Over the years, Gannett has built out 60 or so local niche sites dedicated to moms. And now the media company is pulling them together into a network called MomsLikeMe.com, which just launched this week. So for example, RockyMountainMoms.com now redirects to Denver.MomsLikeMe.com, and other sites, like CincyMoms.com, will soon follow. The effort will help streamline Gannett’s national advertising efforts, but the big upside here is MomsLikeMe.com has launched nationally, even in markets where it doesn’t own a newspaper or TV property. So for example, there’s New York, San Francisco and Seattle. All the big markets are represented, as well as most medium-sized markets as well. Very smart. Some media companies have attempted to launch a nationally-branded site by partnering with other media companies in its unrepresented markets, but the patchwork approach has shown little traction. Gannett’s national push all on its own is one of the most promising local online media efforts I’ve seen to date.
Of course, this niche is rather competitive, so Gannett will have plenty of work to do, especially in those new markets where it doesn’t own a media property.
Adds justme in comments: “The problem with this is that these sites are nothing but discussion forums. They don’t provide any content — events, stories about issues, links to recipes etc — that a better mom-oriented site like Whoa Momma from tampabay.com offers. Gannett may have more locations, but when you get there you don’t have much to see.”
Says dcdave in comments: “The tampabay.com approach is the old ‘umbrella/mothership’ thought process. Instead of giving the site it’s own URL and it’s own style, it’s simply an unwieldy subdomain of the larger site, designed exactly the same way as all of their other blogs without much attention to demographics other than the subject matter. The Gannett approach might be lacking substance, but that’s something they can make up for. The broader strategy of making the sites separate niche products, vs. sections on a hub site makes a lot more sense.”