When Jen Singer appeared as keynote speaker at last year’s American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) conference, she lit up the room as she shared stories of surviving cancer and creating a MommaSaid.net, a launching pad for her now successful personal brand.
Singer’s articles have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, American Baby, and dozens of other publications. She’s also worked as a spokesperson or brand ambassador for consumer brands including Microsoft, Purina, and Pull-Ups.
Ebyline chatted with Singer about the challenges of balancing social media with writing, landing spokesperson and avoiding ethical issues in the process.
Could you tell us how you created the Momma Said brand?
I was a communications major at Boston University, and went into advertising, and decided that if I stayed in advertising and had children, I would never see them, because their hours are so long. And I decided to just go off on my own and freelance for a little while, so I did some writing and then I had kids. And thought, “Wow, this is way harder than I thought it would be.” I started to write some articles for like Women’s Day and Family Circle. But I’d write an article, and it would be six months, a year before it came out.
I thought, “Why don’t I create a website, cut out the middle man, and start building up a following so that I can publish books?” And this is before anybody had put the words “mom” and “blogger” together, so this was a unique idea at the time. And that’s what launched Momma Said. It was twofold. It was basically to find out that I’m not the only one who felt that motherhood was more difficult than I thought it was, and two, to create a platform for future work.
Could you tell us about your brand ambassador and spokesperson projects?
I’ve been a spokesperson, and I’ve been a brand ambassador, which are two different things. For instance, I have been a spokesperson for Pull-Ups since 2005. In the beginning my job was to answer the media’s questions about potty training, and give advice in traditional media. In fact, they sent me on a TV tour across Canada to talk about potty training. But in recent years its all been in social media. So my job is to answer potty training questions from frazzled parents every three weeks on their Facebook page. So that’s a spokespersonship.
A brand ambassadorship is a little bit different in that you are not necessarily a spokesperson for the company, you are simply saying that you use this product, and you enjoy it, and you get some word out about it either through tweets or blogs, or whatnot. And with a brand ambassadorship, there’s usually quite a few bloggers involved. With spokespersonship, it’s usually just a handful.
Currently I am a brand ambassador for Microsoft Office. I had hosted Twitter parties for them in the past. When this came up, it made sense to me because I use Microsoft Office, I am a PC, and it made sense for me to share the stuff that you can do on office that I didn’t know before, especially with other people who write from home.
As journalists and bloggers start to promote brands as spokespeople and brand ambassadors, how can they avoid conflicts of interest?
It’s such a new and gray area that everybody who’s involved in brand ambassadorships, spokespersonships, and journalism are still trying to figure it out. For me, a lot of the writing I had done certainly before cancer writing was very humor pieces, first person essays, so I really wasn’t involved in the reporting, and journalistic style that a lot of straight forward journalists and article writers who work for the New York Times or whatnot do.
So for me, it was really about my brand, and about what fit with Momma Said. So I always took on something, if I took on something, it was my — I took on Pull-ups because my kids use Pull-ups, and I could use my own personal stories of using them, and what it was like to potty train to help people. For me going online, and answering questions for poor, frazzled parents who are trying to figure out how to potty train when their kids are referring to is a service, which of course journalism is a service. So to me that fit. But I have turned down opportunities where it didn’t make sense, I didn’t believe in the product, I never used the product, or I wouldn’t use the product; it didn’t make any sense.
Social media is hard to quantify in dollars, so many writers feel torn about spending time on it when they could be working on paid assignments. How do you budget your time for paid activities and assignments versus maintaining your social media presence?
I think a lot of traditional writers and traditional journalists don’t understand that to build to a brand, it takes a tremendous amount of putting yourself out there, making connections, and doing social media that doesn’t bring back an immediate return on investment. And we’re used to you pitch an article, an editor says, yes, you get paid.
However, a lot of the things that I’ve done are all because Momma Said is the basis of the platform. So while Momma Said doesn’t make a ton of money from advertising directly, everything else I’ve gotten comes from Momma Said. So I have to continue to blog, so that my SEO opportunities stay up there. You don’t want to blog once a week or Google is going to forget you; I need to blog everyday. And it also helps create the following that people want who want to hire me want to have.
Basically, if you don’t keep up with the social media, and you don’t keep up with building your brand, the other opportunities won’t come. And you have to understand that it isn’t A + B = C, it’s A + B = G, and you don’t know when G is going to pop up.
So what’s next for you? Any books or new projects in the works?
I’ve been transitioning a lot over toward cancer writing. I launched the Parenting with Cancer last year. It’s a website for parents who have cancer, and the people who love them, because that’s what I had been through. And I’m, a columnist for Living with the Cancer Magazine. So that part of things is starting to expand. But I continue with Momma Said. And one of the things I want to do is launch some e-books. I think that there’s a lot of opportunity when you already have a brand, and you already have a following, you can sell things directly from your website without having to wait for a major publisher to put a print book out there for you.
