combined with context is powerful. That’s what you need to be seeking – always. Mine the data, then focus on context from which that data came. We talk about this so much we’re afraid people are going to start running when they see us coming. However, context is critical. Overlook that element when it comes to listening in the social media space and your subsequent research and analysis and you’re in trouble. Especially if you’re selling those services to clients. What people are saying in the context of everyday life matters so much – and is so rarely taken into consideration.

Behavior is telling – especially when it comes to social media. People want to belong. They want to connect, communicate, share, listen and interact with their online friends. And whether you believe it or not, to a vast number of people, the relationships they have with their “Internet friends” (as Shelly’s husband likes to call them) is a really important part of their lives.

And brands and monitoring tools and practices are failing in a huge way when it comes to considering context and the context of human interaction. To our way of thinking, the only way to apply context to online interactions and the data you can get from monitoring and listening tools is to integrate people into the process. Fail that and risk the results you think you’ve ended up with being inaccurate

This means looking beyond the queries, the numbers, the semantics and the number of brand mentions. It means digging deeper. Discerning patterns, threads that you can unravel – and/or weave together, to form a pattern. This means remembering that humans comprise the social landscape. And when you make the mistake of just relying on a tool to deliver data and thinking your work is done, you’re setting yourself up for not only disappointment, but also for inaccurate results.

So do it right. The data delivery is just the midpoint. Once you’ve got the data, that’s the time to apply human brainpower and critical thinking. Don’t stop until you understand the context of whatever data it is you’re analyzing, how how that relates to your ultimate goals. If you try – just a little, you’ll be amazed at what the consumers that you’re listening to are really telling you. It’s there. You’ve just got to want it.

Things We Forget (but shouldn’t)

Articles and press releases and feed pickups are not social media engagement. Should you track them? Should you know what’s being said? Absolutely. But if you want to engage with your audience (and we know you do), it doesn’t matter a lick if there’s content that talks about changing weather patterns. Nor does it matter if it gets picked up by every RSS scraper out there.

Does it add to the overall volume? Perhaps. But in our minds, not in a way that should matter. Content, intent and people matter.

What About Goals?

Goals are the beginning point of any objective, campaign or initiative. We mentioned this above in the seven steps, but because it’s so often overlooked, we’re laying it out for you here. Whether it’s measuring success, competitive analysis, reputation management – every action in the act of listening and monitoring should start with goals.

What are your monitoring goals?

• Are you looking to gain insight into consumers’ language and thoughts?
• Are you monitoring for competitive analysis purposes?
• Are you monitoring for product research & development purposes?
• Are you monitoring to improve customer service?
• Are you monitoring and gathering intelligence for new business prospecting purposes?
• Are you monitoring for every day brand awareness and mentions, so that you can potentially get out in front of any potential crises that might occur?
• Are you monitoring a specific campaign to see what kind of results it’s delivering so that you can tweak and modify accordingly?
• Are you monitoring because you care what people think, say or need?

We hope that no matter how many of the above you say “yes” to that, most importantly, the one you’re nodding about is the last one. Successful marketing, PR or communications of any kind hinge on that last point – actually caring what people say, think, want and need. If you know those things, you can position yourself to win – just about every time.

And a Note About Tools

You need social monitoring tools. Not using monitoring tools is a sign of so many things. Arrogance. Ignorance. Cluelessness. None of them good. More importantly, it’s quite simply akin to asking for disaster to strike.  If you value your brand and your brand reputation, monitor it. Period. There’s no excuse not to do so.

That said, we hope that most everyone is monitoring their brand name in some way – even if it’s just with Google Alerts. While this is important, don’t overlook the need to monitor the space related to your business. Not only can you learn a tremendous amount about your industry and consumer behaviors and desires, you can learn about your competitors, unfulfilled opportunities, and find ways to personally engage to help position you and your company in the greater space.

The thing about tools – they don’t do the job for you – they assist. Just like surgeons use scalpels to operate and handy men use drills to make holes, the tool is just that – a tool. Operated by someone who knows what they’re doing and who knows what they’re looking for. Equally as important, they know what to do with it – in this case, data – once they find it. No matter what any one of the seemingly bazillion “social media monitoring tool” providers out there might like you to believe, social media monitoring solutions are not one-size fits all and they are NOT plug and play.

There’s a whole separate post we’ll write specifically about tools, but just know going in that there’s no one out there that’s perfect – at least not that we think is perfect. And that sometimes a combination of multiple tools for multiple purposes can be a good way to get what you need.

Technology is a Beautiful Thing

It is. We love technology. And while we’ve made incredible progress on the technology front in the last few years, data in and of itself, without interpretation – without context – isn’t really all that valuable. People drive data. Situations drive data. Context drives what that data means and what you can ultimately use it to help you accomplish.

Think less about you and more about them. Listen to what consumers say about your products, where they say it, how the say it and the context in which they say it. Pay attention to consumers. They’ll tell you just about everything you might want to know. But only if you’re listening. And putting what you hear into context.

And, as our friend (and fellow data geek) Tom Webster likes to say, ask better questions. And do the work.

Data is where it starts. Context is the midpoint. Great decisions are what follow.

About my Co-Author

I co-authored this piece with my good friend and frequent collaborator, Shelly Kramer. Shelly is the CEO of V3 Integrated Marketing, a full service digital communications agency. She is a marketer, strategist, content creator, speaker and social media savvy geek focused on digital media and all forms of digital strategy, content strategy and creation and online marketing. To the astonishment of her many mathematics professors, she’s also become partial to stats, numbers, analyses and measurement of all kinds.

She’s a brilliant strategist, brand builder, and thinker – and one of the most wonderful and geekiest people I know! If you get the chance to hear her speak, I promise you’ll learn something. Meantime, follow her on Twitter. You won’t be sorry. Not only will you get great info (she’s very generous with sharing!), but she’s very amusing. Oh, and did I say smart? Big time smart.

You can find her online at V3 Integrated Marketing, on Twitter, and on LinkedIn.

This article first appeared in The Social Media Monthly Magazine, in May of 2011.

What To Thrive in Social Media? Data & Contextual Analysis is Key

It’s always interesting to us that many agencies and PR firms assign young staffers and/or staffers who don’t have or who’ve never had children, to work with and/or court mom bloggers. While they are certainly very capable marketing and PR professionals, the problem here is often the disconnect. And it only makes sense; in some cases, it can be difficult for people who don’t have children to understand the mindset of a parent.

Parenthood changes your life. In amazing and sometimes impossible to understand ways. And the parenting blogosphere is filled with people who are writing their way through this incredible journey. Some of them are men; many of them are women.

These parent bloggers are very attractive to brands and agencies. In many instances through the process of writing their blogs these individuals have built their own personal brands and communities, and are considered experts in the parenting space. They typically have loyal readers and have built deep friendships in the blogging community through their own blogs and other social networks.

Let’s Talk Numbers

We love numbers. And when it comes to women bloggers, discovering what motivates them, what they seek, and how to work with them most effectively is all in the numbers.

In a 2011 survey done by The Social Studies Group and BlogFrog exploring things like blogger/brand experience, the ideal brand/blogger relationship and other key elements of the female blogger universe, some interesting facts came to light. They include things like:

• Two-thirds of bloggers reject at least half of the pitches they receive from brands.
• Social good matters to bloggers. Trust levels increase 56% for campaigns that include an element of social good.
• More than 40% of influential bloggers either remain undiscovered by brands and/or have never been approached by them.
• The majority of women bloggers want long-term, deeper relationships with a few special brands.

Smart Women, Choosing Home

Many times, women bloggers are underestimated. Especially by the very brands and agencies who most might want to work with them. They rarely choose to stay home and raise children because they don’t have any other choice. Instead, they most often knowingly opt for the chance to do so. And they are mostly a well-educated group, with a large percentage having bachelor’s degrees and/or some post-graduate study.

source: The Social Studies Group. The Green Mom Eco-cosm Revisited; A Survey of Green Moms in Social Media

The largest groups of female bloggers are ages 30-34 (23%) or 35-39 (20%), closely followed by those aged 25-29 (15%) and 40-44 (14%). And boy, have they got kids – some 74% of women bloggers have children 18 and under living at home. Not surprisingly, the most popular topics they blog about include things like family and parenting, lifestyle, crafts/DIY, food and product reviews.

In short, they blog about what they do and what they know. They blog about products they try, products they love, services they discover, things they recommend, and they also aren’t shy about talking about what they don’t like and what they don’t recommend. They want to share and, equally as important, they listen to one another and they take one another’s advice. Research supports that – 93% of female bloggers have purchased a product they found on a blog or via an online community.

How Brands Connect with Women Bloggers

Our research found that brands and agencies are often doing a poor job of connecting with mom bloggers. Blind, bulk, non-targeted email pitches are common and bloggers often feel disrespected and disregarded as a result. Brands and their agents often exhibit lack of preparation and/or interest in a woman blogger and often.

Money Matters

Not surprisingly, while many women bloggers might have started blogging as a way to share parenting experiences and be a part of a community of women navigating parenthood together, most of them view their blog as their job. And they spend a lot of hours on a weekly basis working on creating content for their blogs. Our research confirmed that the thing that many brands and agencies seem to overlook is so simple: those women would like to be compensated for the work they put into their blogs.

• 90% of women bloggers want to work with brands, so long as there is some form of compensation
• 67% think revenue generation (not just “stuff”) is either somewhat or very important.
• Of the paltry 21% of female bloggers earning $1,000+ per year as a result of their blogs, almost all are spending 30 hours or more per week on their blog

Sadly, especially given the above, blogging sure isn’t profitable for a vast majority of female bloggers. Ask yourself how willing you might be to spend 30 hours a week or more working on your blog and earning what literally could amount to infinitely less than minimum wage. All while also trying to raise a family.

What Brands Can Learn

Don’t be discouraged. Women bloggers are generally very, very interested in working with brands that they believe in, brands who take the time to get to know them and who compensate them fairly. They like campaigns that make sense and suit their respective audiences and they really like for things to be organized. They want to know exactly what’s expected of them and what the compensation will be for the work. They like clear and concise communication from the brand or agency representative and they like to feel valued. When you think about it, those things aren’t shocking – they make sense.

So, if you’re a brand or an agency thinking about or wanting to work with mom bloggers, we’ll hope you’ll take some of the information here and put it to good use. Make sure the campaigns that you have in mind make sense for the bloggers you target working with. And if you’re not sure, find a parent or two within the agency or company and ask them for an opinion. Bloggers want to be a part of campaigns that not only make sense, but campaigns that suit their audiences. So do yourselves both a favor and get to know them, what they blog about and whether or not what they do suits your needs. Don’t waste their time just because you’ve not done your homework.

Mom and parent bloggers can bring a lot of value to your campaigns. And it only takes a little bit of effort to potentially have a huge success. And isn’t that what we all want?

About my Co-Author

I co-authored this piece with my good friend and frequent collaborator, Shelly Kramer. Shelly is the CEO of V3 Integrated Marketing, a full service digital communications agency. She is a marketer, strategist, content creator, speaker and social media savvy geek focused on digital media and all forms of digital strategy, content strategy and creation and online marketing. To the astonishment of her many mathematics professors, she’s also become partial to stats, numbers, analyses and measurement of all kinds.

She’s a brilliant strategist, brand builder, and thinker – and one of the most wonderful and geekiest people I know! If you get the chance to hear her speak, I promise you’ll learn something. Meantime, follow her on Twitter. You won’t be sorry. Not only will you get great info (she’s very generous with sharing!), but she’s very amusing. Oh, and did I say smart? Big time smart.

You can find her online at V3 Integrated Marketing, on Twitter, and on LinkedIn.

This article first appeared in The Social Media Monthly Magazine, in March of 2012.

Do you remember that old Breck shampoo commercial? The one where Heather Locklear urged everyone to tell two friends about how great the product is and then those two friends would tell two friends and so on, and so on. By the time Heather’s head was titled across your screen a hundred times, you got the point: word-of-mouth marketing works! (And some people, we understand, were in fact inspired to buy the product.)

Marketing experts will tell you that word-of-mouth is the oldest and most effective means of getting your product in the home of every American. An ad can be as funny and clever as it wants, but there’s nothing more compelling than a ringing endorsement from someone a consumer knows and trusts. However, word-of-mouth has evolved along with methods of communication. Today, word travels faster than ever as millions of Americans are plugged into the Internet and mobile applications. If you don’t know what consumers are saying about your company and products on feedback sites, in chat-rooms, boards, blogs, vogs[1] and moblogs[2] – good or bad – you may want to find out.

Take the Movie Industry, for Example

The studios can buy first week audiences. But they are learning quickly that advertising is not nearly enough to overcome the influx of online word-of-mouth. The Hulk is a perfect example of the phenomenon; as ticket sales plummeted by 70 percent the second week, with negative comments from viewers being one of the major causes. We have read about people who as they leave a film send mobile messages out panning or exclaiming praise. And it spreads – quickly. If you read a long list of blogs (and we do), you will see the ups and downs that ‘we the people’ cause by such communication. It’s empowering and exciting as consumers. But as marketers, it can be awfully scary.

The lesson that marketers need to embrace is that there can be enormous benefit in working to harness the power of instant communications for good and not evil. The same person who sends an immediate opinion of a film might be your best spokesperson.

Retail – How Do You Shop?

The retail industry is also experiencing the power of online word-of-mouth marketing. We’ve all read the studies – people are not going shopping for large items without first doing their homework. An August 2004 Dieringer Research Group study found that online shoppers are brand impressionable and that three out of five consumers who researched products online changed their brand opinion based upon information they found.[3].

Consumers who buy a product, have a good experience doing it and then subsequently enjoy the product, are going to tell others about it. Forget Consumer Reports, companies dealing in big-ticket items such as plasma televisions and refrigerators are learning that consumers do their homework and it goes beyond what is said in a magazine. Consumers want to hear about what other people have experienced with a store or how they feel about a particular brand. A salesperson is trying to make a commission and Consumer Reports can only conduct so many tests, but a user can give you the inside scoop – and they’ve got nothing to gain from it.[4] That’s powerful. [Great examples of websites to check are epinions and Planet Feedback, but many sites provide consumer feedback i.e. Amazon and Zappos]

Of course, the only way to have great consumer reviews is to provide a great product or service backed by great customer service. But don’t we all gain from that?

I’d Like a Second Opinion

Healthcare is another industry where word-of-mouth has made its mark. Some experts have gone so far to say that word-of-mouth is revolutionizing that industry as consumers are taking a more active role in their treatment decisions.[5] Patients will ask for referrals, second opinions and consult online patient support groups looking for the latest information about their condition before they settle on a course of treatment. If a patient community does not like what your large pharmaceutical company has to offer, they are going to make sure everyone knows. Conversely, if someone is having a great result from a treatment, they are going to want to share that news with as many people as possible. Most major diseases, and even some of the more obscure ones, have support groups and patient chat rooms. It may be worth your time to visit them once in and while to see what people are saying.

The Bigger the Company, the Better the Target

The scary thing about word-of-mouth marketing is the lack of control – you really have no control over what’s being said, how often and to whom. That’s why it’s important to monitor what is being said so that you can decide if steps need to be taken to dispel a nasty rumor if you can sit back and let America do your marketing for you. Sometimes, the stuff that’s not true becomes more famous than what is. Consider these two recent cases.

As a pet owner, you may have received an alarming e-mail about the Swiffer Wetjet that alleged the product contained harmful chemicals that can kill a pet due to liver failure. The e-mail was started by a distraught dog owner who believed the Swiffer Wetjet was to blame for his or her pet’s demise. Vets around the country received countless calls as to the validity of the claims, while animal welfare associations weighed-in on the issue. A panic ensued because one person who was upset about losing a pet told two friends, who told two friends, and so on. (You get the picture.) Even with the ASPCA’s conclusion that the ingredients in the Swiffer Wetjet were indeed safe for use around animals, Proctor and Gamble continues to address questions and answers related to the topic on its Web site.[6]

Sometimes, however, a company doesn’t get off as easy as old P&G. Sometimes, the chatter, the e-mails, the discussion groups and the blogs can lead a company right into the middle of a crisis.

A leading consumer advocacy group filed a lawsuit against food giant Kraft over its use of partially-hydrogenated oils in Oreo cookies. According to BuzzMetrics, a company specializing in word of mouth research and planning, the lawsuit triggered over 2.6 million comments from over 120,000 consumers causing the total volume of online discussions on trans fats to increase more than eightfold in the same month. The outcome: if consumers did not link trans fats to Oreos before the online feeding frenzy, they do now. [7]

Wherever You Look

The world is just plain different now. No one is immune. You simply cannot claim to be something you’re not and get away with it for long these days. Anyone with a newfangled mobile phone can walk into a dirty fast food joint and show the world – totally negating the millions spent on advertising a sparkly clean restaurant chain. A phone company that claims to have great customer service might have hundreds of complaints online. Someone – actually lots of someones – are reading them.

If there’s a story to be told about a company or product not being what is advertised, you can be sure that bloggers will find it and tell it. There’s no more hiding the ‘fine print’ or glossing over reality.

In the future, marketers will need to ask harder questions about whether they are up to snuff – can they either pass the bloggers’ rigorous testing and fact-checking and come out unscathed? Or even better, can they use the bloggers to their advantage? Here are a few tips to help you do just that.

Listen and read: Know what is being said/written about your brand, your spokespersons, your advertising, your company, your suppliers.
Know the bloggers who cover your beat. Surely, you follow the analysts for your industry. The bloggers wield tremendous influence. Know who they are!
Be honest. If you make a claim, back it up. That includes making sure your staff can back it up, too. Bloggers get their information somewhere – don’t let it be from inside your company! If a blogger or website ‘outs’ a problem with your company or product, deal with it. Ignoring it won’t make it go away – it will likely make it grow.
Rumors and Gossip and Hearsay – Oh My!

You don’t have to wait to receive a nasty e-mail rumor from a distraught consumer to find out if your company is the target of negative word-of-mouth marketing. There are several ways to gauge your company’s reputation within the online community. It’s a good idea to do a search every so often on your own company to make sure you haven’t missed an opportunity to build on positive chatter or to identify an online rumor that needs to be squashed.

Sometimes, word-of-mouth information comes from inside your own company. An unhappy employee is just as bad, possibly worse, than an unsatisfied consumer. To keep find out if any employees are bashing you in cyberspace, visit Vault. For those of you who are a bit braver and really want to hear the bad stuff, go to F**ked Company where’re you’ll hear the latest rants from employees both present and former, and maybe even discover some internal memos that were never meant to be seen by the public.[8]
Not all complaints fall on deaf ears and sometimes, word-of-mouth becomes a matter of public record. To find out what, if anything, your customers are complaining about, visit DMOZ Complaints. In addition, BRBPub provides an excellent search tool for researching public records.[9] You may not like what you find, but at least you’ll know and can take the appropriate course of action.
Now that you’ve been reminded of the power of word-of-mouth marketing, considered the role it plays in your industry and wondered about what consumers are saying about your company, do us a favor and tell two friends about what you’ve learned. And be sure to tell them where you learned it.

I really dislike news apps on Facebook. If someone posts a link to an article, I’d like to read it without giving an app permissions. I’ll take the time to find the article elsewhere. Maybe it’s just me.

Well guess what? It’s not just me. There was an outpouring of agreement on this one.

While I imagine that the news outlets like The Washington Post and Yahoo News! who practice this methodology are unlikely to stop doing it any time soon (and I’m sure plenty of people give permission with or without reservation), I strongly believe that it’s a major turnoff for many Facebook users.

As for me? I’ll be searching for those articles elsewhere if I want to read them.

If you know me, you know I’m not a dog person.

And yet, my friends’ dog – Baxter – has crept up into the “okay, I can stand to have you around” category. That’s big.

Bax is a Vizsla, evidently. Many of you may have heard of that breed. I had not. Truthfully, I forget it all the time and had to look it up to do the research for this post. I knew it started with V.

Evidently, I live in a hotbed of Vizsla social media. Who knew?

In the past month, there were over 1,200 Vizsla mentions on Twitter.

And this is what the topline conversation is about:

You may ask, “What is the point of this post?”

Search me. I was just thinking about Baxter when I was going through my holiday photos and wondered if anyone else had a dog like him. Seems the answer is yes.

And I love the tag: Forge Brilliance. Make it count. BlissDom 2012!

Join me!

~Wendy

I couldn’t stop smiling when I saw this tree on Christmas Day at Skylark Diner in Edison, NJ.

Why, you ask?

Because it’s so exciting to see someone use tools in a very different and creative way. And very successfully, I might add.

We all use the same tools – Google, Twitter, Facebook – and some of us use monitoring tools, visualizing tools, text analytics tools. (We do here at Social Studies Group all the time. Such fun!) But when it comes to using those tools to discover, solve, create – that’s when it gets interesting.

It’s not all about the tool or even what the developers imagined we’d use them for. It’s about how we think, solve problems, imagine new and thoughtful ways to take advantage of its capabilities. And it’s about how we tap into and leverage a combination of available tools to more deeply learn and analyze.

This is what I love about my job.

For giggles, I decided to dig back into the archives to uncover some mom research that my team worked on seven years ago.

Here are some excerpts. Any of this sound familiar?

Don’t take mom for granted. She didn’t like it when you were a kid, and she definitely does not like it now that you’re trying to sell her something. Everyone knows that mom rules the roost, but do you know what makes her crow? The key to getting your product off the shelf and into the shopping basket is understanding who the mom is that continues to make the everyday buying decisions for her family. She’s complex. She’s making calculated decisions. And she’s using technology to help her make them.

According to MRI data moms between the ages of 25 and 49 are:
• Smart and involved with their community (cause branding anyone?)
• Adventurous and willing to try new things (so don’t make it dull!)
• Interested in many things and well-balanced (a little culture never hurt anyone…)
• Looking for convenience, quality and a good price when they shop (isn’t everyone?)

According to ADWEEK, a study done last year by Redbook magazine about mothers of young kids confirmed that the working-mother role is losing its appeal. Among mothers of infants, the percentage who work outside the home fell between 1998 and 2000 – “the first significant decline,” since 1976, the first year the census bureau began tracking these kinds of numbers.

With family members going in a million different directions, moms need to keep up with hectic schedules and in touch with loved ones. Just because your product may be high-tech or cutting edge, don’t be afraid to market it to mom. She can handle it. She’s a business woman after all. Consumer reports indicate that moms are using Personal Digital Assistants (PDA’s) and desktop computers to run their households.

And it’s not just about keeping-up and in touch. With kids going from a school play to a soccer game in one afternoon, moms want to preserve those precious moments. A CNET Personal Tech Radar survey conducted during last year’s holiday gift buying season found that moms favored such high-tech gifts as digital cameras and camcorders so that they can capture those rare moments when the family is all together or little Johnny hits that home run.

Both of these instances are evidence of a booming technology market among moms. And not only are they buying technology, they are using it to make purchases. Online shopping sales went through the roof last year, particularly during the holidays . Site like eBay and Amazon are one-stop shopping outlets for everything under the sun and all from the comfort of home…

Now the pressure is on to write a position paper that will be this spot on seven years from now. Yikes!