Any dad will tell you — even if he at first won’t admit it — moms rule the ol’ castle. Well, if not “rule,” then moms make most of the decisions.
Maybe it’s a hormonal or evolutionary thing that kicks in once women have kids. I dunno.
While I am partial to moms, since I am married to one (note: she became a mom after we married), actually, moms are just a subset of the larger group among us known as women.
Yes, women may not often be in formal positions of power and can be quiet or unassuming (well….okay, skip the bad, sexist jokes). But, beware: There’s a lot out there and they are strutting their influence more and more.
Don’t believe me? How’s this:
- Women purchase upwards of 80% plus of consumer products (and that jumps to 94% when you’re talking about home stuff).
- According to Nielsen Online@Plan, there were 32.4 million women online with children under 18 in their household as of winter 2007/2008, making up 22.6% of all adult Internet users. From that same eMarketer report: “Mothers are part of an adult female Internet user population that will grow from 80.9 million in 2008 to 91.3 million in 2012. Adult females outnumber adult males in both the general population and the Internet user population.” (My emphasis added.)
- Echoing the above stat a bit, in the growing importance and role of social media, women are naturally more socialable. “RapLeaf studied over 49 million people based on the publicly available data to understand social networking trends and their relation to gender and age of internet users….The 49 million of people in the selection were split between 24.8 million women, 20.6 million men while 3.9 million preferred to keep their gender to themselves.” (Source: Profy.com.)
Still don’t buy it? Try these other posts:
Hell hath no furry like a mom with a blog
Five Reasons Why Mom Blogs are the Blogs to Watch
The Ultimate Mommy Blogs List–Blogs for Moms by Moms (okay, it’s list — but look at that list!)
Cision Lists Mommy Blogs (The key is the end paragraph by Will Flavell, starting with “Those bloggers influence so effectively because they are truthful, sometimes brutally so.”)
So, what can we take from all this XX Chromosome power?
First, there’s a good chance that women in total or moms (more specifically) are in your target audience. But, don’t treat them like a number. In social media, it’s about the relationship (stupid). See the Profy link for good commentary about how women use social networks compared to men.
Well, there’s a lot of other things we can take from this. But, the one above is enough. If you are going to be good in social media (heck, PR and other marketing communications, for that matter), know your audiences’ tendancies and preferences. Develop ways to best communicate with them, ways they want to receive; not what you want to do.
And, remember, it is really about the relationship. While it may be “business” to you, it’s likely personal to them.
-Mike
NOTE: This post is similar to one I recently did for my TalentZoo Marketing Moxie column.
Image courtesy of Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls
