Online social networking reaches mothers at home with their kids

Simon Canning | July 07, 2008

WEBSITES and advertisers targeting the parent market are embracing the latest online trend of social networking to further expand their reach.

Last week, one of the leading sites, Kidspot.com.au, had a soft launch of extensions to its site that aim to turn it into a social networking forum for mothers.

Children's product giant Huggies has also invested heavily in its own social networking and information portal, the Huggies Club.

That site has 160,000 members and Huggies has teamed with computer and printer company HP in an industry first to use HP's Snapfish photo technology so mothers can print photos, with revenue to be shared between HP and Huggies.

And just weeks ago, social networking site MySpace released research results that revealed more than 73,000 of its Australian users defined themselves as mothers and that marketers were beginning to home in on them as a distinct market.

About 80 per cent of them used the site as a way of taking a break from the kids and as a means of touching base with women in a similar situation, often using it as a support network.

Kidspot.com.au founder Katie May, who is a former marketing director at Seek.com.au, said the changes were aimed at getting people to spend even more time on their website.

"I think the important thing for the website will be to continue to be putting on traffic, but we are also looking at growing the relationship with our visitors," she said.

Ms May said the site, which was started three years ago, initially based its business model on being a directory for parenting services and products but had since grown to include forums, news and other information.

"A lot of the traffic comes for the directory but people then go on to use four more pages," she said.

"It is still a bit too directory focused. The soft launch will make it softer and warmer."

Kidspot now derives its revenue from a mix of paid search results and advertising, and Ms May said the sector was undervalued and had huge potential.

"There are about 2.5 million households with a child under 14 in Australia and these are the women we are trying to attract," Ms May said.

She compares the site's 500,000 unique users to the circulation of The Australian Woman's Weekly.

Fairfax Digital is in the market with its Essential Baby, while independent website Bubhub operates from Queensland.

Ms May estimated that directory advertising alone in the sector could be worth up to $47 million, with display advertising in the "hundreds of millions".

"But if we target them not just as mums but as women, then it is a very, very large market," she said.

Kidspot also recently launched its first above-the-line advertising campaign using billboards.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23977935-26077,00.html

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