2010

June 30

5 Steps to an Optimized LinkedIn Profile

by dawn billings · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business for Women, Social Media

Hey Women Entreprenuers, it’s Dawn Billings. Having an optimized LinkedIn profile is more important than ever. LinkedIn is an important part of your overall Social Media campaign.

Whether you are a small business looking to connect with prospects in LinkedIn or an individual looking for a prospective new job, you have to make sure that your profile is attractive and attracting the right audience.

Follow these five steps to ensure success:

1. Tailor Your Profile Information

You want to display your first and last name to ensure that people can find you. Plus, if you ask to connect with someone they need to know who you are. So keep the display name settings as “full name.”
Customize your “Professional Headline,” which is also known as “current position”. However, the two can be separately maintained to make it more attractive to prospective clients or employers. You can simply edit the headline independent of your current job when in edit mode.

2. Add a Photo

Here’s a fact, profiles without photos are rarely viewed and rarely used.
Add a flattering image that you use throughout all other social networks.
Adding a photo makes you recognizable and will help you brand yourself.

3. Customize Your Website Alt Text and URL

When adding a new website choose “other” in the drop list of website types. This will give you the option to add a “website title” and voila your link now has an anchor text.
Rather than saying “my website” it now says “inbound marketer”…or something like it.

4. Work History

If you are self employed you have the opportunity to showcase some of your strengths. Provide a list of recent projects or services completed.
If you are looking for a job you clearly need to highlight successes at past jobs.
At the very minimum list your most recent work (hint: this gives you a chance to brag about yourself.)

5. Recommendations

Want a chance to have others brag about you?
Ask for recommendations – or to be endorsed as it’s called.
Whether it be career highlights or reviews from happy customers…Having these recommendations does not only give you bragging rights but will also give your prospects a chance to hear good things from others who have worked with you.
If you don’t any recommendations yet then go out today as ask someone you know well to write one.

So here you have it. In about 30 minutes time you too can have your LinkedIn profile optimized.

Dawn L Billings is an the author of hundreds of articles on parenting, relationships, entitlement and networking, and over 20 books Dawn is an active advocate for children’s issues. As the CEO and Founder of The Heart Link Women’s Network, Trova Women Business Directory and Trova Small Business Directory and The Heart Alliance.com international women’s networking organizations , Dawn is a great supporter of women in business.

Dawn is the architect of the Primary Colors Personality Test

Check out our women networking events and find a gathering near you! You will be so glad you did. Also check out - TROVA NOW Women Business Directory, and TROVA Business Directory for all small businesses. TROVA in Italian means “Find”. Would you like for your business to be found easily both locally and nationally? That is what our new business directories TrovaBusinessDirectory.com and TrovaWomenBusinessDirectory.com are all about. For more information about how to get your women owned business listed for FREE visit: TrovaNow

Tags: business women directory, Dawn Billings, Linked in, networking women, Online business directory, Optimize website, Primary Colors Personality Test, Trova Women business directory, women's networking

2010

June 29

Women Networking with Confidence – Step 12

by dawn billings · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business for Women, HLN Spotlights, Marketing Tips, Networking

Women Networking with Confidence: Twelve Simple Steps –
Step 12 – Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and Take Your Life Day by Day

by Dawn L. Billings

12. Don’t sweat the small stuff and take your life day by day. Rainy days are a fact of life, just as real as the days full of bright sunshine. Worrying about when its going to rain does nothing to control the rain.

When you are networking, loving, serving, giving, living, working, playing, the only time that exists is the present moment. Many of us spend a great deal of time worrying about tomorrow, or being anxious about things that “might” happen. Don’t sweat the small stuff, but especially don’t sweat things that haven’t even happened.

Remember where the source of your inner strength comes from and trust it. Understand that everyone’s confidence will be stronger at different times and in different areas of our lives. Don’t compare yourself with others. Compare yourself with yourself and always focusing on improving the mistakes you made yesterday or last week. Accept that life is a journey, and not a destination.

If you do these twelve things you will find that your networking experiences will be more fun and more profitable.

If you will focus your attention on these ten areas, you will become a master networker. If you are looking for a wonderful place to network with women, visit www.TheHeartLinkNetwork.com There are hundreds of locations across the US and Canada and Australia. Just go to the locations tab and click on the state to find the location nearest you. Also visit www.TheHeartAlliance.com It is a no cost women’s online networking community with women from around the world. For many other options, just search “women’s professional networking.” Good luck and may you prosper as you serve the lives of those with whom you network.

Dawn L Billings is an the author of over 20 books and hundreds of articles on parenting, relationships, entitlement and networking, and an ardent advocate for women’s and children’s issues. Dawn is the CEO and Founder of The Heart Link Women’s Network, Trova Women Business Directory and Trova Small Business Directory and The Heart Alliance.com international women’s networking organizations and communities.

Dawn is the creator of the NEW Parenting Tool called Capables, a revolutionary parenting tool and Toddler toy that ends whining and tantrums for good. In 2008 Dawn was selected by Oprah Magazine and The White House project as one of 80 emerging women leaders in the nation. Find out more and buy Dawn’s books, Women Lifting the World inspirational videos to uplift the hearts of those you love, and the NEW Toddler Teaching Toys called CAPABLES Dawn is also the architect of the Primary Colors Personality Test

Take the opportunity to attend a Heart Link Women’s Network networking event. Check out our women networking events and find a gathering near you! You will be so glad you did. Also check out - TROVA NOW Women Business Directory, and TROVA Business Directory for all small businesses. TROVA in Italian means “Find”. Would you like for your business to be found easily both locally and nationally? That is what our new business directories TrovaBusinessDirectory.com and TrovaWomenBusinessDirectory.com are all about. For more information about how to get your women owned business listed for FREE visit: TrovaNow

Tags: business networking for women, Dawn Billings, Free business listing, heart link womens network, networking tips, Online business directory, professional networking for women, self confidence, Trova business directory, Trova Now, Trova Women business directory, women networking, women networking event, women networking groups, women professional networking, women's networking

2010

June 27

Do you know how to Flickr?

by dawn billings · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business for Women, Marketing Tips, Social Media

Do You Flickr?

Hey Women Entrepreneurs, most small businesses haven’t figured out how to promote themselves on Flickr. I know I certainly haven’t yet. The good news about this is that means you can get an edge on the competition if you love to shoot and share photos. In a recent post at the Influential Marketing Blog, Rohit Bhargava offers several useful how-to pointers.
Consider the following:

It all starts with high-quality, non-marketing photography. You don’t have to hire a professional photographer, as you would when shooting images for your website or ads. “Flickr works best when you share more authentic ‘real life’ photos,” he notes. “To take great ones, you may want to upgrade your point and shoot to a real Digital SLR camera with a high quality lens.”
Then you’ve got to go pro. A free account, he argues, will allow you to upload 200 images—but it’s easy to hit that limit and you’ll have less credibility in the community. “If you are going to use Flickr to do any marketing,” he says, “put up the 25 bucks and get yourself a pro account.”
And quickly approve requests for reuse. “Lots of services, bloggers and media are now using Flickr images to power their own stories and media,” he says. The more they use and credit your images, the more exposure your company receives.

The Po!nt: Use Flickr the right way and you’ll gain a competitive advantage on small businesses that do not.

Source: Influential Marketing Blog. Click here for the full post.

Dawn is the architect of the Primary Colors Personality Test

Tags: Flickr, How to use Flickr, networking group, professional networking event, women networking, women networking group, women's networking

2010

June 25

Women Networking with Confidence – Step 11

by dawn billings · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business for Women, HLN Spotlights, Inspiring Articles, Marketing Tips, Networking

Women Networking with Confidence: Twelve Simple Steps –
Step 11 – There is no such thing as Perfect

by Dawn L. Billings

11. There is no such thing as perfect. So, first of all, do not expect it from others. If you do, you will be repeatedly disappointed and frustrated because you will be expecting something that won’t ever happen.

Take note of who you can count on to follow up and follow through, or who you can count on to send you qualified leads and put effort into strengthening those relationships and no effort into complaining or judging those who are not perfect. If you want to expect anything, expect excellence instead of perfection and begin with expecting it from yourself. That will keep you so busy you don’t have time to judge others.

2010

June 24

The Myth of Social Media Success

by dawn billings · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business for Women, Marketing Tips, Networking, Social Media

Hey Women Entrepreneurs, Have you ever wondered, “ Why do people think I need a Facebook presence, or a Twitter account or LinkedIn account? I know people who have been doing the crazy social media thing for months – with not much to show for it.”

There is definitely a great deal of chatter and confusion around social media.

There is no question social media really can help you build your business, and increase your income. We have all witnessed how connections can be formed for joint ventures and collaborative projects, and how customers find businesses through social networking. So we know income can be generated as a direct result of social media. But it doesn’t happen instantly.

Anyone who thinks that Social Media is a Quick-Fix, or immediate marketing magic bullet, needs to clean and reload their gun. Social media isn’t about creating a few accounts on various social media sites and then sitting back to watch the customers you are looking for, race to spend money in your business. Social media isn’t that simplistic.

Social media is an investment in a process that works over time. All marketing is about consistency. Marketing focuses on “marketing touches”. This is how many businesses used to design their marketing campaigns with repetitive commercials. There is no question that the Internet is taking over where commercials are leaving off. Even Pepsi gave up their advertising coveted spot on the Super Bowl, in favor of a new social media campaign.

So how do businesses use social media in more productive systematic ways?

First, businesses not only need to create a myriad of ways to stay front of the people they are looking to do business with, they need to optimize their time and link their social media. Each business needs to find ways that they can get in the middle of the Internet traffic highway inexpensively, but effectively.

One effective way is to make sure their websites are linked and optimized. There are two new online business directories that can help for just pennies a day. Trova Business Directory and Trova Women Business Directory provide their Platinum and Elite members with optimized mini-sites on their directories. When you are looking for business and type in women business directory it is important that you are connected with a small business directory that shows up on the first or second page of a search engine. Trova Business directories are there.

Social media and social networking, like face to face networking, is not only about marketing touches, it is about building relationships, finding ways to give back and developing trust. Customers don’t choose to do business with people they do not trust. Earning trust and building trusting relationships take time.

Social media isn’t a magic bullet, instead think of social media as practice at the firing range. It is in the shooting repetitively that you become an excellent shot.

Social media is a process. It is a tool that only works when you use it consistently and participate.

Social media works because you plant the seeds. It works because you show up and participate. It works because you take the steps to build relationships and trust. It works because you optimize your time and your links. It works because even when it looks like nothing is happening, you trust the process and continue building relationships.

Join. Build relationships. Link. Establish trust. Contribute your expertise. Trust the process. Your efforts will have you consistently hitting the mark.

Dawn is the architect of the Primary Colors Personality Test

Tags: Free business listing, FREE online listing, Online business directory, small business directory, Social Media, social media advertising, social networking, Women business directory, women networking, women networking events, women networking group

2010

June 23

Women Networking with Confidence – Step 10

by dawn billings · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business for Women, HLN Spotlights, Marketing Tips, Networking

Women Networking with Confidence: Twelve Simple Steps –
Step 10 – Set Goals, and Take Risks that will Make You Great

by Dawn L. Billings

10. Set Goals, and take risks that will make you great. Don’t take risks for risk’s sake. Take risks that make you better, stronger, smarter, or better equipped to live your dreams. When you are afraid to do something, look inside and attempt to discover where the fear comes from. Once you understand what is causing you to fear, support yourself in doing what you need to do to feel more confident and secure. If you fall down, pick yourself up and move on. The more risks you take, the more courage you build and the more confident you become. Life is abundant. There is no shortage of opportunities. So set the kind of goals that make your knees tremble with both terror and excitement. Your life is up to you. When you know your goals, you know what you need from other people and when other people understand what you need from them, it is easier for them to provide you the help you need.