Mommy’s Rise Up!

Yesterday, Kami Huyse lamented that women have been relegated to the lower ranks of the corporate world, even settling into “whoa” public relations jobs (be very scared), which are holding women back as they attempt to break the glass ceiling.

Seventy-one percent of women in the survey held staff positions, in areas such as human resources and public relations that are viewed as having only indirect impact on a company’s financial results.

The real measurement for most CEOs is how did your efforts improve the bottom line, and that is where women and men in the public relations profession have failed because we haven’t found a proven measurement of how relationship building and maintenance improves cash flow.

Also, this means that CEOs will continue to look down on PR as something less important than all other input centers and therefore they will believe it must be relegated to the less important employees – women.

Now, to show that women are powerful communicators, in a little corner of the blogosphere a quiet revolution is about to become very vocal – Mommy Blogs. Starting with Dooce, which was started by a mommy fired because her blog became more popular than the company she worked for, the mommy blog movement is quickly becoming a place where people are turning to court favor and seek access for their messages. Dooce even posts press releases. Marketers also are taking notice:

And now these moms have started blogs, are connecting more easily and vocally with other moms, and starting communities online that mirror those they have offline.

Mommy blogs are on the rise and will become another channel for groups seeking access to a targeted audience, which will lead to more public relations campaigns in collaboration with mommy bloggers. I see a cottage industry on the way as mommy bloggers aid in generating buzz and promote viral marketing.

And now back to the problem facing public relations: we all loose, men and women, as long as CEOs don’t understand our importance to the company. This problem will continue to rear its ugly head as long as we don’t find a clear method or strategy demonstrating how and why public relations benefit the bottom line.