Copyright 2008 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.

August 30, 2008 Saturday

BUSINESS

964 words

BY STEVE PAINTER ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is venturing further into the social media waters with a coalition of busy moms who blog about how to save money on everyday necessities, vacations, even big-ticket items that may fall outside most shoppers' budgets.

Soon, the company intends to invite customers to share their own money-saving tips in exchange for a chance at winning a year's worth of groceries.

Blogs, or Web logs, are journals that are available on the Web.

Some of the 12 moms selected for the project already have begun posting video clips on their Web sites, suggesting ways to trim spending.

The clips were recorded on miniature camcorders that Wal-Mart provided to the bloggers.

The bloggers are not paid but hope to benefit from the exposure of partnering with the world's largest retailer.

Other clips soon will be posted on a Wal-Mart YouTube channel the company plans to launch next week, spokesman Melissa O'Brien said. Current plans are for site visitors to vote on clips customers submit. The top 10 vote-getters will win $6,000 worth of groceries, she said.

Details of the partnership will not be released until next week, O'Brien said.

Six of the mom bloggers contacted this week said they were under no obligation to feature Wal-Mart in the money-saving tips and, in fact, not all are regular Wal-Mart shoppers.

"We do not have to include Wal-Mart at all," said Tara Kuczykowski of Canal Winchester, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. The mother of five children ages 6, 5, 4, 2 and seven months operates the Web site www.dealseekingmom.com and also is paid to transcribe tapes of interviews, focus groups, speaker presentations and other events.

Kuczykowski said she typically doesn't shop at Wal-Mart, even though it "usually" has the lowest prices, because she finds she can come out ahead shopping Kroger and Giant Eagle with double-coupon offers.

The Wal-Mart partnership could raise awareness of her blog.

"I'm just hoping this will bring additional traffic to my site, and people will like what they see and want to stick around," she said.

Potentially, that could attract new advertising revenue, the main financial incentive for many of the bloggers to participate in the project.

Wal-Mart took some heat for earlier ventures into the blogging world, mainly for not disclosing it was paying for them.

The Working Families for Wal-Mart blog and a related site, Paid Critics, were revealed to be the work of public relations firm Edelman, which produced the blog for Wal-Mart.

Another blog, Wal-Marting Across America about two people traveling across the country, staying in Wal-Mart parking lots and visiting with shoppers also was revealed to be Wal-Mart-funded.

Lynnae McCoy, a mother of two, said she started her blog, www.beingfrugal.net, as a way to keep her family focused on getting out of debt.

An avid Wal-Mart shopper who lives near Medford, Ore., she's aware of complaints about some of the company's practices. But she finds the staff is friendly and usually isn't restocking shelves while she shops one of her pet peeves and the store has what she needs.

"I love my local Wal-Mart," she said.

Colleen Padilla, author of the blog at www.classymommy.com, set aside her master's degree in business administration and her short marketing career that included stops at Ford Motor Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. to develop a Web site that focuses on moms and babies. She has a young son and daughter.

Padilla said she shops Wal-Mart and Target for basic consumer products, but neither company has supercenters that sell groceries in her area just outside Philadelphia.

John Andrews, Wal-Mart's manager of emerging media, contacted her and the other bloggers, she said.

Padilla and the other moms will visit Wal-Mart's Bentonville headquarters in early October, at Wal-Mart's expense, where she hopes to "get an inside peek at the world's largest retail operation." Blogger Jessica Smith of Olney, Md., said she is "kind of fascinated about a town driven by one corporation." Her blog, www.jessicaknows.com, is less focused on frugality than some of the others, though she says saving money is a good thing.

She worked eight years in marketing, business development, e-commerce and recruiting.

When her son was born, she said, she returned to work outside the home for awhile before deciding that "I was missing out on some real quality time and milestones with my son." Smith landed a work-athome job with the Web site www.wishpot.com, which helps people shop online. She shops Wal-Mart occasionally, she said, though none is close to her home and they're not supercenters.

Christine Young of Lincoln, Calif., logically shouldn't have much time to blog at her site, www.fromdatestodiapers.com, what with home-schooling and keeping up with seven children, five of them boys, all of them age 7 or younger.

Yet, through the blog, she said, she picks up free-lance writing jobs, which she does on top of writing and editing newsletters for other sites and serving as a social media consultant for a couple of companies.

She shops at wholesale club Costco once or twice a week, but not so much at Wal-Mart since the family moved two years ago and is not near a supercenter.

And she shops Target "a lot more often than I'd like, because Target does not save me money." Blogger Alyssa Francis of the Dallas-Fort Worth area said she was surprised to be invited to take part in the project.

"I had written a few posts about Wal-Mart that weren't particularly glowing," she said.

Francis said she had heard from readers who had trouble using coupons at Wal-Mart, particularly coupons printed from companies' Web sites.

"Other than the coupons, I try to stay out of the politics, the rumor mills, the Wal-Mart haters," she said.

To contact this reporter: spainter@arkansasonline.com This article was published 08/30/2008

September 2, 2008