Time saving tips for the working mum

An Oversubscribed Life!

You will notice the late entry of my blog this week, this is primarily down to my oversubscribed life and it got me thinking about time saving. I would imagine that lack of time is a concern for every working mother who is trying to juggle the various demands of life. Now I don’t want to raise your levels of expectation here and make you think I have discovered a magic formula, I haven’t, but I have been looking into some mechanisms that can help save a few precious minutes of time and that might even allow you to put your feet up once in a while.

This has been a testing week on the parenting front for me, there have been all the usual morning rants, “brush your teeth”, “get your shoes on”, “eat your breakfast” and as any parent knows these instructions have to be given at least 15 times each to have any impact at all. There are the numerous questions that require carefully considered responses “are all the people who live in Hungary, hungry?” and “but why can’t I marry my sister, she is a girl?” In addition to this I have started to feel like I am losing my powers of negotiation, only when it comes to the children of course.  If I’m honest I’m not sure I was up there with ????? in the first place but more recently I  noticed myself giving into their every demand just to enable me to carry on working.

This can’t be right I thought to myself, there must be another way!

Getting Organised

And so I have discovered   Tweetdeck and Hootsuite,  what are they you may ask?  HootSuite and TweetDeck are both social media dashboards. They allow the user to access multiple social networks on one screen. This way the user can manage multiple accounts in one setting. Logging in and out of each social network is eliminated and users can choose to update the same information on multiple accounts if it is necessary. Although both are social media dashboards and both are tools to help manage multiple social networks at once they are different in their own individual ways. I am currently using tweetdeck and I have to say that this does meet my needs at the current time, but my colleagues all use Hootsuite and say it is far better. You will have to make up your own mind,  here are some clips that might help you get started on these dashboards.

Hootsuite

Tweetdeck

Here is a quick overview of TweetDeck:



an here is a full list of tutorials that take you through how to use Tweet Deck stage by stage.

http://support.tweetdeck.com/forums/126043-desktop-video-tutorials

Some Tips

I am still quite new to these dashboards but it has completly revolutionalised the way I plan my tweets and posts across all the social media channels. This simple tool means that I can spend an hour in the morning planning what I want to go out on my social media platforms, schedule them all in and leave it for the rest of the day. Previously I would have been tied to the laptop panicking about the lack of communication with my followers. This really is a fantastic time saving tip.

I know what your thinking, it's not just social media that eats into my time it is also the day to day aspects of my business so before I sign off  I thougth I would leave you with my top 7 time saving tips outside of the social media forum!

7 simple time saving tips

1. Plan your next day the night before.,


2. Prioritize my list and do the most important tasks


3. Always stick to the list and tick off the item as you go


4. Take a break from working and going to the gym or just out for a walk.


5. Procrastination is the biggest time consumer, just get on and do it!


6. Outsourcing things like writing content and updating your social media profiles


7. Ask your self a simple question – “Is what I do now helping to get more visitors to my site?”

How can Facebook deals work for me?

An introduction to Facebook Deals

I hope you all enjoyed my blog last week; I have to tell you I was incredibly nervous about putting it out there. Thank you to all those who fed back to me, your comments are invaluable.

From the feedback I have had, it seems that what my audience would appreciate most is simple and easy to use information that can have real impact on their business.

I think this is otherwise known as quick wins!

I remembered  an article that I had recently read in a local magazine and it  made me think about the number of different ways in which business’s use money off coupons, discount vouchers and deals to entice and reward their customers.

Facebook has recently introduced a similar scheme ‘Facebook Deals’ this is free to businesses in Europe and is really easy to set up. Unlike the other more familiar coupon sites like Groupon, they do not solely rely on groups and the deals can be individually tailored to suit your specific business and the customers you are trying to attract. Have a look at this clip on you tube to see how it works click on  Facebook Deals.

So why use Facebook deals?

Facebook has over 650 million members and the average facebook user has over 130 friends, this makes it a great platform to run a reward based system. There is real flexibility with the deal offerings and there are no minimum offers and no minimum purchases required. Currently this is all free of charge and this makes it especially attractive to small business's who would be hard pushed to hand over between 20% and 50% of their commission should they use an organisation such as Groupon to facilitate their deal offerings. 'Google Offers' will also be promoteing a reward based system but without the membership base that facebook has aquired, and the minimum requirement of a 50% reduction I dont see that this is yet the market place for the small business. If you want to read more about the strategy behind this new facebook scheme have a look at this article in the guardian http://bit.ly/hDOrm7 . I have highlighted below some of the more tangible benefits to running Facebook Deals.

• Hassle free word of mouth marketing


• Builds loyalty and drives repeat business


• Enables you to reach new customers


• Gets people to reccomend your business to their friends

What are Facebook deals?

There are four different types of deal:

Individual Deals

Individual Deals will create lots of attention in a short space of time. A one off offer like 20% off your   purchases for a limited time  can be offered to both new and existing customers.

Friend Deals

Friend Deals is a great way to get people to either buy from your business or visit your venue as a group. Friend Deals allow you to offer discounts to groups of up to 8 people when they check in together. Since every deal claimed will be posted to the users’ profile, this is an excellent way to spread the word.



Loyalty Deals

This kind of deal is to reward your most loyal customers and may encourage your occasional customers to visit you or buy from you more often. This type of deal can be very flexible, it can simply be a reward that   customers can claim after a certain number of check ins or purchases.

Charity Deals

This is a great deal if you or your business cares about poverty, the homeless, disease or abandonded puppies for example. If this is the case you could consider setting up a Facebook Charity Deal for your business. As an example of how this could work, you could promise  to donate a certain sum to your chosen charity, every time a new customer checks-in at your venue.

To see how to use the deals click here.

What should I do next?

Facebook Deals could really work for your business, if you take the right approach.

• Register your 'Place' on facebook, use the clip above for guidance.


• Until you have a 'place' your customers will not be able to 'check in' with you or search for rewards that may be available.


• Who are your customers,  what kind of rewards would they use and recommend.


• Run a series of different deals and change them regularly to keep your content fresh and your customers interested.


• Use other media to create awareness - window posters, newsletters, email... to raise awareness


• Vary your deals to suit individuals, groups and loyal customers.


• Make it fun!

I would love to know if you have found this helpful and if it has given you some fresh ideas, if you do set up a facebook place or deal please let me know about it. What do you think about Facebook Deals, a replacement for Groupon or not?

Until next week, Alison!

Is Social Media the working mum's life line?

Being a Parent
Firstly, let me introduce myself, I am 35, married and mother to a daughter (9) and son (6) like all parents I will describe my children as being extremely wonderful and special human beings and whilst this is true all the other parents among you will know that this is not the whole story.

So, wanting to be the best parent I could be, I made the decision that my working life needed to be adaptable and give me the ‘work life balance’ that would enable me to live this Brady Bunch style existence. In this vein I decided that working for myself was really the only option. I am now 8 years down the line, I have established and sold two successful businesses and I now have some experience that I wish I had had way back then.

Lessons Learnt

In an attempt to use this experience in my next venture, define what it is that I have learnt over the years and maybe see others benefit from this I thought a blog would a way forward.

There is no denying the fact that being a working mum is a real challenge and no disrespect to the fathers out there but it seems that paid work for a mother is an addition to all the other roles they play and not their primary role so finding time for it is somewhat difficult.

So first things first and one of the biggest mistakes I made, was understanding the difficulty of getting a new business off the ground. When you first get started it is so easy to get bogged down with the stuff you feel confident in, for many people that I have come across this is often:

• doing what they are good at, their skill (not looking at how to sell/market their business)


• talking to just clients they know well


• producing business plans that reflect their view; rather than some customer research


• working on their service; instead of marketing, networking and selling

So in all of this it is easy to forget some of simple, basic but  important aspects of establishing a start up.

What is often neglected is the face to face interactions that will put the personality behind your brand and use this to make yourself memorable. People buy from people, see the (AC Nielsen Report), so whatever you product or service it is important that your customers have a feel for who you are and what you are about.

With the rise in social media you can network, arrange meetings and cover a lot of ground before meeting people as well as give people an idea of who you are. It is becoming easier and quicker to build relationships, it is also a working mothers dream.

I am only touching the basics here and pointing out the opportunities so here are a few good tips to get you going. It is important to develop your confidence. Choose 1 platform, research and learn how to use it well; perhaps use 1 for a week and then move onto another. Find out from speaking to potential customers what they recommend, it starts a conversation! and you ideally want to use the same platforms that they use.

Some Introductory Guides

A starting point for Face Book:

• Six questions to ask before launching a Facebook fan page


• 10 Secrets of a Winning Facebook Fan Page

A starting point for Twitter:

• Keep It Short and Tweet: Intro to Microblogging Using Twitter


• So what the hell is Twitter anyway?

A starting point for Linkedin:

• An introduction social media (slides with Linkedin tips near end)

The use of social media platforms to give your business a personality and get people talking about it is manageable from home and is not restricted to office hours, it allows us working parents to blog, tweet and post around the kids social lives, I say kids social lives because I clearly no longer have one of my own!

So for all out there who aspire to run their own business’s, get into social media this could be the opportunity for you to get the building blocks in place. You will still be able to take the kids to school and pick them up, attend all their clubs and school events and ferry them around to the never ending stream of parties. Don’t forget that all social media platforms can be managed from smart phones so just think next time your sat watching your children run riot at the park you could be building your business profile.

Let me know some of the challenges you face with the 'work life balance' myth.

Next week I will be taking you through how to use some of these tools in more depth, look forward to connecting with you.

Alison