1. Tag other pages - tagging pages is a great way to be seen on the business pages of businesses you support. One of the best ways is to do this as part of a recommendation to explain why you are tagging this page.
2. Introduce yourself - some pages allow you to post on their wall. Post an introduction of yourself and tag your page, and include a comment about the business you are posting on. For example “Hi, I’m Jane from My Business Page (with tag). It’s great to be part of this page, I love your products”.
3. Promotion pages - there are a lot of different pages that allow business mums to promote their business on their pages. Join these pages and use them to promote your business. Make sure you read the guidelines on the pages and post in keeping with their guidelines.
4. Terms & conditions - review the Facebook terms & conditions & other hints Facebook has. They have strict conditions about promoting your page, and in some of these there are also some great tips. These conditions include how you can promote your page on other pages.
5. Be involved - get involved with your favourite pages. Read posts and reply to the conversation. You never know when the chance to recommend your business may come up, or pages of some of your other favourite businesses.

I hope these tips are useful to help you promote your business on other Facebook pages. If you have any other tips, please share them with us.

Are you too cheap?

I read an excellent post this morning by Kathie Thomas about being a VA doesn’t mean ‘cheap’. Kathie makes some very good points, especially about charging enough so you can meet your cost of living.

There seems to be an attitude among business mums and WAHMs in Australia where they seem to be afraid to charge for their services. And, on the flip side, they seem to expect other businesses to put their prices lower simply because they are a business mum or WAHM.

Just because we work from home, doesn’t mean we have to do everything free or cheap. We are running a business to earn an income.

Melinda Brennan over at SuperWAHM created a WAHM Manifesto. This is free and well worth a read. Among other things, the Manifesto states that “Every WAHM has the right to earn a decent income”.

So, are you undercharging for your services? Are you too cheap?

If you’re not sure, try raising your prices slightly and see what happens. You may be pleasantly surprised.

This all got me thinking. One of Brenda Thomson’s favourite strategic alliance story is about a dentist and a masseur. I won’t tell the whole story here, but if you want to find out more, check out her site. In a nutshell, the masseur made the return visits a lot more attractive.

For children, the dentist can be a scary place. Can you imagine what would happen if the dentist teamed up with someone who created letters from the tooth fairy and sent reminder letters from the tooth fairy?

Keeping this in mind, if you need to send out reminder letters, is there a creative way you can send them out? For many of us, this may not be relevant, however if you find you send reminder letters and they aren’t getting results, think outside the square.

I know that if my kids received a letter from the tooth fairy suggesting a check up so their teeth would be perfect when it came time to collect them, they would be hassling me to make an appointment for them.

Do you have a creative way to send reminder letters to your clients?

I thought today I would post 5 ways NOT to promote your business via Facebook pages. These things may result in your posts being deleted, you being kicked off the page and banned, and even result in you being reported to Facebook.

1. Introduction - do you go to networking events and say “Hi, I’m Jane and I sell widgets, come and buy from me”? No… well this is what a lot of people do when they join a page. They say “Hi, I’m Jane from World Wide Widgets (with a link to their business page) come and join my page”. This gets really annoying reading posts like these. Better to say something like ” Hi, I’m Jane from World Wide Widgets (with a link to your page), what a great page this is, I look forward to getting to know your business”. If people are interested, they will join your page.
2. Tagging a promo - there are a lot of businesses out there who will post a promo on their wall, then tag a number of other pages. Sometimes this is good because the pages they tag are set up for these kinds of promotions, however others are not. Be careful when you do this to make sure the pages you tag are happy for these sorts of things to be added to their wall.
3. Tagging to get on a wall - I have seen a lot of businesses who will tag other businesses just to be listed on their wall. Again, this is OK if the business you are tagging is set up to accept these sorts of posts, otherwise if you are tagging a business, be open to why you are tagging them. For example you may recommend Jane’s Widget Page because she has great widgets your followers would enjoy. This way you have a reason to tag this page.
4. Inviting EVERYONE - when inviting people to join your page, be selective. Not everyone is interested in widgets. I get invited to join almost every page and at one point almost all of them had to do with maternity wear. I’m not pregnant and not planning to be, so these pages were of no interest. Especially if you invite a lot of people to a lot of pages, it can get annoying and will result in them blocking or deleting you off their list.
5. Friending page owners - this is something else that can get annoying. Many business owners set up pages for their businesses so they can keep the personal things apart from their business information and don’t want to be friended by everyone, especially if it’s for the purpose of promoting your business. Instead, if you like the look of a business owner and want to friend them, include a note introducing yourself and why you want to be on their friend list.

I hope these help you with promoting yourself and your business on Facebook. If you have any other things to add to the do not do list, please add them.

Next week I aim to include points on what TO do to promote your business on Facebook pages.

Email isn't always the best form of communication

Recently I changed the way people can get a newsletter from my business. Now, they can either get it via email or in the post. A number of people questioned this and the answer is simple - not everyone wants to get an email newsletter, some people prefer something in the post, and others simply don’t sit on the computer as much as we do.

I run a number of workshops and events - one is tonight - and I sent invitations to my database via email. Looking at the statistics, less than a quarter of the people I was inviting opened the email, and even less clicked on the link to book or for more information.

Thinking about my own habits, I often receive an email newsletter and leave it marked unread until I have the chance to go back and read it… and sometimes it stays unread until I delete it to clear out my inbox.

So, what have I learned from this?

Simple, communicating with your customers solely via email doesn’t always work.

It’s helpful to communicate via a number of methods, both online and offline. This could include sending something in the mail and picking up the telephone.

What am I going to do next time?

Next time I run an event, I plan to send a postcard or invitation to my database as well as send them an invitation via email, Facebook and other places they hang out.

How do you communicate with your customers? Is it solely via email, or do you have other strategies as well?

Do you have our favourite blog?

It’s that time again. Business Mums Network are once again conducting the Blog Awards.

We are on the hunt for Australia’s favourite blog by a business mum. This year, there is a twist, we will be running these monthly. Each month will have a different theme - for September we are looking for a blog by a business mum who blogs about her business.

Some examples are:

• Your Cheeky Monkey
• Mm is for Me
• AnK Bowtique

This is just a tiny selection of blogs.

We have some great prizes on offer for the winners, and simply by nominating your favourite blog, you can also win some great prizes.

If you’re looking for some blogs so you can nominate someone, have a look at the blogs that were nominated last year as well as the blogs on Business Mums Daily.

For more details about the Blog Awards, click here.

If you want to go straight to nominating, click here. If you enter your full details and join our VIP list, you are eligible to win some great spot prizes. You can nominate as many blogs as you like.

Choose the right charity for your business

If you’re anything like me, you are constantly asked to give money and donate products for charity fundraisers both for your business and in your family life. There often isn’t enough money in your bank account to give to everyone who is asking, and the same with products.

So, what do you do?

The best thing is to choose a charity or two that are important to you and give to those. Then, next time you’re asked to donate something you can tell them that you have your chosen charity and give to them (it’s amazing how effectively this works).

The next thing is to work out which charity to support. There are so many worthy causes out there it can be hard to know what to choose.

For a business, it can be a good idea to choose something that fits with what you are doing. For example, my chosen charity is Opportunity International because they help people start up small businesses, so it fits with what I’m aiming to do with my business.

I know of some business mums who use their family history as motivation for choosing a charity. For example I know of one business mum who supports Mummy’s Wish because a close friend of hers had cancer and received support from the. And another who supports Backpacks 4 Aussie Kids because her parents had foster kids when she was growing up. These charities don’t necessarily match their business, not in any obvious way anyway.

If your business does support a charity, it’s a good idea to have a page on your site explaining why you chose this charity to support. I have seen some businesses who make a big thing about supporting a charity, however if it’s not a charity I am not passionate in supporting and I can’t see an obvious reason why they are supporting this charity, then it won’t sway me to purchase from them. However if I can see a story behind why they support this charity, it is more likely to sway me.

Some time ago, I bought a gift online. Inside the package along with the item I purchased was a sheet thanking me for buying from them and explaining why they had chosen their charity and how my purchase helped support their cause. Unfortunately I can’t remember which business it was (it was quite a while ago), but their extra bit of information has stuck in my head.

Do you have a charity your business supports? Do you let your customers know about it? Please add a comment and share your story.

One of the inserts caught my eye - it was an order form marked “Trade Table Order Form”. As they were also a major sponsor, I assume they had the opportunity to have their insert highlighted during the notices part of the conference.

The point of this insert was obviously to drive people to their stand and place orders during the conference. As the conference was in Melbourne and the company was in Sydney, this also meant that a lot of the stock they brought down with them could be left behind as people ordered and bought their stock.

Have you ever had the opportunity to have a trade table, expo or market stand along with the opportunity for other promotion? If so, jump at it and use the other promotion to drive people to your business display instead of the others.

This company is also at the conference every year, and have been for a number of years, so the participants are expecting to see them and come ready with money to buy. Many of the products they now bring down with them have been pre-ordered by participants who simply fill in the form ready to take items home with them.

1. Take a break - if I can, sometimes taking a break from what I’m doing can help the inspiration come. It can be as quick as making a cuppa and coming back to the computer, or it may be taking the weekend off.
2. Read some blogs - depending on what I need inspiration on, sometimes reading some blogs can help. Sites such as Blog Whammy and Business Mums Daily have great blogs to read.
3. Music - listening to music can often help too. The sort of music I listen to depends on my mood and what I need inspiration for. Annette talks more about this on her blog.
4. Watch TV - yes, sometimes watching TV can provide inspiration! Again, it depends on the sort of mood I’m in, what I need inspiration for and what is on TV at the time. For example, last week I did a post inspired by The Collectors, a show on ABC I don’t normally watch, it just happened to be on at the time. You can read the post here.
5. Kids - as business mums, we have kids. There are times when things our kids say or do can provide inspiration, whether it’s for a blog post, new product or service, or even a business idea! Spend some quality time with your kids and pay attention, you never know when inspiration will strike. Just make sure you have a notebook with you to write down your ideas so you can continue having a great time with your kids.

These are just 5 things that help me, especially with blog posts, but also for other things. What things help you with inspiration, especially at times when you really need it?

Do you take a break?

Do you take a lunch break or do you madly work through without a break from the time the kids go to school to when they get home?

It can be tempting to work through without a break, suddenly realising that you’re hungry around the time you pick the kids up from school. Or taking your lunch to your desk and work while you eat.

Ask yourself this - in life before children, did you take a lunch break then? When I was working BC (before children), I would make a point of going to the corner shop for my lunch. If I had brought my lunch to work, I’d go and get a hot chocolate. This would give me a change of scenery and short work and a break from work.

Recently I’ve started having a lunch break. Usually I sit and watch Dr Phil or some other trashy thing on TV because it’s been too cold & wet to go for a walk. I wish there was a coffee place near me… Other times I’ll go up to my brother’s cafe or somewhere in between to have lunch or a hot chocolate for a change of scenery and a good break. Sometimes the break is for an hour, other times shorter, other times longer.

Having a break is important. Often great ideas will flow, but more often than not, the break helps me come back in the afternoon refreshed and ready for the next task.

So, do you take a lunch break? If not, it might be time to start.