In the last couple of weeks, I have had the privilege of being featured on three online platforms for women — for Mums, for female entrepreneurs and for those who count themselves in both categories.

I was featured with a Mumpreneur Profile on Antonia Chitty’s FamilyFriendlyWorking website.….

.… m y sto ry was presented in a great blog post on MumsLikeYou last Friday (6,000+ users and 40,000 — 60,000 monthly hits).…..

.….and I was presented as the Member of the Week of the booming network driftig.nu for female Swedish entrepreneurs, with 6,000+ members and a real treasure of encouragement and inspiring advice.

Of course great exposure for me and the MummyMug to a revelant audience within networks much bigger than my own. The features generated about 500 visits to this site and many interesting comments and new leads to help me build my business.

I can only say — thank you! And I herewith return the favor. Please visit the sites above. You’ll not regret it.

Of course it did not happen by itself. Yep, I did make the first cold call contact with the women behind these sights and I simply asked for the possiblity of being featured. They were all quick with feedback, generous with their time and with their support in terms of lending me access to their platforms.

This is Online Sisterhood in action. The more I explore the online communities for women, by women, I see example after example of women investing their time and energy in unselfishly helping some other woman to find advice, to connect, to build their business, find online friends or a great buy. And, as study after study on the tremendous online engagement of women, this engagement is creating real and mutual value; for women personally, and for their businesses.

Isn’t it funny that we women, who often in the ‘offline’ world are known for the absolute opposite to the generosity to each other and without willingness to help each other further on the career ladder, are engaging so generously, and at such a massive scale to complete strangers online? Perhaps is easier for us women to show this generosity to each other when we are meeting in the virtual world, free from the inherent competition that occurs when women work or live side by side offline. What do you think?

Whatever the reason: online, it’s a brave new women’s world.

Are you an aspiring (Mum)blogger but not sure where to start and how it is done?

I’ve got a good tip for you. Being a beginner myself, I have signed up for the Mum-bloggers E-course, run by Erica from LittleMummy.

Divided into three courses of 10 weeks each (Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced) she takes you step by step through the basics, such as starting a blog, posts and pages and commenting etiquette, basic SEO, joining groups and reviews and competitions — and more. She tells me that the Intermediate and Advanced courses will cover  Slideshows, video, analysing blog data, podcasting, monetizing, Email list building, newsletters .… and finally e-courses and ebooks, so you can end up knowing how to share your knowledge as well!

I am about two thirds through the Beginner’s level. the obvious plus-points is that for free, it is informative and — it is extensive.

What I most like is its structure and careful avoidance of information overload. Thanks to the weekly pace, you actually not get more information than you can digest during the startup of a blog.  I see the E-course email in my inbox, it takes no more than 15 minutes to internalise what it says. Because it is not more information than I can digest, the message actually sticks.And I am encouraged to apply and try what she is talking about.

Also, Erica’s style is to the point, informed and has a friendly tone.

So, thumbs up for Erica — and wishing all you prospective bloggers out there some happy reading!

Hi everyone! I hope you have had a relaxing and good Christmas break and feel refreshed and ready for the new year. I hope 2010 will bring you health, happiness and all other things you wish for yourself and your family.

I’m just back from a trip to Sweden, which combined nice relaxation with the family with useful meetings and contacts for MummyMug. Really looking forward to a new year, which will certainly bring lots of hard work but also a lot of fun, I am sure!

As one of my New Year’s resolutions is to start vlogging, I decided to start right away!

Yesterday, we attended a seminar in Utrecht, organised by CMS Derks Star Busman and WBI Webexperts. I believe the 50 or so participants which had taken the time to come, was an afternoon well spent.  The speakers included Mr Hoorneman, Sienen and Hagen from CMS, and Tim Pellens from WSI.

The topic was social media, and we got a good and informative rundown from WSI on internet and social media trends, and the optimisation of the visibility and reach strategy within the ever-changing battery of social media tools and platforms. A few interesting stats on internet use in the Netherlands, that were new to me in any case:

• 12,2 million Dutchies (out of a total population of 16.6 million) are online at least 1 hour per day.
  
• The fastest growing Dutch online population demographic is women aged 20 — 40, and they engage increasingly in.… gaming!
• E-commerce currently generates 4 billion € in annual sales in the Netherlands.
• Social network Hyves is gigantic in the Netherlands, with around 6,7 million Dutch members. That is something like  40 % of the entire population! Fastest growing category is women between 30 and 50 years of age.

A large part of the discussion revolved around the legal ins and outs of using social media for marketing purposes. Perhaps not the sexiest topics to spend time on as a passionate social media marketeer. But of course oh-so-important to be aware of: better to be safe than sorry and find yourself in court facing a competitor suing your pants off because you used their trade mark name wrongly.

A few insights:

• There is a lot of legal buzz at the moment around the use of third party trademarks in Google Adwords and as keywords online. The European Court of Justice has recently indicated that Google has the right to propose and sell Adwords including 3rd party trademarks. A French court, however, recently fined eBay €80,000 for having used Dior as a keyword. This is clearly  jurisprudence in the making.…
• A rule of thumb is, that you may use someone else’s trademark in your blog or on your site, if it is for referral, for [fair] comparative advertisements and as long as it made abundantly clear that you do not sell or represent the brand.
• The registration of a domain name in itself gives no automatic IP rights and is not comparable to a trademark in the ‘offline’ world.  This said, you may of course not cybersquat and register a domain name that already belongs to someone else. So start in the right order: secure it by duly registering your trademark first.
• The new Dutch legislation on data protection, which amongst other things forbids Dutch companies to send any kind of email to customers or other companies without prior explicit permission to communicate by email, is one of the strictest in the world. Horrey.…. it certainly does not make life easier when one wants to design marketing campaigns., I can tell you that much. It also applies to Dutch companies communicating with persons or companies outside of the Netherlands.

That a lawfirm offers such a seminar for free is of course great service.  So — herewith my official thanks! I learned a lot!

It also goes to show that they believe, that there will be many companies out there, including some of those present that day in the room, who are going to make mistakes along the way and end up needing legal defence in this area. Or feel that they need to attack a competitor to defend their position.

And no doubt many of us will.… and having shown that they are a trusted hand to turn to if and when that happens, I am sure they will end up earning back the cost of speakers, handouts, pens, mini-mints and coffee, drinks and chips.

The last few days, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about social media this blog, the MummyMug and the world of online Mums.I’ve been exploring the Mum-blog universe, read lots of posts on social media and came across someone who rightly points out a few things (I do recommend you to read the whole post here; guest post by Michael Brito posted on Brian Solis, Pr 2.0)

Reality #1: Consumers already get it; brands are still trying to figure it out.

Reality #2: Brands should focus on the people first, tools last.

Reality #3: There is no such thing as a social media expert quite yet.

To sum it up, he argues that social media is about authentic people and about tools and processes in constant flux. And this does not match the standard corporate one-way communication strategies of yesterday. And it gives voice to the constituencies that are supposed to buy the products that companies tweet about.

Of course it was always a no-brainer to use social media to promote the MummyMug — an affordable way to do marketing, and a good sales channel (this said: product fulfilment is in this case still VERY much offline, and there I still have to find the most cost effective model as the purchase has to be delivered without it costing an arm and a leg and without consumers having to wait 3 weeks to get it in the mailbox).

But I want to go beyond that: I want the brand to really be BY the online Mums — the real ones. And serve online mums, to give them a product they really want and need.  I want the MummyMug brand to be crafted inside social media, but just communicated through it.

Why? Because as much as MummyMug is a brick-and-mortar product like any other, and I need to make money selling it, just like any other company, MummyMug IS about real mothers. I am a very real one-man band (mother) who wanted to make something really useful. MummyMug will deliver a real benefit to the mothers who choose to use it. And I would not want it any other way than how THEY want it. And I want the success to be a shared one.

I am trying to create and launching a completely new and independent brand in the midst of a dynamic social media take-off. I have a product aimed at a demographic that is very much active in the social media sphere.

So — it must be possible to make it happen!

How? I look for a strong Mum on each anchor market, to be the MummyMug Mum. Someone who is already established, who probably already has a professional background in marketing. A Mumpreneur. To blog, promote and connect with the Mums online. To listen, to crowdsource  ideas for what the MummyMug should evolve into  — and to feed that back into the MummyMug Hub (read:me) so I can tune the product and the brand into the needs of the Mums out there. In other words: I am working to build a network of freelance Mum-bloggers, that together with me can put the magic into the MummyMug brand.

These MummyMug Mums who would not only be freelance marketeers, and certainly be given a business opportunity where they would share in the financial success they will hopefully help create,  but truly live the brand, in flesh and blood, and connect through social media with other real Mums out there.

Together, I am sure we can create something from which everybody wins.

So — are you the MummyMug Mum I am looking for? Then I can’t wait to hear from you (cecilia@mummymug.com )

Wow. I am overwhelmed. I have spent the afternoon browsing around the world of British Mumbloggers. Why British? Well, I blog in English myself for starters. I want to get to know them, their way of life, their likes and dislikes and hopes and fears. And hope they want to get to know me.

Randomly starting to look for bloggers is like lifting the blanket and discovering a whole universe. It’s of course overwhelming and impressive how many mothers and fathers are out there, the the sharing that takes place is impressive. So much community. So much instant recognition in the lifes of complete strangers. That is so reassuring! ;-)

At the same time I somehow want to find my way around before I start commenting, start getting in the game. Feels a bit like needing to do some careful evaluation of the fields and the rules before starting to actively play. So, have started gently by subscribing to some selected newsletters from bloggers that instantly appealed: LittleMummy, Who’s the Mummy? amd A Modern Mother to mention a few.

And last but not least: a direct email to AlphaMummy, a group blog of women who seem really cool. Who knows.… will they read this and reply?!

Today we are talking about the website, which has just gone live as you know. Eelco is explaining us the content management system and how we can post on the website. I am very excited to get blogging and share my story of making the MummyMug a great experience for you all!  More to come.