• by Stephanie Azzarone , Op-Ed Contributor, January 26, 2011

In the past few years, companies across all categories of business have come to realize that moms rely on social media to help them make decisions about what to buy for their children.

Unfortunately, in many cases, they've reached that conclusion based on little more than the constant hype about "the power of social media."

We wanted to help our clients make decisions based on fact. We wanted to know: Are moms really making their purchasing decisions in response to social media? Toward that end, we commissioned The NPD Group, a leading market research company, to help us find the answer and to provide us with greater insight into how and to what degree social media influences what moms buy.

The just-released study, "Social Media Moms: How Networking Impacts Purchasing Behaviors," provides a comprehensive look not only at what motivates moms' purchasing decisions but also at moms' overall use of social media. Based on responses from a sample of more than 2,000 moms who actively use social media, following are some key findings:

• 79% of all moms in the U.S. with children under the age of 18 are active in social media.

• Of these moms, about one in four (23%) said they have purchased a children's product as a result of a recommendation from a social networking site or blog.

• Online recommendations have even more impact among the most frequent social media users: 43% of active social media moms who use these sites on a daily basis have purchased a children's product as the result of a recommendation from these sites.

• More than half (55%) of these moms said they made their purchase because of a recommendation from a personal review blog.

• 40% of these moms made a purchase because of a Facebook recommendation.

The study also provided a very detailed look at the kinds of products moms buy as a result of social media recommendations, specifically what online sources they rely on the most, the types of blogs they prefer to visit, and how moms interact with corporate social media efforts.

The NPD Group fielded an online survey to members of its online panel and to members of the Child's Play Communications online panel. The two different sources provided data to create both a holistic view of U.S. moms and their interaction with social media, as well as a deep-dive into the behaviors and preferences of social media moms. The complete survey is available for purchase from NPD.

Clearly, social media is a dominant force in the lives of mothers, and moms nationwide are making purchasing decisions as a result of the information and advice other moms are providing through social media.