• by Maryanne Conlin , December 30, 2009

I was recently asked by one of the lead agencies doing pro bono work for the Huffington Post/Hopenhagen campaign to lend a hand in promoting a video contest to send a citizen journalist to the Copenhagen Climate Conference. I was brought in late, as the contest had been running for a few weeks with rather lackluster results, and only had one more week to run, but I thought might be able help with what I considered a worthwhile project.

What occurred surprised me.

What started with an email I sent to a green mom-blogger group suggesting one of their more prominent members enter the video contest turned into a crowd-sourced social media plan that included Twitter domination of the contest hashtag; a pro bono tweet-up by a well-known green marketing organization; 75-plus blog posts and mentions; and endorsements for their candidate garnered from top Mom blogger sites, including Blogher and Mom Central. This all in one week!

And I just sent out an email.

Okay, I did a bit more than that, but the bloggers involved took the basic list of suggestions (Twitter, Facebook and Blog posts) I wrote on how they might promote their candidate and expanded upon it exponentially. They found new ways to use the social media space to make her campaign go viral from LinkedIn to Ning to social bookmarking sites to involving high-profile Tweeters and bloggers to support their efforts.

Truly a crowd-sourced effort. And it got me thinking. Mom bloggers are savvy users of the social media space. When they get passionate about something, they can compete with the best of social media marketers by creating and executing strategies that work to advance their wants and needs.

The trick for marketers is to tap into that passion by creating promotions about which they can get excited.

So, I've been thinking as I work on creating campaigns for products and services with prizes less exciting than an all-expenses-paid trip to Copenhagen -- can this passion and excitement be replicated? I think it can by engaging moms as part of the campaign development process -- give them an idea about which they can be passionate and ... let 'em run with it.