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Clorox is listening to moms

In Clorox's Battle to go Green by Anya Kamenetz of Fast Company magazine (September 2008), new mom and Clorox marketing executive Jessica Buttimer had noticed how fellow moms were discussing natural “green” cleaners even though only 1% of the market was held by brands like Method and Seventh Generation.

When moms talk, Clorox listens. Surveys showed that 44% of consumers were interested in buying green cleaners. So what was stopping them? Buttimer and her team identified three major reasons:

1. Doubts that natural products cleaned as well as traditional cleansers.
2. Expense - most green cleaners cost twice as much as other products.
3. Inconvenience since green products are usually only available at stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s.

Well, Clorox has met all these concerns with their new line of Green Works products:

1. The Green Works products I have tried, including the new Green Works dishwashing liquid and the Green Work's Natural Glass & Surface Cleaner and their Natural All-Purpose Cleaner I previously reviewed work great. (And thanks to Clorox for sending me samples to try out.)
2. Green Works products are a little more expensive than traditional cleaning products. However, compared to other eco-friendly cleaners, they’re a bargain.
3. Green Works are available at your local supermarket, discount store, and even at places like Walgreens.

Now that people are watching their pennies, Clorox has even a bigger advantage over products like Seventh Generation. People will still want to be as green as possible, but want to save money, too. For many, Clorox will be good enough – not too harsh on the environment and not too tough on the wallet either.

Oh, and did I mention the products smell great, too?

Google goes social and Chris Lang says I told you so

I’ve become a fan of Chris Lang’s social marketing and social bookmarking blog and his product Wickedly Evil Social Marketing Tactics. Both his book and a chance to have a free consultation call with Chris really set me straight on some of the ways I approached social bookmarking and growing my blogs’ readership.

So I wasn’t surprised that Chris sent me an email today that said:

Google has unveiled their own Google social bookmarking and it is powered by Google Reader.

Oh my, oh my, oh my – finally! You can read about it on his blog at Google Reader Adds Friends List, Sharing, Bookmarking and Blog Recommendation Engine. It’s a long and very detailed post so give it a several reads – and take notes!

Google Social: the death of Digg?

Chris was predicting the imminent release of Google Social when Google’s efforts to buy Digg fell apart. Like Chris, I had a sneaking feeling that Google could see how people game the system when it comes to using Digg. It’s a mess over there and Google knew there was no way to clean it up.

Instead, by using Google Reader as the basis of its social product, Google has figured out a way to stop the phoney baloney. As Chris writes:

With Google Reader as a Social interface and the data that is available from it, there is no way I can see to game the system. Sure you can email your friends and have them share an item, or bookmark a post. You will have to actually read the feeds, have targeted like friends and do something besides use a GreaseMonkey script to do the work for you like the Digg top 100.

What does this mean for bloggers? I believe it’s a return to what made blogging great: content, content, content.

• Are you writing quality material and solving your readers’ problems and/or providing them with entertainment?
• Are you networking with other bloggers by leaving quality comments on their blogs and developing online and offline relationships with them?
• Are you spending time doing quality promotional efforts aimed at your readers like building email lists and sending them valuable e-newsletters and offers?

This doesn’t mean the death of Digg and the top dogs there…yet. However, I wonder how this will affect smaller, niche social bookmarking sites like Kirtsy, HealthRanker, Mixx, and Mommyranks? After all, it’s a Google world and we all live in it. Time will tell.

Mommy Ranks - social bookmarking for mom bloggers

The newest contender in social bookmarking sites for moms is Mommyranks from Lauren at MommyBar and GreenBar.

She has stiff competition in Kirtsy, which is growing in popularity. Kirtsy's strength is that it has a more general audience - women, not just moms. However, there is power to niches especially when direct competition, like The Mom Blog Network and CafeMom's Hot List aren't being used much by the mom blogging community.

Lauren is busy publicizing Mommyranks on Twitter as well as contacting individual bloggers through the Mom Bloggers Club. She's also busy adding more functionality to Mommyranks. Lauren's done a great job getting mom bloggers to join MommyBar and GreenBar, and I think she'll do the same with Mommyranks. Heck, she's even offering prizes for the highest rated article of the month as well as for the top user(s).

So stop on by Mommyranks, sign up, and start submitting some content!

The latest July/August 2008: BlogHer 08, BlogTalkRadio interview, upcoming workshop, Mom Central Consulting, and The Big Tent at the DNC

BlogHer08

I was quoted on the CNET, Blogging and bringing home the bacon about BlogHer. They took a picture of the podium during my session, which was lived blogged very thoroughly at Free and Flawed by Jenn: Live Blogging from BlogHer ‘08 - DIY Content Syndication & Promotion and at happykatie: Blogher 2008 - DIY Content Syndication and Promotion. It was also followed up with a much better picture at our moderator, Krista’s blog, Kribaby: 5 Tips from BlogHer08 DIY Content Syndication. (That’s me seated in the middle, talking with my hands as usual.) Here's another picture of me from the Web Teacher.

I’ve been reading the other posts in the blogosphere about the session and either it was too advanced, too easy or full of good stuff. This leads me to believe that BlogHer needs better session descriptions. Since many people came up to me with compliments or questions, I believe I did a good job at least introducing people to the concept of social bookmarking.

I meant to write up a BlogHer post, but it’s been done by dozens of other bloggers who were there. All I can say was that seeing old friends was terrific, the sessions were fantastic, the networking was awesome, the keynote speakers amazing, and I am still learning so much at the sessions I attended. The only complaint? We need eggs and yogurt in the mornings at breakfast, not just pastry and fruit.

blogtalkradio: Motherhood Uncensored

I was recently on the Motherhood Uncensored BlogTalkRadio podcast, Back to Preschool: Getting Our Super Little Ones Prepared for Their Big Day. You can listen to the archived show here or click on the badge to the right. We talked about book you could read and activities you could do to prepare your child for that first day of school.

Workshops

I will also be teaching another blogging workshop, Beyond Blogging Basics, through the Northern Colorado Writers on Saturday August 23 at the Windsor Rec Center.

Mom Central Consulting

I’m now officially the Social Media Manager at Mom Central Consulting. I got to meet several of the women from Mom Central at BlogHer, which was fun because I’ve only worked with them on the phone. I hope to go out to their offices in Newton, MA soon.

The Big Tent

I will be representing the National Association of Mothers' Centers and MOTHERS at The Big Tent, the media tent for bloggers covering the Democratic National Convention. I’m the MOTHERS E-newsletter Author and Coordinator and blog at their book blog, MOTHERS Book Bag, and probably will be blogging there, having dispatches posted on the MOTHERS website, or both.

What’s up next month? For start, BlogWorldExpo 2008 in Las Vegas!

Sony gets you where you want to go: the Sony NV-U83T portable navigation system

In my ongoing romance with the Sony brand, the folks at Rocket XL sent me the Sony nav-u™ portable navigation device (NV-U83t) to review.

Ironically, I had just purchased a Navigon 2100 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator for my husband, Paul, a few weeks earlier based on the Navigon 2100 review at Terry White’s Tech Blog, and that I could get it for less than $100 at Staples thanks to it being on sale and a $25 off coupon I had.

Paul is very happy with his Navigon, especially after using it on a recent business trip to the East Coast. I’ve only used it once and there are some features I love it on that the Sony nav-u doesn’t have. First it warns you when you go over the speed limit. (Paul promptly disabled this. Then again I have more speeding tickets than he has and need these warnings.) It also has 3D Reality View™, which gives you the feel of driving into the city. (When we drive into Denver we see a realistic silhouette of the city skyline on the GPS unit.)

However, I don’t want to compare the Navigon to the Sony GPS too much. The Navigon is a wonderful unit for the price, but it’s much smaller (3.5” compared to Sony Nav-U’s 4.8”) and has less bells and whistles.

The Sony GPS comes with some amazing features like:

• Bluetooth hands free communication so you can make and receive calls on the go.

I don’t use Bluetooth and don’t talk on the phone and drive, so I didn’t use this feature. However, if this is something that is important to you, and your car doesn’t come with a Bluetooth function in the radio, it’s certainly worth paying extra for this feature.

• Position Plus so when GPS signals are temporarily interrupted, such as when driving through a tunnel, the nav-u NV-U83T will keep you on-track by using multiple sensors to monitor your position relative to the map.

I didn’t go up to the Eisenhower Tunnel to test this, but if you frequently travel tunnels or places with many large overpasses, this feature may be a necessity.

• RDS-TMC Traffic Messaging Channel, which gives you real time traffic information radio reception so you can monitor traffic conditions. It also automatically re-route you around trouble spots. (This is a subscription service. You get a 90-day free trial. A yearly subscription is $49.99.)

I didn’t use this much either, since I don’t travel during rush hour. (One of the advantages of working from home). However, it did identify some of the construction on the roads and highways, though not all of them like the major overnight construction that we have here in Colorado.

Other Sony nav-u features I liked were:

• Dual view - 3D Junction Guide. This gives you more information about highway merge scenarios. (See picture to the right.)
• Detailed maps. Since it’s has a larger screen, the Sony unit can include more detail like surrounding street names.
• Text to speech technology. It’s almost as good as the computer talking to you on Star Trek. However, I wish Majel Barrett (the voice of the Enterprise’s computer) was hired by Sony to do the voice on the GPS. The voice was a little flat. Our friends’ GPS in their Land Rover has a British accent, which is charming and makes me think that Q from the James Bond movies will jump out of the boot any second.
• The main map view shows an estimated time of arrival. This is great to know, so when your kids ask, “Mom when will we be there?” you can tell them with pinpoint accuracy. Or you can use it to figure out how late you will be to your next appointment, so you can sweat bullets accordingly.