Visit the Shaks

When it comes to marketing your business, social networking is rapidly becoming a must. And one of the common tools used now is Twitter. But sometimes things get a little heavy-handed on Twitter. In such cases of social media, blogging and marketing, ProBlogger almost always has relevant words of wisdom. Such is the case when it comes to affiliate marketing on Twitter. Here are 8 tips offered by Darren Rowse:

1. Be relevant.
2. Personalize.
3. Genuine recommendations.
4. Be conversational.
5. Indirectly link to affiliate products.
6. Be moderate.
7. Listen to followers.
8. Be useful.

I think #1 and #8 are especially applicable, as is moderation (#6) and being genuine (#3). If you are just trying to sell something, eventually (or not so eventually) people will figure it out and you will likely be shunned. And that does no one any good.

If you have a home business, you know how important it is to have a printer. And an all-in-one printer that can scan and fax as well is a definite bonus.

Over at Biz Chicks Rule, there is a contest for a brand new Epson all-in-one printer. Actually, there are two printers up for grabs. You have until Monday to head on over there and enter the contest.

I love The Office. I'm glad its back on again. Anyway, enjoy this look at The Office as a crime drama.

Happy Friday!

One of the promotional tools you can use for your home business is a blog. I really like these 12 Tips for Writing Better Blog Posts over at KoMarketing. Here are 12 ways you can improve the quality of your blog posts -- potentially pulling in more traffic for your home home business:

1. Write with clarity.
2. Identify the objective as quickly as possible.
3. Make your blog post titles strong.
4. Images can help bring interest to your post.
5. Organize your writing (subheads, bullets, etc.).
6. Focus on the subject.
7. Reference sources.
8. Link to related posts.
9. Be concise in a wrap up at the end.
10. Get some feedback before publishing -- even if all you do is edit it yourself for spelling and grammar.
11. Consider timing.
12. Evaluate and learn from the results.

Do you have any tips for writing better blog posts?

Yesterday, I mentioned that there are some ways that you can learn to market your home business on Twitter. But what about other social networking? There are plenty of social media sites out there, and you can build a profile and connect. Interestingly, The Wall Street Journal offers some insights on four social networking mistakes that can be made:

1. Basic, bare profile. Make it interesting, and add background information.

2. Little personality. It is important to be yourself, and present yourself as a person. Facts about your home business are dry and boring.

3. Too much hype. While social networking can be a good marketing tool for your home business, you can't be overly promotional. People get annoyed if all you do is sell, sell, sell without actually engaging.

4. Scarcity in terms of fresh content. Regular updates are important, or your profile will go stale.

I also think that it is important to add that too many social networking profiles can be a problem. Identify the communities to which you want to belong, and focus on three or four profiles that you have time to develop.

Do you have any social networking tips?

One of the great things that technology has provided us with is the option to engage in working from home...while not at home.

Right now I am in New York for two weeks, visiting my husband's family. And thanks to the wonder of the laptop, and wireless Internet, I can get my work done while sitting on the couch at my in-laws'. It works pretty slick. I can still "visit" to a certain extent, and I'll get my work done, even though I'm not in my home office.

Do you use technology when working from home while away from home?

When it comes to promoting your home business, it can help to have something unique and interesting. One idea is to give out digital keychains instead of the standard pens and magnets that other businesses use.

If you are ordering in bulk, it is possible to get wholesale prices on keychains, and many companies will also engrave the name of your home business (and maybe even a logo) on the back. Digital keychains are fun for the recipient, and they are useful. Take them to conferences and send them as gifts to regular clients.

Other unique ideas for promoting your home business include:

*Odd-sized business cards.
*Mousepads.
*Bookmarks.
*Re-usable shopping bags.

Social media is becoming increasingly important when it come to promoting your home business online. And one way to do this is through business blogging. But you do need to be able to promote your home business blog when you do this. And Facebook Pages offers a new way to do this. Problogger offers a look at Facebook Pages, and how it can help you home business blog:

Once you have created a page on Facebook, people can then become your “fan” or “supporter”. You don’t have to accept people as a fan and they can’t see your individual profile. On a page you can then easily add relevant pictures and video. You can have a discussion board and add any of the thousands of applications to your page.

I'm at my grandpa's house. I'd rather be fishing. But I'm writing a blog post. If I'd pre-posted this, I'd be catching some trout. But I'm not.

One of the best things you can do for your home business blog is to be familiar with the process of pre-posting. If you plan ahead, you can write your blog posts ahead of time, and then posting them doesn't cut into your precious vacation time.

Now, it's time for me to hit the stream.

One of the more difficult things to do in the summer is keeping the kids occupied. This can be especially challenging if you work from home.

Happily, there are some resources that you can use to find fun things for the kids to do, like this link list of educational games for kids to play online from BlogHer.

We have a laptop, so I've been letting my son spend a little time on the computer, while I get some work done on the laptop. He's learning, having fun and I'm getting work done.

When it comes to your home business, reputation is important. And a good online reputation can be very important. Problogger points this out about the importance of tools that help you monitor your online reputation:

The importance of such tools to bloggers is significant. Not only do they allow you to monitor what is being said about you and your company in the blogosphere - but to be able to set up tools to monitor when keywords in your niche are being mentioned is very important - particularly if you have a blog with a news focus.

So, how do you keep track of the online reputation of your home business?

There are many ways, including free tools from such sites as Google and Yahoo. However, a new online reputation monitoring tool is appearing in Trackur. Bad news: This service costs money. Good news: Packages start at a low $18 a month (and go as high as $188 a month -- yikes!).

If you use the tracking for your home business, you can count it as an expense on your taxes (yay!).
Carefully evaluate your home business needs, though. You may be just fine with the free tools out there. While you may not need something like Trackur, you should still be doing your best to monitor your online reputation.

One of the ways you can promote your home business Web site is with a blog. But you can't just put a blog up and expect people to come. Deb, over at Network Blogging Tips, offers some great insight into the mistakes that many new bloggers make. Don't let yourself fall into these traps:

1. Thinking that blogging is a way to get rich quickly.
2. Not doing enough research for your blog.
3. Blogging in a niche that is over-saturated.
4. Blogging about something you don't know.
5. Not promoting your blog.

Remember: If you do a good job with your blog, and you get out there and promote it -- especially by being a member of a community -- you will build a loyal following for your home business.

When it comes to your home business Web site, there are many tools that you can utilize in terms of building your online community. And one of those things is online forums. If you are wondering about online forums -- from how to get one set up and going to how to properly manage it -- Patrick O'Keefe has written a great handbook: Managing Online Forums.

As social media becomes increasingly important, this book has been released at an ideal time. It has everything. O'Keefe uses an engaging and conversational style to share his experiences with setting up and managing online forums. This book will take you from the basic technical steps of setting up an online forum through creating guidelines for community members to managing inflammatory postings.

If you are interested in adding an online forum to your home business Web site, this book is a great read.

I'm not really sure what to make of this. But it does amuse me. It amuses the heck out of me. Do you think this is really a good work from home opportunity? I'm not sure...

Happy Friday!

Sometimes, after a while, it becomes necessary to get a new look for your home business Web site -- or even change your brand. It can be a daunting task, but if you think it through, it is possible to change the way you've been doing things with your home business Web site.

Whether it's just a bit of a facelift, or whether you are going all out, a fresh change can be helpful. Just make sure that you accompany that change with a new "launch," and that you make sure your network knows what you're doing.

Congratulations to Sparkplugging (formerly eMoms@Home) on the new look!

One of the things you can do to help boost traffic to your home business blog is to takes steps to boost your online credibility. This is not done just by offering relevant and useful content on your home business blog. There are are things that you need to do in order to increase your credibility and your visibility.

Problogger points out that it takes time to build online credibility, and that it can't be rushed. Here are some other tips that Darren Rowse has with regard to building online credibility:

*Leave useful (and not self-promoting) comments on other blogs in your niche.
*Build relationships with others in your home business niche.
*Offer to guest post (and also accept guest posts) on related blogs in your niche.
*Have an opinion about what's happening in your niche.

Second Life is becoming a bigger and bigger trend. It is possible to attend jobs fairs and even get exposure real-world items and businesses when you create a Second Life.

And now, some experts are saying that ignoring virtual worlds like Second Life may be a bad idea. After all, if you want your home business to appeal to an under-30 crowd, it is important to start connecting with them on a variety of levels.

Learning Second Life can be time-consuming, though, so you need to carefully evaluate your home business and decide whether other avenues of social networking may be better for your time.

In honor of Earth Day, I thought I'd share some tips on conserving energy with your home office computer. These energy saving tips come from The Simple Dollar, and many of them are fairly easy to implement:

1. Use a SmartStrip for your computer and its peripherals. You plug the computer into the main "outlet" and when the computer is on, everything else on the strip gets energy. When the computer is off, everything else is as well.

2. Change the energy settings on your computer.

3. Put chargers (including your laptop charger) on a timer so that they only come on for a limited time.

4. When you replace home office equipment, do star with EnergyStar 4.0 equipment.

5. Dim your computer monitor's brightness.

Every little bit helps.

Happy Earth Day!

Here is a look at integrated product management from Ryma Technology Solutions:

One of the keys to growth in any company, whether a home business or a large multi-national corporation, is to leverage technology in a way that allows you to provide maximum value to your customers. For home business, this is especially important, since technology is often what allows you to get your products and services out to the world.

Integrated product management allows you to combine a variety of processes is an efficient and innovative manner. Even if you are more geared toward services, there is a lot to be learned from integrated product management. The principles can apply in nearly any home business setting. The principles of cooperation and information exchange are especially important. Not only does it help in large corporations, but it can apply to small groups of home business owners working together.

Ryma Technology Solutions is part of the Integrated Project Management Alliance. Seminars on applying integrated project management are being offered by the IPM Alliance on April 24 in Minneapolis and April 29 in Jersey City.

Hee, hee.

Sean Kelly over at FranchisePick.com put me on to this great Web site, blaugh.com. If you are looking for a funny way to lift the spirits of visitors to your home business blog, or if you are looking for a clever addition to your "error" page, this might be the way to go. (cartoon source: blaugh.com)

If you are looking for the lighting of a 40-watt bulb, but are concerned with making your home office a little greener, you might try this gravity powered lamp. I saw it over at My Organized Biz, and read about it in greater detail at Science Daily.

Hmmm...with Earth Day coming up in April, this might be just thing to spruce up your home office while being kind to the environment.

(Image credit: Clay Moulton)

One of the reasons for having a home business blog is to help bring traffic to your work from home Web site. So, it follows that you need to bring traffic to your home business blog.

At Just Make Money Online, there are some great suggestions for increasing pageviews on your home business blog. Many of them are based on some tips offered by Darren Rowse over at Problogger:

*Emphasize related posts (add links to posts that are related).
*Create compilation pages that include "best of" lists or posts that are related to each other.
*Make your home business blog interactive (allow comments, etc.).
*Create quality content.
*Include social networking marketing in your efforts.
*Include images and video on  your home business blog.

One of the online trends that keeps getting bigger is social networking. You can't keep up with everything out there, but you can pick a few things to help improve traffic to your home business blog. One of the things I have recently discovered is Twitter.

Well, someone told me about it. This is a social networking site that allows you to post brief updates as to what you are doing. Things like "Good morning. Time to get to work," and "Off to the store for some bread." But you can also use it to update your "followers" (the people that look at your updates) about the latest post on your home business blog. This is done via Twitterfeed.

Cautionary point: As with all social networking, it is important for you to be involved in your community. Twitter is no different. You need to add valuable content so that the Twitterfeed of your home business blog is viewed as more than just spam.

If you are a woman, and involved in ecommerce, you might consider submitting your name for the Who's Who Directory of Women in eCommerce. This is an interesting resource that may help you connect with other women who have their own online business, or offer services through a Web site. Here is the information on who qualifies, from the Women's eCommerce Association, International:

The Who’s Who Directory will include women who have an online presence either in the form of a website or blog and who either promote a product or service via one of those vehicles (or you make money through affiliate sales).  Your site does not have to have a shopping cart to qualify, just be one of the ways your customers and clients can find you. The information will be published online and promoted via our websites, media releases, WE Magazine for Women and our global network of women’s organizations.

A basic listing is free, although there are some extended listings for $25. I'd stick with the basic listing to start. These Who's Who directories are nice, but they are rarely worth the money when you start paying for listings. You can get the same results (and often better) by engaging in traffic building activities like commenting on blogs and forums.

Go to www.whoswhoinecommerce.com for more information.

Couldn't resist this hip-hop video from Siemens. Happy Friday!

Many times, a home business Web site will feature an impersonal bio. Think about the bio on your home business Web site. How does it sound? Is it distant, perhaps written in the third person? Dawud Miracle over at eMoms@Home points out that your home business Web site bio is an important part of connecting with others:

A good bio shows that you’re human - that you’ve made mistakes and learned lessons. It meets the audience where they are in language they can understand. Ultimately, your audience should identify with you in your bio. They should see themselves in some part of it.

You are more likely to get new clients if you can connect them. You want them to feel comfortable with you. And when your home business Web site is the first "face" that they see, it is important to make that face warm and "touchable."