Is the Dad Blogger’s Turn Coming in 2010?

Jessica Smith of JessicaKnows.com posed an interesting question last week:

Will 2010 be the year of the Daddy Blogger?

2009 has clearly been the year of the mommy blogger. Brands have recognized this through their engagement of these influential women.

Mainstream media has brought mom bloggers and their stories of buying power and word-of-mouth success stories into the folds of newspapers and on television screens across the country. We’ve also witnessed the notoriety lead to controversy, drama, and some may argue, scandal…if only just perceived.

However, I’ve been noticing a quiet trend. The stealth mode of the “Daddy Bloggers”.

Jessica’s argument centers on what she calls grit, reach, “Mars and Venus”, fresh voices, and ready to rock and roll. Go read her post for the full and very compelling argument.

My take? Yes, 2010 will see the dad bloggers attract significant attention from brands. Here’s why:

• The model is proven: Mom blogs have been thoroughly embraced by brands ranging from auto manufacturers to consumer products to TV networks. Entire conferences and niche consulting practices have sprung up about connecting marketers to moms, with a significant focus on moms who are active in social media. It’s not a huge leap from moms to dads, especially the not-insignificant number of stay-at-home-dads, and dads who play an increasingly active role in management of the household, many of whom are active on blogs.
• Dads may appeal to a distinct set of brands: Be it stereotyping or accurate market segmentation, many dad blog product reviews* tend to focus, unsurprisingly, on products traditionally associated with dads: gadgets, technical gear, sports, outdoors, etc. It’s not unreasonable to see many brands that haven’t found a suitable niche with mom blogs to latch on to dad blogs as their own way to ride some of the social media wave. (*My own casual observation)
• Marketers flock to the appearance of trust and authenticity: Just as mom blogs gained traction as storytellers of remarkable honesty, emotion, and humor, dad blogs are doing the same. Trust and authenticity, married with relevance, creates loyal and often broad bases of followers. Marketers love this, as a product endorsement given by someone you feel an emotional connection vastly outweighs one given by a generic review site.
• The potential is largely untapped: Some of the examples outlined below notwithstanding, relative to the mom blog community, dad blogs are an untapped market for brands. Some of the better known dad blogs are seeing commercial success and are flooded with product pitches, but you’re not seeing, yet, the proliferation of highly trafficked and pitched review sites written by accomplished dad blogs. As the Sony DigiDad campaign illustrates, there are lots of opportunities for creative engagement.
• The mom blogs are reaching a saturation point: This may be a controversial point, but my spidey sense is telling me that the mom blog community, in the midst of a full-on goldrush, is approaching an attention saturation point. The established, unique bloggers with passionate followers will always be able to command attention from major brands. However the next tier down is seeing a massive amount of review sites go live, creating pressure to grab more readers and potentially diluting some of the original appeal of the mom blog community. Dad bloggers, still heavily loaded with storytelling blogs, may represent an attractive and available adjacent segment for marketers.

This argument isn’t entirely new, but the beginnings of this shift are finally starting to appear: The NY Times and AdAge both covered Sony’s recent effort to engage gadget-oriented dad blogs, driven in large part by Chris Brogan (who has his own Dad group blog at Dad-O-Matic). Commercial success is cropping up for dad bloggers such as the guys at DadLabs and the blogger-turned-book author Danny Evans at DadGoneMad. Even Wired is in the game, with the dad-blog-firehose known as GeekDad (your RSS reader has been warned).

There is also a group of smaller, but growing Dad group blogs and communities, such as Dad-Blogs.com (disclosure: I’ll be starting a guest column there shortly), CC Chapman’s Digital Dads, The Art of Manliness, Geek Dads @ Home, and the previously mentioned Dad-O-Matic, among many others.

Dad blogging may be the Internet’s tiniest niche; or at least it’s least lucrative. - Shawn Burns

That may be about to change.

Disclosures: In addition to the guest column I’m planning to write at Dad-Blogs, I’m also a newish author of my own storytelling blog about being a dad. So yes, I’m making this argument from someone in a position to benefit from my own predictions coming to pass. So caveat emptor. That said, I stand by comments, just run them through your own BS filter. I also make a number of assertions based on observation rather than published data. Again FWIW.

Related posts:

1. The Very Basics of Blogger Outreach
2. Going to ConvergeSouth 2010 in Greensboro? Of course you are…
3. Social Media ROI and ROMI