Who's the Mummy?

Copyright Part II: Protecting your work online.

So, last week I wrote a post about how to ensure you’re not stomping all over someone else’s copyright when you’re blogging.

What if someone’s treading on your toes?

Having spent hours crafting an amazing set of photos, or blog posts, or a website theme, or whatever it might be – there’s nothing more infuriating than finding some twonk on the Internet has just grabbed the whole thing without so much as a thankyou note.

Take a deep breath. There are things you can do.

First, copy the URL of the offending page or pages. Take a screenshot of your original work, and the copycat. Now you have evidence.

Second, think about who has ripped off your work. It may be that you wrote a review of some shoes and now the shoe company has posted your complete review on their site. Or perhaps you wrote a lovely post about post-natal depression and a women’s charity thinks your article was so great, they want to share it with their readers, too.

In these cases, the chances are that the guilty party isn’t evil, they’re just ignorant of the rules of copyright. These sorts of people often (wrongly) think I’ll be grateful they just stole my content because they’ve “given me exposure”. Pfft.

So, the best approach is to drop them a polite email. Point out that your work is protected under UK and European copyright law and that they do not have the right to publish it. Include the URLs for both pieces of work, as evidence. Request that they remove the content from their website and any other publication they may be using it in, and to confirm to you when they have complied with this request. I often like to include a cheery offer along the lines of: “If you would prefer to license the content for use on your site, my rates are as follows:” (Here insert rates at least 50% above your usual rates, whatever they may be)

Sometimes, your content won’t be on this sort of website though. Nine times out of ten it will be a blog with a random selection of content articles, all of which will have been stolen from different sites by an automated script. These blogs, known as spam blogs or splogs, are a cheap trick used by spammers to fool search engines into thinking this is a genuine site with quality content – which they’ll then flood with visible or invisible links to their dodgy websites, boosting Google rankings in the process.

If you’re dealing with a splog, there is no point in getting in touch and politely asking them to take down your content. No, in this case, you can skip straight to issuing a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice to the host of the blog – such as Google for Blogger blogs or Wordpress. There are loads of templates for DMCA notices, and it's worth checking because different companies require notices to be submitted in slightly different formats, but once you’ve filed a notice with the host, you can expect the page to be removed in around a week.

It’s worth remembering, too, that there are things you can to that will make it harder for people to steal copyrighted material from you:

• Make pictures small: If you’re using family snaps on the site, make them small rather than letting people click on an image to see the full sizes photo.
• Think about alt tags: Alt tags are the names you give to photos  when you publish them in a post. If you name a picture “cute sleeping kitten” (as I once did) then it turns out that 20 people a day Googling that term will land on your photo, and presumably steal it. Given the fact that I paid for the privilege of using that photo, it narked me no end that someone else was just stealing it for free. If you don’t care about SEO, use alt tags like numbers or first names. If you do care about SEO, use tags relating to your post topic, and not the image.
• Consider watermarks: sometimes you’ll be using images that need to be large, perhaps because your blog posts are very visual. In this case, you can easily add watermarks to photos – use them in the middle so someone can’t crop them out. If you think this would detract too much from the image, then use a digital watermark – this is an invisible bit of code embedded into images that prevents them being copied and reused.
• Clip your RSS: If you’re finding copyright theft a problem, amend your RSS feed so you’re not publishing a feed of your full content. Instead, publish extracts of each post – perhaps 50 words or so. You can do this in your blog's RSS settings. This will annoy all HECK out of subscribers, though, so only do it if you’re genuinely concerned.
• Make it Obvious: Legally, you don’t have to put a copyright symbol on your site to be protected by copyright, but having it there might make someone think twice about stealing it.

Any other tips?

What do you know about copyright? (Part I)

This blog post is copyrighted.

I didn’t fill in a form. I didn’t register anywhere. But the moment I started typing and putting these words into a new order, thought up by me, my words became copyrighted.

Because this blog post is copyrighted, I own it. If you want to use it, you have to ask permission. I might ask you for payment. I might say no. If I say yes, I have a right to be identified as the author of those words, when you use them (though I may choose to waive that right, for example, if you pay me more). 

In the same way my computer is my physical property, my words and pictures are my intellectual property. I own them. If you take them without permission, it’s theft. And make no mistake, it’s illegal. That's why you should care about copyright.

In reality, you’re probably not going to find the riot squad over your bed tomorrow morning with assault weapons, just because you reprinted one of my articles or photos without asking. But you might find a retrospective bill for £5,000 on the doorstep – which is exactly what happened to thousands of website owners who inadvertently used unlicensed images owned by Getty and Corbis, two of the world’s biggest picture agencies.

Some people reckon copyright doesn’t exist on the Internet. That it’s old-fashioned, or not really in the ‘spirit’ of the digital age. Friends, those are STUPID people. When you meet them, give them a quick slap round the head, just for me, will you? If there was no copyright, if you could just take anything you fancied, whenever you chose, there would be nobody left to pay the money that funds the great content in the first place.

The good news is that it’s pretty simple to ensure you're not infringing someone's copyright.

Don’t take photographs from Google Image Search (somebody, somewhere owns them). If you're doing this right now? Stop it. There's no need.

Instead, use images from stock libraries like iStockphoto and Flickr, and search specifically for ‘copyright free’ or ‘creative commons licensed’ images where the owners have given permission for them to be used freely, usually on the condition that they are credited as the image owner. Or use your own photos. Or use PR photographs, which are issued by companies to accompany press releases, and are usually copyright free. Or - random idea - if you're reviewing a film or toy or bedding range, ask the company to send you a picture.

If someone writes a blog post that inspires you to write a follow-up post, you might want to quote the original post. If you're reviewing a song, or film, or book, you might want to use quotes or clips in your review to illustrate your points. This is allowed under a part of copyright law known as 'fair dealing'.

Fair dealing means you quote as much of the work as it necessary to prove your point - and no more. You should credit the original author, and what you use shouldn’t prevent them from subsequently selling or licensing their work to someone else in future, if they want to. Never, ever, simply re-post someone’s work in its entirety, even if you credit them.

If you’re embedding photos, videos or images on your site, be very careful indeed. Don’t ever remove digital or visual watermarks on photos, even if they are right across someone’s face. If you’re using a video, use the ‘embed’ code the site provides, rather than copying the video and running it on your own site. If in doubt, drop someone a quick email asking permission for what you want to do. If you’re on the level, they’ll almost certainly say yes. 

Coming next: Part II: How to protect your copyright.

Communities, cliques and a new meme

I was chatting online recently with a friend, someone who I’d consider to be a really popular, successful parent blogger. But this woman doesn’t feel part of the ‘core’ blogging community. “Oh I’m not in with them,” she said. “They just don’t like new people.”

I was a little taken aback.

But then I thought about it. Surveys consistently show that the reason most people blog is to connect – to reach out to like-minded people and become part of a community. Those same surveys also show that something like 95 percent of blogs are abandoned within a few months.

Could it be that it's actually really hard to become part of an online community? And if so, how can the community be more welcoming to new members? Because a growing, thriving community with lots of new voices is a good thing, in my book.

I don't know about cliques, but I would say as an observer that there are bloggers I’ve un-followed on Twitter because I can’t see any point in following them. Their entire Twitter stream is a series of in-jokes directed at five or six of their best mates, and they never bother to respond or reach out to anyone else. That’s not a bad thing per se, but it’s boring as all heck to read.

I also sometimes think the community can be quite insular with memes and awards. The same people tagging the same people, week in, week out. You can almost predict who some people will tag before even reading to the bottom of a post. Again, this isn’t a bad thing by definition. But I suspect it’s quite intimidating to new bloggers. How do you break into that sort of close-knit circle?

So, rather than just wittering on pointlessly, I’m starting a new meme of my own. This meme is called the “You're Welcome Meme”.  I'm tagging three bloggers I really respect as great community builders with this meme: the fabulous Sleep is for the Weak, the Mummy Whisperer  and TheMadHouse. Also, I'd love for the tag to go to Beki at Beki's Bloggy Bits, Heather at Notes from Lapland and Peggy at Perfectly Happy Mum. I can't wait to read all about your favourite new discoveries!

Here are the rules: 

• Visit the new blogs I've introduced you to. If you like them, subscribe!
• Recommend three new blogs you've discovered and loved (if you link back to me, I'll share all the new blog links in a subsequent post)
• Tag three other bloggers and ask them for three new blog reads. 

Here are my three favourite three recently-discovered blogs:

Daisy Darling: written by a teacher, this blog combines family insights, creative projects for kids, vintage fabrics, craft projects and lovely photos. Oh, and there are cats. I'm very keen on Internet cats, until Flea and I find the perfect kitten to add to our family. Daisy Darling is in fact a haberdashery house, which makes gorgeous hats for children and adults.

I love blogs, and great content always means more than great writing. But every so often you find a blog that is written by someone who was BORN to write, and that’s the case with Dad blogger Brit out of Water. His posts about living in New York with his daughters is beautifully written, and just really smart. Also, his Jude Law airport story cracks me up. I, too, am a master of the airport immigration slalom, friend. 

Everyone should read Lavender House. It's painfully honest, inspiring and one of the few blogs I've discovered that I think uses words and pictures together in a seamless way - each one equally important to the story being told. And she's in Brighton, my favourite place in the UK. Everything's more fun by the beach.

What's in store for Mummy bloggers in 2010?

Susanna from A Modern Mother has posted her seven predictions for the parent blogging community next year. Never one to miss an opportunity to copy a great idea* here are my own seven predictions:

1. Susanna thinks video blogging will be big in 2010. I disagree. I think the vast majority of Mummy bloggers (and perhaps a few Dads) like the anonymity of blogging, and would shriek in horror at the idea of the world seeing their grey hairs, wrinkles, eye-bags and wobbly bits (I have none of these things obviously. Because I’m 21 and a size zero). Instead, I think the big tech story of 2010 will be micro-blogging services like Tumblr and Posterous. Rather than creating a site in Blogger or Wordpress these platforms let you email short clips, pictures, video, text, links – and they all magically appear in a single stream – it’s blogging made unbelievably fast and simple. You don’t even need to register for an account to use Posterous.
2. Parent bloggers will become more diverse. The early pioneers of blogging have mostly been people who have a professional background in writing, comms or technology. So we’ve got a real bias towards middle class, white, 30-something graduates. I think as blogging gets more widespread, and simpler, the community is going to become A LOT more diverse. It's going to be awesome.
3. This diversity is going to mean new niches in parent blogging. We’ve already got parent blogs about gardening and home ed, but in 2010 there will be even more choice of reading material – Granny blogs, political blogs, crafty blogs, cooking blogs – the sky’s the limit.
4. Less homogeneity means more conflict. 2009 saw one or two pretty minor spats in the parent blogging community. Inevitably, as you get more voices, you’ll get more disagreement between bloggers. And I hate to be the one to say it, but large groups of women are not known for their ability to get along easily – and I don’t expect blogging to be an exception to the rule.
5. More commercialisation. Part of the increased conflict in blogging is going to be driven by the increasing involvement of marketing, advertising and PR. I think PR approaches will polarise – some agencies will take a scattergun approach of sending out lots of freebies to (what they see as) low value blogs that will write about them while other agencies will take a strategic view and try to build relationships with (what they see as) premium parent blogs.
6. Bloggers as brand ambassadors. Unless you’re topping 50,000 unique users a month, advertising is just a really drawn-out way to earn enough money to buy a cup of coffee. So I think brands are going to try and capture some of that parent blog sparkle by paying for posts – either on the parent blog itself, or on the brand’s website, where the blogger acts as a paid columnist. It’s a win-win proposition already being used by several major household names like Tomy and Proctor & Gamble.
7. Protests. We’ve seen in other sectors how powerful a blog can be in forcing change within corporations. In 2009 many bloggers wrote powerfully about issues affecting their children, from seating on planes to buggies that don’t work. I think as networks of bloggers become more established, we’ll start to see organised campaigns, lobbies and protests – and smart companies will listen. US companies have already discovered that annoying the Mom blogs is a bad idea.

* I didn't really nick the idea, Susanna asked me what I thought.

** Also, I run workshops for PRs on how to build smart relationships with bloggers and pitching parent blogs. Find out more by dropping me an email.

A Primer: Five Ways to Measure Your Blog Traffic

After yesterday’s post about traffic stats, I was inundated with questions about traffic stats, so I’ve put together this post showing the main ways you can see and analyse visitors to your blog.

I hesitate to call it a 'masterclass' but it's the basics and I'll try and answer any questions you might have. My personal view of traffic stats is that I like to know what content on a blog is popular (or not) and how people are finding my websites, so that if I’m not attracting the audience I want, I can make the necessary changes, and try different tacks.

I’m not really looking for a philosophical debate about how you’re too spiritually pure to care who reads your blog because, like, it’s all about the creativity. If that’s you then, great, more power to you – but you’re not going to get a lot out of this post so I’d just stop reading now. Go on, go and have some cake or something. Pop back later.

First: use what you've already got

If your blog is hosted on one of the main blogging platforms like Blogger, Typepad or Wordpress, when you log in to your site you’ll see some very rough and ready traffic stats.

These stats will generally show you what are known as page views. It may also show you ‘users’ or ‘unique users’. The difference between these two figures is pretty simple: If Bob looks at your post, that’s considered to be one “page view”. If he then clicks to see another post on the site, that’s another “page view”. But since both those page views came from Bob, it’s only considered to be one “unique user”.

Blog stats may also show you a ‘referral page’. This is the website Bob was on before he landed on your blog. The referring page might be a Google query, or it might be another blog that has a link to yours. If the referral page is blank, it means Bob typed in your blog address and came directly to your site.

Pros: This stuff is there for the taking (it’s in the overview section of Typepad, and the profile section of Blogger). It’s free. You don’t have to install anything.

Cons: It’s pretty basic stuff.

Using the big tools: Alexa

You might hear people talking about Alexa as a way to measure web traffic. It's pretty simple: go to www.alexa.com and type in your website address. Alexa will tell you how many visitors you have and where your site ranks in global popularity stakes, as well as UK popularity stakes.

However, for most bloggers reading this, Alexa's a waste of time. Unless a blog ranks in the top 100,000 global blogs, Alexa won't have any traffic stats on it. And none of the top five parenting blogs in the UK rates a mention on Alexa. What data there is seems to be wildly inaccurate. Although if you're the sort of person who will be cheered by knowing your blog ranks 50,000th in the UK and 500,000th in the world, then go knock yourselves out. 

Getting your own monitoring tool: Google Analytics

A far better alternative to Alexa is a Google Analytics account. You can add Analytics to your existing Google account if you’re already using Google Reader or Gmail – otherwise it only takes a few minutes to get an account, and it’s free.

Analytics lets you create ‘profiles’ for individual websites and blogs. Google will generate a small piece of code that you need to copy and paste into your blog. Top tip: put the code in the bottom right hand corner of your blog or website so it loads last – Analytics can be annoyingly slow, and if you put it at the top, it stops everything else from loading.

Once your code is installed, it takes a few hours for Google to start capturing data, but once Analytics is live, you’ll be amazed by the details that can be captured. For starters, you log in and can immediately see how many page views and unique users your site has had.

Click through the various options and you can see when people visited, what page they landed on, what page was the last one they looked at, and how they found your site – through a link on another blog, a web link, Facebook, Twitter, Google – it’s all there. You can even see what ISP your visitors use, what browser and operating system and (roughly) where they’re based.

Pros: Google Analytics stores a lot of data and will keep it indefinitely. It will probably tell you just about everything you could want to know about your blog or website visitors.

Cons: Personally, I think it’s bloated. I’m not sure I really need the option to sort my visitors by ‘goals’ and to put a visual graph over the top of my blog illustrating visitor pathways. Almost certainly, I’m never going to want to sort my visitors by ‘screen resolution’. For novices, the Analytics application has a scary number of buttons, graphs and options.

A simpler option: Sitemeter and Statcounter

The free versions of these tools work in a very similar way to Google Analytics – you sign up on the site, and install a small piece of code on your blog. With Sitemeter you can install a widget without needing to mess around with code, which is a bonus, frankly.

You then have the option of either having traffic stats emailed to you, or visiting the website to see more detailed analytics. With both sites you get an overview page showing you weekly and monthly page views and unique users, as well as how long visitors spend on the site.

One thing to bear in mind is that the free version of both these programs will only store a relatively small number of records – a couple of hundred at most, so you only see a day’s worth of traffic data at a time. 

Both Sitemeter and Statcounter assign each visitor to your site a number. You can then click on that number to get what’s basically a profile of that visitor including much of the information in Google Analytics (entry page, exit page, referral page, visit length, browser, ISP, location) and you’ll also see their IP address. An IP address is basically a unique ‘address’ for your computer that identifies you.

Having individual IP addresses is handy if you want to know whether specific people are visiting your blog – and it’s funny how quickly you get to know the IP addresses of your regular visitors. I have around 20 readers I can now recognise by their IP alone! Yes, this is weird. No, I’m not proud of it.

Pros: These tools are FAR simpler to use than Google Analytics and I recommend them for that reason. As a handy bonus, identifying people by IP address is very handy if you ever have a problem with an internet troll or unpleasant commenter, for example. (you can hand over an IP address to an ISP or the police and they can trace it to an individual person)

Cons: Like Google Analytics and your own blog platform stats, Sitemeter and Statcounter only record visitors who actually come to your site. Today, many people will visit your site through an RSS reader such as Google Reader, Netvibes or Bloglines.

What about RSS?

Annoyingly, not everyone who reads your blog comes to look at it. Instead, they may subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed - this is a version of your blog that is automatically published in most cases, using a computer language called XML. The feed is picked up by feed readers like Google Reader or Netvibes, which people use to collate all of their blog subscriptions into a single window. 

The bad news is that it’s substantially more difficult to know how many people read your RSS feed than it is to know who visits your blog. One very rough and ready way of estimating your audience is to go to the Google Reader website and add your own blog in the “add a subscription” box.

Once your blog is selected, click on the ‘details’ link towards the top right hand side of the screen.  This will tell you how many people subscribe to your RSS blog using Google Reader. This figure won’t include the 40% or so  of feed reader users that don’t use Google Reader. And if you publish more than one feed from your blog you will need to enter each feed address into Google Reader to get the count for each feed. (If you don’t know if you publish more than one feed, you probably don’t. It’s something you sort of have to do deliberately).

The nice thing about Google Reader stats is they’re public. So you can look at how many Google RSS subscribers you have and compare it to any other blog you like.

However, if you want a more accurate count of your subscribers you’re going to need to publish a single feed that will let you track subscribers more accurately – and that means signing up for Feedburner. What Feedburner does is take all your existing feeds and meld them all into a single RSS feed that is directed through Feedburner.

You don’t need any technical know-how to do this – just go to Feedburner.com and sign up by entering your current feed details in the “burn a feed” box. You’ll be asked to create a password for your feed, which you should do if you want to keep the stats private. There are various options in blogging consoles to tick - but Feedburner gives you much better instructions than I could produce.

Once your feed has been created, you can log in to Feedburner and see exactly how many people subscribe to your feed. As with Analytics, you can drill down into this data to see what feed readers people are using and what they’re clicking on in the feed (you might click on something in Reader to see the comments on the original blog, for example). Keep an eye on the site though, sometimes the admins will post information about variations and unusual events that might cause your stats to shoot up or down.

Pros: Feedburner has some nifty extra features that are worth exploring – you can grab nice ‘subscribe’ buttons that will let blog visitors sign up directly to your Feedburner feed, as well as being able to download a ‘subscribe by email’ option which is surprisingly popular, and various other nice widgets.   

Cons: Feedburner can play havoc with your existing feed if you're unlucky, so do take care to follow instructions carefully.

Are some things really better left unsaid?

This weekend, I had a row with a member of my family.

Actually, I don't do rows. So when I say "I had a row" what I really mean is that I said "Oh no, that's absolutely fine, really, don't give it another thought," then put the phone down and pulled faces at the handset for five minutes until I felt better.

But here’s the thing: I’ve always thought that people who speak ill of their family say more about themselves than anyone else. So I choose not to blog about my family.

Obviously, not everyone feels the same way – this week I read two amazingly honest, thoughtful posts about Mothers by Life with a Little Dude and New Mummy. Those are really moving posts and well worth reading if you haven’t seen them already.

There are only a few things on my “do not blog” list.  As well as my family, I choose not to blog about my love life – for one, it’s pathetically unexciting, and for two, it’s my choice to have a blog, and that’s not a choice the chap would ever make. Also, really, I don’t think Flea ever needs Google to turn up some post about my sexual antics.

I do sometimes blog about The Father although I edit heavily and try to always be aware that I’m talking about someone who doesn’t have a right of reply. So I try not to attribute motives to his behaviour, and only to blog about those things I really feel strongly about, that I wouldn't mind Flea knowing about later, and which I feel other people might have experience of, or insight into.

It’s such a difficult balancing act – I strongly believe that a blog only really works if you really put yourself into it. But I also believe there should be limits and that it’s important to be respectful of other people’s confidentiality and feelings when we blog.  I’m not sure I always get the balance right.

What do you think? What sorts of things are on your “do not blog” list? Do you tell people if you’ve blogged about them? 

Pay the Mummy blogger: because you're worth it?

This weekend, a client asked me if I knew of any parenting blogs that took advertising. Weirdly, I could only think of three or four British Mummy bloggers that I know run ads.

I say weirdly because I know that many of the parent bloggers I speak to are desperate to make some money from their blogs. As one blogger told me last week: “I’m just so sick of working for free.”

I suspect part of the issue is that running ads is hard work. You need to know how to display the ad, and (more tricky) how to charge – advertisers are going to want to know about things like page impressions, click-throughs and so on.

So I was interested to speak with the people at GoPayForIt last week. They’re offering a micro-payments service that lets web users pay for content using their mobile phones.

Using GoPayForIt, a blogger might decide to charge for access to specific content – a recipe, pattern, blog theme, avatar or similar. A visitor clicking to download the content could be automatically redirected to a GoPayForIt payment page, where they simply enter their phone number. They’ll then receive a PIN code to enter on the payment page. Once the number is entered, the charge is applied to their phone bill, and the user directed back to the download page.

The advantage for website owners is simplicity: there’s no need for any complicated code on your website to run GoPayForIt (the company says they can provide Javascript or HTML code that can easily be added to a blog). It’s simple for consumers, too – there’s no need to enter any banking or card details at any point, the charge is actually applied by the mobile operator.

There are downsides, of course. First, the operator and GoPayForIt take a cut of what the consumer pays. The mobile operator takes a commission, as does GoPayForIt – so on a 25p charge, the blogger can expect to receive around 10.25p (the exact commission varies by operator).

Second, because GoPayForIt doesn’t receive money from the operators immediately, you’ll wait at least a month to receive cash from website visitors – if you’re prepared to wait more like 45 days, you receive a slightly higher percentage of the payment made. And it's a UK mobile operator service - so it's only suitable for UK consumers.

Despite this, I can see blogs that could make great use of this kind of technology. I’ll pay iTunes to download a song I want to hear RIGHT NOW because it’s not on Spotify and, hell, it’s only 79p and I'm frankly too old and too embarrassed to actually buy a Miley Cyrus CD in a real-life shop.

In the same way,  I can totally imagine being on a website and really wanting to download that cool Christmas Twitter avatar or recipe for cupcakes because it’s only 50p or £1 (technically, the service can process payments up to £10, but it’s most likely to be used for small, impulse purchases) and I lack the skills to do these things myself.

And if you've got a good offering and a good audience, you could make some cash this way - if you've got 1,000 visitors per week and half of them are prepared to pay 50p for some content or service, you'd be making £250 after commission. It's not going to get you a yacht in Monte Carlo, but it's a start.

I'm not saying every blog out there can charge - I don't think people would pay for this blog, certainly - it's just ramblings and there are plenty of other blogs doing the same thing - well, not many other blogs have the monkey porn, but you know what I mean.

But I see so many amazing, talented Mummy bloggers who are genuinely creating new, useful stuff that is currently being given away for free, and I know I'd be happy to fork over a pound to read, use and download some of that stuff. And while advertisers might have a hidden (or not so hidden agenda) that can compromise your blog, micropayments are a way to keep control over your own content. 

Be really interested in your thoughts on this - do you wish you could make money from blogging, or is it a creative, personal project?

So, that underbelly I was talking about... (updated)

A few months back, I wrote a post on my PR and journalism blog, Getting Ink, mentioning the commercialisation of the UK Mummy blogging scene, and how I felt it was beginning to create some divisions and tensions.

I got a lot of comments – universally saying I was wrong. The Mummy blogging community is so supportive and friendly, people said, nothing resembling a seedy underbelly here.

So, erm, did you all see this in the Indie yesterday? Nice article on Mummy blogging, quite bland. But check out the comments – ouch! 

Have to say, I’m not surprised in the slightest. If you add money to any community, those who get it (in terms of advertising, freebies or publishing deals) will always be a source of irritation to some of those who don’t. Isn’t it inevitable?

I’ve had some first-hand experience of handling this frustration, because I put together an index of  the top 100 UK parent blogs. “I was once blog of the week in the Daily Mail!” fumed one blogger. “I regularly pay Wordpress for additional bandwidth, and I know for a fact that X and Y blog have less than half of my traffic!”

Another blogger said she belongs to a “private forum for established, PUBLISHED bloggers” and claimed that BMB (a social network for parent bloggers) is basically just a circle of mates sending each other pretty badges.

Being honest, I can see both sides. It must be frustrating seeing people who don’t write as well as you getting plaudits or freebies. Perhaps even more so to see someone getting a book deal when you know your audience is far bigger.

But from a journalist’s perspective: I don’t think the PR community is being misled. I think most PR agencies view blogger outreach (as it’s called) as being incredibly inexpensive, and they don’t worry too much if some of their attempts don’t generate a return – providing they get enough return overall. Also, for a PR agency, a Mummy blog with 500 incredibly relevant readers might be worth more than a generic website with 10,000 readers.

 That's not to say PRs don't need to be smart or selective when pitching blogs. They should absolutely be asking questions like: is this a good blog, is it read outside a small circle of virtual friends, is it well linked to, does it generate conversations? Does it have values and content that align with the client’s messages? Is the blog itself selective, or does it promote anything that comes along?  Part of me suspects in the early days that many PR agencies are just adopting a scattergun approach and hoping something hits the target – which doesn’t surprise me, it’s what many agencies do when pitching mainstream journalists.

Which brings me to another point: the UK Mummy blogging scene is very new. I don’t think, as yet, any real leaders have emerged. I think over the next year or so, we’ll start to see some blogs remaining non-commercial. Those that do accept advertising, or freebies for review, will have to learn to balance commercial and non-commercial content – or lose their audiences.

Blogs that are better written and more engaging will find it easier to build and retain an audience than those that are less well-written. If you genuinely feel overlooked, then work harder to promote your blog, to increase engagement, to build links - you can't expect the world to come looking for you.

Ultimately, those who’ve invested time in building relationships and not undermining their blogging friends are the real winners – because the real point of blogging, for most of us, isn’t making money or getting freebies. It’s about having fun, sharing our writing, making connections and exchanging experiences and ideas about parenting, creating a record of our children’s early years. A free box of soap here or there doesn’t change that, surely?

 [Note: I updated this because I don't want to be overly ra-ra* about ALL blogs. I do definitely think that good writing and being selective about what you cover on a blog is important.] 

*technical term