Kate Emery: The reality of ‘mummy blogging’ is much tougher than the perception

Mummy Blogger. Just reading the phrase will likely put a certain kind of woman in your mind. She’s young. She’s attractive. She’s posing on Instagram in a $500 pair of leggings with a baby in one arm and a tub of ethically questionable “detox tea” to flog in the other. She might be a celebrity: Kim Kardashian in full make-up and a body-con dress posing “candidly” with her children, or Kylie Jenner and her daughter in matching bikinis. Popular condescending misapprehensions about “mummy bloggers” — including that they don’t have a real job but have found a way to monetise good looks and parenthood — are why so many women with children and an online profile push back against the mummy blogger moniker. Men who have children and write online, they note, are rarely called “daddy bloggers”. Constance Hall, arguably WA’s mummy blogger queen with 1.3 million followers online, has publicly rejected the label, saying she’d rather be called a blogger, writer or “that feral b...h on Facebook”. But with the industry worth an estimated $15 billion internationally and hundreds of mummy bloggers across Australia, this cohort of influencers — whatever you call them — cannot be ignored. In WA right now, industry insiders say, they have never been busier. Sought by brands to sell everything from fashion and beauty products, breakfast cereal, furniture and — to use a couple of recent examples — magnesium bath flakes and “anti-ageing” pillows, part of the appeal of mummy bloggers is their ability to speak to women, who are estimated to control 85 per cent of household purchases. Culturally they also help shape social norms around motherhood and femininity. But it is not possible to dismiss the darker side of the industry: the pressure it places on some bloggers to present a perfect façade, the online abuse and the effect on the mums following the blogger’s every post who may feel like failures if their own lives fail to live up to the image between their thumbs. Murdoch University senior lecturer Catherine Archer has spent more than a decade studying mummy bloggers. Having interviewed a swag of early mummy bloggers for her PhD she is currently reinterviewing them about how the landscape has changed. In that time the industry has morphed from a handful of trusted community figures hoping to connect with other mothers, to a more commercialised fantasy. Online influencers are more powerful than ever but they have in the process, Dr Archer said, lost some of their trusted authenticity as a collective. “I think the interesting thing for me is how, initially, it (mummy blogging) was very much about connection with each other and sharing your stories and then obviously the brands saw that this was a space that people were connecting with,” she said. “We know that mums, women, are really the principal spenders in the household so it commercially make sense to connect with people that are — and at that stage, they were — a very trustworthy source for people, who saw them as just like them. “I think it’s really interesting now looking at (the results of this year’s ABC Australia Talks survey) that influencers are probably the least trusted profession now. “It’s really quite ironic that what was seen as someone just like us and incredibly trustworthy because it wasn’t a big institution like mainstream media, has now gone the other way and is probably the least trusted. “Having said that, they still do move products and it’s a huge industry now.” Long-time Perth blogger and social media consultant Amanda Kendle has taught blogging at the University of Western Australia. As a consultant she advises both those looking to build their online platforms,and brands trying to tap into the power of online influencers. While Ms Kendle has always rejected the mummy blogger title — “even though there were times when I probably really was” — she said these days it was the “blogger” part that was out of step. In 2021 mummy bloggers are all about social media. “These days it’s definitely more about social media with Instagram or TikTok or whatever,” she said. “If you’re going to be a successful ‘mummy blogger’ you need sponsors and sponsors are looking much more at social media. A blog is often just a back-up these days, where it was the other way around before. “The nature of social media and the algorithms means that people are always trying to play to the algorithm and do the thing that’s going to capture the attention, whereas back in the original blogging days it was kind of an online diary.” If “mummy blogger” is a loaded term then its close cousin “influencer” is no less polarising. “A label is a label and it all comes down to the label you give yourself and what you carry yourself under,” Perth social media star Ely Fisher said. “I probably struggle more with the label influencer (than mummy blogger) because I’m not here to influence people into anything. “I’m more here to encourage women to feel more confident ... they can take it or leave it, so when people call me an influencer or if it’s the only way to describe what I do to people in a way that makes sense — having to label myself as an influencer — it’s always felt a little icky to me. “‘Mummy blogger’ I’m probably happier with because I am a mum and I blog ... but I’m not just that either, there’s a lot more to my story, as is there is to all ‘mums’ out there.” The i-word might conjure a shudder for those to whom it is applied and a sneer for those who judge them, but there is no doubt influencers can, well, influence. Research by Power Retail, based on 10,000 Australian online shoppers, suggests one-third of all purchases are swayed by influencers. And while Generation Z has the reputation for being obsessively online, 54 per cent of those “followers” were between the age of 25 and 44. So mummy bloggers are capable of making serious money for big brands. But how much are they making for themselves? At one end of the spectrum is Jenner who pockets a reported $US1 million per sponsored Instagram post. Ms Kendle said while there were Australians willing to pay thousands for a single post they were the exception. Mummy bloggers mostly earn money through affiliate commissions — earning a commission on products bought through links they promote. “I do know plenty of bloggers over time who do easily reach six figure incomes from their blog,” she said. “Which is kind of crazy for something that didn’t exist until, like, 15 years ago.” Nicole Woyzbun, who has 26,000 Instagram followers as SugarPlumTree, approaches her work online like a part-time job. She receives an average of $250 per sponsored post. “I’m certainly not rolling in money but I do look at it as the equivalent of a part-time job,” she said. “Our family relies on this income to meet our family expenditure requirements. Because I have a little one not in school yet it allows me to work from home and also be able to drop and pick my older two up from school.” Mother-of-three Nikki Langford posts on Instagram under the handle Kombilife. She got started while working through her grief over the death of her mother. An impulsive snap of her son, shared online, was her first introduction to the world of mummy blogging for profit. “I posted a picture of my little boy and I got hits right away by brands wanting to work with me and wanting to send him clothes and stuff like that,” she said. “I’d never heard about brand ambassadors, which is what it was back then. Back then money wasn’t even part of how it worked. But then you become a brand ambassador for these amazing brands and you form these amazing relationships and ... I think we’ve kind of lost that a little bit. I haven’t lost it in terms of who I work with because I’m very picky but there’s definitely a little less connection (and time) to get to know that person behind the brand. “It looks like a lot of people do it for the wrong reasons: to get free products and not actually caring about the brand that they’re working for or that it relates to them.” Harley Snelson is the marketing outreach co-ordinator for Perth’s The Influencer Agency, which manages some of WA’s biggest online talent, including Fisher, Langford and local mummy bloggers Rayne Embley, Alana Witty and Lidia Love. Right now, he said, they were “busier than ever”. “Across the board the whole influencer marketing sector has blown up,” he said. He said a mummy blogger posting a couple of times a week could easily pocket about $500. “But they work hard for that,” he said. Mummy blogging takes more than a slick of lipstick and an iPhone camera to be successful. “Recently I had to take some time off for health reasons and I was struggling in coming back and someone said ‘it’s OK, you’re just an influencer, it’s not like that’s your job,” Langford said. “It’s a job to me. You have no idea how much work goes into creating content, writing the content and editing the photo, choosing the photo. The reason I’m still in it is because it lights me up, it’s my passion.” Woyzbun explained how much work a post could take. “It starts with emails back and forth with brands discussing rates and contracts, then you have to nail their brief, which is often pages long and has very particular do’s and don’t’s,” she said. “Then it’s being photograph ready — choosing outfits, blow-drying hair, putting on make-up. Or it might be cooking — getting all the ingredients, cooking the meal successfully and then styling it. Let’s not even talk about creating content with children ... that’s a whole other level. “Next up is taking the actual pic. You need good light and a good camera, plus a lot of knowledge of angles and composition. Once your content is created it involves editing the pictures and choosing the best ones and then writing your captions for approval by the brand. “Hopefully the brand likes the content but sometimes there are reshoots and caption changes. “This is all before you post your actual content on Instagram, which then involves a lot of interaction to get the engagement brands expect on your post. Last but not least you need to invoice the brand once the work is done and chase up the payments.” Throw a dart into a stack of newspapers and you are liable to hit a headline warning about the danger of mummy bloggers. “The damaging mental health impact of following mummy bloggers,” warns Metro UK one week. “Mummy bloggers perfect parenting tropes driving mental health crisis,” shrieks PRWeek on another. There is research to suggest social media content can put new mothers at risk. Dr Archer’s research with Playgroup WA and St John of God Healthcare found social media was part of most new mothers’ days. And at times that was not a good thing. “What people were saying is the Facebook posts that showed the perfect life really did have bad consequences for them,” Dr Archer said. “So there were lots of positives around social media use but they felt that there were definitely some negatives and it could contribute to them feeling depression and that sort of thing.” There can also be downsides for mummy bloggers themselves. Many are trolled. Hall describes herself as “one of the most online bullied women in the country”. There is also research suggesting social media can be a source of support, including for new mothers who can feel isolated. And for every post promoting a face cream or shoes there are those dealing with serious topics, like Grecian Martin, who posts under the handle Growing Our Tribe, about her IVF journey, or Rebecca Marsh, who opened up about the death of her mother. Showing the realities of motherhood — not just the glossy facade — is a responsibilitymummy bloggers take seriously. “I use Instagram stories to try and be as transparent as possible with my followers and often show the ‘behind the scenes’ — which is often a very messy home and a make-up-free me,” Woyzbun said. Dealing with the responsibility of an online following is something Fisher had to adjust to. “I wasn’t prepared for the thousands of women globally read to hang on to my every word,” she said. “I realised very quickly I needed to be very careful with what I shared, how I shared it and the brand I promoted. “If I’m going through something in my own life, in the beginning I would share from the dregs of it, while I was knee deep in it ... and then I’d surface and realise that probably wasn’t the best advice to give or thing to say because, emotionally, I was struggling.” Fisher said showing the honest side of herself was vital to being an authentic. “So sometimes I’ll film a story, look terrible in it and have the urge to delete it, fix my hair and re-film it and that’s when I make that decision to not and I think that’s why I still have the opportunity to speak to a lot of women, because you’re gonna get every version of Ely: the glam Ely, the mum bun Ely and the playful comedian Ely — she’s personally my fav.”