According to the U.S. Census Bureau figures, some 5.6 million mothers, or nearly 1 out of 4, have opted to abandon their jobs to be with their kids. More and more are preferring the stay-at-home option after childbirth.

Women who take care of their kids full-time are more likely to get depressed, however.  While they love their kids to bits, they feel that a life doomed to changing diapers day in and day out is a waste of education and talent. Besides, letting the husband be the sole breadwinner during a shaky economy seems not a wise option.

The solution: Keep your sanity and dignity, as well as the streams of income flowing by being a stay-at-home but working mom. The following are just some of the many work-at-home options you can choose from:

1. Freelance writing. Do you have a way with words? Many businesses pay good money for content writing. There are many freelance writing websites you can sign up for, like Elance,  Odesk, and Guru. You can also set up your own portfolio to promote your writing services. All you need is register a domain name and use solutions like Wix or Squarespace that require no coding skills.

2. Customer service. There is a huge demand for virtual employees to handle in-bound customer calls which can be routed directly to your computer via the Internet. Virtual customer service agents are paid by the hour and keep a specific work schedule. Training is also paid.

3. Medical transcription. If you type fast and have excellent spelling and grammar, you can try working as medical transcriptionist.  There are training programs available online for this line of work with focus on honing your English skills, knowledge of human anatomy and pharmacology, and ability to take dictation from health professionals.

4.  Data entry. A data entry job usually requires some form of data being converted into another form, like a list of people’s name and addresses in Word document being transformed into entries in a spreadsheet.

5.  Online teaching or tutoring. Online teachers and tutors may teach a variety of subjects, ranging from elementary to college levels. A teaching certification or experience is usually required to qualify for this job.

6. Bridal and wedding consultant. A bridal wedding consultant performs a variety of tasks including planning the schedule for the wedding and the rehearsal dinner,  connecting the couple-to-be with the right vendors, creating the budget and the bridal registry, etc.

7. Selling arts and crafts online. If you love crafting, why not create a website showcasing your creations? Just make sure you have quality photos because your customers will be judging your work based on these images. Try beaded jewelry, hand-sewn bags, dolls, ceramics — the possibilities are endless.

8. Cake decorator/designer. If you have taken a course in baking and cake decorating, this home-based work option may appeal to you. You can start by offering your services to friends, neighbors, or former officemates.  Make sure to make a portfolio of your best designs.

9.  Dog daycare. If you love dogs, this job should come easy to you. You get to pat, groom and interact with multiple dogs at the same time and get paid for it! In the U.S, dog owners pay as much as $30 per dog for a few hours’ stay at the daycare center.

Experiment! You may even come up with your own idea.

Take the leap!

The first step in building a successful home business is coming up with a solid plan of action.

You don’t necessarily have to develop an actual business plan in the traditional sense (though it would probably help), but it is very important that you have your goals, promotional strategy and costs mapped out clearly for use as a personal reference.

Put away at least three months’ worth of money, and get ready to be your own boss.

Stay-at-home businesses are a great way to transition into self-employment. Just remember that to be your own boss, you also have all of your boss’s responsibilities: you’ll need to keep work coming in, keep pay going out, and keep your clients happy.

Finally, you’ll need to keep yourself happy and stress-free. That’s the most important thing!

Welcome to all and thank you for your visit ! ツ from Pixabay

Tools have the power to either make your life simpler, or more complicated, depending on what you choose.

That is why making the right choice is important.

Here are my top tips on finding what tools are right for your blog or business.

Start by defining your needs.

Most people look at price or features, and just assume if the price is low and the features are numerous, they will be set. But that’s not always the case. A tool could have 1,000+ features, which is pretty awesome. But if you are only going to need three of those features, then there’s no sense in

• A) paying for things you don’t need or
• B) not choosing a tool that is awesome at the three features you need and instead choosing one that is so-so at a 1,000+ features.

Let’s say that you’re evaluating email marketing software. Your requirements are that it integrates well with other tools that you use, it offers a wide variety of templates that are mobile friendly, it allows you to preview emails before you send them, and it helps you create great forms and squeeze pages.

While there are tons of platforms to choose from, you’ll likely go with GetResponse because of their 100+ integrations, responsive email design, inbox preview tool, web form builder, and squeeze page generator.

Once you have defined your requirements, making a choice about what tool to go with will be much simpler.

Compare your top choice with some alternatives.

Just because you only found one tool that fits your needs, doesn’t mean it’s the only tool out there. There are great sites like TopAlternatives.com that can help you find the top tools for specific needs. For example, in their SEO category, they break down tools with specific functions.

This can help you discover a few great alternatives so that you can jump into the next step. They offer alternative tools for building a website, customer satisfaction, design, ecommerce, email marketing, mobile, optimization, SEO, social media, time management, usability, visual  marketing, and business communication.

Try before you buy.

Whether you end up trying to decide between multiple tools with the features you want, or just one that seems to be perfect, be sure to try it before you buy it. Most tools will offer some form of free trial, usually ranging from seven to thirty days. Here are my recommended free trial tips.

• Don’t sign up for a free trial until you are ready to actually use it.
• Set a reminder in your calendar to visit the tool each day until the trial ends.
• Take into consideration the ease of use of the tool you are trying. If it’s difficult, you won’t want to use it on a regular basis, which will lower its value for your business.
• Know how long you have and when/where to cancel if you decide against a particular tool (include a reminder in your calendar for the last day to cancel).
• Plan to evaluate the results of using a particular tool the day before you need to decide to commit to it.
• Look for deals before buying any tool you liked. For example, searching for “Wix promo code” may help you discover great budgeting options.

Remind yourself to regularly use your tools.

Once you have made the commitment to the right tools for your blog or business, don’t let them sit stagnant while they auto-debit your credit card. Set them up so you can easily remember to use them on a daily basis. If they are web applications, for example, create a folder on your bookmarks bar for your tools and put your username next to each so you can easily get to the login pages and remember how to login. Below is my list of top tools…

If there’s certain times you want to check a particular tool, such as taking a daily look at all of your dashboards in Cyfe to review your analytics, then you’ll want to set a calendar reminder to do so. What I like to do is grab a link to the first dashboard I want to view (like my ultimate social media dashboard)…

You don’t have to do these specific things, but you should make it a point to regularly use your tools.

Review, and review often.

If you find you’re not regularly using a particular tool based on difficulty or lack of usefulness, then it might be a sign you need to choose something new. Or, at the very least, time to cancel your account and save some money until you find something new.

Finding the right tool is key to business productivity.

For this, you might want to set a monthly or quarterly reminder to review all of the tools in your toolbox to see if you are still using them and still getting what you need out of them. If not, go back to the beginning of this post and start the selection process over again. This will ensure that you are always getting value from the tools you choose for your business.

How do you find great tools for your blog or business and then ensure you are always using them?

Image by free stock photos from www.picjumbo.com from Pixabay

Whether you realize it or not, your brand has a tone of voice. You may have a hard time identifying it, but you can bet your customers are aware of it. 

The good news is that you can control and shape this tone – but you better act sooner rather than later.

The Value of Your Voice

The term “tone of voice” typically conjures up thoughts about spoken words and how we speak in certain situations. However, in the case of marketing and branding, it refers to written words – or the words a brand uses on websites, emails, advertisements, social media, and packaging.

“A tone of voice both embodies and expresses the brand’s personality and set of values,” writes Harriet Cummings, freelance writer and content marketer. “It’s about the people that make up the brand – the things that drive them, their loves and hates, and what they want to share with the world.”

Your brand’s tone of voice doesn’t just refer to the words you select, though. It’s also defined by the order, pace, and rhythm of the words. All of these factors come together to create something that’s bigger than the words themselves.

Three Tips for Shaping Your Voice

As a brand, how often do you consider your tone of voice? Don’t be ashamed if the answer is “never.” 

Many marketers and modern business professionals have been taught to focus too much on the mode of communication and not enough on the words used. If this is true in your situation, it’s time to reevaluate. Here are a few things you need to know about shaping your brand’s tone of voice:

1. Understand Your Audience

“It may seem simple, but it is more important than ever to understand who your audience is and what they expect,” says Lisa Giosi, social media manager for Active Web Group. “Gone are the days when one message fit all consumers. Today’s sophisticated audiences expect there to be a conversation, as opposed to just one-way communication.”

Do you know who your audience is? Your audience will shape your voice to a large degree. The good news is that you can learn a lot about how your customers speak and interact by studying what they do and like on social media.

Set up a customer appreciation week to get to know your customers better, or organize a local meetup. Implement email marketing to collect customers’ feedback, use surveys and feedback forms, etc.

2. Hone in on Your Values

Your audience plays a large role in shaping your voice, but there are also plenty of internal factors that determine the tone you select. Think about your brand’s core values, goals, inspirations, and other important factors. 

How do you want them to come across in your messaging? In most cases, these elements will coincide with your audience’s preferences, but there can be subtle differences.

3. Study Relevant Examples

One of the best things you can do is study other successful brands and evaluate their tones. You don’t want to mimic what they’re doing, but it can be incredibly helpful to see what they’re doing and watch the consistency they achieve across the board.

This resource over at Marketing Land has 20 different examples of effective social media voices. Check out a few of them and see if there are some lessons you can apply to your own brand’s tone of voice.

Do Your Brand Justice

Your brand’s voice says a lot about the values your company stands for and believes in. In order to connect with customers and create meaningful online experiences, you must master the art of crafting and using a compelling voice that does your brand justice. 

Make sure to maintain your brand consistency and use your brand’s visual identity across all your channels, from social media to print. There’s Vista print promo code for you to do this on a budget.

Using the tips in this article, and your own intuition about your brand and its target audience, begin shaping your voice for the future. Your ability to create effective content depends on it.

Imagine how to manage a team at this office: everyone arrives to the building, has their own parking spot physically sectioned off from everyone else; a walled-off path that leads to their own desk, in a closed-off room, equipped with a kitchen and a bathroom; and their own walled-off path leading outside of the office to cafes and bars where they can take their laptop if they want to work outside.

There are neither internal phone lines in the office nor are cell phones permitted, only wireless internet via laptop. Whether there are 100 people in the building or only one, there’s absolutely no way of running into another human being on your team.

This sounds bizarre, but it’s basically how a remote team would be expressed in terms of a physical layout. Remote teams are great for lean startups, for businesses seeking to reduce costs, and even for attracting top talent – but project managers and company owners can’t expect the same results from using their in-person office management skills with their remote teams.

When you’re not physically working in the same space as your team, it’s vital that you use these six types of tools to get your work done:

COMMUNICATION

In the imaginary office earlier, it’s impossible to physically encounter another person on the team, so no updates can occur without using online communication tools. It’s the same for your remote team, so unless their volume of work is very simple and very small, it’s vital to invest in several systems of communication.

What you choose will depend on your style – some prefer webconferencing services to complement email, other teams use Skype for chat and video calls, some prefer to use video rooms like Sqwiggle.

Setting a business email address for each of your remote employees will help you keep your business communication more professional and safer.

Whatever tool or combination of tools you go with, just make sure they’re reliable. It’s incredibly frustrating for a remote worker when communications tools frequently fail – their work depends on having clear, recurrent communication.

FILE SHARING

This is similar to communication, but focused on sharing work products. For successful remote team work that actually generates results, you have to have a system of file sharing that avoids duplicate work or multiple versions of work product in different stages of editing.

Some people are fine with Google Drive or Dropbox. Other teams prefer to use Evernote or collaborate on files directly within their project management system.

Make sure to create a secure file sharing system as cybercrime continues to be on the rise, according to Hari Ravichandran.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

No matter how small the project or the team, don’t give in to the temptation to wing it by email. A good project management system avoids inbox clutter, organizes important documents, and tracks progress on key deliverables, while also communicating that progress to collaborators on the same task.

Asana, Basecamp, and Trello are versatile favorites that can work with a variety of different kinds of projects, while options like GitHub tend to be more popular with software developers.

There are quite a few business phone apps to help you manage projects with different teams.

TIME TRACKING

Remote workers don’t have the equivalent of face time, so it’s vital to implement a tool that gives them a comparable amount of accountability and credibility. Especially if there’s a delay on deliverables, being able to track time gives remote workers something to show for their efforts in the meantime.

It’ll also make progress reviews easier by giving managers another variable to compare with KPI’s during performance reviews. Hubstaff or Harvest are examples of easy to use tools that also integrate with project management and payment systems, and provides greater accountability than self-reporting.

PAYMENT

Nobody likes working hard and then not getting paid on time – especially not employees who’ve never physically seen you and who are located thousands of miles away.

Delays can happen even despite your best, good faith efforts to pay your remote team on time – but repeated occurrences can seriously damage morale.

That’s why it’s essential to have systems and procedures set up for accounting and payment. Whether it’s a tool that integrates with your time tracking system to automatically pay your workers, or hiring a virtual accounting team, get automated payment tools set up to make sure that your team members are promptly paid for the work they do.

Tools like Quickbooks will help you manage your finances effectively. Here’s a Quickbooks coupon to get you started.

RECOGNITION

Everyone likes to feel appreciated – and remember, in the remote office, you can’t just walk down the hall and congratulate a team member on an awesome job.

Something as simple as a thank you via email, a gift certificate, or even a small bonus will go a long way. Even better, share the appreciation – create a wiki or newsletter thanking that week’s or month’s star player for their work, and you’ll increase morale on the entire team.

Remote teams can form the base of highly successful businesses and create rewarding work for both entrepreneurs and their remote employees – as long as managers use these 6 types of tools to facilitate their working relationships.

Image source: Pixabay

If you’re a business owner or are just starting out, then you cannot underestimate the power of good marketing. 

Marketing is now an essential part of running any business, and so no matter what the product or service, you should have a marketing strategy in place.

I assume you already have a site. If not, here’s a very detailed guide on starting an online store.

Read on for five ideas on how to market yourself and create the type of buzz around your business that you need.

Build an Email List

Assuming you have a website and blog, then building an email list will help you directly engage with your customers and specific target markets. 

Make sure you have an email sign-up form on your web page, and give readers an incentive to fill it in, such as a free ebook relevant to your industry. You can then send out direct messages, newsletters, or marketing emails to your list.

Optimize Your Website and Marketing Content

Optimization is key to achieving a positive place in the SERPS, so use basic SEO strategies to improve your visibility. 

You should research and use keywords that aren’t too competitive, build good quality backlinks by producing shareable well-written content and posting on guest blog sites, and track all your results to keep on top of bad links and identify your most successful strategies.

However, as the search engines have cracked down on poor quality content and SEOs who ‘game’ the system, be very very careful. You don’t want to be penalized. So always make sure your links are natural, don’t produce copy stuffed with keywords, and never post on sites that provide poor-quality content or where you have no control. If in doubt, engage an SEO specialist for help.

Good branding is more than just a logo – it tells customers about your business a lot more effectively than thousands of words ever could

Create Strong Branding

Good branding is more than just a logo – it tells customers about your business a lot more effective than thousands of words ever could.

Essentially, good branding gives your business a visual identity to differentiate it from competitors, creates an image that customers want to buy into, gives your business its own personality, demonstrates your values, and builds trust. Ultimately, whenever customers see your brand, it should create a powerful connection between your customers and your business – and therefore build sales.

Create an Editorial Calendar for Blog Posts

A blog is an excellent tool for marketing, but be careful not to just post up haphazard and random content when you think of it. Create a plan for your blogs so that each post is carefully thought out and published regularly. 

Ultimately, you’ll save time on head scratching and trying to come up with ideas when under pressure.

Diversify Your Content Marketing

The most successful marketing strategies employ a good mix of types of media and platforms for customers to engage with. Use videos, images, articles, infographics, or webinars, and distribute them across a wide number of platforms for best results.

Image by Nattanan Kanchanaprat from Pixabay