Mompreneur First Year Tips Part 2 of 3

Idea of the Week: Send Them Your Website

Postcards are a great, inexpensive way to boost sales. Ask the ideas company how they can help you develop a postcard campaign that will get attention.

Mompreneur First Year Tips Part 1 of 3

Idea of the Week: Your Logo All Wrapped Up

Before and after photos are a great way to demonstrate the value of your work.  Showcase your work on your website with a photo gallery.  For more information give us a call at 416-686-6747 or email sherri@ideascompany.ca.

Idea of the Week: Tips for Holiday Greeting Cards

It's not too late to get your custom designed Holiday Cards with ideas company. Call today 416-686-6747 or email the ideas company at sherri@ideascompany.ca.

Search Engine Marketing

Join The Mompreneur, today, on Wednesday, November 18th for an informative Webinar entitled: Search Engine Marketing: Increasing Exposure and Traffic on Your Website and Understanding a Google Analytics Report.

This information packed Webinar will teach you tips and techniques for increasing exposure and traffic to your website through search engine marketing tactics.

Before joining us, you should already have a website and have Google analytics installed.

We will be reviewing two analytics reports in detail during the session. The goal is to help you understand and interpret all of the information that Google analytics is giving you and learn how to use that to increase website traffic.

During this presentation, you will:

• Learn how to set up your dashboard with the important information and have it sent to you and any other stakeholders automatically.
• Learn how to interpret the reports on your dashboard, and make sense of the data.
• Learn goals, what they are, how to set them up and what the value is for your site.
• Learn how analytics can help you bring more customers to your site and convert those visitors into leads or customers.
• Learn about segmentation and profiles and how to find out where geographically your traffic is coming from. 

WHEN: Wednesday, November 18th

TIME: 1:00pm - 2:30pm EST

>COST: $25

REGISTER: CLICK HERE...>

CanadianBabies Fan Page on Facebook

Be sure to become a fan of CanadianBabies on Facebook as well (and tell use about your fan page, so we can become a fan of yours!).  The CanadianBabies fan page is here:

http://www.facebook.com/canadianbabies

Our tweets are copied to our Fan page so that our PEP sponsors get more exposure.  Be sure to have a nice gif or jpg image of your logo or product on your homepage so that Facebook will pick it up.  This and a link to your website will be shared with all the CanadianBabies fans on Facebook.

Idea of the Week: Thinking Of You

From the ideas company. Ask the ideas company for a few samples of Holidays Cards that feature your business and company logo. Call today 416-686-6747 or email them at sherri@ideascompany.ca.

Promote your Business with a Half-Tile ad

Have you forwarded your half-tile ad?  Each week, we send out the CanadianBabies Babble to over 12,000 of our e-subscribers across Canada.  In this national e-newsletter we include 4 half-tile ads linking to our PEP sponsors' websites. These ads appear in rotation based on the half-tile ads that we've received.

If you haven't forwarded your 300 by 125 pixel half-tile ad, please forward it asap to: info@canadianbabies.ca and we'll put it in rotation asap.   If you need a half-tile graphic for your business Jamie can make a great one for you at an incredibly low price. Her website is here:

http://www.jvgraphic.com/

Our Parentpreneur LinkedIn Group

Apparently relationships matter :) so we've invited you to join CanadianBabies Parentpreneurs on LinkedIn.  You can find the CanadianBabies Parentpreneur group here:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2052553

This is a group for our PEP sponsors and is a great way to connect, share information and news.  LinkedIn strengthens and extends your existing network of trusted contacts.

From Wikipedia, "LinkedIn (pronounced /ˈlɪŋkt.ˈɪn/) is a business-oriented social networking site founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003^[1] mainly used for professional networking. As of October 2009, it had more than 50 million registered users,^[2] spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide^[update]".

Let's us Tweet about you!

Is your business on Twitter?  It's a great way to connect with your target consumers and other businesses.  Be sure to have your business name and tag line in the meta-tags on your homepage and make them less than 120 characters.  This will help you since when folks, including CanadianBabies, tweet about your business the information that you want shared is shared.

Daily CanadianBabies tweets about Canadian baby and parenting news and about our sponsors.  You can see our Twitter account here:

http://twitter.com/canadianbabies

Each month as we get information about your PEP subscription from PayPal we tweet about your business with a connection to your webpage.  This tweet is set to automatically go out two weeks later as well so we're now tweeting about your business twice monthly!  Many of our tweets about your businesses are re-tweeting by our followers!

Name Your Tune

One of our fantastic sponsors! We love this CD!

Vancouver Island Baby Fair featured on 'A' News

Hello! We Aren't Here To Take Your Call...

Stay connected and continue to build your bond with your customers with email.

With our email marketing solution you can save money and stay in contact with your customers for as little as $30/month. No special programming knowledge or software needed. Format your email online anytime, anywhere in the world. The ideas company can even help you with your campaign if you want!

Contact Sherri Appleby of the ideas company to arrange your no-hassle FREE demonstration.

Go Baby Expo in Fraser Valley, BC

This is a tradeshow for moms, dads, grandparents, babies, tots and kids. We have expanded this year to include kids of all ages. There is a high demand for a tradeshow in the Fraser Valley that has a little something for EVERYONE in the family. We have constructed this event for families with kids of all ages. We have bouncy castles, face painting, balloon making, lots of samples, hourly prizes.......and much more for everyone! "Moms to be" can watch a wonderful fashion show with a great maternity line. Concession stand for the family, seating to rest and room to move; this is what you will find at OUR show.

Tips for Social Media Promotion!

I was thinking about titling this post, "What drives me crazy about business websites that I want to promote!", but I thought maybe that wasn't the most positive way to start a conversation. Hmmm, I seemed to have done that anyway :)

Please, please make sure the home page of your website has a clear image of your logo or product that is sized 130px × 106px or 101px × 130px or something close to this size. I've share a sample of an image that Finest Expressions has on their website that is a great example of this.

Why is it so important to have such an image on your homepage? This is the size that Facebook uses when someone posts or shares your website on Facebook for all their friends and more to see. Each month we post links on the CanadianBabies Fan page on Facebook these images, your images, are seen by our Fans and Friends. This helps us and our friends share your information and a great clear image will draw more people, potential customers to your site!

Keep in mind that if you do have a large image on your homepage that Facebook will resize it to this smaller size. When your image is resized it may loose some of the details that you were hoping to share. If you want to have a large image on your site, also post smaller ones or ones that can be resized nicely. The more images that we have to choose from the better!

Please share your thoughts and comments! ...and tell all your friends about the CanadianBabies Parentpreneur blog!

Great tips for Parentpreneurs!

Thank you for Ellen McCaleb for sharing this blog post "32 Tips/Ways to use Facebook for your Business". Facebook is a great way to build both your personal and business network. Just remember to follow their rules! This post is a great step by step guide to promote and build your business using Facebook. There are a lot of simple tools gathered together in this one article. Work through them step by step and it will be worth it!

Mike Michalowicz for gathering and posting these 100+ Mom Entrepreneur Success Strategies. These posts are from some wise women. Creating, building, promoting and running a business is hard...and it's definitely harder while balancing this parenting thing (whether you are a mom or a dad!).

Please share your comments and tips here as well!

Ottawa Baby Boom Show

Mom Entrepreneur Support Group

The Mom Entrepreneur Support Group is an interactive group that allows mom entrepreneur members to network with one another and share their stories and advice for balancing motherhood and running a company. Membership is free.

In addition, the group is strictly moderated. A list of guidelines has been established in order to keep members on track with the mission of the group. I hope you will consider joining us and contributing your experience.

We have over 650 members and 2,800 discussions. We also have a resource file for members that includes a cash flow analysis template, a list of mom entrepreneur grants and contests, a list of members who offer exposure on their sites, buy in rights to our Co-op Shop and much more.

If interested, I invite you to click the following link for more information: http://tinyurl.com/MomEntSG.

Halftile Ads for the CanadianBabies Babble

We're still accepting haltfile ads from members of our Parentpreneur Program (PEP) we will use in rotation in our weekly national e-newsletter, the CanadianBabies Babble. This e-newsletter goes out to over 11,000 e-subscribers and features many of our contests, product reviews and parentpreneur articles.

If you haven't yet please forward your halftile ad sized 300 pixels by 125 pixels. You can see our ad specifications, click here. And you can see halftile ad samples here:

http://www.canadianbabies.ca/images/halftiles/bugalug_halftile.jpg

http://www.canadianbabies.ca/images/halftiles/littletraveler_halftile.jpg

If you need any help creating your own halftile ad, please visit this page:

http://www.jvgraphic.com

Please let us know if you would like to join our Parentpreneur Program (PEP).

Join us on LinkedIn

We've also created a group for our parentpreneurs on LinkedIn. You can join it by visiting this page:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2052553&trk=anet_ug_grppro

You'll be able to interact here and you may find some great connections!

CanadianBabies Fan Page

We've created a CanadianBabies Fan Page that you can access here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/CanadianBabies/220198635314?ref=s

When we have more than 100 Fans we get to customize the above URL so please become a fan! As well, as tweeted about your business each month, as your Parentpreneur Program (PEP) subscription is automatically renewed, we'll also copy this tweet onto our CanadianBabies Fan Page.

To help promote your business, we recommend that you have a clear image of your logo on your site's homepage as well as your BUSINESS NAME and your BUSINESS tag line in your website's title metatags. Facebook can use this image to highlight our posts about your business.

Optimize Your Title Tag for Twitter

The CanadianBabies twitter profile (with 2,999 followers) is here:

http://twitter.com/canadianbabies

Each month as your subscription to our Parentpreneur Program (PEP) is automatically renewed, we'll tweet about your business. This tweet will appear on our site's homepage.

I highly recommend having your BUSINESS NAME and your BUSINESS tag line in your website's title metatags. Here are some examples of past tweets:

Finest Expressions - Special Gifts for Special Occasions http://ow.ly/h5A9

Baby Kneez - Childrens Kneepads In 8 Great Colours http://ow.ly/h5y3

We'll also be tweeted about new parentpreneur and product review articles and contests that appear on our site to promote your involvement even more!

You can find out more about optimizing your title tag here:

http://websearch.about.com/od/quicktipsandtricks/ht/meta_tags_title.htm

To Tweet or not to tweet!

First there was Facebook and now there's Twitter.

"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

If you are a small parent run company, I suggest you twitter. Don't get obsessive about it but do tweet when you can.

"Why? Because even basic updates are meaningful to family members, friends, or colleagues—especially when they’re timely."

You can join Twitter here and create an account named after your business. Here are more Twitter basics for small business that you'll find helpful:

• Twitter 101: Twitter Basics
• Twitter: the Basics