5 ways to talk to mums online

1. It’s all about the kids

As you may have noticed online, people absolutely love talking about themselves. “Look at my holiday”, “look at my new haircut”, “I just passed my driving test theory on the third time”. However rumour has it, the second you give birth, all of a sudden you’re not the most important person in the world anymore. Mums are still very loud on social, but would much rather talk about their children and their achievements instead. “Look at my son”, “look at Daisy’s new lunchbox”, “little Darren just got through the night without wetting the bed.” 

With children’s brands online, it’s important to recognise this behaviour and give the parents the opportunity and platform to speak freely about this, as it’s what they’re truly interested in. Ask the parents questions about their children, and they will jump at the chance to answer. Ask parents to share images of their children doing something cute with the brand they love, and they will. 3 year olds will not be engaging with the content you put out, the conversations are happening on the pages between adults. Therefore, with parent’s sharing images of their kids and giving permission for the page to also share, you’re returning to what the value of the brand is all about in the first place: The kids.  

2. Memes aren’t just for teens anymore

Parenting is hard and no one wants to feel like they’re doing a bad job. Seeing a funny one-liner about a struggle you have also suffered will make you feel like you’re not alone and that your children aren’t more unruly and bratty than that perfect mum blogger’s you follow. A funny quip about how long your child takes to put their shoes on, how much mess they make when they eat or pretending to be impressed with their terrible drawings performs better than a sickly statement about your child’s good behaviour at the supermarket, because absolutely no one is going to be able to relate with that one. 

Ensuring the memes are well-designed means people will want to share them and associating the joke with a still or clip with your brand makes it relevant. However you have to know your platform. Text based assets and TV stills aren’t going to add a lot of variety to an Instagram feed, and on a platform that is so into aesthetics, it’s not what it’s meant for. There is certainly a place for these, however, Instagram is a place mums will often head to for inspiration, so an attractive feed is a big help in drawing followers in. Instagram is expectation, Facebook is reality. 

3. Make it easy

It’s not called the “The hardest job in the world” for nothing. Motherhood is not simple and mums are busy. Don’t overcomplicate CTAs and ask a lot from your audience. As lovely as it would be to share a blank drawing of a character, ask parents to download it, print it out, get their child to colour it in, take a photo of it and then share it on the original post… It’s not going to happen. Nobody has the time for that and engagement will be drastically low. Instead, ask parents to share photos of their kids that they may already have taken, tag a friend in a relatable meme, or just comment with a GIF or emotion that sums up how they feel in a certain situation. This gives parents the opportunity to have fun and join the conversation in less than 5 seconds and it means that engagement will always be higher for you. 

4. Sharing is caring

There is a lot of power in competitions and giveaways. Be careful though because doing these too often will tarnish the reach of other posts on your page and begin to attract the wrong audience, but every now and then they act as a lovely way to give back and thank the fans for being there. You can also often ask for more detailed answers to questions that could help your market research in the future like “who is your child’s favourite character and why?”. With the incentive of a prize, a lot more people will be willing to answer in a lot more depth than usual. 

5. Create Meaningful Interactions

When selling products, it’s important to do this sparingly as adverts and asking people to buy often will eventually put people off. Where mums are spending the majority of their money on their children, they will begin to feel irritated if brands appear to only care about making money from the merch they’re selling, rather than creating meaningful interactions. This way, when you do talk about an event or product, you will find the audience are a lot more genuinely excited to hear about it as a piece of news, rather than a constant push to sell. 

Flossie Joseph is a Strategist at Wilderness Agency