My Momblog Journey Thus Far: Tips & Annoyances

This is a photo of the recent Mercury transit, not blogging. I don't have a photo for every occasion.

I've just read Dear Mommy Blogger and I felt inspired to write the entry I was going to write anyway at some point. I started this blog a month and a half ago and the associated Twitter account shortly after that. The good news: I've finally found active mom bloggers! If you read my earlier entry on my struggle, I was coming up with inactive blogs or none at all, only articles on how to make money blogging. It was frustrating and lonely.

I started this blog because I couldn't find other work-at-home moms in professions. I wanted to know if such a feat was even possible and how those impressive working moms succeeded. I wanted advice on in-person meetings with children, phone calls with children, conferences with children, professional networking events with children, and sexual discrimination in the workplace. I couldn't find these mom bloggers, so I started my own blog in the hope that they'll find me. I haven't yet succeeded in my search. If you're out there, professional work-at-home moms, I'm still looking for you. I'm only 4 months into this work-at-home mom gig and I seek advice, tips, support, and feedback.

I have been successful in finding mom blogs of all sorts, though! I really should have used Twitter as a resource from the start. Ah Twitter, how I love thee. Twitter is how I connect with colleagues around the world, so it made sense that I'd connect with moms that way as well. Through Twitter hashtags and retweets, I've found women from all over the world. From links within blogs and guest posts, I've found even more.

Oddly, many of them are new like mine. There seems to be a high turn-over in mom blogging. Women blog for a short time, then stop. I've been blogging elsewhere for 14 years and my baby is young, so I'm in this for the long haul. I'm looking for others to connect with who also want lasting friendships through blogging.

Despite being a blogger for 14 years, I'm learning some new tricks. I've always been a fan of photodocumenting my life, but I can see the benefit to creating cute photo titles. Thanks for that tip. I dislike the proliferation of perfect stock photos and therefore only use my own imperfect photos. I tried to make my blog a bit more colorful and interesting with photos while still keeping it simple.

I always strive to be a better writer and communicator. I'm turning away from a more diary style and toward more a more themed style. Instead of recounting my days, I'll write about how I feel or what I've learned about a subject that may be of interest to others. By reading mom blogs, I've become a better blogger myself.

What I was surprised to find was the sheer amount of noise: blog entries and social media postings devoid of real content. While many blog entries were interesting and genuine, too many were sponsored product reviews or the same ten “interesting” tips I had read in 100 other places about newborns, baby sleeping, baby eating, etc. If a blog entry is just repeating what it read elsewhere, why wouldn't I read more original, educated sources on the matter instead?

Social media postings are full of nonsense and redundancy. Too many pleas for attention. Why are you stealing my time, my most precious resource, to ask me for the fifth time to read a blog entry I read the first time? Or to read an old Christmas entry in May? Or to subscribe and follow you on other social media platforms, despite the fact that I know how to find you on Facebook if I wanted to? Or to thank a complete stranger for following/liking/”interacting”? Each time I read one of those nonsense postings, a little bit of my life has been stolen from me.

There's some exceptionally bad advice out there. I read one mom blogger advising other mom bloggers to follow 2000 users, unfollow whoever doesn't follow you back, then follow thousands more! If you're following users to gain more followers, you're not a genuine follower and your new followers likely won't be genuine. You aren't reading your followers' content and they're not reading yours. What's the point? I block anyone who pulls that stunt.

I also unfollow anyone who repeatedly posts the same entry or link over and over and over. All scheduled, of course. When questioned, they say that Twitter posts have a life of 20 minutes. No. Twitter posts have an indefinite life, and if you think your followers don't know how to scroll down, you're part of the problem. So much clutter. So much unnecessary noise.

I'm enjoying writing my mom blogging and Twitter microblogging so far. It's an outlet for words I don't want to put on social media attached to my name. But it's flawed. It's tiresome to sort through the trash. I'll probably deal with it until I reach a breaking point, then purge the irrelevant noise-creators.

On a positive note, so far I have found around 100 interesting moms (and a few dads!) to follow. I'm slowly going through their blog archives and subscribing for new entries. It is nice to know that there is a mom community out there online for me, even if an imperfect one.