15 parent blogger rankings worth spending time on

When KiddyCharts started 7 years ago now (nearly), we’d never even heard of parent blogger rankings. We barely knew what parent bloggers were in fact. Now there are so many ways of looking at influencer, and blogger activity, it is almost impossible to keep track.

Before we launch into introducing some of the parent blogger rankings that KiddyCharts have used as digital marketing consultants, or have featured in – a very quick summary about what it all means for bloggers and businesses…

As bloggers, the most important thing to remember is that we all blog for differing reasons, and because of that, every single blog is a unique view of the parenting world. That makes it incredibly hard to rank them realistically at all, and every single one of these rankings does the best they can, with the information they have available. It is so very hard to create an objective ranking out of something that is so subjective and unique as blogging and the influencer space.

To put it bluntly, in order to use these effectively they should be seen as guides and not the ultimate goal. Every brand, and blogger will make their own decisions about who to work with, and what constitutes success as a blogger and influencer based on their own individual ideals.

And THAT is EXACTLY how it should be.

Parent blogger rankings for bloggers

Some bloggers look at the parent blogger rankings religiously and measure their success against these and the awards they achieve, others choose not to take part as they find it better to work with brands by emphasising their own specific strengths, and there are those (like KiddyCharts) that check regularly, but try not to worry too much from month to month or week to week. For our site, it is all about whether the content you provide is resonating with your audience, and if you are enjoying what you do as a blogger and influencer.

Parent blogger rankings for brands

For brands, the rankings are a necessity, but, in our view, a great place to start, and build relationships with REAL people and REAL bloggers and influencers. It is never all about the stats in digital marketing, from the big to the small, and everyone else in between. If you have never worked in blogger outreach before, parent blogger rankings are an essential place to go to start your journey and build relationships. But they are far from the whole story. Blogging is about PEOPLE and RELATIONSHIPS and you can’t ever show that effectively within a ranked list. Brands will continue to use those lists to develop the relationships with the influencers and agencies that they know and love working with. They will always have their place as one of the many important tools to build a solid, over-arching digital marketing strategy encompassing outreach, agency, and talent management systems and processes.

More on this in our next article covering parent blogger rankings next week where we explore in a little more detail blogger opinions, and the good, and the bad around rankings, but for now let’s look at what parent blogger rankings, and influencer discovery tools are actually out there…and this is by now means a ranking or a definitive list *just saying*

Parent Blogger Rankings – What’s available?

What are the key rankings and databases that KiddyCharts has both featured in, and used as a digital marketing and outreach specialist over the last seven years?

Babios Statistical Analysis

This new kid on the blog is a statistical study that looks at parent blogging from a Mathematical point of view, primarily to see if it really is a numbers game. So does the bigger the audience mean the better the influence? Though clearly this isn’t the case, and you can still have a high level of influence, with a smaller audience size. In fact, one might imagine that as the audience grows, the engagement rate may very well drop. Those larger creators are still influencing a wider audience than their smaller counterparts just by virtue of reaching a bigger audience. For bloggers, this provides an interesting new take on where they sit within the community, without that focus on the numbers (though it is only one moment in time), and for brands it is a fascinating new way to look at the community.

Feedspot

A weekly top 100 parent blogger ranking; based on social and website metrics for the sites included. It’s a good overview, but it does seem a little bit of a mystery how the ranking is calculated; though perhaps this isn’t a bad thing as it means it is a lot harder for influencers to game the system.

Fohr

Since the advent of stories, and the emphasis on visual media, Instagram influence within the parent blogging, and creator community has grown. Fohr offers influencers and their clients a ranking based on verified influence and engagement, across most of the major social platforms, but with an emphasis on Instagram. For bloggers, it’s a way of proving authenticity, and for brands offers an opportunity to find creators with an Instagram focus.

HypeAuditor

A relatively new system, again focused on offering information on an infuencer/bloggers Instagram community, and their engagement levels. The system professeses to be able to rank an instagram influencers community based on their follower authenticity. Influencers can request a free report on their accounts to help weed out any bots, and non-engaged followers within their community. Brands can view to see which influencers have “real” audiences, while offering benchmarks for influencers to be able to see what engagement levels are reasonable depending on specific follower numbers.

Indahash

An influencer marketing app / database and community, again focused on Instagram offering creators and bloggers opportunities to work with brands, and the brands an opportunity to reach influencers. Influencers typically need to be registered with the platform to feature in their rankings, but brands can slice and dice the data as they wish around specific parameters.

Like Wise

A very new system focused entirely on improving authenticity within the influencer and blogging community; of which parent blogging is a niche area. The paid for database and ranking claims to be able to tell the 25% of creators and bloggers that have “fraudulent” followings on their social media platforms.

Oanalytica

A company that provides Influencer discovery and management software that releases its own rankings of parent bloggers annually based on their database. Their rankings are available on their site, and are generated through the use of their database. The ranking is therefore only as good as the search that generated the ranking. Those that are familiar with Boolean searching will know how difficult it is to construct a clean search to locate parenting bloggers. For example, the system seems to work on Twitter bio descriptions (or Twitter isn’t a focus for you), so if you don’t mention parenting, or mummy blogging within your Twitter bio, your influence may not be counted within the ranking.

Parent Blogger Leaderboard

Updated weekly (the most regular of the listings rather than the database tools, which can obviously be searched in real-time), this looks at a number of factors to develop an influencer ranking for each blogger. Rankings include Twitter presence, Kred (previously the system used Klout), number of blogs created, alongside comments on those blogs too. For bloggers, this provides a quick look at how things are going on a more regular basis, and for brands it is an easy way to see how active a blogger and their audience is.

Tots100

The most well known parent blogger ranking within the community, and one of the longest running ones. Parent blogs are ranked based on relative performance within the community for stats such as Instagram following, YouTube presence, website visits, and backlinks to site. Data is compiled from sources such as SEMRush, the Tots100 badge displayed on the blog sites, and social account info. For bloggers, this provides one of the most comprehensive views of their performance within the community, as well as a way of getting brand opportunities. For brands, the ranking offers a guide to those bloggers and influencers that are likely to be able to help with their specific products, particularly as the ranking is searchable. For example, if your brand is only interested in South East bloggers, with kids under 5, you can see which bloggers rank well inside those parameters. In addition, Tots100 also offer wider outreach services alongside their listings.

Flea Enterprises, who compile Tots100, also do influencer rankings for travel, food, vlogging and other areas too.

Social Blade

Offers both free and paid versions, again enabling the user to search on a specific influencer on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitch to see how they rank against other bloggers/influencers. Rankings are again created through a database, and based on the search criteria entered by the user. For brands, this largely focuses on video platforms, and is a great way of checking overall numbers. Overall rankings are available for some specific categories, but parenting isn’t one, so must be user generated. Which means the data is only as good as it search parameters again. For bloggers, this does give you rankings, but the free version isn’t niche enough to be able to see your position within the parent blogging community. It IS however, a great tool for spying on the competition; if that’s your game!

Tribe

Another network focused on Instagram, and the opportunities that it brings for creators and brands. Influencers and bloggers are invited to promote the brands they already use, and love. Submit to specific campaigns, and then see whether they photos are accepted. Brands submit campaigns, and approve those that respond. They key issue here is that bloggers and influencers often have to spend time, and effort creating content that is not them guaranteed to be accepted by the brand. Every creator within Tribe is given an influencer rating which ranks them within the overall Tribe community.

Tubular Labs Leaderboards

High respected leaderboards based on video views across YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram produced monthly within specific categories and countries. Higher level rankings are free for visitors to the site, and the full system can be purchased to see more niche details on creators, parent bloggers and influencers. Global and UK data provided, but only within the paid version for parent bloggers (which is a shame!). For brands, this is an excellent tool for measuring video influencer for parent bloggers/vloggers, and beyond. For bloggers, this offers one of the few lists across all social media for measuring your video influence. Fingers crossed that the system adds Instagram Story coverage soon. Stories coverage is a really big gap in the marketplace at the moment, particularly considering its importance to brands.

Vuelio Database (formerly Cision)

Another database provider, but this time focused on author influencer, rather than the creator and blogger space. This means that the listing is very much focused on the content produced by the author and website, and whether it all fits into the specific category the list applies to. The parent blogger rankings are based on a proprietary algorithm (aren’t they all!) which looks at social sharing, topic-related content, post frequency, engagement, social media influence, traffic and engagement; so the usual players. For bloggers, the top 10 lists are a great way to win business if you feature we’d imagine, and for brands as always, the lists are a great place to begin. However, the real value comes with the media database itself, which is full searchable, and gives much more info and flexibility than the lists themselves do. We have found it invaluable in our consultancy work in the past.

Upfluence

This is another paid for tool, which enables users to rank parent bloggers (and other influencers of course) depending on their own criteria. The system also enables brands to manage specific campaigns depending on the level of service opted for. This company hasn’t yet released a parent blogger ranking publicly, but one imagines it is only a matter of time. For bloggers, it just pays to be in it, but there isn’t much to be done if you aren’t. For brands, this is a robust, and higher level solution to outreach needs. It is for those looking for program management, and not just “a list” The system comes with a price tag, and the return on investment needs to marry with that initial cost.

Webfluential

Our final tool – it is at the end of the alphabet (!) is another network that offers rankings for brands, and insights into blogger engagement and audience authority using social reach on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Users can again search within specific categories for influential bloggers and creators, as well as create their own searches. Influencer data is more robust within this system as the influencers have agreed to give access to their accounts to Webfluential for data gathering, BUT the influencer has to be included within the system. In addition, personality analysis from Watson Wyatt is included within the data, and can be viewed on influencer media kits. For bloggers, you’ve got to be in it, to win it (!), and you can be offered collaborations through the system. For brands, the information provided on the bloggers and influencers within the parent blogger ranking is excellent because they have been given access to data. However, there are strong bloggers who aren’t included within the system in the parenting space, and also whose personality traits (however they have been calculated) could be seen as misleading, so it is important to view the definitions of all these closely and not to let them bias decisions too much. As always, the system should be seen as a guide for establishing wider relationships, and the ability to follow and reach out to influencer and brands is an additional and helpful tool within the system.

Other Parent Blogger Ranking Tools

Aside from these influencer rankings, there are social listening tools, that help determine what online influencers are talking about what topics, and with how much authority including Brandwatch (who produced a Twitter ranking for parent bloggers, and no own BuzzSumo and Crimson Hexagon), Kantar Media, and Pulsar to name but a few. There are tools that rank visitors to sites too, such as SimilarWeb, Alexa, and even some pitch pack tools like Ace Media, which provide measures for total social influence and website visitors, alongside information on demographics for the audience of the influencer or blogger.

There are almost as many tools to measure social influence and blogger engagement as there are social platforms….

It will always remain a personal choice for the brands and the bloggers which platforms they want to be on, or which parent blogger rankings brands want to carry most weight (if any) in their decision making. Hopefully though, this article has given you some insights, and ideas for the future.

Thanks as always for stopping by, and see you again soon. Don’t forget to pin this article for future reference, and if you like what you see, follow the blog too. We produce weekly printables, have great giveaways and reviews, as well as writing on blogging and parenting too from time to time.

Helen

 

 

Disclaimer

All the opinions in this article are those of the KiddyCharts editor (Helen Neale). They do not represent the opinion of anyone else, or any organisations that KiddyCharts have worked with as a digital marketing consultant or employee.

 

 

 

 

Sharing is caring!