Getting Ink

99 British Mummy Bloggers on Twitter

I've been streamlining my Twitter contacts this week - and wondering whether to set up multiple accounts for the different sorts of work I do - but then I think maybe part of the fun of Twitter is the unexpected stuff that crops up from time to time.

Anyway, I cobbled together this list which I thought people might find useful - 99 British Mummy Bloggers on Twitter. Technically speaking, a couple are Dads, and one or two are ex-pats, but you get the idea. I've included the blogger's name as well as the name of the blog where this information is publicly available. You can see this month's top 100 UK parent blogs index, the Tots100, here.

As ever, if you'd like to be removed from a list or added to a list, just leave a comment or drop me a line. Oh, and you can follow me here. I give GREAT Tweet.

1. 3 Bedroom Bungalow   
2. Aly (AlyBEan)   
3. Antonia Chitty (Family Friendly Working)  
4. Bad Housewives   
5. Nadine (Business Mum)   
6. Karin (Café Bebe)    
7. Carol (New Mummy)   
8. Cathy (Cathy Keir)   
9. Michelle (Baby Signing Store)   
10. Claire (Dandelion Lounge)   
11. Clare (Clarebabble)    
12. Crystal Jigsaw   
13. Kelly (KellyFairy) 
14. Debbie (Carrots and Kids)  
15. Dan (All That Comes With it)   
16. Diary of a Yummy Mummy   
17. Tim (Bringing up Charlie)    
18. Dulwich Divorcee   
19. Dulwich Mum   
20. Ella (most/least) 
21. Elsie Button (Flower Fairies and Fairy Cakes)   
22. English Mum   
23. Erica (Little Mummy)   
24. Jane (Exmoor Jane)   
25. Lulu (Family Affairs and Other Matters)   
26. Four Down, Mum to Go   
27. Frog in the Field   
28. Amanda (Glamumous)   
29. Hazel (Hot Cross Mum)  
30. Alice (Hove Housewive)   
31. I'd Like to Sleep Now   
32. Karen (If I could Escape)   
33. Ellie (Insomniac Mummy)   
34. Sally (Who's the Mummy?)
35. Joanne Mallon (Parentdish)    
36. Jo (Jo Beaufoix)  
37. Linda (You've Got Your Hands Full)    
38. Abby (Juicy Tots)   
39. Kat (Slugs on the Refrigerator)   
40. Keris (Keris)   
41. Laura (Are We Nearly There Yet, Mummy?)    
42. Laura (Synchronization of us)   
43. Elaine (LittleSheep Learning)    
44. Val (Magnum Lady)   
45. Emily (Maternal Tales)   
46. Mel (Melanie Trevalyan)    
47. Melissa (More to Life than Laundry)   
48. Camilla (Milla Country-Lite)   
49. Where's Your Other Sock Gone   
50. Leslie Anne (Kooky Boutique)   
51. Lorraine (Ramblings of Mum on the Run)   
52. MTFF (Motherhood: the final frontier)   
53. MTJAM (More than Just a Mother)   
54. Karen (mummy of many)   
55. Sian (Mummy Tips)   
56. Lisa (Mummy Whisperer)   
57. Jane (Mumsclub)   
58. Sam (Mum's the Boss)   
59. Janis (Mum versus kids)   
60. Claire (Music Bugs)  
61. Nixd Minx   
62. Nunhead Mum (Nunhead Ramblings)   
63. Claire (OMG I'm Pregnant)   
64. Pippa (A mother's ramblings)    
65. Josie (Sleep is for the Weak)   
66. Rachel (Rachel Pattison)    
67. Ruth (Left of the Pleiades)   
68. Sandy (Sandy Calico)   
69. Ian (Single Parent Dad)   
70. Lucy (sleepytot)   
71. Maria (Single Mother on the Verge)    
72. Stephanie (Notes Inside my Head)   
73. Zoe (Diary of a Surprised Mum)   
74. Sally (Who's the Mummy)   
75. Tara (Sticky Fingers)    
76. Tasha (Coding Mama)    
77. Tawny (I Promise I Will do my Best)   
78. Kat (Housewife Confidential)   
79. That Girl (40 Not Out)   
80. Funky Fairy  
81. Brenda (The Green Familia)   
82. Liz (Hectic Mum)   
83. Noble Savage  
84. Dany (Tums2Mums)   
85. Victoria (It's a small world after all)    
86. Wife of Bold  
87. Caution:Woman at Work  
88. Yummy Mammy  
89. Being a Mummy  
90. Natalie (Bambino Goodies)    
91. Nadine (Time Management Mum)   
92. Jane (Diary of an Exmoor Wife)   
93. Amy (1 More Means 4)   
94. Susanna (A Modern Mother)    
95. Peggy (Perfectly Happy Mum)    
96. Liz (Violet Posy)    
97. Claire (20SomethingMum)  
98. Liz (Living with Kids)   
99. Whistlejacket (MummyRambles)

5 signs you're a compulsive over-sharer

Cor, it’s great all this 2.0 networking, isn’t it?

Like, I know what music Jed likes to listen to as well as the music he pretends he’s cool enough to listen to, I’ve seen pictures of colleagues parents and holidays and babies, and all sorts of things. I even know what Wadds has for breakfast of a weekend. S’marvellous.

I’ve come around to the idea that for social media to really work you do have to give a bit of yourself to the community. I used to find personal blog posts and Tweets really annoying but now I think people do business with people and knowing a little something about someone makes them more three-dimensional, somehow.

That sharing definitely has a pay-off for me – I have had business leads worth well in excess of £10,000 this year from contacts I’ve made through both Twitter and Journobiz. And I think without the odd bit of banter or sharing of tips here and there, that wouldn’t have happened.

But thinking about Jed’s post about when sharing becomes too much sharing, I realise that I’m a cold-hearted capitalist deep down. Don’t let the Greenpeace bumper stickers fool you, I only share when there’s something in it for me, and it has to be something that’s worth more than what I’m sharing.

Often the “something in it” isn’t financial. It might be a relationship I want to cultivate, a network I want to be part of, or a community I want to find out more about. I take a reasonably long-term view of these things. And in that way, I can see social media (and the 2.0 sharing culture) has become incredibly important to what I do for a living.

But there’s definitely a point at which sharing becomes TMI.

My rule of thumb is that I would never post anything I’d have a problem with my family reading, I’d never post anything someone might sue me for, and I’d never knowingly post anything that might lose me business – either by annoying a client or enabling a rival to poach them.

And, because it’s Tuesday and everyone loves a list on a Tuesday, 5 signs you’re sharing too much information:

1. You name names. Don’t name clients past or present in any blog, Tweet or similar. If necessary, change genders, first names, countries or any other details that might identify individuals.
2. You’re a passive aggressive Tweeter. Oh, I HATE passive aggressive Tweeters. You know the people who post stupid, whiny, non-specific messages like “Really disappointed in a friend” or “I hate selfish people”. Shut up, already. Most of your Twitter followers really don’t care if you live or die, and any concern they express is just them trying to score some gossip. Deal with your issues in the real world, like an actual grown up. Sorry, that’s possibly my Northern side speaking.
3. You’re begging for work. This is a tricky one, but my personal feeling is you should never look desperate for work. Keen, by all means, but nobody likes to think they’ve given work to someone who’s otherwise unemployable. In the social media world, it pays to keep your happy face on and do the pitching behind the scenes.
4. You forget that the Internet is public. If I post a message on Journobiz or Twitter or Flikr or any other open forum, I have zero expectation of privacy. By all means use privacy settings to their fullest, but mistakes are easily made, and it’s better not to post if in doubt. My personal favourite example of this was the guy who took a quiz on Facebook called “How Good a Lover Are You?” and got the result “Below Average”. I know this because he posted it to his profile – where 350 of his clients, colleagues, friends and contacts could see it. I’m a terrible person, I know, but I did laugh.
5. A potential stalker could find you using something like Spokeo. I share a lot online, but there are certain things I make a point of never posting. Or not posting accurately, at any rate. These include: my home address, my home telephone number, my personal email address and my date of birth. I use different email addresses for different services, and regularly change passwords. I’m sure a determined hacker could still do some damage but I want them to at least have to make a concerted effort.

Emails I have received this week

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm as fond of email as the next journalist. But this week? Email has not been a friend of mine. I just keep getting annoying emails. Maybe I'm just having a grumpy day. You be the judge:

Annoying email #1: "I am not in the office. Sorry for the inconvenience."

This from a PR. No alternative contact, no switchboard phone number, no idea when you might be back. You're just not there. Helpful.

Annoying email #2 "Special Offers from Catholic Gifts"

It's spam. I know it's spam, you know it's spam. But if I delete it, and something bad happens, I'll always wonder if it's because I deleted an email from God. Well, not directly from God, but you know what I mean.

Annoying email #3: "The finance director is on holiday"

So you're a £10m company. You employ 200 people in London and San Francisco. But one teeny tiny person goes on holiday and you're suddenly unable to pay any bills? Gosh, hope the electric isn't due.

I've got your number

My name is Sally, and I’m a stats addict.

I can’t help it. Blog and website stats simultaneously satisfy my nosy instincts while also feeding the complex mix of insecurity and ego that propels most journalists into the business.

It started small. I looked at my Typepad stats once or twice a week, and saw how many page views I got. Then I started to look at ‘average daily’ stats, and referral pages, and it was a download slope from there.

Before long, the Typepad stats weren’t enough to keep me going. I had to install Google Analytics. Now I could see search terms that drove visitors to the site, how many people looked at each specific page, and how many times. I could even identify the network location of visitors, and got a thrill if I saw someone from the BBC or News International was on the blog, while comparing which PR agencies and publishing companies were regular visitors.

For a while, it was enough. I’d have a look at Analytics once or twice a week. Everything was cool. Under control.

But a little voice in my head demanded to know more. So I knew that three people using a certain ISP visited the blog on a specific day, but who were they? What did they want? When someone arrived at the blog after searching for “Sally Whittle blog” I’d immediately wonder why they wanted to know about my blog. Maybe it was a potential client, or maybe it was someone who secretly wanted to sue me for something. Or I suppose it could just be someone, like, reading the blog. But how could I know for sure?

So perhaps it was inevitable I’d end up with Statcounter then Sitemeter. It’s free and it tells you just about everything you never needed to know about every single visitor to a site, short of their shoe size. Individual IP addresses, locations, time and date of visit, exit and entry points, referring pages – the whole shebang. And of course, as all fellow paranoid freaks know (even if you pretend not to), a quick examination of an email from someone reveals their IP address.

So now I know who hits the site, when, how often and for how long.

Obviously this knowledge makes me no happier or more content than the blind ignorance of the early years. Because now I’m forever thinking: “Why did that person  view that page 50 times??” or “They only stayed for 10 seconds. Harumph. You can’t possibly appreciate the subtle humour of that post in ten seconds. Loser. I never liked him.”

I’m going to bet 50 quid I’m not the only one, though. I think we should have a support group or something. With rich tea biscuits and big urns of tea, a safe place where we can share confessions of how we’ve set up Google alerts and reverse-engineered IP addresses. It’s a disease, you know.

New Top 100 Index of UK Parent Bloggers

A quick post to flag up that there's a new index of the top 100 British Mummy bloggers over at Who's the Mummy?, which may be useful for those people looking to pitch bloggers. Here's the new top 10 for August 2009:

The Top100 British Parent Blogs and Bloggers:

Rank	Blog	Score	Change
1	Alpha Mummy	715	+2
2	Jo Beaufoix	705	+2
3	Single Parent Dad	692	+6
4	The Potty Diaries	671	+4
5	Sticky Fingers	667	+7
6	English Mum	665	+5
7	Petite Anglaise	659	-6
8	Molly Chicken	658	-7
9	My Boyfriend is a Tw@t	659	+11
10	Notes from Inside my Head	631	+21

Details of the methodology and so on can be found at the FAQ over on Who's the Mummy?

Freelance (frē′lans′) noun: idiot; see also: masochist

I blame the recession.

I'm now so completely panicked that the media is going to die next time I pop to the bathroom that I've taken on stupid amounts of work. It's August. It's the school holidays. And so WHY am I having conversations like this?

"So, it's 10 features all together, for 2 weeks today? Sure, no problem."

"Ah, you need the white paper for a customer event in September. Well, I guess I can get the draft to you for Friday. Oh, 5,000 words? Well, sure, no problem."

To be serious, I know that having work in the current economic nuclear winter is a good thing. And I'm grateful and certainly happier than I'd be with the alternative. But I did think to myself, as I was having a work conversation with a toy supplier at 11.30pm last night, why do we do this to ourselves?

When I started out freelancing in 2001, I'd start every month in a wild panic in case I didn't earn enough to cover the bills. I got to a point, 12 months later, where I'd paid all the bills for a year. But I still started every month with a vague sense of panic about whether I'd be able to pay the bills this month.

I've been freelancing now for eight years and I STILL get the panic. I tell myself that I've never not earned enough to cover the bills before, but it doesn't seem to penetrate the right part of my brain, because I still find myself awake in the wee small hours sometimes thinking "WHAT IF NOBODY HIRES ME THIS MONTH??"

I wonder if that feeling ever goes away, or if that's what drives us to keep pitching?