NETWORKING WAHM

Archive for the ‘Networking Online’ 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.

15 TIPS TO GET YOUR TIME BACK -

We are all guilty aren’t we? Ever have a full day go by and you have no idea even what time it is? Have you been online for hours already today? You have no idea even where your day has gone? Your day it’s almost over. It’s so easy to do. Many of us work online as careers. Most of your day or all day is spent typing away. If your a writer, if you write a blog, if you have a website or do something similar; much of your day is spend looking at computer all day.

How do we get our lives back from spending all day on the computer?

1) Take breaks –  for meals, bathroom breaks, phone calls and errands. Many of us don’t get up enough and move around.

2) Schedule your online time, like you do with the rest of your life. Block it off on your calendar as you would any other activity. So you clearly can see how much time you spend online. You can schedule your real life around your computer time.

3) Pick up the paper and pen again. Take a break sometimes and brain storm on paper first. You would be surprised how many new ideas will flow on paper. Sometimes you can build off of the ideas when they’re all there in an outline or  a bubble map.

4) Prioritize what has to be done first. So everyday do you really need to check your hosting account or read every email. Probably not?!

5) Minimize your life how many email accounts do you really need?

6) Hire help hire or an intern, if you need it? Have someone else check your emails and lighten up the load on you.

7) Teach your children to help you with some of your responsibilities.

Use technology find the best cellphone style for you and use it wisely.

9) Multitask, you can read your emails at your child’s soccer game.  

10)  Think about what your prioritizes are for the day, before getting online. Set short term goals with your time.

11)  Set a timer, so you don’t get carried away. Some may really need reminders to stop and move onto something else.

12) Rethink which Social Sites are working for you, which ones you can skip. Your goals for why your online should help your to decide which ones are best for you. Really think on how does it benefit you by taking the time out of your day to be on it?

13) The four letter word “SPAM” This is by far my worst nightmare. I have some tips for this LARGER than life problem. Delete often, sort if by sender and mass delete and don’t make it a priority in your life. This would be a perfect job for your new intern. Don’t you think!

14) Take a vacation sometimes from being online. Tell your friends your taking a break and give them a time frame as to when you’ll be back.

15) Put your spouse to work. Have them help you with the family emails, computer banking, etc.

We all use social media and love it, right?  We use it as a great free resource for meeting new people, advertising our products or sites  and networking with others with the same interests. Can it be harmful to you and your family, by using as much as you do?

We all love social media, how could you be overwhelmed by it? Just google social media icons, how many on the list do you recognize? What are there a hundred currently, maybe there’ll be a thousand? Counting all the ones which are currently being developed and not released yet. If I see one more new icon and not recognize it, I’ll scream. I think all the letters from A to Z, have just about been all been used for the single letter icons, right? Social media is totally overwhelming to some. I’m one who finds it a tad bit overwhelming to learn to all these sites really well. Couldn’t they at least function similarly?

It’s overwhelming for the fact there are so many. You can actually have a hard time deciding which ones to sign up for, never mind keeping up with using them reguarly. Challenging isn’t it!  I guess you need to really learn more about each, find the ones which will work for you and/or your business.  There are a few, I will not mention the names, which are much more user friendly in their design layout, for non computer people. Others are harder to use, I wish they would improve their design layout.  I just don’t understand why you  would bother to use a social media site, which is very difficult to the average person to navigate? I think we will start to see some fail, because there too many flooding the web, it seems.

Have you ever been on  a social media site till 1 or 2 AM? It’s easy to do, you really loose track of time once you get on. If  your one who is on at 2 AM, you may need to take a break. Your family will thank you for taking a social media vacation! Return to the quality family time you had before social media came about. Take your children somewhere.  Just tell everyone on your favorite social media sites ahead of time. Tell them  your taking a social media vacation for the fact your kids want to see you,  not the back of your head.

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

Online Networking – Streamline the Process to Save Time

By DeAnna Troupe

Online networking is an awesome way to get new clients. However, it can be difficult to handle all of the invitations and manage all of the connections. Here are some steps to help you streamline the online networking process.

1. Use templates whenever possible.
There are many tasks that you do over and over again. You send invitations, thank you notes, and updates. You can save yourself time if you create a template letter in word or notepad. This way instead of having to think of what you want to write, you can just copy and paste the letter.

2. Outsource the tasks.
You can also save yourself time in your online networking by outsourcing your online networking tasks. There are virtual assistants that specialize in contact management. Since you have created templates, you can just email these files to your virtual assistant and have her send those emails out.

3. Designate a certain amount of time to spend on online networking.
Another way to save time networking is to only allot a certain amount of time per day to network. Only do your networking tasks once or twice per day.

4. Set up a separate email account that you use just for online networking.
If you belong to a lot of online networks the amount of email messages that you get can get overwhelming. I have a different email account set up that I only use for networking. This way my invitations don’t get lost among other email messages.

Online networking is a great free way to get new clients. Use the steps I mentioned above to streamline your online networking efforts.

DeAnna Troupe is a virtual assistant. Claim your free ecourse on traffic generation today by going to http://www.deannaspencer.com/list.html

Networking on My WAHM Space: The Basics

“My WAHM Space” is a great new way for women who have businesses to network with each other! Each week, registered members (registration is free) of this fantastic community get together on the web forums, live chats and other fun events designed to help women showcase their businesses and talk about the challenges of owning a business. Each member gets their very own profile page where they may include information about their business including links to their personal blogs and business website(s). Then at different times throughout the week, members can hold online chats to sell their products and they offer some great deals!

Of course, there are web discussion forums and chats where Mom’s can ask questions, talk with each other, vent if needed and find a social outlet that encourages and educates all. My WAHM Space is better than other social networking sites out there because here you can find other Mom’s who can relate to and understand the unique challenges of being both a Mom and a busy business-person. Where else can you find true friends who share the same experiences, trials and successes as you?

Not only can you share ideas with other Mom’s, but you can build a blog and use the power of the Internet to write about your life, your business and any other interests you may have. Use this tool to post pictures about yourself, the products or services you offer and how other Mom’s can benefit from learning more about you. You can add a group of favorite members and get to know them through the weekly activities available, plus save time and money in your advertising efforts. Send email reminders out to your friends and family and other members to come check out what’s new. My WAHM Space is full of opportunities to use social networking to build your business and make friends at the same time, so I encourage you to check it out today.

Finding an Online Community for Women in Business

As a businesswoman, it’s very important to have a good support network.  You need fellow businesswomen to share experiences and tips with.  You need women who are in fields related to yours to ask questions.  The sense of community provided by a group of businesswomen can help see you through the tough times.

But finding a group in your area isn’t always practical.  Maybe there are networking groups that you could join, but they might meet at times that are not convenient for you.  Or if you’re not in a metropolitan area, there may not be any groups that are especially for women in your area.  That doesn’t mean that you’re left out in the cold, though.

There are plenty of online communities designed for businesswomen and female entrepreneurs.  These communities offer such features as profile pages, forums, chat rooms and classified ads.  They give women a place to connect with like-minded women from their own homes and offices.

With all of the online communities for businesswomen out there, it can be tempting to join and participate in them all.  But by doing so, you limit your opportunity for meaningful connections.  Keeping up with so many different communities takes a lot of time, and there’s little possibility for reward.  By finding one or two good communities and sticking with them, you can better reap the benefits they have to offer.

Here are some tips for finding the right online community for you.

* Keep your objectives in mind.  If you are looking for referrals, a group that consists completely of women in your field is probably not the best choice for you.  That doesn’t mean you can’t join for the opportunity to learn from others in your business, but if referrals are what you want, you may not want to limit yourself.

* Ask colleagues for recommendations.  Those who are experienced in online networking often know the best places to do so.

* Take the groups that interest you for a test drive.  Many communities offer a free trial, and some are completely free.  So if you find one you like, join up and network with the members for a week or so.  This will give you a feel for how everything works and how supportive the other members are.  If you decide it’s not for you, move on and find something else.

* Read the rules of such communities carefully.  Most have restrictions on blatant advertising.  While it is rarely banned outright, there is often a designated time or place for it.  Disobeying these rules could get you booted, and at the very least it will turn off the other members.

Online networking is a great way to find business partners and generate referrals.  Communities designed specifically for women are also valuable sources of business advice, and can result in lasting friendships.  Even if you have the opportunity to network locally, networking with fellow businesswomen online offers lots of rewards.

Some great places to check out are:
My WAHM Space
Mom Masterminds

Are you using Facebook? This is a great new way to keep in touch with others on the Web. It provides real time updates on what people are talking about, what they’re sharing, including images and stories. If you are on other social networking sites like MySpace or if you blog, you can link your sites to Facebook and keep everyone up to date. One of the unique features of Facebook that a lot of network marketing people use the list of feeds available to the public. This lists the most popular topics and pictures that people are posting online. Marketing gurus can use this list to promote their opportunities and get a better response based on the trends online. With the millions of people using Facebook every day, you can take advantage of this growing network and increase traffic to your own website.

Do you Twitter? It’s the great new way to increase traffic to your website by providing a way for you to find out who’s talking about you!

This network marketing tool was invented to allow companies to monitor others in the Internet who are talking about their products and services in real time. That means, if you have a company, you can set up targeting tracking of how and where people are talking about you by using Twitter. Some highly respected companies like Dell and Comcast are using Twitter to monitor Internet “chatter” to find send out responses to consumers who may be interested in what they’re doing.

Twitter tracks keywords and phrases that the companies set up and can change as needed. If you own a personal website or blog, you can use Twitter to stay connected to the people who read your blogs, family and friends who may be responding to your posts and pictures on various other social networking sites.