NETWORKING WAHM

Archive for the ‘Networking’ Category

We ALL have time management issues today. How do we improve our time management to create more time to network? How does improving our time management lead to networking opportunities more often? Implementing time management skills will ease up your with time to attend more meetings to meet more contacts.

By attending more meetings means more contacts in your network. Professional contacts are people who know and trust you! They are your best references and the “word of mouth” is still the most trusted from of advertising. Your contacts are your referral partners. A referral partner is simply a professional contact who will vouch for you. We all know of people who are great at what they do in our network often in conversations someone will say “I need to work on find someone who’s knows how to___”. We’ll say in reply ”I know of a guy who does___ ” Now how many times have we heard that phrase? Often by having a large referral base it will lead to more clients. Then end result is more income to your business! 

Part of time management is outsourcing when needed. As you grow with your business, you’ll learn we’re really better off hiring out some tasks…granted it’s hard to hand over control. We totally understand, it’s a necessary step to get to where you want to be in the end! For growth and expansion, even to look more polished and professional it’s necessity in some aspects of business.

It’s in the nature in our culture today, time management and networking are harder. It’s harder to find time for networking with so many devices to manage we’re all overwhelmed. With loads of social media sites to stay actively engaged on. Then we have loads of activities to attend for business/career and our family time to manage too.. we’re BUSY! Busier than we have ever been. How on earth can we find the time to network to build our contacts for our business or career growth?

We’re bombarded with emails and direct messages from everywhere today. From everyone from professional contacts to others who’d just like to get to know us a bit more. With all the job seekers out there reaching out, you may come across those messages also. You’ll have those who’d like to work for you reaching out. Many job seekers have taken to writing emails for leads.

All the messages are really overwhelming and hard to keep up with. Also, spammers are still able to make there way through the spam filters with very ingenious ways. They’re great at tricking the system. So how do you personally manage all of the messages and weed out the ones which are the most important? *TIP* - Personally I use lists everyday in my email accounts and in social media.

Suggestions to help :

1) Use folders in within your email!  Make folders and move your emails around. To utilize NEW folders it’s a step to stay organized. Prioritize how soon you need to reply to keep you organized ”High Priority”, “Reply A.S.A.P.”, “Answer Soon” “When I have time” for example are great folder titles.

2) Consider outsourcing for your email or other tasks! Outsourcing has grown tremendously over the last few years. Outsourcing is taking off! Outsourcing has grown, because our needs have changed and the way we do business has changed! The need for all of us is really to be out front and “the face” of your business! To become very diversified with our marketing campaigns! We all need to do it all! To be out front rather than on the backend of our businesses or careers. This is really why outsourcing has grown.

3) Consider hiring a Virtual Assistant! The VA community of professionals is a fantastic resource for anyone who would prefer to be networking over replying. There are many stay at home mothers who are former corporate women who today are top notch Virtual Assistants.

4) Prioritize importance of actions! Do what needs to be done now? Have a what I call a ”Priority Hit List” The 5 top priorities of the day are_____, ____,____,_____, and _____    All the rest for messages and actions can wait until later.

5) Delegate to others! As a business owner the hardest part is really finding people with strong work ethics to accomplish your mission! Who are those people you’d impeccably trust? Those who’d do a quality job at the tasks assigned? Those are the people you “MUST” have as employees. It’a not an option in hiring! To go the top, top people are must haves! If you’d like your company to go grow must start with quality people. Put enormous time into finding the right team of people! The return on investment is HUGE!

6) Consider hiring social media management or a consultant. Social media consultants are the way to go for better understanding how to effectively target your audience. Think of a target when it comes to social media marketing. Excellent marketing people understand how to find the center of the target, your prime clients you’ve been working so hard to locate yourself. I believe in working smarter not harder. I own a company which does exactly this! My NEW company Divas Social! You name it we do it when it come to social media! http://divassocial.com  On Twitter – http://twitter.com/divassm and  http://twitter.com/divassocial  On Facebook -  https://www.facebook.com/DivasSocialMedia 

7) Training your family for tasks you have been doing yourself. Aren’t we mothers all guiltly of doing too much ourselves? Children are great at helping once they feel rewarded for their actions. Laundry, Dishes, Cleaning, Emails etc. the list goes on. They’ll need these skills once they’re grown so why not start to mastering it now?

Break large projects into tasks. Always step and chunk your work into smaller pieces. It’s less overwhelming to look at smaller steps. It’s always easier with large projects to have phases or steps leading to a much bigger goal.

Being a mother is often referred to as a “full-time job” and with all of the responsibilities and duties that come along with this title it is unfortunate that overtime pay is not an option. In an economy where a dual income isn’t a so much additional as it is necessary income, not everyone has the luxury of “mother” being their only occupation. Many moms out there are finding that they need to go back to work but might not quite be sure how to get back into the professional world. After all, where do job searches and interviews fit in between dropping off the kids at school and rushing them to soccer practice afterward? Luckily, for the modern women, multitasking is usually not a problem and technological advances are making it easier than over to market yourself professionally without spending too much of your precious time on those efforts. 

First, if you want to be on the job market you are going to have to put yourself out on it. The quickest way to do this is by establishing a professional online presence. These days, employers like to do a little background research on potential employees, so make sure that your professional and not personal self is what initially pops up on Google searches. There are several resources you can use to quickly establish your professional online presence, but one of the best and time-efficient ones is LinkedIn. This professional networking Web site allows users to connect with other professionals in their industry for various business purposes. By creating an account with LinkedIn you are able to create an online profile that includes information about your professional experience, educational history, and portfolio work. This is a great way to get your resume information out there without taking the time to send out a bunch of resumes to potential employers.

Having a LinkedIn profile that shows up when someone enters your name into an online search engine can also save you a lot of time in the interview process. When interviewers already have some knowledge about your work experience and educational background they can cut right past the informational part of the interview and ask the most important questions that will let them know if you are the right person for the job. This saves both of you time as you won’t be called in for any interviews you are not qualified for and the ones that you are qualified for  will likely go a lot faster.

This online tool also serves as a great way to network without having to take the time out of your busy schedule to attend job fairs, hiring events, or other social functions. LinkedIn allows you to connect with other professionals you have worked with in the past and discover the inside connections you may have that can lead to future career opportunities. It also helps you to identify industry executives and other management professionals in your field that could have the power to put you in the right position. Rather than spending hours researching companies to find out who you need to contact in order to secure an interview, you can just search for professionals in your area and invited them to look at your profile to bring attention to your credentials and generate interest in your capabilities.

By-line:

Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online college. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031 @gmail.com.

It’s a hard economy, what steps can you take which are not costly, benefit your business and are easy to do?

5 TIPS -

1) Start bartering with you local contacts for services. Use the bartering “topic”, as a means to network and meet more local businesses.  Take the topic out into your city or town and ask other local businesses, if they would be interested in bartering. If they don’t already, branch out and develop your bartering group. If you city or town doesn’t already have one this may be a fantastic networking opportunity for all of your contacts. Think of bartering as a way you can decrease your expenditures and still keep your business fully functional.

2) Offer you employees bartered services as bonuses. Many bartering groups use gift certificates. By offering your employees gift certificates, you form a good a working partnership with other companies. This will be a great way for you to form a new networking group. If you have more than just yourself to take advantage of bartering, you’ll spread your business name. Often your employee, will develop into a new repeat customer which is a winning situation for the other business.

3) Join as many coffee business networking groups as your time will allow. Often they are not advertised, so you may need to ask around and use the Internet to find the groups.

4) Rather than having to push yourself to always sell your business. Just invite local contacts you would possibly like to do business with to your coffee group. Let the natural friendships form.

5) Use social media to network your business. Often we use it solely for our personal use. Promote your specials, new products, bonus deals, coupons etc. with social media. You would be surprise how well it works. For those who use it regularly, no advertising compares to the reach which social media has.

Networking  is the most solid way to grow and develop yourself  as a business professional, by networking your business will naturally grow. You can do both at the same time, most of us learn almost through osmosis just by being around others. You not only meet potential clients, but also friends you’ll learn from. Networking is a tried and true method of growing any business. Networking doesn’t have to cost a lot,  you can become your own advertising and marketing consultant. You just have to be sincere and yourself. How great is it to know, you yourself, are your own best marketer and salesperson ever!

With a new year around the corner, many of us are making new plans for growth and change. The New Year is coming up, how are you planning on changing your business and social  life. Have you given thought to adding  any new networking groups to you marketing plan in the new year? Your should try to add a few groups each year. Drop out of  networking groups which have not worked in the past year in helping you grow your business.  Try to find the networking groups which will be more effective in your growth. Seek out the groups which are not far for you to travel to. Time is money and money is time, including travel time. If you start your research online try to find the groups in your area which will best serve you.

In thinking about joining more groups in the new year. Also think about professional organizations, entrepreneur groups, and technology groups. Think outside of the box, maybe join the groups you can learn from in addition to offering just networking opportunities.  Think about your own skill set and what you could benefit from learning when looking into groups. Classes are also a great way to network.  In doing so you can grow your list of contacts, from an ample group of contacts to a new substantial group. Just think of how much you could grow your business, if you substantially increased your contacts in one year. How much would you grow?  Really contemplate on doubling your contact list over time.

We have all given of our time to causes over the years. Have you ever considered drawing together your local contacts, to help a cause together?

No better way, for your contacts to truly be themselves and get to know each other on a personal level first. Down the road, maybe trying each other’s services or products.  Networking on a professional level is much more stuffy. Networking in a fresh and different way, to bring local people together. Bring your favorite local people in your network to get to know each other, in such a selfless way, is fantastic. Networking done face to face, on your home turf in a low key way, how  fun, and  it’s all for a good cause. It doesn’t get any better and you’ll feel great after! 

For WAHMs,  it’s the perfect way to get to know other WAHMs,  in a more relaxed way. Our challenges are not being able to get out as much as we’d like, with our work being at home. Doing work for a cause, would be the prefect outlet of us occasionally.

Idea:  You could create a team.  For example -  Susan G Komen Race for the Cure, it would be perfect cause for women coming together. Being able to  train as a  local team of business people, make new friends and business contacts while raising money of a great cause.  Read the rest of this entry »

Please come  over and join our Circle of Moms Community. Please feel free to ask your questions. I have often given thought to starting a forum for Networking WAHM. Circle of Moms is convenient for most of us who are Facebook users, I felt it was logical choice.

Networking Mom

Networking WAHM – Circle of Moms

One of the easiest ways to develop your network of contacts is to go to every party your invited to.  The focus is off you at a party which is not your own. There is no pressure on you. By going to a large variety of events you’ll meet many different people from all different backgrounds and businesses.

Learn as you go and watch others and how they network and learn from them. If  you have a contact who you feel networks well bring them along. Watch them as they use their networking skills and learn how they do it.

Direct sales parties, graduation parties, birthday parties, retirement parties are all fun places to network.  At this time of year there are many parities to attend. Never miss any event to mingle and learn from others.

So many of us would like to be great at networking or really want to be better at it? In  many of the networking groups you stand up and present your business to others. So do you have any anxiety about doing this? I know I do not like it, but will do it when needed.

So how can you become great in business if you  can’t do any public speaking? I really do think there are many people have stage fright and many us suffer from this. Many people have a real  public speaking anxiety issue, just the thought makes many nervous.

I know many people who really dread the idea of walking into a room of strangers at new meetings, events, etc. Are you one? A great tip is to get there early, so when the people start arriving they meet you first and you’ll feel more comfortable knowing a few people a little before it starts.

Many of us have public speaking fears. Do you hate the thought of getting getting up in front of a group.  You can take a class to work just on public speaking, it may just really help you in your business.

So the first step is learning about your fear or fears and facing it.  You can take small steps to face your fears. So you can network in all situations.

Network anywhere and everywhere! Just about anywhere you go, can become a great moment to spread the word about your business. Ask others what they do, tell  them about what you do and what your business is about.

I recently took a trip to see family. During the sit and wait time at the airport, I networked as much as I could. I feel the contacts I made gave me some good business advice and leads on some of the resources, which I need. Great contacts can some from just about anywhere why not the airport talking with other travelers.  Business people are very interesting to talk with and you learn just by listening. You both have the time just to sit and talk. Be it in the airport or on the plane use the time wisely!