Given the ever-expanding role of online platforms in networking, creating awareness and marketing, two Turkish women have dug in their “digital heels” to create a platform bringing together Turkey’s leading female digital content producers — bloggers, influencers and entrepreneurs — and users.

Elif Dogan and Perihan Gurer both left their careers after becoming mothers in the last decade. Both were also attracted to social media to share experiences about their transition. Today, more than 100,000 online users separately follow Dogan’s blog and Instagram account, “Blogcuanne” (Blogging Mother), and Gurer’s Instagram account, “UykusuzAnnelerKulubu” (The Sleepless Mothers Club).

After completing graduate studies in management at the University of Baltimore and working for civil society organizations in the United States for five years, Dogan gave birth to the first of her three sons in 2006, after which she returned to Turkey. She started writing a blog as a hobby in 2009, and since 2011, she has done so professionally. In 2013, she published a book, “Motherhood Is Not Always Rose Colored.”

Gurer, who has a graduate degree in management from Istanbul University, left the corporate world soon after the birth of the first of her two daughters. She founded “The Sleepless Mothers Club” in 2011 as a social entrepreneurial initiative to share mother-to-mother guidance and support as well as offer expert knowledge and useful information on topics of interest to women.