February Reviews Round-Up

February has been an interesting month for reviews and sponsored content on parenting blogs.  If my in-box and some tweets I have seen recently are anything to go by, all the brands and PR agencies seem to be using up their budget and bombarding bloggers with enquiries before the financial year end.  Personally I have found I can hardly even keep up! No has been a frequently used word.

That said, I have of course been able to fit in a few personal reviews and sponsored posts over the course of the month.  One of my favourite reviews was writing about Love Heart sweets and how I proposed to my hubbie using them. What I have found is that over time my reviews have become less structured and nowadays they seem to be more editorial in style. Is this a bad thing?  I don’t think so as long as there is always a disclaimer at the end of the post and it is tagged as a review but again I have seen tweets and forum conversations recently about how fed up some people are with reading a post and only finding the disclaimer at the end.  I personally don’t tend to feel bad if it is a good post that I worked hard to make read well but like everything in blogging there are always people with a different opinion and that keeps things interesting.

This month on my blog I hosted New Bloggers Fortnight and Wendy wrote a post about reviewing with integrity, take a peek it is an interesting read. Also there was a great post from Ruth at Geekmummy where she talks about links in sponsored posts and whether they should be ‘dofollow’ or ‘nofollow’ links.  No idea what I am on about?  Then do check out the post as it is an important subject if you review and host sponsored content.

Anyway, enough of my babbling on, here are a few great posts I have come across this month that I want to highlight –

First up we have Working Mammy who reviewed Skipp the Sailor, a lovely children’s book.  What I really liked was that the book was bought for this review and I think it is a sensible idea for new bloggers to do a few practice reviews first off to gain their confidence.

Then we have A Mummy’s View who wrote a post on bath time must haves.  Again the items were not provided for the purpose of the review and the writer has used their experience over the last year or so with their child and various bath time products to write an interesting piece that would be useful to a new parent who may be anxious about bathing.

I got tweeted any interesting link from the lovely Cherished by Me, her 13 year old daughter CG had written a review of ‘The Hunger Games’ book. This is not a book I had heard of, I suppose my kids are not in the right age bracket yet but from the review I now have a full picture of what it is about and and I think CG has a great future ahead as a blogger!

Chez Mummy made me smile with her review of the MAM Bite and relax phase one mini teether.  The first vlog I came across showed her little boy preferring to chew his sock rather than the said teether!  I was pleased to keep reading and see that things did improve…

FennGirl jumped into her first review with a mighty rigour and it was clear to see that she loved the Bananagram word game that she was sent. Her title was super catchy and woudl easily have pulled people in to read.

Then the last two reviewers I put in the ‘old school’ category, that is established bloggers that you know will always do a  really good review.  No shortcuts and strong on content. Mellow Mummy was reviewing some Argos kids clothing in the post I choose.  Her daughter Lara makes a great little model, showing us how versatile the clothes are.

Liz at Me and my Shadow probably wins the award for the best review post of the month. Her post reviewing Justin Fletcher’s new CD is just fabulous. Who would know that an adult can do a strenuous workout and all to the background noise of Justin!

So there you have it, this months round-up.  Have you written a review or sposnored post in the last month that you would like to share with the BritMums readers?  Yes, then link up here…

About Michelle Pannell

Mummy from the Heart is the fourth baby of Michelle, a 46 year old (manic) mother living in East Sussex. Having moved to the countryside and ‘retired’, Michelle can now be found eating too much cake and taking long walks. She lives life on the bright side and looks for the joy in every situation, even the excess pounds those cakes keep adding! Michelle’s blog is a very honest place where she shares tales of imperfect parenting, being a Christian digital activist and anything else that takes her fancy.

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