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