Proud to be a MAD Blogger

I honestly can’t remember which one of us came up with the idea to call our new Parent Blog Award projects ‘The MADs’. I know we discarded some pretty embarrassing first draft names: The Bloscars (like the Oscars? Yeah I thought it was rubbish too…) The Mammy’s” (like Grammy’s, yep I think that was mine…*cringe*).

All I do know was that months ago Sally from Who’s the Mummy and I began talking about the idea of putting together a Parent Blog Awards programme. It’s done in almost every other sector, film making, writing, music, for example, as well as within other niche blogging communities, all designed to celebrate the achievement of people in their particular fields, normally nominated by the people that love them and wish to hold them up as examples to be proud of.

With the amazing surge in parent blogging in the UK now seemed like the perfect opportunity for us, parent bloggers ourselves, to put together our very own grass-roots awards programme. We hadn’t a clue how we were going to do it, but we thought it’d be fun to give it a go.

We knew what we wanted. We wanted something that allowed us to take a break from stats and tables and indexes, that allowed the vast number of people reading parenting blogs to celebrate their favourites by one simple measure, by saying “You’re ace. I love your blog. And here, I’ve nominated you for this award to prove it”. It wouldn’t matter how many page impressions you got, or how ‘well known’ you were. If someone had read your blog and been touched, or entertained, or inspired by what they’d read there, you would be in the running.

And it wouldn’t matter if you got one nomination or fifty – you’d still get to display your awards badge proudly and bribe all your friends to nominate you. When the top five nominated blogs in each category were announced, the short-listed blogs would be those who had the people power behind them, whether loyal readers, or friends. And chances are they would be people who shone in the blogging community, and who had touched the lives of the people that had nominated them.

People, that as parent bloggers ourselves, we should be so proud of. Proud for them to represent our community.

And people that should be proud of themselves. So too often we end up muddying over our own achievements, in some kind of uncomfortable modesty. (I’m the worst culprit, let’s face it). We wanted people to be shown how much they were appreciated and how highly they were thought of, and for that to make them feel good about themselves, as they should do.

And so the MADs, the Mum and Dad Blog Awards, was born.

Soon we had the fabulous Ellie from Insomniac Mummy on board, and with a huge HEAP of help from lots of other bloggers, and contacts we built our awards programme. We had to figure out sponsorship, and web site building, CSS (EVIL), and privacy policies. We learnt as we went along, made LOTS of mistakes, spent hours wailing on the phone as we tried to bring it altogether.

And finally, yesterday, we launched. Ten categories covering the whole spectrum of Parenting Blogs, all with amazing prize packages which we put together to represent what we knew our fellow bloggers would love.

In less than 24 hours our site has seen over 1200 different people come visit. More than 250 different blogs have already been nominated, big blogs, little blogs, well-known blogs, new blogs – the vast majority of whom I have never come across before and have loved seeing for the first time today.

It’s been so much fun to see people’s excitement today, their delight as they realised they’d been nominated and proudly told the world.

And today’s only just the beginning. We have the most exciting Awards Party planned for September, and lots of surprises along the way.

I can’t wait.

Thank you to everyone who’s already helped to make it such a success and been so supportive in spreading word today and giving us such positive feedback.

And Sally? You are a one-woman dynamo. Never have I seen anyone work so hard. You are a super-star, lady. Thanks for having me and my mad skillz on your team x

Ok. That’s enough of my big speech. But since I’m not eligible for the awards I had to get one chance to stand up and have my big moment, right? At least this way I get to stay in my PJ’s…

And if, by any chance, you’ve been living under a rock, then go see what all the fuss is about and get nominating some MAD bloggers!

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