Women thrive in supportive communities. We create strong, life-long bonds through sharing our lives with each other. As modern life speeds by, we are forced to move away from those we love, we are so often lonely.

Moms are especially vulnerable. Those women who stay home and raise their children often feel isolated and intellectually unfulfilled.  We long for the intimacy of women with whom we can learn from and share our common struggles and joys.

Mommy Blogging is the new Digital Front Porch Swing.

Mommyblogging has only just begun. Come and sit on the front porch swing with me, let me tell you about our story.

We live in such exciting times, and I see a tipping point that is quickly approaching.  The New York Times, Businessweek, and Oprah all have taken notice and the world is paying attention.

The recent 2009 Social Media survey published in emarketer explained:

1. More than one-half (53%) of the US female Internet population of 79 million actively participated in some type of social media at least weekly. Of the female social media participants, 75% took part in social networking and 55% used blogs.

2. A survey by Razorfish and CafeMom found that Websites, referrals from friends and family, and information from search engines were the most common sources online moms used to make a purchasing decision. They were less likely to use TV, magazines, newspapers or radio to make their purchasing decisions.

3. Women are so enthusiastic about reading and writing blogs, they are stealing time from other media to spend more in the blogosphere and on social network sites.

Mom Bloggers have built a community in the virtual world that is based on sharing our lives, our stories and our hearts. Blogging is not only a hobby, it is a reminder to take a moment and look at our daily lives from a different perspective. We tell our stories in beautiful pictures and weave daily life into a digital masterpiece.

Our communities, once limited to our computers, have come together. Last February I co-hosted BlissDom, a conference built around the writers and readers of my magazine, Blissfully Domestic. The conference was brilliantly run by my fabulous co-host, Barbara Jones of One2Onenetwork. Three hundred women, most of whom had never met in person, squealed with delight as they hugged hello.

We brought our blackberries and our babies. We shared our knowledge and partied like bloggy rock stars.

Are these communties real? Yes. They are built on love and shared experiences. The most successful relationships are built on trust, and the online community world is no different.

Are these communities powerful? Yes. Moms have the power to make or break advertising campaigns. This piece in Mashable from Sarah Evans explains the debacle that was “motrin-gate” last year.

Are these communities influential? We have just begun to scratch the surface. The tip of the iceberg is in view, and over the next 3-5 years, the true impact and influence will become clear.

Growth and Change in the Mom Blogger Community

When the story of Mommyblogging is told we will look back at this time period as one of great evolution. As more women join the converation in their own way, we see the state of the Mommyblogging union is fluid and ever changing.

Mom Bloggers have many different styles. Some are gifted storytellers, some love to write controversial pieces, some focus on tips for home-keeping and hobbies and I am hear to say there is no wrong way for a woman to write. The audience is vast and there is room for all voices. As I said during the first Blissdom, “Blogging is not a zero sum game.”

MommyBlogging and Money

There is no substantial money in blogging. Blogging is a vehicle that can help other projects. Our blogs are our platforms to shine. Sure, Heather and Ree, are making tons of money. Some bloggers earn enough every month for coffee, some for a few groceries, but most do not earn a dime.

Penelope Trunk wrote one of the most honest, and painful posts, on this topic with, “Reality check: You’re not going to get make money from your blog.” She explains that blogging is a great career tool, but blogging for dollars? Not gonna happen.

What about Mommy Blogger Reviews?

The ongoing bruhaha in the Mommy Blogger community is all about reviews. As companies and PR representatives reach out to moms, there is a storm of tension on the horizon. Passive agressive comments and nasty posts addressing payment, popularity, and honesty are becoming common place in some circles. This saddens me because this behavior is not what we are about.

I am asked daily for advice from bloggers and PR representatives alike. In all honesty, I am navigating the landscape like everyone else. I learn as I go, and simply try be transparent.

Stephanie Smirnov, PR Mama, opened my eyes to so much in her brilliant piece called, “Bloggers, Brands & the New Publishing Paradigm.” It is required reading for everyone who seeks to understand all the dynamics at play.

“…some bloggers who approach product endorsement as an advertorial opportunity believe the endorsement carries a cash value. But remember that advertorial is an off-shoot of advertising and – crucial distinction – the marketer who pays for it in a magazine controls the content. And the resulting advertorial is clearly labelled as such, as dictated by the American Society of Magazine Editors.”

Reviews are not advertising. Legally, paying for a review is murky at best. Which is why the FTC is taking notice. PR Companies are developing strategies for blogger outreach that are quite successful.  Danielle Wiley, from Edelman, was recently interviewed in AdvertisingAge about her success with matching mom bloggers and companies.

What do I know for sure?

The Mommy Blogging community is vast and growing daily. Yes, there is room for everyone. When done with integrity there is no wrong way to do it, every woman can easily tell her story in her own way. We are in a period of fluidity and great uncertainity as our role in the 2.0 world gains prominence.

As I have said before countless times, I am the dancing monkey of the mommy blogging community. As the publisher of Blissfully Domestic and co-host of BlissDom, I view it as my responsibility to help navigate these waters with you.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts about the State of the Mommy Blogging Union. Learning together and from each other is the beauty of our community.

(image source)

(Blissdom Photography by Secret Agent Mama)

The Blissful Babes and I are so happy to announce we have a time scheduled for our Blissful Brainstorm session.This session is only open to you, my lovely Friends of Fussypants, and will not be publicized on BD. I want to keep it small and intimate, among good friends.

Thursday, July 9th.*

9 Eastern, 8 Central, 7 Mountain, 6 Pacific

We will discuss-

• The state of the blogosphere. Defining our goals and how we measure our success. What is your vision for your site(s)?
• How we at Blissfully Domestic can help you as the individual blogger and CEO of your own site.
• Exciting up coming changes at BD to help you shine in every area of life: career, home and play.

And much more!

If you have emailed your skype name or left the name here on MrsFussypants, then you are golden. If not, be sure to add it here or shoot it over via my contact form.

Love, Alli

*Because of all the time zones, a good time for everyone is always hard to find. If this time does not work with your schedule, I will try to host another Brainstorm session during the day in August. I will be traveling for most of July, and this is my last full week at home.

I love handing over the reigns to y’all because y’all are my own personal search engine. Any question I have? *magic* Answers appear, and answers I trust.

I have just finished weaning my youngest. After 11 yrs of being pregnant or nursung, and 5 boys later, we are done. I’ve been exercising (yeah, yeah, I should have been doing it all along) and thinking about ‘getting my groove back’.

With my company growing, I have been shopping. For grown up clothes. Dresses even.  Shocking, right?  I wondered where y’all love to find great clothes. Last night I did a call for favorites-

Now, for me, I am in love with Shabby Apple dresses. Remember they sent me two dresses for Blissdom? They are wraparounds with a full skirt that hits at the knee. Oh so flattering. I love them desperately. Only problem is Mark thinks they are awful. If it was up to him I would dress like hoochiemama, seriously.

I also love just about anything from Ann Taylor Loft, Chicos, Talbots, and at Walmart they have a label called George. I also am a talented Goodwill shopper. I can go in a store, drop off my donation box, and spot a designer outfit in 5 minutes tops. {*alli does a prideful George Jefferson strut around the room*}

My friends on Twitter weighed in with their favorites. Thanks Ladies!

Now, Friends of Fussypants, considering you are part of the smartest, most beautiful, fabulous group of readers on the web (*AHEM* because you are here!) time to share your favorites.

Where do you love to find great clothes?

And again, I give you a picture for no good reason other than it makes me giggle. We do post family friendly LOLs on Blissfully Domestic LoL by the way. Mostly because I can’t let my boys look at the main Icanhazcheeseburger.com site because of the sidebar ads. Ack, awful. However the LoL guys let us post the Pictures on BD, so I won’t complain about their ads anymore. (blushes)

Thanks to my rampant ADD, I always looking for something new …SQUIRREL..and I have a fun idea- Blissful Brainstorming.

Over at Blissfully domestic we are celebrating 18 months since launch and working on a fabulous redesign full of bells and whistles. We have always been community based, and will continue to be. BD has gone through so many changes. It all started with an idea to form a site full of my friends on my budget of $27. It was a big, improbable, crazy idea. From Daisy Olsen building my vision from scratch, learning to keep it up and running with 300 writers on the dashboard, and fumbling around until we found the wonderful Katie Howard as our Managing Editor; we have tried to look professional on the outside and secretly ran around like chickens with our heads cut off  behind the scenes.  We now feel we have on our ‘big girl pants’ and know a little something about how to do things.

As many of you know, Blissfully Domestic (with the fabulous One2OneNetwork) hosts BlissDom every year. We work to help give the friends of BD; writers, contributors, editors, and our strategic partners, the first opportunity to speak and attend.

Our working mission statement for BD is:

Blissfully Domestic is a go to source for launching and discovering smart ideas, tools, and products that add real value to women’s lives. We support and encourage women in whatever role they find themselves in order to positively grow women and families.

Blissfully Domestic is the reserve of resources for womens’ lives. An intentional launching ground for homemakers, bloggers and businesswomen to further their knowledge, networking, and friendships.

As we grow and change, I will be hosting Skype chats to brainstorm how we at BD can promote you and your blogs, how we can focus on more of the content you want to see and get feedback.

In these chats we will have many of the BD editors, the Blissfully Domestic Divas, in the conversation to answer questions about blogging, topics they write about and just to have fun.

The Skype chats will be in text version only. No voice or video. It gets too crazy that way. And really you do not need to hear my boys yelling and my dirty house. Seriously, I am blissful, but not domestic!

To join in, leave your skype name (signing up for skype is free) here in the comments. If you do not want your skype name public feel free to email me via the contact form.

I will contact everyone within the next week to let you know the time(s).

It has been a reeeeally long day. I was supposed to do very official sounding business things. Things that require me to act like I know what I am doing.

I was unable to get anything done. Emails are unanswered, deadlines are missed. My house is trashed.

I found myself doing these things:

1. Saying, “Honey, did you throw a sock in the potty and throw it on the counter?” *ahem*
2. Deciding to hide from them for a few minutes and hope they will play nicely.
3. Finding them in living room lightsabering, throwing popcorn, jumping on couch; yelling at them and then wanting to cry.
4. Giving up trying to get everything in order, going to the playground and simply enjoy being in the moment with them.

You know what? It was awesome.

**I have a cool new toy here on the new site. See the little green (or red) tab on the left of screen? If you click it, you will see my tweets, and then all the replies in a threaded conversation.

Here is the cool part. You can log in, and reply to me, and it will show up on twitter as a reply and link back here magically.

Yes, the word “magically” is my extent of Internet technology.

Anyhoo, it’s pretty cool. Check it out!

I try to keep it real here on my site. I tell you everything I am up to, even if it is kinda boring. You know about last year’s job loss, us losing our dream home to foreclosure, homelessness and you cheered us on as we crawled our way back to normal life. (If you don’t know the story here is the link, forgive the lack of pictures, when I moved from typepad, some were lost.)

You are my loved friends. Sometimes I disappear for a bit, like my BFF is famous for, but I always come back because I love you and this space. It is a part of my life. As I branch out in other endeavors, I am grateful for this special place as my online home.

I have another problem. I need your feedback. A couple of times over the past two years I have received very thoughtful, kind, well meaning letters from readers who are concerned with the ‘image’ I give as a Christian because of my Name the Inappropriate Photo’ contests. They worry I am providing a platform to tear others down. We all know there is too much of that online as it is.

When I hear things that ring true, they worry me. I easily ignore all the people who write nasty little comments on blogs to try to hurt and offend, but getting a sweet letter from a concerned friend….even if it is a friend I have never met…gives me pause.

Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God.

-1 Corinthians 10:32 NIV

Forgive the long post today, I am a terrible writer.See why I post pictures all the time? heh.

My Christian faith is the cornerstone in my life. In everything I do online, I work to build up women and never tear anyone down. My business mission statement is:

“Do the most good for the most people.”

My Inappropriate photo contests seem to be hurting people, and causing me to look like a hypocrite. Now, I do not deny my hypocrisy. I am no role model, ever. I am simply a women living a large part of my life semi-publicly online and trying to do my best everyday.

I poured over this article last night.

I will leave it to you, Friends of Fussypants, what is the future of Name that Inappropriate Photo? Does it need to change? Do we only use pictures without people? Or maybe people who obviously are dressing up to be funny? Can it be saved? Or, in the end, does they bad outweigh the good?

I value your thoughts and insight. I am never sure how to answer comments, I try to email directly or use Twitter, but today I will keep the discussion going here, so all discussion is kept in one place.

***OK, there is no reason for the manatee picture above, but I think it is funny and wanted to use it sometime. {giggles}***

Fight the Frump is my way to stop and remind myself in a fun way to take care of myself. I know sometimes I get caught up in judging myself by an unreachable standard.

Because so much of what we see is altered, this week let’s watch this again-

So remember to take care of yourselves, Friends of Fussypants, we want to Fight the Frump, not try to be pagent queens. {giggles}

I am still trying to work on my “just do one thing” of exercising daily. I’m getting there slowly. By the way, I am the only woman at the gym who works out in pearls?

Everyone on twitter had a hoot when I posted this.

If you have something you love, I say work it!

Have a great weekend y’all. Keep taking care of yourselves. We have to be good to ourselves so we can take care of our families and beyond.

Real quick, share with the world your “one thing” you are doing to care for yourself. C’mon, you can come up with something. Gotta start somewhere, right?

xoxo, alli

Did you know what Cap & Trade really is?

Your senators vote Friday June 26th.

If you want to you can call and tell them to Vote No on HR 2454.

202-224-3121.

(Not really spiffy hats & trading baseball cards is it?)

I will keep comments open, but as soon as people start attacking me I will close them. {serious eyes}

I’m gonna be a speaker at SITScation this Fall! I am so excited to be speaking with such wonderful women, and honored to be chosen to speak by the brilliant SITS gals. They are a powerhouse!

Here are the fun details-

SITScation 09 is going to ROCK.

Registration fee: Before July 1- $200
After July 1- $250

*Space is limited!

I’m gonna close comments so y’all will go visit the other speaker’s sites and check out all the fun. If you want to.

Girlfriends,

Tomorrow night I’m doing what I do….jumping into the deep end of a new social media. Blogging? Did it. Online magazine? Did it. News site? Did it. Hosting a conference? Did it. I don’t promise to do things well all the time, but I’m never afraid to try! Failure has been my friend more than once!

I have been lucky enough to ride the coat tails of brilliant people who let me tag along: Daisy Olsen, Barbara Jones, Katie Howard, and now Sweetie Berry. Sweetie is mentoring me as Allison Worthington Media’s Creative Strategist. Y’all will get to know her well.

What now? What can I not do? I can’t be on camera. I can’t stand to see myself. But, I have a famous friend, My Fab Mr. David Cooper, who is kind enough to teach me how to tolerate myself on TV and learn the broadcasting ropes.

Your humble host is appearing on LIVE internet television as Mrs. Fussypants herself to try out this new social media tool.  How fun to play with new gadgets, Live internet television is the biggest one I’ve seen lately and Allison Worthington Media is exploring just how to bring you and yours more good things at home.

Put the kids to bed early, get on your comfy jams and join me Tuesday, June 23^rd at 7:58 pm for my very first live web production web party. Details to follow here later tonight on the location on the web! Can’t wait to see you!

Xoxo, Alli

PS- Don’t laugh at me too badly, promise?

I would also love to hear from you all about what kind of topics would be great for future shows. I would love to have guests and interview people. Wouldn’t that be fun?

**Here is the show link**

http://davidcooper.com/view/440