• by Stephanie Piche , April 14, 2010

Over the past 20 months or so, I've been helping Moms create video content, from vlogs to product reviews and live-streaming Web TV shows. It has been an interesting journey for me as someone who has engaged and encouraged women with interesting stories, personalities and passions to get in front of the camera.

One thing brands get right is that women like to talk about products they use; they like to share how they use it, what not to do with it, and how things work with it and so on.

However, one of the things brands fail to realize is that moms make buying decisions based on things they need, which means we're not out buying gadgets, cosmetics, cookware, software and other non-essential items unless we need it or we believe we need it.

Just because we are not buying high-ticket items every day doesn't mean we should not be marketed to or educated about your products. Brands are making a big mistake if they think we're only interested in hearing about things we need to run our household such as groceries, paper goods, cleaning products and school supplies.

We don't need to be "sold" on the necessities, but we do like to save money on them. We know the brands that we trust before we go to the grocery store; we don't necessarily know the brands that are non-grocery/household related, which is a perfect place to connect with us.

Some months back I had a conversation with a company that sells webcams. Its representatives told me that sales were down because new computers were coming equipped with the cams, albeit inferior models. This posed a problem when one is trying to engage the brand as a site sponsor. However, we were able to successfully position their superior product and market their brand to the audience as the educator of "how to use" webcams.

One thing to remember is that a mom is not going to spend money on something that may be "better" if she doesn't deem it to be necessary, i.e., webcam lens quality, but she will remember the brand in a favorable way if she learned something from it.

This proved to be true as each week the audience knew the brand was a site sponsor and would see ideas about "how to" use the webcam, from sharing video messages to creating vlogs with webcams and demonstrating it on their product.

We created a live brand engagement using story-streaming for on-demand interactions with the consumer even when they were not there to buy but to participate in a conversation. The most interesting outcome was that when moms brought up the topic about needing a webcam, they would hear a recommendation from another mom who offered not only the sponsor's brand name but the model number as well.

If you're a brand that wants to create these types of opportunities, you could think outside the box and look for ways to create conversations and content that moms are looking for by capturing these "story streams" on video and sharing it with other viewers.