As I just noted in this week’s “Executive Momorandum,” it is a source of delight and some amusement to me that Moms have “suddenly” become the hot target audience; new darlings in the media, and the new dominators OF the media. Our aptitude for connectivity and embrace of technology as its conduit have made moms not only a marketer’s key target, but their best new media strategy, too. For me, this has created the ultimate, if unsought, confluence of my two professional lives; and in fact it is with my dual lenses – as a member of the so-called “mom media,” and a marketer with an interest in reaching us – that I see this all with an uncommonly complex view.

Let me start with the Great:

The passion and savvy that moms have demonstrated with social media – blogging and tweeting at unprecedented rates – boldly defies some of the worst traditional stereotypes about women and technology and business. Moms truly have been on the forefront of this seismic redefinition in how we communicate. seizing upon the latest innovations, tools and techniques with a prowess only rivaled by the Silicon Valley “digerati”… and that is a validation and victory for all of us.

Impelled by what is a proven, defining characteristic of women: our propensity to be social and communicative creatures, moms have particularly embraced social networking with uncommon ardor, from Facebook to Twitter to mom-specific networks (like ours, we hope). Everyday, there are amazing examples of moms using the power of social networking online to build their own networks: to ward off isolation, to find solidarity in shared experience (whether a sleepless child or a tough situation at work), to make friends, to seek advice, to promote themselves. It’s anthropological implications aside, I know I have met and built many relationships online with people whom I have yet to meet in person. And may never. And yet we now know, like, and often support each other.

To this last point, scrape the conversations of active moms online and the best of who we are bears its evidence. Contrary to one of the myths about moms that I find most personally irksome: that moms’ primary behavior toward one another is defined by pettiness, insecurity and competitiveness, social media allows the world a public view of the small acts (sometimes 140 characters or less) of warmth, nurturing, helpfulness and humor that moms practice toward one another routinely. One timely if extreme example: earlier this week a popular mom blogger from Atlanta was devastated by a stroke. Within hours of the first word getting out, along with a simple appeal (via Facebook) from her husband to “pray for her,” moms have led a massive social media mobilization around #prayersforanissa, that has brought — in 2 days – over 53,000 visits to a CaringBridge web page set up for her, and countless donations of giftcards to local restaurants and services, at the family’s request, from around the world.

The power that women, and moms, have to enthuse and persuade has found new focus through social media, as hundreds (if not thousands) have found a voice… and then a following… and then a business… via their social media savvy. Moms, both with and without outside careers, are proving to be shrewd online business builders, monetizing their blogs, syndicating their content, even consulting with large companies on how to: market to moms.

And A Word on the Occasional Ugliness…

Typically I would have stopped at the paragraph above. However, for all the great being perpetuated daily, it must be acknowledged that there are disheartening instances of ‘bad apple’ behavior that reinforce those worst stereotypes about women/moms, and undermine all the benefits that we are otherwise achieving through this new media. As, then, both a fellow mom communicator (one who has been at this for over 7 years, which in digital dog years makes it more like 49), and the kind of corporate marketer that many moms-turned bloggers-turned mini-businesses want to partner with, let me suggest a few basic tenets that we should insist on together:

Quality over Cacaphony: We moms have a lot to say, a cornucopia of the cerebral and the irreverent that can be quite wonderful. However, once we take those comments and conversations public, a level of self-filtering simply needs to be applied. Otherwise we risk our real power to influence becoming subsumed by NOISE.

Earn Your Influence: As ‘mom blogger’ somehow became a ‘hot job’ and cultural phenomenon this year, with myriad companies in a scramble to ‘reach the influencers,’ it was perhaps inevitable that many would jump on the bandwagon, with their first question being, “how can I get companies to send me stuff?’ (That is not a theoretical example, by the way; I’ve seen dozens of moms in group Twitter events ask this very question). If you seek to transcend individual social participation to be a part of the ‘mom media,’ do so motivated first by having a genuine mission, a platform, a purpose, a point of view. Do it first for the love of sharing information and ideas, for creating content, for informing and/or inspiring others… and let any business benefits follow.

If You Deem Yourself a Professional Mom Online, Act Like One: In the FTC’s recent and controversial decision to draft blogger guidelines, there was an outcry that mom bloggers were being unduly targeted. Fair or not, I happen to believe the best rebuttal is to be simply above reproach. In truth, there are moms who have positioned themselves as ‘professionals’ online but have operated outside of common professionalism (and plain good judgment), i.e. there is a difference between something you write about editorially vs. something you were paid to promote – and you have a responsibility to clearly distinguish the two. On a related note of professionalism, there are a handful of moms with a fair amount of influence whose posts and tweets are laced with profanity. To be clear, I’m a New Yorker and have admittedly lost the Ivory-pure mouth I maintained at least through my childhood. Let me simply refer back to the “self-filter” point above. There is a Delete button when you type.

Most of all, the Cardinal Rule Our Society of Moms MUST Make a Condition of Entry and Acceptance: Do NOT Inflame, Belittle or Divide Other Moms Out of Some Sense of Boosting Yourself. This is thankfully the rarest of bad apples, yet when it happens, like a disaster in the news, it grabs all the headlines and distorts how we are all perceived. All it takes is one mom (in this case, inexplicably) with an audience to say something outrageous and incendiary like “moms who work are outsourcing their love,” to spawn a whole new belief that the Mommy Wars exist – when the vast majority of us live our lives to the contrary every day.

With Moms’ unparalleled embrace of new media has come an unparalleled new interest in moms, in which we can all revel. I am personally proud to be a part of it. My hope with the few reminders above is that it can be also accompanied by an unparalleled and uncompromised new respect.