Step Ahead says I am a Social Media Star!

It was great to receive this honor by Step Ahead, Inc. , a company that offers social media, Internet marketing and public relations services. They recently featured me as February's Social Media Star.

Thanks!

Guest Author - Top 10 Tips for Growth through CHANGE

Deciding to be a mom entrepreneur is something that requires change and personal growth.

Sometimes change can be overwhelming, even if the change is something you have chosen to do. You can manage change, and use it to grow towards fulfillment and happiness. Many mom entrepreneurs chose this path because it is something that aligns with their values. That’s the first step in successful change. The rest of it takes commitment, courage, passion, and a bit of guidance.

To start you off, below is a list of Top 10 Tips and things to remember for achieving personal growth through change:

1. Change happens to everyone. You can learn to GROW through CHANGE.
2. You are in charge. Things are not happening to you…YOU are making things HAPPEN!
3. Know what you value. If you don’t, you will inevitably get stuck doing the things you don’t!
4. Do things that honor your values – this is how you will find joy in everything you do.
5. Assess where you are before you decide where you want to be!
6. When looking at your life, look at the whole of it – ALL of the areas. You need to understand the context of your life before you make changes in any area (i.e. if you want to make changes in your career, you have to make sure you understand where you are in the rest of the areas of your life – family, friends, community in order to make changes in that one area).
7. When setting intentions, go for it! You can ask the universe for anything you want! Why limit yourself?
8. When setting goals, make them measurable, obtainable, and in line with your values!
9. The key to success is intention, commitment and communication! Think it, document it, and tell someone about it!
10. ABOVE ALL ELSE, BE GRATEFUL. It is the most powerful attraction force available.

Rebecca Rodskog is a Change Agent, Life Coach, and the founder of Rodskog Change Consulting. Her mission is to lovingly guide individuals from Point A to Point B on the path to personal growth and fulfillment. She helps people grow through change. Visit www.rodskog.com for more information.

Free Strategy Roundtables for New Entrepreneurs

I recently received this information from Maureen Kelly at Biz Book PR. It looked very valuable so I wanted to pass it along. I have signed up for the March 25th roundtable discussion.

Early stage entrepreneurs generally cannot afford a top strategy consultant to help solve problems on product strategy, channel options, positioning, financing, etc. So, as part of her effort to rejuvenate the economy through promoting entrepreneurship, serial entrepreneur and strategy consultant Sramana Mitra will be hosting some free online Strategy Roundtables with Dimdim--the open source web conferencing platform.

Following are the sessions available:

• Wed., Feb. 18, 11:30am-12:30pm PST
• Wed., Mar. 11, 9-10am PST
• Wed., Mar. 25, 10-11am PST

During each 60-minute session, entrepreneurs are invited to pitch Sramana their ideas in a 3-minute presentation. She will review the material in real-time and provide feedback on each pitch, as well as address specific strategy questions from the entrepreneur.

Afterwards, she will take questions about strategy from other participants. The session is open to 1,000 people, but only the first five to sign up for each session will have the opportunity to pitch Sramana and discuss their business. The rest of the attendees can listen, and learn from the interaction. More often than not, the same questions are on many minds, so listening to the roundtable discussions is always a good learning experience.

For more information and to register, click here.

Sramana Mitra is the author of Entrepreneur Journeys, now available on Amazon. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has founded three companies and provided strategy consulting to over 80 organizations, large and small. She is a weekly columnist for Forbes and writes a widely syndicated business blog, “Sramana Mitra on Strategy” (http://www.sramanamitra.com/). Sramana has a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Blog Design Giveaway

Ariane Griffiths of Foundation Studio Special Events, who is also a member of The Mom Entrepreneur Online Support Group, recently announced a free Platinum Blog Design Pkg. valued at $350.

The package includes:

• Custom header
• Coordinating graphic/color background
• Optional background detail (a.k.a “glare”)
• Custom template
• Optional navigation bar
• Favicon (Check out ours to the left of our address bar)
• 1 - 125×125 web button
• 1 - 120×40 vertical banner
• Post signature

You are invited to enter your name to be included into the drawing. Enter here - http://foundationstudio.ca/archives/350. One lucky winner will be picked at random on February 23rd . Good luck!

Congratulations to our recent contest winners!

Congratulations to Bridget Moore of Gourmet Chocolate Bon Bons who was the winner of our MarketSplash HP giveaway. Bridget has won a $300 credit towards design and printing services from MarketSplash by HP, which provides all the small business marketing materials, products, and design services you need in a single, easy-to-use interface. Their brand marketing solution includes award-winning design templates, professional business cards, standout websites, traffic-driving direct mail postcards, and many more marketing products.

"I am so excited to win this great gift! My business is fairly new and I try not to use too much of our home finances to fund my business. This will be a wonderful help! I think I will look at things like promotional items i.e.: pens and maybe some mugs I can use to put my chocolates in, I need a rubber stamp or two and I think maybe a professional logo would be great! Thank you again for such a great contest!" - Bridget Moore of Gourmet Chocolate Bon Bons

Congratulations also to Gail Klanchesser of Coastal CPR and First Aid who won our "my gift for one wonderful woman contest". She will receive The Lovely Book For Wonderful Women by Lehla Eldridge and a "you're beautiful pass it on" t-shirt from the Dove Self-Esteem Fund.

Thanks to the many people who participated. We will be offering more great contests very soon!

P.S. You have to be a subscriber to win.

My gift for one wonderful woman

Valentine's Day is next Saturday and in celebration, I want to give a gift to one lucky wonderful woman. To enter, leave a comment below about what makes you happy or why you are a beautiful person by Feb. 9th.

The Lovely Book For Wonderful Women by Lehla Eldridge is a whimsical book meant to inspire happiness. Each page offers words of encouragement along with illustrations that make you smile.

Lehla is the mother of three young children, twin girls age four, and a 20 month old boy. One day while she was in the kitchen preparing a meal, her children were screaming and tugging at her.

She was very tired and in that moment, she needed to retain her sanity so she decided to get a piece of canvas and write on it with colorful paint about things that made her happy. The sea. Laughter. This moment was her inspiration to write The Lovely Book.

"I also feel in this day and age, women's lives are so full and busy. It can be easy to forget to stop and take a breath. This book is for all the wonderful women out there who need a breather and want to stop and laugh and remember what makes them happy."

Some of my favorite happy feelings from the book include:

"Put on music and dance." pg. 53

"Lie on the grass in the summertime, look up at the blue sky and enjoy the feel of the earth beneath you." pg. 43

"Marvel at what another woman can do." pg. 71

"Notice spontaneous acts of love and kindness." pg. 35

"Dream...Give yourself the time to stop and dream. Dream about what you want and how to get it."

In addition to giving away a copy of The Lovely Book, we are also giving away a "you're beautiful pass it on" t-shirt from the Dove Self-Esteem Fund.

I feel very passionate about what Dove is trying to accomplish with their awareness campaign. I applaud them for confronting this issue head on.

The Dove Self-Esteem Fund was developed to help free the next generation from self-limiting beauty stereotypes. Committed to reaching five million young women by the end of 2010, the organization invites you to play a role in supporting and promoting a wider definition of beauty.

So in celebration of Valentine's Day and for one wonderful woman, I offer this gift of happiness to you.

To be eligible to win The Lovely Book and "you're beautiful pass it on" t-shirt, you must be a subscriber of this blog.

To enter, leave a comment below about what makes you happy or why you are a beautiful person.

A winner will be chosen at random from all comments by Monday, February 9th at 5:00pm. The winner will be listed on this blog.

5 tips for increasing blog subscribers

In my ongoing quest to create more awareness about The Mom Entrepreneur and build my blog subscriber list, I started doing research to learn what additional strategies I should employ.

In Google, I searched for "how to build blog subscribers". Not surprisingly, some of the people I respect the most in the industry came up in the first couple of positions. Experts such as Darren Rowse at ProBlogger (74,000+ subscribers), Brian Clark at Copyblogger (50,000+ subscribers) and Chris Brogan (17,000+ subscribers).

I think if you are going to try to perfect something, you should learn from the best.

Based on what I have learned from reading articles written by these experts, I have decided that the following 5 tips are a great place for bloggers to start in order to prepare their blog for converting more readers to subscribers.

1. Make it easy for readers to subscribe. Brian Clark encourages bloggers to make it as easy as possible for readers to subscribe. Offer both RSS and email subscription options. Have the logos for each prominently displayed on your blog. Eliminate any unnecessary steps to obtaining a subscription.

He advises that Feedburner has one of the more simpler sign up processes. You should also encourage readers to subscribe by including a message at the end of each blog post: "If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS". This post would then link to a landing page where readers could easily subscribe.

2. Consider eliminating the word subscribe. I also came across some great advice from JohnTP who suggests that you do not use the word "subscribe" and offer an explanation for what an RSS feed is.

JohnTP discovered that when he asked readers to "subscribe via email", many people thought he was asking for money for sending something via email. The word subscription traditionally refers to "the right to receive a periodical for a sum paid, usually for an agreed number of issues".

He encourages you to educate your readers about RSS by putting up a page explaining about it and then linking to it next to your "subscribe via RSS" link. Similar to what ProBlogger does. My suggestion would be to link to an authoritative source such as Wikipedia's definition of RSS for further explanation.

So how do we make it clear to our visitors that we don’t charge money for subscribing? By removing the word "subscribe". This can be done by simply changing the text in the HTML code generated by Feedburner. You could also say "join our online community" or some other wording that would easily be understood by your target market. This would then still link to Feedburner or any other RSS service you use. If you offer tips, advice, resources or anything else through your blog, then say that below.

3. Stay focused on your niche. Having great content is key, but it is no longer enough. Always keep your target audience in mind when writing blog posts. The Mom Entrepreneur offers tips, advice and resources for balancing motherhood and running a company. I am a mom entrepreneur and I write about topics I feel are important to my readers. I also survey the members of The Mom Entrepreneur Online Support Group in order to have a clear understanding of issues that are important to them.

Create an editorial calendar to help you stay focused on content and give your readers a clear picture of what they can expect to read.

Darren Rowse offers this great tidbit of information: "I am sure there are numerous reasons why people subscribe to a blog's feed - however in most cases the simple truth is that they subscribe for one obvious yet powerful reason - they think that the blog might produce content that they’ll want to know about at some point in the future."

If you truly understand your target market then you will have insight into what they want to know about now and in the future.

Chris Brogan advises varying the length of your content. Make your text punchy. Use short sentences, small words. Be willing to break a few grammatical rules, if only for effect. He also suggests using visuals in your posts to draw attention. Ask questions, offer tips and invite the reader to engage you.

4. Offer them something they really want. I have been looking for a way to offer a tips sheet as a thank you to readers when they subscribe to my blog. When doing this research, I finally found a way to do it.

Feedblitz offers email autoresoponders, which can include a link to an offer, as a built in feature. However, after a 30-day free trial it looks like they charge a monthly fee for their service, which is based on the number of subscribers.

In Feedburner under the "publicize" tab, under "email subscriptions" go to "communication preferences". In the "confirmation email body" change the generic message offered by Feedburner to something customized.

In my new message, I include a link and an offer to join The Mom Entrepreneur Online Support Group. Once developed, I will also be adding a link to a tips sheet PDF that can be downloaded when readers subscribe. They will receive this autoresponder message when they subscribe via email.

The only catch is that the email from Feedburner containing this customized message is the one that asks them to confirm their subscription. It is possible that people may just click off to the free offer and not complete the subscription process.

For readers who subscribe in a feed, Brian Clark suggests using the free Feedvertising plugin if you have a WordPress blog. This option is not currently available for any other platform. Since Feedvertising links only show up in the feed (and not in the post), only feed subscribers will see the link and have access to the bonus offer.

5. Make your blog fun and informative. Nothing is more boring to visit than a blog with dull colors and no brand. Before officially launching your blog to your target market, take the time to create a look and feel that is inviting and engaging.

Widgetize the site with buttons and icons that offer something of value to your target market. For instance, The Mom Entrepreneur offers a Kraft Foods Recipe Finder widget. We include badges and links to other blogs we feel would benefit our readers to be connected to.

We also offer an Amazon Recommended Reading list, which includes story and business book suggestions.

The Mom Entrepreneur will be working over the next few weeks to implement these strategies. These steps ensure that when readers visit a blog they can easily "join" or "subscribe". Once I have completed these steps, I will offer additional ideas for reaching out into online communities and attracting more readers to your blog.

What other initial steps would you suggest for preparing your blog? Would love to hear your comments.

The Mogul Mom offers 22 Free Things to Manage Your Business & Your Life

I subscribe to The Mogul Mom because Heather gives valuable advice. Her most recent post 22 Free Things to Manage Your Business & Your Life I felt had some very valuable information so I wanted to pass it along. Enjoy!

Giveaway for $300 credit to MarketSplash HP extended

On Tuesday, January 27th, I told you about a great contest we were running to giveaway a $300 credit for MarketSplash by HP services. Unfortunately, I gave the wrong link to answer the trivia question.

So here are the details again with the correct link for answering the trivia question. Thanks for your patience!

For our giveaway, we will be offering $300 in MarketSplash by HP credit.

Examples of what $300 in MarketSplash by HP credit could purchase:

• Business cards (starting at $9.99)
• Letterhead
• Envelopes
• Loyalty cards
• Appointment cards
• Promotional post cards

Or, winners can choose to use their prize towards custom design work such as:

• Custom logo design (starting at $299)
• Custom business card and stationery design (starting at $199; great for businesses who already have a logo)
• Custom post card design (starting at $299)

NOTE: MarketSplash by HP is very flexible, and the credit can be a “mix and match,” depending on what the winner determines works best.

OK...so here are the simple rules:

• You MUST be a subscriber of our blog. Our awesome giveaways are for subscribers. If you are not yet a subscriber, you can do so via email or in a reader or click on your favorite web aggregator to the right.
• Answer the following trivia question correctly: As shown in “A Delicious Dilemma” video, what is the name of the award that Goobers, Sno-Caps and Oh Henry! are vying for? (HINT: the answer can be found at adeliciousdilemma.com.)
• Email your answer to traci@themomentrepreneur.com and confirm you are a subscriber of our blog. (You may only enter once.)
• Wait patiently until 5pm EST on February 5, 2009 to see if you are chosen at random as the winner. (Winner chosen at random from all correct entries using a sequence selection of numbers from random.org.) Winners will be contacted via email and announced on this blog.

That is it! Easy enough. GOOD LUCK!

Exercising will raise your energy level enough to make you want to clean your house

Recently I sent out a query looking for fitness experts who have worked with mom entrepreneurs. I wanted to speak with trainers who understood a woman's body post pregnancy and who also had an appreciation for a mom entrepreneur's busy schedule.

It is unrealistic to think that we can commit to 60 or even 30 minutes of exercise daily. We may desperately want to, but if we do, it is usually at the expense of something else just as important.

As I near 40, the thing I miss most is my energy level. I am not that active and I sit at my computer most of the day. I miss hiking, long walks, 30-mile bike rides, skiing and other activities I engaged in regularly about a decade ago (before kids).

Now my kids are older and they are very interested in these activities. It is almost like I have a chance to live again. I don't want to be left behind.

I have found that just walking for 30 minutes, three times a week has started to give me more energy. When I have the ambition to clean the house then I know something is working. Oddly enough, I sincerely enjoy exercising. I am a member of a health and fitness club that offers a great environment for all types of activities.

I am not much of an outdoors person in the winter, but this year my husband and I decided to try snowshoeing with the kids and we all love it. We have a huge backyard with many acres of woods beyond that. My husband has created paths all around our land and we try to get out every weekend (if it is above freezing).

So I sent out this query for fitness experts...I received about 50 or more emails with great tips for helping mom entrepreneurs get back in shape and feel energized. I am in the process of narrowing down the list to three to four experts whose advice I will highlight throughout 2009.

If you are ready to make the commitment to be healthy, get back and shape and feel more energized please let me know!

How to avoid spending four hours cooking dinner for the family

I have been following the Weight Watchers Momentum program and learning about healthy cooking. Now that my husband and I are trying to eat better, I am finding that cooking dinner can be an all night chore.

My kids are relatively picky and very rarely will eat the different meals that I cook. On top of that, my oldest son will not eat red meat. The rule in our house is that they have to try new things before they can say they do not like them. It is usually more the texture they do not like as opposed to the food.

This past weekend I went to the grocery store and spent more time than usual. I tried to find healthy snacks and food options for the kids that could easily be prepared.

A popular dinner meal I serve to my kids is called "buffet supper". I make sure I have a few different options for them to chose from for each food group. They like being able to make their own choices of fruits and vegetables, dairy, protein, breads and grains.

You can purchase ham chunks, which just needs to be warmed up. I also keep a lot of chicken around and cook up as needed. Apple boats are also another favorite. My son created this recipe. Apple slices in a sea of peanut butter with a chuck of cheese on a toothpick stuck in each apple slice.

Other favorites include salad, carrots with ranch dressing, fruit salad with vanilla yogurt and granola, cottage cheese, cheese sticks, yogurt, snack packs of chips, crackers and cookies, pears, fresh berries.

I find if you can make the meal fun (i.e. apple boats) then kids will have more of a tendency to enjoy the food. Both my boys also enjoy cooking. By getting them involved in the meal preparation process, they get excited about trying new things.

My oldest son who is now eight, likes to host dinner parties. His favorite meal to cook is Easy Mac 'n Cheese from the Pillsbury Kids Cookbook. We go to the grocery store together and he helps find the ingredients we need to prepare.

He also likes to make the Pizza Snacks, Frosty Choco-Banana Snacks, S'mores Nachos, Create-a-Scene Cookie Puzzle, Frozen Brownie Sundae and Bunny Rabbit Pancakes.

I enjoy spending this quality time with my son. As a busy mom entrepreneur, it is so important to find quality time with the kids. Activities such as cooking and party planning gives us an opportunity to share something we both love to do.

How do you handle meal preparation for your family? Your tips and suggestions are welcome.