Taking Her Role as Mommy Online
Beth Feldman ’90 is the creator and president of RoleMommy.com. The site is an online community for today’s busy mom with a mission to inspire, entertain and inform. Through blogs, book and product reviews, news posts and events, the company helps moms stay connected and in touch with their personal and professional aspirations. After an eleven-year career in pubic relations with CBS Communications Group, Feldman found a new niche in the parenting market. She realized that the blogging community was gaining size and following, and so applied her past experience to not only promote parenting content and products on her site, but also provide exposure to talented bloggers.
In this interview, she shares her experiences as an entrepreneur and working mother.
How did you decide to launch Role Mommy.com?
After I left my corporate job with CBS, I was doing PR for entertainment companies and I found I really had a passion for the parenting market, so I developed the site to promote events and products reviews.
I actually started out with an idea for a book called Peeing in Peace. Tales and Tips for Type A Moms. As we were trying to pitch it to publishers, we were told we weren’t working mother experts with degrees in that field and no one knew us. I have degrees in communications and journalism, so it didn’t really fit.
What we started to do instead was plan events around balancing work and family for moms, who were at the top of their field. I really enjoyed that aspect of it, so I continued and eventually left my own corporate job and began this full time. It’s become a combination of the online and in-person communities – so it’s really grass roots as well as virtual.
How has your business grown?
I started Role Mommy.com three years ago and now it gets over 10,000 hits a month and we have thousands of followers on Twitter and Facebook. A lot of companies are coming to us for product reviews because the results are more immediate in the blogging world. A company could send that same product to 20 magazines and if they’re lucky one editor might review it. That’s the wonderful thing about the blogging community… there’s accountability. Bloggers actually review products, as opposed to an editor that is being bombarded with products and just selects one and then nothing else sees the light of day. Now, we even have companies that hire us to host events for mom bloggers in order to showcase their products and reach out to this influential community.
I’m also president of Beyond PR, an entertainment and public relations agency representing television and Internet projects, as well as best-selling authors. What’s really great is that I’ve streamlined the companies to be able to pass the PR aspect along to mom bloggers.
From a PR standpoint, I treat bloggers as I would journalists and I think that’s really key. I look at blogging as an extension of journalism and I help bring these writers into the mainstream media by providing opportunities for interviews with television or newspaper outlets. When they’re looking for a specific expert for a story—whether it’s how moms have been affected by the economy or parenting a tween—I have a full database of contacts. These women are not only great writers, but they’re great on camera too, so I’m helping them to build their brand.
This online experience has led you back to publishing a book. Can you tell us about that?
Yes, a lot of the bloggers I’ve known over the years came together with me on a humor anthology that I just finished called See Mom Run. It’s full of really funny essays from the world’s most harried moms.
About two dozen writers contributed to the book and I’m going on a 12-city tour. I call it the “unbook store” tour. Moms don’t go to a Barnes and Noble to sit and listen to a reading. They just run into the store to get what they need and run out. So instead, we’re going to some unconventional locations to find moms: a comedy club, a health club, a spa… We’re going to be in Boston on November 3rd, then we’ll be in Charlotte, North Carolina, then Chicago and LA—all the different cities where our contributors are from.
I feel like I’ve come full circle. This book and my website bring together my whole vision of showcasing incredibly talented moms doing what they love, and that’s what I’m really excited about.
So what are busy moms telling you?
As a mom, it never shuts off… it’s a 24/7 work schedule. A lot of moms are going online to find listings, advice, news, and to make real-time connections with others in a way that meets their needs.
Also, moms are finding that it’s never too late to start over. You graduate from college, start your career, pursue what you think you should be doing, but then there may come a point when you say, “Well maybe this isn’t it.” I’ve met so many women who decided to take that leap to do what really makes them happy. Even if it means you can get one toe in when you still have that full time job, you should be doing it.
Is the balancing act between work and home getting easier for moms?
I think it’s easier to work virtually, but now it’s harder because you never shut off. There used to be a time where you got home at 6:00 p.m. and that was the end of it, but now that doesn’t happen. You put the kids to sleep, you start checking your Blackberry again and you can log into the server and go back to your computer.
I know for myself, being an entrepreneur, I work 7 days a week and that’s not healthy! When I get home with my kids I’ve been trying to shut off work for a couple of hours, but that’s the down side … you’re always on.
What advice would you give students, recent graduates or alumni interested in PR or journalism?
First of all if they’re not blogging, they should be! If you have a passion for something or an area of interest, you should be writing about it every single day, because that’s going to hone your craft.
Think past the traditional media, it’s not just about working in a major newspaper or magazine anymore, it’s really an online world. There are so many opportunities in social media and I feel that young people are proficient at the type of online skills that would be beneficial to a company’s bottom line.