Time to mark your calendar again!

Women Grow Business is absolutely delighted to be joining Live Your Talk to co-host an elegant evening of celebrating women entrepreneurship, stimulating conversation, and of course, wine!

Come mingle with DC’s best and brightest entrepreneurial minds, be in featured in our photos by Nakeva Photography, and maybe even win a Kindle!

We’ll be converging on the 5th & K St location of Busboys and Poets at 5:30 pm on Wednesday, February 15, 2012.

Go by our Eventbrite page to add it to your calendar now – if you won’t be in DC to attend, please share the link with your crowd.

There are NO tickets available at the door, and we’re only allowed to admit a certain number of people to our cozy loft space. Something about fire hazards…

Anyway, men are welcome to mingle with us, as always. So bring all your friends, and come celebrate Social Media Week with us in style!

Special thanks to our premium sponsor, The Matrix Group. And the utmost gratitude to Compass Point Associates and Live Your Talk who are also sponsoring the event.

Register today – this event will fill up fast (as will your two free glasses of wine)!

Image courtesy of Jawcey.

Today at noon, we’re privileged to have Allen Mireles lending us her wisdom on the topic of LinkedIn, during our monthly Twitter chat, which happens at Noon Eastern/New York time on the second Monday of each month.

In today’s chat we’ll be zeroing in on How to Effectively Use LinkedIn for Business.  More about our guest expert in a moment.

First, a few details about our chat.

How do you follow Our Monthly Tweetchats?

1. Log into Twitter, Tweetchat, Tweetgrid, or any other Twitter tool that lets you isolate a hashtag.
2. Follow our Twitter hashtag #wgbiz. (In Twitter you can use the search at the top of the screen, in Tweetchat or Tweetgrid, once you’re logged in, you’ll see an area for you to enter the hashtag at the top of the screen.)
3. Arrive as early as 11:45 a.m. to introduce yourself, send us a link to your site, and share what your company does, as well as to meet the other chatters.
4. Make sure you’re following the host, in this case me (@wbgiz is the official channel, @Tinu is my personal handle), and featured guest(s) if any, in this case Allen Mireles (@AllenMireles), so you can send questions or follow up with them later.
5. Have fun. Twitter chats are meant to be informative, sure, but also lighter than a teleconference or webinar.

More About Allen

Why did we go out of our way to ask (okay, beg!) Allen to join us?

Because she knows her stuff.

We make a point not to go down the social media street too often, because there are so many other blogs out there doing it. But when you get the chance to bring your audience specialized knowledge on a social network with such a business-specific use like LinkedIn, well, who could pass that up?

Called one of the “25 Very Smart Business Women to Follow on Twitter” and one of the “20 Social Media Divas You Should Be Following”,

Allen Mireles is a social media marketing and public relations strategist, trainer and public speaker. She combines more than 20 years of experience in traditional marketing and public relations with social media expertise, practicality, and humor to help her clients understand how to use social media tools and marketing and public relations strategy to meet business objectives.

Mireles is principal of Allen Mireles Social Media Marketing and Public Relations, a consultancy based outside of Toledo, Ohio, and founded in 1993 as Allen Mireles Marketing Communications. The firm has a diverse international client base in healthcare IT, manufacturing, and education.

See you at the chat!  (As always feel free to leave a comment to leave a question for Allen, or if you’d like a 15 minute warning for the chat.)
 

I’m very excited to announce the Northern Virginia Women’s Business conference ticket giveaway, brought to you by our favorite (and only) sponsor of Women Grow Business, Network Solutions, who is also one of the sponsors of this event.

If you don’t know about the Northern Virginia Women’s Business conference, here’s a quick description from their site:

 

JP Events & Consulting and Reston Limousine are proud to present the third annual Northern Virginia Women’s Business Conference. THE one day event for visionary women who want to discover the tools for success, make strategic business connections and leave feeling empowered and inspired to take action.

Throughout the day hear from women leaders in business and technology about:

• Branding
• Power Networking
• Sales Strategies
• Empowering Women in Finances
• Marketing and Social Media
• Maximizing Your Worth
• Work and Life Balance

The event takes place all day this Friday in Landsdowne, Virginia. I was convinced that it would be a great event to attend just from the agenda, but you should also take a look at the list of speakers, which includes a member of our Women Grow Business community, Tara Rethore, president of M. Beacon Enterprises.

Lisa Byrne and I are going to be live blogging this event, and we’re looking forward to meeting the lucky winner.

So what do you have to do in order to win this one and only free ticket, a $235USD value (not to mention a priceless fountain of knowledge)?

• Be available on Friday morning to pick up the ticket from us
• Leave a comment below sharing with us why you would value the experience and what you hope to gain by attending
• Make sure you’re connected to the community somehow (Facebook, Twitter, link to your website) so we can follow up with you via email to confirm your ticket.

Neither Lisa nor myself are allowed to pick the winner, so any brownies or bottles of wine sent to us will sway the results in any way. (Not that this should stop you from sending us anything.)

We’ll be contacting the winner via email so again, make sure there’s some way for us to get your email address after the contest is over (other than leaving it in your comment. Not secure!) The contest ends at noon tomorrow – don’t wait and forget about it, enter NOW.

Can’t attend yourself but want to help us find a winner? Tweet this post out to your circles. We only have about a day to get this coordinated, so we could use your help too.

We’ve got two events coming up this November for Women Grow Business, one live, and one virtual.

It also occurred to me when observing shares in Facebook and on Twitter that many community members have their own events to share, so I’ve decided to try a little experiment, which we’ll discuss momentarily.

First, let me update you on our latest news.

The Next Live Women Grow Business Event is Almost Here

By the time you read this, there may be only one or two seats left to our 3-in-1 strategy workshop for building your business.

Just in case there are – or if you’ve signed up and wanted more concrete ideas of what will happen that day – here are some reasons why you should attend.

A common complaint of entrepreneurs is that it’s difficult to both market your business and actually run your business at the same time. To complicate matters in this day and age, there are constantly new tools debuting, and even those are in an ongoing state of flux. Staying on top of all the new information, or even choosing what you’d do best to focus on is a constant struggle.

And yet you can’t just stop getting new customers, or using new tools to keep your current customers from going to your competition, or pretty soon you won’t have a business any more.

In our Rotating Digital Strategy Workshop, we’ll help you come up with a strategy that hits all the high points of the marketing you need to do for your business, and suggest ways to keep on top of all the daily tasks you need to attend to in order to execute it successfully.

This live workshop takes place this coming Tuesday, November 8th – you can sign up here.

UPDATE: Our wonderful Lisa Byrne has been able to secure extra seating. So if you hurry, new seats have been added. But you MUST sign up in order to get a guaranteed seat. This is a workshop, so you’ll need it.

Next Tweetchat Features Community Member Thursday Bram

The following Monday, we’re going to have an online chat with Women Grow Business Contributor, Thursday Bram of Hyper Modern Consulting. She recently launched a resource for Freelancers as well.

What is freelancing?

The common definition is working in a career that isn’t tied to one company, an independent worker. Freelancing is closely tied to entrepreneurialism, but the two aren’t necessarily one and the same.

You can’t help but think about how closely the two are linked, however. And freelancers often have amazing insights that many different types of people in business can learn from, whether they are top level corporate executives or small business owners.

So set aside your lunch hour from noon to 1 pm on Monday, November 14th for our online chat with Thursday. (Our chats will always be held the 2nd Monday of the month if you want to mark your calendar from here forward. Hint, hint.)

If you’re not familiar with Twitter, don’t worry, you can still follow the chat, even without being logged in, although I recommend signing up for an account now in order to be able to send in questions, and save your favorite insights.

How do you follow Tweetchats?

1. Log into Twitter, Tweetchat, Tweetgrid, or any other Twitter tool that lets you isolate a hashtag.
2. Follow our Twitter hashtag #wgbiz.(In Twitter you can use the search at the top of the screen, in Tweetchat or Tweetgrid, once you’re logged in, you’ll see a space asking for you to enter the hashtag at the top of the screen.)
3. Arrive as early as 11:45 a.m. to introduce yourself and share what your company does, as well as to meet the other chatters.
4. Make sure you’re following the host, in this case me (@wbgiz is the official channel), and featured guest(s) if any, in this case Thursday Bram (@ThursdayB), so you can send questions or follow up with them later.
5. Have fun. Twitter chats are meant to be informative, sure, but also lighter than a teleconference or webinar.

Need Help Promoting Your Women in Business Event?

I hope to see you in attendance at as many events as you can make it to- the Women Grow Business community appreciates all your support. And so do I.

This column won’t just be for Women Grow Business events in the future. If you have an event you’d like to see included, email the address on the Be Featured page with the word “event” in the subject line.  Please include the details of the event – what it’s called, a brief description, who is holding it, whether it’s free or paid, time, date, and location. Please be explicit even if the location is online – is it a webinar, online conference, Twitter chat?

A link directly to a page that has more details or a public page where attendees can sign up would be also appreciated, but is not required in the case of offline events.

We can’t include all the ones we get, but if we believe they could be of interest to our audience, we’ll do our best.

Image courtesy of Handycons2

Don’t have a website yet?

Our blog’s sponsor, Network Solutions, is offering a coupon code for a discounted domain name registration. Click here to order your domain and use the coupon code PCMKT00424 when you get to the checkout page.

Ye faithful WGB readers, thank you for sticking with us the last couple of weeks! I know some of you have been scratching your heads, wondering where, oh where, did your content go?

We didn’t fall into a black hole, exactly, but as we were undergoing the editorial transition, we… ok, we fell into a black hole.

I’m sorry! We’ll try to do better the next time!

But we’re back now and I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to tell you that effective immediately, Tinu Abayomi-Paul is the new editor of Women Grow Business.

Tinu really needs no introduction. She’s been a stalwart of the WGB community from Day 1, not just with her terrific blog contributions, but has brought tremendous value to our community via last year’s Women Grow Business bootcamp, her regular participation in our monthly Twitter chats as well as other social properties, and, all in all, is just the bee’s knees.

(Do bees have knees? If they did, and assuming they were fantabulous, them’s Tinu for you.)

Here’s her official bio:

Tinu rescues web sites from obscurity and shows business people how to generate leads and traffic from the web. Founder of Free Traffic Tips and Ask Tinu, she is widely published online as an ever effective, end-to-end website promotion specialist — on Web Pro News, Search Engine Guide, and more. Ready to engage on Twitter as @tinu, she’s known to say: “You can’t knock my hustle.”

But really, Tinu is so much more than that, and I can’t wait to see the new heights she will take Women Grow Business to.

Please do join me in congratulating and welcoming your new editor – Tinu Abayomi-Paul!

Former Women Grow Business editor Shonali Burke is the award-winning principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, where she turns your communication conundrums into community cool. Adjunct faculty for Johns Hopkins’ MA/Communication program, she publishes Waxing UnLyrical under the watchful eyes of Chuck, Suzy Q. and Lola, her three rescue dogs. Her long-suffering husband has accepted that Shonali can most often be found on Twitter.

Are you suffering from a nasty case of “the shoulds?”

Symptoms include: Habitual doing of what you think you SHOULD do versus what you WANT to do, feeling detached from your job, wondering what happened to that life or career dream, a general angst for doing the dishes…

Sound familiar?

Several, major bodies of research actually focus on the cause and impact of that nasty case of “the shoulds”: Confidence.

Well, “should” no more, because the Hot Mommas Project has a treat in store for you!

The Hot Mommas Project has cracked the code on women’s confidence, and has packaged it up in a half-day seminar. Until now, these teachings were only available inside the classroom of an exclusive, nationally ranked Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership course.

Today, The Hot Mommas Project brings you groundbreaking research and the best practices in leadership education. The result:  To help YOU solve, improve, and reach higher; a real world toolkit with the guidance to use it. In the Sis U Bootcamp coming up, you’ll:

• Understand the hard-hitting facts behind the value of women and girls in society. We raise GDPs and company profitability. There’s a reason. Learn what we can do to bring it to the forefront.
• Learn about the “confidence crisis” and how to neutralize it. It’s rampant among women and girls, but we’re so well educated and awesome, we’ve been excelling in spite of it.
• Master the Sisterhood of Success Equation: GRIP, GOAL, GET and see how you can replicate this in your career in any situation ranging from work life balance to salary negotiation to running for office.
• Experience one of the most addictive mentorship exercises ever, and walk out with “Your 5″ – what their research shows is the make-or-break between mediocrity or pursuing your true potential.
• End strong with a pay it forward plan – because that’s how the Sisterhood of Success rolls.

Here are the deets:

When: Saturday, October 15th, 2011, 10 am to 1 pm

Where: The George Washington University School of Business, CFEE

How much: $99 with our special discount code until October 7^th (30% off original ticket price)

How to get the discount: Register here and enter the code wgbiz

With whom: Kathy Korman Frey, The Hot Mommas® Project Founder, Harvard MBA, Entrepreneur in Residence and Professor of the award-winning Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership class at The George Washington University School of Business, Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence.

Having heard from Kathy during last year’s #wgbiz bootcamp, I can tell you she is a terrific speaker, energizing, and knows how to put you to work. So I strongly suggest you sign up soon. It’ll probably be the best $99 you’ve spent in a while. Remember, the special discounted WGB rate is good through Oct. 7, so don’t delay!

Image: snigl3t via Flickr, Creative Commons

Outgoing Women Grow Business editor Shonali Burke is the award-winning principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, where she turns your communication conundrums into community cool. Adjunct faculty for Johns Hopkins’ MA/Communication program, she publishes Waxing UnLyrical under the watchful eyes of Chuck, Suzy Q. and Lola, her three rescue dogs. Her long-suffering husband has accepted that Shonali can most often be found on Twitter.

From our friends at  American Express OPEN and WIPP:

Small businesses received $98 billion in government contracting opportunities in 2010. Despite this enticing number, many small businesses are staying on the sidelines and missing their fair share. The federal government has a benchmark goal of awarding 23 percent of spending to small businesses and an additional 5 percent to women-owned small businesses.

To help business owners claim their full share, American Express OPEN and Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) are offering a free, one hour tutorial on Wednesday, August 17^th. This session will provide top level guidance on what business owners should be doing after they complete their registration on the Central Contractor Registration (CCR) – the primary vendor database for the federal government.

Topics discussed in this webinar include:

• A review of the CCR record
• SBA profile
• The Small Business Dynamic Search Process
• An overview of how the federal government buys products and services.

This educational webinar is part of the Give Me 5 program, a national program created by American Express OPEN and WIPP to help women business owners get a leg up on selling to the world’s largest customer; the U.S. government. The Give Me 5 program has educated more than 400,000 business owners and helped more than 28,000 register on the CCR.

The 4-1-1:

Date: Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Time: 3-4pm ET / 12-1pm PT

Where: Virtual

To register and for more info, click here.

Reminder: we’re talking “coy and decoy marketing” with Tinu Abayomi-Paul on Twitter TODAY!

Seems like everyone’s using social media to promote themselves these days.

But how do you do it ethically? How do you do it so that you get results? How do you do it without it eating up your day?

Join regular contributor Tinu Abayomi-Paul for our August Twitter chat next week, when she’ll talk about all this. Some of the questions Tinu will field are:

• How to increase your audience quality and quantity by serving your audience
• Why inflating numbers doesn’t work
• Tools for tracking the results of your activities
• What connects social media to lead generation
• How to get more leads from social media by NOT focusing on lead generation

If you’re not familiar with Tinu (gasp!), here’s a little bit about her:

Tinu Abayomi-Paul rescues web sites from obscurity and shows business people how to generate leads and traffic from the web. Founder of Free Traffic Tips and Ask Tinu, she is widely published online as an ever effective, end-to-end website promotion specialist — on Web Pro News, Search Engine Guide, and more. Ready to engage on Twitter as @tinu, she’s known to say: “You can’t knock my hustle.”

If you have more questions for Tinu, please leave them in the comments below. And it’s easy to join our Twitter chat: just sign onto Twitter from 12-1 pm ET TODAY and follow/use the hashtag #wgbiz to participate.

Important Twitter handles for you to follow: @tinu (Tinu), @wgbiz (our official Twitter handle) and @shonali (er, me, ‘cos I’ll be helping to moderate the chat).

See you there!

Women Grow Business editor Shonali Burke is the award-winning principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, where she turns your communication conundrums into community cool. Adjunct faculty for Johns Hopkins’ MA/Communication program, she publishes Waxing UnLyrical under the watchful eyes of Chuck, Suzy Q. and Lola, her three rescue dogs. Her long-suffering husband has accepted that Shonali can most often be found on Twitter.

Seems like everyone’s using social media to promote themselves these days.

But how do you do it ethically? How do you do it so that you get results? How do you do it without it eating up your day?

Join regular contributor Tinu Abayomi-Paul for our August Twitter chat next week, when she’ll talk about all this. Some of the questions Tinu will field are:

• How to increase your audience quality and quantity by serving your audience
• Why inflating numbers doesn’t work
• Tools for tracking the results of your activities
• What connects social media to lead generation
• How to get more leads from social media by NOT focusing on lead generation

If you’re not familiar with Tinu (gasp!), here’s a little bit about her:

Tinu Abayomi-Paul rescues web sites from obscurity and shows business people how to generate leads and traffic from the web. Founder of Free Traffic Tips and Ask Tinu, she is widely published online as an ever effective, end-to-end website promotion specialist — on Web Pro News, Search Engine Guide, and more. Ready to engage on Twitter as @tinu, she’s known to say: “You can’t knock my hustle.”

If you have more questions for Tinu, please leave them in the comments below. And it’s easy to join our Twitter chat: just sign onto Twitter from 12-1 pm ET on Monday, August 8, and follow/use the hashtag #wgbiz to participate.

Important Twitter handles for you to follow: @tinu (Tinu), @wgbiz (our official Twitter handle) and @shonali (er, me, ‘cos I’ll be helping to moderate the chat).

See you there!

Women Grow Business editor Shonali Burke is the award-winning principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, where she turns your communication conundrums into community cool. Adjunct faculty for Johns Hopkins’ MA/Communication program, she publishes Waxing UnLyrical under the watchful eyes of Chuck, Suzy Q. and Lola, her three rescue dogs. Her long-suffering husband has accepted that Shonali can most often be found on Twitter.

As a woman entrepreneur, you’ve taken the steps to launch your own business. What’s next?

We’re bringing back our popular monthly Twitter chats this month with a woman who’s answered this question while building her own business successfully. Matrix Group CEO Joanna Pineda will answer questions – today! – and offer her thoughts on what you need to know after you’ve launched your business. For example:

• How to measure your ROI. For example, how much are you spending on hosting and managing your website? What about other business expenses, such as Internet, phone and transportation? Are you sustaining a good living from your business?
• How to develop achievable goals. According to a recent survey conducted by Make a Million Dollar Business, an initiative program to help women business owners launch their businesses, 87% of the women surveyed said they want to grow their business; 54% they prefer to do it themselves.

And, finally, Joanna will share her own experiences on how she transformed a one-person shop into an award-winning agency web design and development agency.

Here are some of the questions Joanna will take:

• What types of goals should you create for your business?
• How often should you re-evaluate your goals?
• What types of networks are available to help you develop your business goals and objectives?
• What types of expenses should you be tracking?
• Is it better to hire employees to manage your day-to-day business or outside help?

If you have more questions for Joanna, please leave them in the comments below. And it’s easy to join our Twitter chat: just sign onto Twitter from 12-1 pm ET TODAY, and follow/use the hashtag #wgbiz to participate. Important Twitter handles for you to follow: @jmpineda (Joanna), @wgbiz (our official Twitter handle) and @shonali (er, me, ‘cos I’ll be helping to moderate the chat).

Hope to see you there!

Image: garryknight via Flickr, Creative Commons

Women Grow Business editor Shonali Burke is the award-winning principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, where she turns your communication conundrums into community cool. Adjunct faculty for Johns Hopkins’ MA/Communication program, she publishes Waxing UnLyrical under the watchful eyes of Chuck, Suzy Q. and Lola, her three rescue dogs. Her long-suffering husband has accepted that Shonali can most often be found on Twitter.