Companies tap into frugal-blogger power

NEW YORK (AP) — When Melissa Garcia was frustrated by Old Navy’s scanty coupon offerings, she didn’t just complain to the store. She vented on a message board tied to her blog consumerqueen.com, which is read by at least 30,000 people each month and now, increasingly, by corporate America.

Within weeks, chatter in the so-called mommy blogosphere led Gap Inc.’s Old Navy to begin issuing coupons several times a week, instead of just once a week.

Moms have always had marketplace muscle, but a new frugality driven by rising joblessness, housing woes and other economic problems has them exercising it like never before with the help of the Internet.

In this recession, their talk online encompasses everything from complaints to advice on coupon clipping, low-budget meals and family finance. But it’s not just fellow moms who are following every post: Retailers and consumer product makers are listening, too — and responding.

Companies and the bloggers themselves are mutually benefiting. Consumer product companies such as home appliance maker Frigidaire and Unilever, maker of Suave shampoo, are hoping to enhance their brands by giving free samples of their merchandise to key women bloggers to test and chat about on their sites, though many bloggers say it’s essential to disclose such freebies to maintain credibility with readers.

More than 12 percent of all posts on mom-oriented blogs during March and April included mentions of the economy and saving money, up from 8 percent a year earlier, according to Nielsen Online, which has studied 10,000 parenting blogs.

Meanwhile, traffic to blogs written by mothers and devoted to saving money has exploded. Couponmom.com — cited by Nielsen Online as one of the five most influential of that breed — attracted 972,0000 unique visitors in March, five times more than a year earlier, according to Internet research company comScore Media Metrix’s latest data.

Fans such as Melissa Riegert, in Middletown, Ohio, who started using coupons five months ago, say they’ve learned from parent-oriented blogs how to save thousands of dollars per year.

She estimates she’s cut her weekly grocery bill in half to $75 by using double coupons to get freebies, a tip she picked up on moneysavingmom.com, which she reads twice a day. With the money she’s saving, Riegert hopes to be debt-free in a few years.

One of the most influential mother- oriented blogs Nielsen cites is 5dollardinners.com, written by Dayton, Ohio, resident and mother of two Erin Chase, 31, who shares daily tips on how she plans and shops for nutritious $5 dinners such as homemade vegetarian pizza for her family of four. She just signed a deal with St. Martin’s Press to publish a book on the subject.

Consumerqueen.com’s Garcia has just started making money through advertising, and Advance Brands LLP’s Fast Fixin’ has hired her to manage online marketing of its line of frozen foods. Garcia emphasized that she fully discloses on her blog that she works for the brand. She was also one of a handful of mothers who have influential blogs who are receiving big-ticket home appliances from Frigidaire so she can test them and blog about them, though she said she will disclose such freebies.

And she still has some very down-to-Earth tips for getting by without brands, including how to make household products such as dryer sheets. (Just cut up kitchen sponges and soak them in two parts water and one part liquid softener.)