1. Don’t talk down to women.

2. Do use emotion in your messages. One of the reasons Mom-to-Mom conversations work is because we aren’t afraid to use show emotion. “If you can get to people through their hearts, you can affect change. No billboard can do that,” said Sugar Jones.

3. Be personable. Moms like brands that have a personality.

4. Be human. Put the corporate hat aside and think, act, react as if human, not an entity.

5. Provide detail. Moms like information and to be educated about the products they are bringing into their homes.

6. Work hard to gain a Mom’s trust. She doesn’t have time in her busy life so the first place she is going to turn to is her friends. The trust is already there. A brand has to work twice as hard.

7. Be honest. Transparent. Moms and the rising Dad contingency will see right through your marketing messages if you aren’t honest.

8. Remember Moms are well equipped to adapt to the changing social media landscape. “We are quickly making social media a business,” said Audrey McClelland of Getting Gorgeous and Mom Generations.

9. Don’t pigeonhole women. “Women are a huge demographic. Multi-culture aspects are barely being addressed in most markets,” said Patty Devere of the Ask Patty automotive blog.

10. Allow for two-way dialogue. We like a brand that allows us to have a voice and in return, have one itself.

11. Be useful. Provide information, be entertaining, give us tools we can actually use.

12. Moms often buy from companies that they feel a connection with and who treat them the best. “I love that social media is making companies accountable for their products and customer service,” said Erica Ehm of the YummyMummyClub.

13. Don’t understand estimate intelligence of women. “Moms don’t lose their intelligence just because they’ve had children,” replied Candace Derickx of Best Tools for Schools.

14. Don’t make it a sell job.

15. Don’t be afraid to admit a mistake as a brand. Moms will love you for it. If you like this post, please share the love:

So I’m at Blogher and all of a sudden I hear from behind me, “Holly?” I turn and there is this cute, petite woman looking at that I didn’t recognize. She says, “Candace. SeeMummyJuggle.” Wow, she recognized me from my avatar. So I’d like you to meet Candace. 
Candace not only writes for the YummyMummyClub, she has a business called “Best Tools for Schools“. I asked how she started blogging and tweeting.

It was a good way to raise our profile and do something for my business. I don’t think I would have ever been a blogger, if not for my business. But you also need to get on Twitter. I didn’t understand and I thought it was ridiculous. And I didn’t even have a Facebook account. But you start talking to people and it suddenly seems so natural. People say the funniest things. And you make amazing connections. Like tweet ups. That’s how I met Erica and Kelli (YummyMummyClub). And in talking to Erica, I asked her if she had a former SAHM who’d gone back to work writing for her. I sent her a sample blog and they gave me a weekly column.

For us, social media levels the playing field with the big guys like Staples and Walmart. It’s all about getting the word out. It’s the power of mom and what she has to tell you. I wrote an article with Owl and was able to create a partnership. Owl is a national icon in Canada. And this was only our second year of business.

My husband walked into Walmart last week, right before Blogher. He said your lists are at Walmart in the back to school section. The Best Tools for Schools lists right off your website. So I put it on Twitter with a message about how unbelievable that was and Twitter did the rest. People who followed me from the beginning of our business were outraged. They tweeted and re-tweeted how disappointed they were with Walmart and by that afternoon I heard from the Vice president of Walmart. They removed the lists from the store and asked what else they could do to make amends, like a donation to a charity of our choice. So I asked them to help with a United Way Community Action Day we do each year to help kids in need get school supplies. They gave us a very generous gift card to get supplies from their stores. We’ll be able to help 100 extra kids, with that donation. I wonder if they would have done anything if I had gone the store manager route versus Twitter.

I’ve had to set up two twitter accounts. Picture me with devil horns on YummyMummyClub side while I’m an angel holding back on the Best Tools for Schools side . Yummy more fun. But they are two distinct followings. It’s very hard to know where to draw the line sometimes when using social media. Some people share everything. But I try to keep it light. If people are too personal or have tunnel vision with their message, I usually don’t follow.

I have a 17 year-old stepson and an eight and six year old. There is no typical day, but we are always on the go: working, volunteering with the kids, in the warehouse and running the kids to camp. Summers are none existent. My husband owns a pool company and me a school company. Blogging, United Way, the food bank, kids and school.I haven’t watched TV since the “Lost” finale. I blog whenever I get a few minutes. I talk and record into my phone using blogs on the go. I tweet on the go. I tweet when I can. When I have an idea for a blog I outline it and then round it out over a few days when I get a few minutes. and sit down at some point to write them. I have cheater blogs of useless comments like, “Malcolm, I know What the Dog Saw.  My potato chips, unguarded and within reach.  Well, my dog anyway.  Your dog is probably much smarter.”

My daughter just bought first website domain for kids. She wants to show how kids can bring about change and talk about volunteering and pet projects. She thinks Mommy is famous. I am on the web. I get interviewed for magazines, but there are different levels of fame. I believe in social responsibility. Kids need to know they need to give back. And this is her idea. So I’m helping her to focus but I’m not going to allow her on Twitter or Facebook for a long time. I’m going to sit right beside her help her with the learning curve about what she can put out here. I want to encourage her. There’s not a lot of Internet time at our house…maybe two hours a week. I’d rather they be active and outside even though I do it all the time. It’s my job to be on the computer. This is work and part fun.”

I asked Candace for tips for brands. She had this to say.

There are four things brands should keep in mind.

1. Don’t understand estimate intelligent of women They don’t lose their intelligence just because they’ve had children.

2. Don’t talk down to women.

3. Make it smart and my grab attention. I can’t stand hooky advertising. I love Swagger Wagon…It’s brilliant. It makes you laugh. And the Old Spice Guy cracks me up. Because they’ve made you smile or laugh out loud, it’s memorable.

4. Don’t make it a sell job. Women want a personal side nod of the business owner. And interact with your followers. Fairmont Hotels does a good job of this.

Everyone knows Moms have had an important impact on marketing, as we know it today. They influence purchases across a broad spectrum of products and services. They’ve changed the way many companies are doing business from call centers to product development. And many companies have made a mad dash into to social media as a way to reach the Influencer Mom. I call it “The Mom Effect.”

In early January, I wrote about “The Green Mom Eco-cosm: A Social Study into their Motivations, Convictions and Influences,” from The Social Studies Group and here they are again six months later with an update called “Eco-Moms Revisited.” Wendy and I met through a twitter conversation as a result of the original blog article. The Social Studies Group has an interesting approach to research and this is a prime example: not a one time study, but an on-going view as the audience evolves.

So who are these Eco-Moms? To the outside world, we tend to think of these Eco Moms as radical and living a committed lifestyle none of us could ever handle, but they are affecting more and ore of us every day.

Because of their devotion to living green, we are all becoming more conscious by buying more green products, discovering organic foods, recycling and passing along gently used articles. Why just a few days ago I read that 38% of Moms across the U.S. have some kind of a home garden.

I was astonished to read that it was “family”, not the environment that was the key motivator for a Mom to become more green conscious. But it makes sense that the presence of children would cause a Mom to think about what their child was touching or putting in their mouths. Most of us tend to think solely of “green” as recycling or buying green friendly cleaning products but forget buying organic, growing your own food or becoming a vegetarian is a part of the mix. Interestingly, the study also uncovered Moms decision is not overshadowed by the recession and she is purchasing organic despite the increased costs.

The Tipping Point:

The Eco-Mom study uncovered 5 moments/tipping points that cause Moms to feel the need to take on more responsibility for the environment.

1. becoming a mom ‐ 54%.
2. an educational experience 21%
3. family illness – 10%
4. personal illness – 7%
5. a brush with activism – 7%

Of equal importance, is the Eco-Mom’s significant use of social media. She’s a heavy user of Facebook, twitter, blogs, forums and blog carnivals. What is a blog carnival?  The author through outreach gathers carnival posts. She collects, links and then publishes them to her blog. Why does she blog? 1. To build community, 2. Document her journey, 3. Find support for her effort. It’s through her daily thought stream on a personal.

“These women are smart, informed, educated – and impassioned,” said Angela Walseng of the Social Studies Group. “Add to this the fact that they are hyper-connected with tracks across social media, and it becomes clear why companies, policy makers and interest groups should be listening to them, and closely.”

THE SOCIAL STUDIES GROUP (WWW.SOCIALSTUDIESGROUP.COM) IS A SOCIAL MEDIA RESEARCH FIRM THAT PROVIDES DEEP ANALYSES OF SOCIAL MEDIA CONVERSATIONS TO HELP COMPANIES BETTER UNDERSTAND THEIR CUSTOMERS, COMPETITORS, MARKETS AND INDUSTRIES. AN AREA OF SPECIALIZATION INVOLVES IDENTIFYING AND ANALYZING NICHE COMMUNITIES ONLINE (GREEN MOMS IN THE CASE OF THIS REPORT), CREATING “UNIVERSES” THAT CAN BE MONITORED AND ANALYZED OVER TIME.

Earlier this year, I wrote about a January 2010 report, “The Green Mom
Eco‐cosm: A Social Study into their Motivations, Convictions and Influences,” from the Social Studies Group and here they six months later with an update called “Eco-Moms Revisited.” Wendy and I met through a twitter conversation as a result of the original blog article. The Social Studies Group has an interesting approach to research and this is a prime example: not a one time study, but an on-going view as the audience evolves.

So who are these Eco-Moms? To the outside world, we tend to think of these Eco Moms as radical and living a committed lifestyle none of us could ever handle, but they are affecting more and more of us every day.

Because of their devotion to living green, we are all becoming more conscious by buying more green products, discovering organic foods, recycling and passing along gently used articles. Why just a few days ago I read that 38% of Moms across the U.S. have some kind of a home garden.

I was astonished to read that it was “family”, not the environment that was the key motivator for a Mom to become more green conscious. But it makes sense that the presence of children would cause a Mom to think about what their child was touching or putting in their mouths. Most of us tend to think solely of “green” as recycling or buying green friendly cleaning products but forget buying organic, growing your own food or becoming a vegetarian is a part of the mix. Interestingly, the study also uncovered Moms decision is not overshadowed by the recession and she is purchasing organic despite the increased costs.

The Tipping Point:
The Eco-Mom study uncovered 5 moments/tipping points that cause Moms to feel the need to take on more responsibility for the environment.

1. becoming a mom ‐ 54%.
2. an educational experience 21%
3. family illness – 10%
4. personal illness – 7%
5. a brush with activism – 7%

Of equal importance, is the Eco-Mom’s significant use of social media. She’s a heavy user of Facebook, twitter, blogs, forums and blog carnivals. What is a blog carnival? The author through outreach gathers carnival posts. She collects, links and then publishes them to her blog. Why does she blog? 1. To build community, 2. Document her journey, 3. Find support for her effort. It’s through her daily thought stream on a personal.

“These women are smart, informed, educated – and impassioned,” said Angela Walseng of the Social Studies Group. “Add to this the fact that they are hyper-connected with tracks across social media, and it becomes clear why companies, policy makers and interest groups should be listening to them, and closely.”

THE SOCIAL STUDIES GROUP (WWW.SOCIALSTUDIESGROUP.COM) IS A SOCIAL MEDIA
RESEARCH FIRM THAT PROVIDES DEEP ANALYSES OF SOCIAL MEDIA CONVERSATIONS TO
HELP COMPANIES BETTER UNDERSTAND THEIR CUSTOMERS, COMPETITORS, MARKETS AND
INDUSTRIES. AN AREA OF SPECIALIZATION INVOLVES IDENTIFYING AND ANALYZING NICHE
COMMUNITIES ONLINE (GREEN MOMS IN THE CASE OF THIS REPORT), CREATING “UNIVERSES” THAT CAN BE MONITORED AND ANALYZED OVER TIME.

The Smashing Book

Designing for the social Web

The Visual Miscellaneum

Designing Web Interfaces

Essential Guide to User Interface Design

Little Black Book of Design – Kindle edition

Designing Interactions

Envisioning Information

Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks

Designing The Obvious

Don’t make me Think

And a couple websites you should check out as well:

http://ui-patterns.com

http://designsnips.com/

So for us, it’s not surprising to see Forrester come out with a report that almost half of U.S. companies will be blogging by 2012. (43% of U.S. companies by 2012) Currently about one in three companies has a blog.

“Companies are finding that blogs fill a specific niche that other forms of social media do not,” said eMarketer senior analyst Paul Verna.

Companies are continuing to join the early adopters in the use of social media by creating Facebook presences and joining the Twittersphere. But, blogs are apparently filling an important role: portraying a human face to the company.

“Studies have shown that marketers perceive blogs to have the highest value of any social media in driving site traffic, brand awareness, lead generation and sales—as well as improving customer service,” said Verna.

Why blog?
1. It’s an opportunity to show thought leadership which can help with company credibility and consumer trust. Blogs are often more trusted than PR releases which are carefully crafted.

2. A company can show their human side. It’s people buying a company’s products and people like to talk to the people behind them.

3. It can help drive and cement corporate culture. And if the CEO participates, he can present a face to his employees, as well as the outside world.

4. It’s a venue for getting product feedback and create customer intimacy.

5. If the content is great, people will keep coming back and they will share the content, increasing your circle of influence.

6. And a practical reason? It’s helps your SEO.

So if your company is not already blogging, maybe it’s time to? 2012 is just around the corner.

My recent adweek article covered the topic of how social media and traditional digital media work hand-in-hand.  You can read the article here, or at Adweek.com, enjoy!

Social media has grown into an irreplaceable marketing strategy, but it must work in concert with your corporate Web site

If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world behind China and India. Weighing in at a whopping 500 million users, the social media giant has just surpassed Google in U.S. market share, according to data from Hitwise. To me, the rapid ascent of Facebook begs the question: Do businesses even need to set up brand Web sites anymore?

You’d likely be wrong if you answered “no.” Social media has grown into an irreplaceable marketing strategy, but it must complement and work in concert with with your corporate Web site.

Brands should be taking a “church and state” approach to marketing on the Web. You want your Web site to be simple and to articulate what the brand is all about, so including corporate positioning and traditional Web site strategies is recommended. But manipulating social media is a completely different ballgame. The game’s motto? Stop selling and start engaging.

Many marketers are starting to think of their brand’s Facebook and Twitter pages as “social CRMs,” which is a step in the right direction to shifting from a one-way channel of communication — marketing directly to consumers — to a back-and-forth, conversational relationship with customers, fans, friends and followers.

The crucial, often ignored part is that social networks are not socially enabled customer-relationship management platforms; they are audience-relationship management platforms. This distinction is a crucial part of navigating social media in an effective way.

When it comes to your brand’s Facebook page or Twitter account, the key is engagement. You want your social media pages to be content-centric first and foremost. The content that powers your social media should be engaging on a level that appeals to your core audience. The split between “product stories,” i.e., “show me/sell me” via a corporate Web site, and “people stories,” or “help me/entertain me” via social media and branded content, represents the divide between church and state.

These two coexisting worlds reveal that the corporate Web site can’t die in the face of the social media revolution. Social media is a great catalyst for bridging the divide. In order to do this, you have to define your brand’s social identity.

Building a social identity means representing your brand in an engaging way, regardless of what you sell. To leverage social media as an effective bridge to your product, you must think outside the typical consumer profile and find a unique way to engage your core audience. You must think like a publisher.

Let’s look at an example. Your company sells fertilizer. Your brand’s corporate Web site is pretty straightforward: it includes details about the product, the unique benefits of buying your product, how to use the product and other company-centric details. These details fit perfectly on your Web site, but they do nothing to engage your core audience. Let’s be honest: no one wants to friend or follow a bag of fertilizer.

Your brand should use social media to demonstrate what you offer to the world in terms of value and value exchange. Staying in theme with your product, use your Facebook page to offer tips on general lawn care in order to help the consumer. Or, maybe, you upload the best user-submitted pictures of their gardens in order to entertain the consumer.

In the end, creating and sharing compelling content for social media channels forces us to think of brands as publishers. You have to grab the attention of your consumers before you can try to sell to them. Creating a
social identity and associating it with your brand bridges the separation of church and state. Now that you have the audience’s attention, feel free to sell.

I’ve been using this analogy for some time now and it seems to resonate with everyone who hears it. If you are a brand looking to connect with consumers through Social Media, think of Social Media as one giant party. Here’s why:

1) Social Media is one giant party.

Let’s set the stage.

Imagine the social web as one huge cocktail party. In one corner of the room, a group of moms are talking about education and parenting issues. In another corner of the room, a group of recent college grads laugh over Will Ferrell’s latest movie. Everywhere you turn, different groups of people are enjoying themselves, sharing stories, discussing current events, pop culture, trends, etc. All the groups are mingling, making new “friends,” and the most influential people in the room have the most “followers” hanging on their every word.

Sound familiar?

Social Media is a true reflection of society today–and what better representation of social behavior, fragmentation, hierarchy and influence than a giant party?

2) Lead with “people stories,” not “product stories.”

Marketing has taught us to always lead with our “product story”: distilling our message down to a “unique selling proposition” and driving it home with features and benefits. As a brand marketer, your first priority has always been to show or sell your product. And it works well–if you only have 30 seconds to sell your product through a message that’s blasted out into the world. However, if you walk into that party and the first thing you do is try to sell your product, nobody will talk to you and you certainly won’t get invited back.

You walk into the party and head for the group of moms in the corner. If you interrupt their conversation to talk about your “new and improved hydrating face cream” or your “ultra-absorbent paper towels,” chances are you will alienate the group or simply be laughed out of the room.

To become the life of the party you can’t lead with product stories; you need to lead with people stories. If you want that group of moms or those recent grads to listen to you, you need to enter the conversation on their terms. You have to start a dialogue with something that is important to them, not what’s important to you. Only then will you have earned the right to talk about yourself. People need to like you first, then they’ll ask what you do for a living.

This means it’s critical to have the right “opening line”–a way to enter the conversation that starts with the consumer’s agenda but can seamlessly migrate to your agenda.

3) Use content to make connections.

The right story, joke or anecdote at a party goes a long way, and social media is no different. If those moms are talking about parenting issues, turn them onto a parenting expert who can help with their problems. If those grads are laughing over Will Ferrell’s latest movie, give them something similar to laugh about or recommend another movie for them to see.

The right content will allow you to make instant connections. And that means you need to think of your fellow party goers as audiences rather than consumers. Like a publisher, you need to help or entertain first; showing or selling comes later.

4) Embrace fragmentation.

Just like a party, social media is made up of many groups. People with different interests, different likes and different dislikes. This means that you can’t use the same opening line with moms that you used with those college grads.

Every audience is unique and you should speak directly to each group. This means you may need a few different “opening lines” if you are going after different audiences. In the same way you would “work the room” at a party, the way to get scale in social media is to break your audience into segments. As you walk around having conversations with different groups of people, you naturally adjust your talking points based on who you are speaking with. At the end of the night you will have met everyone at the party; if you are interesting, relevant and sociable, people will remember you and be willing to learn more about you (and your products).

5) Leverage the influencer.

Have you ever walked into a party where you didn’t know anyone? It’s not impossible to meet people, but you certainly have to work hard at it.

Now, what if you walked into the party with the most popular kid in school? You get instant credibility, everyone in the room knows who you are and talking to them becomes that much easier.

Simply put, leveraging the right influencers makes you “cool by association.” You don’t have to work as hard meeting people, you get to talk about yourself more and instead of trying to figure how to start a conversation with people, they will come talk to you.

sBrands are obsessed with impressions. For them, it’s always been about reach and frequency. Well, when it comes to social media, the name of game is engagement, not impressions.

If you walked into a party and just stood against the back wall, people might “see” you standing there. You may even make eye-contact with a few of those moms you so desperately want to talk to–but what good will that do?

You could go to 1,000 parties and stand against the wall at each one of them. Eventually people may recognize you–but they won’t know anything about you and there’s still no basis for them to have a relationship with you.

The Social Media Party is not about making eye-contact (impressions); it’s about shaking hands (engagements). It’s about meeting people, talking to them, sharing with them–it’s about engaging with them and participating in the conversation.

Final Thought

The party analogy is a whimsical way of saying that brands can’t treat Social Media the same way they treat other mediums. For the first time in history, brands are trying to navigate a two-way channel of communication. This means they can’t talk at consumers. Instead, they need to engage with audiences. Social media requires a value exchange between the consumer and the brand.

So when it comes to developing successful social media campaigns and programs:

1) Pretend like you’re getting dressed up for a giant party.
2) Lead with people stories, not your product stories.
3) Use content to make connections.
4) Try to align yourself with the “in crowd” so people will want to talk to you.
5) Don’t just make eye-content, shake hands with the people you want to meet.

I love Twitter. I know it’s wrong to love a channel, but I can’t help myself. I’ve fallen in love. It’s meant I’ve left Facebook a bit on the sidelines. I’m sorry, Facebook. But I, like so many Moms on Twitter, just love it for its’ immediacy. Face it, with a 140-character limit it fits our busy hectic lives.

Facebook is for people I already know. Twitter is for people I want to meet.

It’s not just a newsfeed. Although I love that an occasional scan lets me see what the world is talking about. I’ve met business partners, learned invaluable knowledge, met wonderful Moms and feel so much more connected to what’s happening in the world.

And I’m not alone. Moms like me love Twitter.*
• We check our feeds constantly
• We check it at all times of the day
• We use it to network
• We use it to learn about products
• 58% of us use smart phones to log onto Twitter
• We prefer it over Facebook if given a choice

In fact, I love Twitter so much I am bringing up my daughter to be a social media maven. She eats, sleeps fashion. I’ve taught her about Twitter, she has a Facebook fan page and YouTube channel.

A week ago or so I got an excited phone call from her. “Guess who is following me, Mom?” I was clueless. Of course, I’m a Mom…we know nothing. Sheesh! So she says, “The Doneger Group, “THE” resource for fashion trending.” I was still clueless but it didn’t matter. They sent her a direct message offering her an internship for next summer. I was a proud Twitter Mama. My daughter had discovered the beauty of Twitter–a business connection.

*2010 Marketing to Moms on Twitter Survey & Report by Lucid and Lisa Finn.

Since this isn’t a technology blog and I’m not a technology blogger, I want to share what I love about the phone aesthetically, and boil the rest down to it being an extraordinarily user friendly phone-toy.

Navigation: The very first time I poked around the Droid OS I was confused.  I wrote it off as “too complicated” as opposed to the iPhone, which, looking back, was a pretty ignorant assessment.  I wanted to be confused in order to make my decision to NOT get a Droid much easier.  One ad for Apple’s iPad boasts, “You already know how to use it.”  The Droid abides by all the dimensions that make this so.  It’s a toy with all its bells and whistles, and the iconography makes them easy to recognize.  I am a big kid after all, and I like my icons glossy and colorful.  Everything rolls along your fingers fast and smoothly.  Being a Mac advocate I really thought I would miss the look and feel of the Apple OS, but the Droid style is fresh and pleasant, giving that comfort level I’ve appreciated since my conversion to Mac.

Screen/Resolution: It’s got a giant screen, big enough to scare off naysayers who hold it for the first time and wonder where the hell they’ll put it, until they start browsing and typing and taking that giant screen space for granted.  Everything is crisp and clear, graphics and text on web pages are at optimal levels. Any better resolution than this is splitting hairs.  Photos and videos look simply amazing.

Do I sound like some one’s ex, boasting about how great my rebound relationship is, when deep down I still really want the iPhone?  That’s a question to be answered when the iPhone actually does come to Verizon.  I consider myself well distracted until that time comes – distracted by the Droid’s sheer elegance and ease of use.

So I asked Sugar to tell my about herself. I like to get to know Moms for more than their passion and number of followers or subscribers. And as everyone knows Moms are all about the story. Well be prepared for the story of Sugar Jones. I just had to leave it in her words. I should have captured her in video, but there’s always next time. Right, Sugar?

Meet Sugar Jones.

“I grew up, a poor Mexican child…

Okay, so I have four kids, ages: 22, 19, 8, and 6. I’ve been married twice. First time to a race car driver. Second time to a pilot. I have speed issues, apparently. I’m currently going through a divorce. No plans to marry an astronaut or stunt man at this time.

I’ve been writing stories and journaling since I was six. My first story was called “Jane’s Rainbow” and I named my journal Aussie. All entries started off, Dear Aussie. So much better than Dear Diary. Who the hell is Diary?. There’s a picture of me in a Blue Bird outfit at a portable typewriter. That was my first “laptop” that I carried everywhere. From room to room. In the car. On vacation. My family thought it was weird. They also thought all my reading was weird. I come from a family of a-holes.

I have worked as a waitress, bartender, and wedding coordinator in hotels. It was lots of fun and I made a lot of money, but the best thing was learning about people and their stories. No amount of psych, business, or marketing classes could have taught me more about the human mind and heart than late nights serving drinks or hours of stress with brides and their moms.

Eventually, I got recruited away by a recruiting firm to be a recruiter. I did that for about three years, which is like 20 years in any other industry. My favorite part of the job was talking to business owners about the initial idea that got them started on their road to success. Their stories were always so inspiring and amazing to me.”

So tell me about “Numerology, Sugar Style”

“I am a freak about numbers. I add every number that’s put in front of me. Ex: I add the digits in the total at the check out all the way down to a single digit. If the single digit is a 7, 8, or 9, I get happy. If I get to 13, I leave it there. 13 is my favorite number. Also, whenever I see 513, I get happy. My birthday is May 13. Yes, I’m a narcissist.”

And what did you say about “Over-Noodling”?

“

I over-noodle everything. Answering these questions has thrown me for a loop. I maybe should have had you just ask me the questions over the phone, but then I’d over-noodle how I might have said something differently, or what I forgot to add in, or does she think I’m a nut job.

I’m picky about the words people use. If someone uses the word “terrific”, I wonder if they mean that they were slightly terrified. If they say “fantastic”, I wonder if there’s a ghost in the story. When I say awesome, I ask myself, were you really in awe, Sugar??

If there is a generic brand of something at the grocery store, I will put boxes side by side and read each and every ingredient. If they match, then I read which one came first, since boxes label things in order of amounts. That’s why once I pick a brand (or non brand) I rarely sway from it, regardless of coupon/deals or pricing.”

You and I met at Blogher. How many what events do you attend over the course of the year?

“I love going to events, not just to meet with brands and see the latest in gadgets, but to hang with my sisters in blogging and my social media pals. My hope is to go to the following:

Blogworld (Vegas Baby!!)

Type A Mom

SxSW

Mom 2.0

Blogalicious

Any favorite Mom stories?

“Crap… stumped… let me think about this one…”

I was so surprised I left Sugar speechless. I’m sure she will be back to finish this question. Sugar isn’t the type to leave unfinished business.

What inspires Sugar?

“I’ve always had something to say about everything. One day, I was listening to Leo Laporte talk about Podcasting (this was back like 2003 I think, when you had to buy lots of equipment and read lots) and I became intrigued. He also mentioned that you should host it on a “weblog.” I started up a Live page on MSN and called it Spectacles. I wear glasses (when I’m not losing them in New York) and I tend to create spectacles in public. Then I found out about Blogger. I created several blogs, but the one that finally got some traction was called Living – In Theory. I was dealing with my life as a co-dependent and survivor of abuse. At one point in my “recovery”, I realized that I was on the other side and on my way to being happy. So I walked away from that very sacred place and started Sugar in the Raw. That’s where I live on-line these days.

Most of my readers have come from my frank conversations on Twitter. I’ve also been retweeted by some really awesome people. The first to set me free from my life of obscurity was Scott Stratten. To this day, whenever I see him, I scream his name, skip and jump directly at him, and hug him until he bursts. He loves it.”

Hey, Oprah, look out. Sugar has aspirations.

“I’ve been doing video shows and podcasts for the last couple of years simply because Oprah won’t give me my own show on her network, so I figured, why wait for the invitation when I have something to say right NOW. I love video because I can really convey who I am and how I got to my final thought. There are so many emotions that are missed when a story is merely in print. Seeing and hearing the story is so much richer and entertaining. People love that. And as I mentioned, I’m a recovering co-dependent, which means I’m heavy into the people pleasing.”

What’s a typical Sugar-filled day like?

“I wake up about 30 minutes before my alarm goes off, which makes me think I should set my alarm 30 minutes earlier, but then I think, no… I don’t want to be startled to life every day. Before the alarm goes off and while I’m still comfy and cozy under my comforter, I grab my Blackberry and check my tweets. This may be why I’m alone. Anyway… so I check in to see if there are any people I need to respond to and then I just jump into conversations or start some of my own. It’s usually based around the news of the day.

My kids make their own breakfast because my job is to raise them to be independent, so it starts with that. I can’t quite get them to make my coffee yet, but that’s okay… I’ll keep working on that. During the school year, I’m homeschooling them several days a week, so my computer/desk time is split between teaching and reading/blogging/working. Their work is usually done by 2, but by then New York is done, so I’ve had to tweak our school time a bit in order to accommodate the work that I’ve been doing. This year, the kids will start a charter school, going on campus two days a week. I’ll be at a Starbucks across the street using their free wi-fi and sucking down Vanilla Americanos while I work. Eventually, I’ll be rich enough to send them to private school, but for now, this is our choice.

The afternoons are pretty much lazy. Go to the beach (six blocks away), ride bikes, chase squirrels… that sort of thing. After dinner, I’m usually back on the computer catching up with the tweeps, reading, writing, video editing. Then to bed where I fall asleep listening to alien abduction and conspiracy stories on Coast to Coast with George Nori. Again, possibly why I am alone.”

The Sugar perspective on marketing to Moms.

“I hate being talked down to… as if I never did anything before (or after) a kid grew in my uterus. It’s not always a given that a woman is a mom, but a mom is always a woman. Remembering that we are women first is key to earning my business.?

You work with brands like GM. What has been your experience?

“The brands that I work with usually know me before we have any relationship. They know that I can be snarky and opinionated at times. I don’t like to change my voice for a project, but sometimes I feel like I might have to (please see “people pleasing” above), so when a company comes right out and says, “Be yourself,” that means a lot to me.”

Are Moms changing the world?

“It’s a little weird sometimes. My first go around at being a mom, you couldn’t really talk about having kids at work. It showed weakness if you left work to take care of your kids. Now, I get to schedule my work and meetings around the kids and that’s okay because the work I do is directly related to being a mom. I’m glad that the shift has happened. I love being a mom, but I love even more being praised for doing the most thankless job in the world.”

What do you think we can expect from Moms in the future?

“Change the world!! The new feminism isn’t bra burning and kicking men to the curb, thank goodness. It’s about persuading others to a better way of life. Women know how to get a message across in a way that evokes emotion. If you can get to people through their hearts, you can affect change. No billboard can do that.”

And what’s in the future for Sugar Jones?

She’s going to be a grandmother and she’s starting a new webshow.

“Yes, that’s what happens when you start having kids at 18. Anyway, my friend Rachel Ferrucci and I have started recording a new webshow called “The G Spot – a Place for the Modern Grandma.”

And that’s the Sugar Jones story. You can follow her @sugarjones or at sugarjonesblog.com