May 11, 2008
Happy Mother’s Day! I put this poem I wrote for Mother’s Day in a previous post, and wanted to share it again here. I hope you enjoy it along with a picture taken by a good friend of mine, Sandy Blanchard.
Motherhood and Childhood
What does it mean to be a mother?
Is it love?
Is it fear?
Is it feeling dear?
What does it mean to be a child?
Is it love?
Is it joy?
Is it having a favorite toy?
As mothers we hope for our child’s happiness
We pray for our child’s health
We hope they are treated with kindness
We pray our children find peace in the world
As children we live for today
We anticipate a life of fun
We hope for a million tomorrows
We cannot imagine a world without our mothers
As mothers we cannot imagine a world without our children
We are one and the same…
Aruni Gunasegaram
March 2008
May 2, 2008
I was planning to write a post updating everyone on our search engine optimization experience today but the real world injected itself with a sick kid at home. High fever and rescheduling meetings doesn’t leave much time for writing long, heavy posts. Plus I had to sneak in a nap in the afternoon while our daughter napped since we didn’t get much sleep the night before. 
So instead, while my husband takes care of the kids this evening, I thought I’d write a post on the example of an unanticipated, viral marketing story with a mom twist. So here it goes…
Once upon a time I met a friend on the Internet. I found her blog and commented away. After some time, we realized we had similar visions and she invited me do a guest post on her blog called Entrepreneurship: A Blessing or a Curse. We kept in touch, spoke on the phone a few times about ways to work together, became twitter pals, and finally met in person at SXSW here in Austin back in March and clicked even more.
While at SXSW she got further proof of what she already knew which was that the name of her blog, then called eMoms at Home, was not really reflective of the demographics of her readers and would-be readers so she had a mini-meltdown, picked herself up and came up with a cool new name called Sparkplugging! Since she was and still is an advocate of entrepreneurs and especially those who work from home, her cool, new name opens the door wide open to many of us who are moms or not but like to spark up ideas and play with them until something happens.
So after SXSW, she went home and saw a post about dads on twitter and decided to do one for moms. Within hours she got tons of replies and created a post called The Ultimate List of Moms on Twitter that started with 250 moms. I commented and subscribed to comments on that post and every day new moms would leave a comment with their twitter name until May 1, 2008 that is. Twitter sent out an email to everyone yesterday, May 1, and in it they included:
Mother’s Day: On The Way
We’ve noticed a trend of parents twittering the moments of their baby’s birth so we know there are some new moms on Twitter. Are you a mom on Twitter? Is your own mom on Twitter? Maybe you even made “The Ultimate List of Moms on Twitter”? Mother’s Day is just around the corner so don’t forget to @reply the moms you know with a thoughtful phrase–but keep it under 140 characters, moms are busy people.
List of Moms on Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/6cxgp5
And today I had 150+ comments in my inbox and they are still coming. Now she has close to 400 comments on that one post! Did she do anything extraordinary to make it happen? Not really. Did she tell people on twitter about it? Yes, of course. Did she know others would tell and re-tell more people about the list? Possibly. Did she know twitter would pick it up in their mass email to everyone? Doubtful (but I don’t know what went on behind the scenes). So in hindsight what played in her favor to have a post she wrote on April 8 (before her name change) take on a life of its own? Here’s what I think:
- She took the initiative to do something that ended up being quite time consuming, but she saw from the responses it resonated with hundreds of moms on twitter that it was a worthwhile endeavor.
- She told her friends about it who re-tweeted and blogged about it.
- The tweeters kept the link going within twitter and in the blogosphere.
- Mother’s Day was around the corner and the guys (I think they are all men) at twitter saw the activity and might have said to themselves “Hmmm. How can we mention a major holiday, get brownie points with our wives/mothers, and promote twitter at the same time” and voila a mention was born!
UPDATE: I sent a link to @Biz to this post and he informed me there are several women who work at twitter! So of course I followed them. Here is his tweet:
biz @aruni awesome! I included the moms list because it was noteworthy - also, women who work at Twitter: @crystal @krissy @alissa @lane @sara
In case you haven’t guessed who this friend is, it’s Wendy Piersall. I guess only Wendy can tell us if she planned all of this, but to me it’s another example of viral marketing that in hindsight makes sense but when started, the current result would have been highly unpredictable.
To me, this is why it is so hard to orchestrate a viral campaign. You can plan everything down to the “t” and still not have it work out the way you wanted. It’s hard to predict when there are so many variables. You can also just do something you enjoy doing that helps others and see a “spark” turn into a flame! Way to go Wendy! 
Oh and by the way, I am @aruni and Wendy is @eMom on twitter…
Posted by Aruni
7:00 pm •
entrepreneur,
entrepreneurship,
mom,
mother,
mother's day,
networking,
seo,
social networks,
success,
working mom,
working mother •
May 13, 2007
Happy Mother’s Day from Babble Soft! Our Mother’s Day special is still available through the end of May 2007. I hope every mother is being treated like royalty this weekend. On Saturday I took my son to his swim class, we went to a birthday party, I took a nap, then went to the mall (by myself!), and then my husband planned a date night for us. It was nice going to the mall and having time to think about the things I wanted to buy, instead of having to make decisions in 5 seconds because one of the kids wants to be carried or is about to run off somewhere. :-) I went to Victoria’s Secret and bought some of my usual items (some on sale), bought some sunglasses from the $10/first pair, $5/second pair sunglass kiosk, and got some things for the kids at The Disney Store. The Disney Store had beach towels (Nemo and Micky Mouse) for $9.99 each , and flip flops for $4 a pair! I was feeling so good about my accomplishments, that I didn’t realize what time it was. I had arrived at the mall around 5:00 pm and thought I had plenty of time…until my husband called to ask where I was. I said “I’ll be home by 6:00 pm” and he said “it is 6:00 pm!” I was surprised because I thought it was only 5:30 pm. The girl at the Disney Store checkout laughed with me and helped me get out the door in a hurry!
After dinner at a nice local restaurant called Shoreline Grill, my husband got out his Blackberry and looked for jazz clubs. We don’t get out much so we aren’t up to speed on the downtown club scene. The place we went to is called The Elephant Room and it had a nice ambiance. We got there around 9:00 pm, they said the band, Gnappy, would start at 9:30 pm, but they didn’t start until around 9:50 pm. We had to leave at 10:00 so our baby sitters could go home. We liked what we heard the 10 or so minutes we were there! Maybe next time.
Today, we went with some friends for a nice brunch at Chez Zee. They had balloon animals and face painting for the kids. We came home and my husband took the kids across the street to play with the grand kids of one of our neighbors, and I was able to call my mom and have a nice mother’s day chat with her. Both kids are napping now so I thought I’d take the opportunity to blog a little.
Happy Mother’s Day everyone!
Aruni
