The professional photo set from the Women’s Leadership Soirée is now available.

Joy, Tinu, Ify and Ashley

Nakeva Photography was on site to capture the evening for us and the pictures came out beautifully.

They’ll also be uploaded to our Facebook page after we gather as much information as possible about those pictured. For the time being, you can view them on Flickr or in the slideshow below.

Want to help us get these up in Facebook faster? If you see a picture of yourself, please respond in the comments with your full name, Twitter handle and website.

In the meantime, we’ll tag as many people as we can and make an announcement on Facebook when the set is available over there. You can read a full recap of our Women’s Leadership Soirée in DC here, where an update with a few of these shots is now in progress.

(And of course, if you want your comments/photos included, send a tweet with the hashtag #wgbiz or leave a comment on our Facebook page. )

Click on the show to view the full set on Flickr.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Sightings from the Women’s Leadership Soirée – Are You In These Photos? #wgbiz #smwwdc

How do you describe magic?

I used to think it was so silly when someone would describe an evening as magical.

Did rabbits pop out of someone’s hat? Was David Copperfield there?

Yet now that words escape me, I understand. They must mean that an event they nurtured to maturity   met the needs of the people it was created for in ways that exceeded what they would have imagined.

Our Women Grow Business community members showed up in force to our Women’s Leadership Soiree. They networked with each other as usual – many of us had our various glasses of wine, exchanged business cards, made small talk, hugged people we hadn’t seen in a while. That much was thrilling but expected.

Of course, sharing appointment book time with two other Social Media Week events (that I hear were simply fantastic), the idea crept in that perhaps we were in for a more, shall we say, intimate gathering.

A Bit of the Unexpected

Nothing could have been further from the truth. Not only was the room filled to capacity,  we got a healthy mixture of rarely-seen veterans and fresh faces among the trusted pillars of our community. This is important: you want the same core group to keep coming to events – that’s what community is.

But communities don’t expand and grow if new faces aren’t introduced, nor if the folks who are normally forced to support only in spirit due to other commitments can’t make it.

And we were lucky enough to have all the bases covered. We had everyone from young female college students to local lady entrepreneur legends in our midst. That was a bit out of the ordinary – and that wasn’t all.

The evening quickly and smoothly advanced from small talk to networking, and not just of the garden variety card-swap. Resources were exchanged and shared, opportunities offered, collaborations started.

And a of start-up may have born from scribbles on napkins – that last part I’m not at liberty to divulge at this time. (wink)

All this was thanks to supportive community members like yourself. And it could not have been such a success without the backing of our premium sponsor, The Matrix Group, and its CEO Joanna Pineda.

Huge thanks to another one of our great sponsors, Compass Point Associates, and CEO Nicolette Pizzitola, also a leadership education advocate, whose George Washington University students also provided our registration support.

And special thanks to Nakeva Photography for capturing our memories throughout the evening.

What Did The Attendees Have to Say?

You just can’t take my words for it that this was an amazing event – with our Women Grow Business founder Jill Foster, now the owner of Live Your Talk, I was a co-host. So I may be ever so slightly biased. Why not let the community speak for itself?

We shall momentarily, in pictures and commentary, below.

(This is an on-going update – if you want your comments/photos included, send a tweet with the hashtag #wgbiz or leave a comment on our Facebook page. After the official photos debut, we’ll be announcing the updated version.)

Thank you so much to everyone attended. If you couldn’t make it or live too far away, we hope to see you at another event soon, online or off.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Recollections and Community Comments about the Women’s Leadership Soiree #wgbiz #smwwdc

On Monday of this week, our community welcomed Stephanie Diamond as the guest expert of our monthly Twitter chats that take place every second Monday of the month at noon.

We had an absolutely wonderful turn out despite several conflicting issues, including:

• the  start of Social Media Week, and many of our regular crowd attending events online and off,
• intermittent slowness on Twitter, possibly caused by the extra load of the aforementioned,
• and some questions showing up in Tweetchat after the answers.

And our gracious guest expert did not skip a beat. She gave us several great tips during our event, such as:

q4 To find stories monitor what you talk about when you’re working- customer service questions or answers to vendors #wgbiz

— Stephanie Diamond (@diamondsf) February 13, 2012

For a full summary of the chat, you can view the transcript online. However, likely due to the problems with Twitter that I mentioned, her tweets didn’t make it into the transcript, and some of the other community members who used the hashtag aren’t represented either. I added the main questions and answers at the end of this post.

Be sure to have a look at the full transcript, where you’ll find other Women Grow Business community members. One of the great things about using social media tools to gather is that it allows those of us who participate to find each other online. Reach out to someone else in the community and make a new friend!

The friendship in itself is reward enough, but you never know where else it might lead.

Hopefully, we’ll encounter each other again at next month’s chat, on March 12, 2012, at noon Eastern/New York time.

And of course, I’m very excited to see those of you who will be in the area tonight at our Social Media Week Event, the Women’s Leadership Soiree. Good luck winning the Kindle Fire… a little bird told me that there’s another really great prize being given away that evening too, so if you’re planning to be in attendance, arrive in time for the giveaway!

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Aggregate of Our #WgBiz Twitter Chat with Stephanie Diamond (@diamondsf)

In January, BOLT Insurance Agency released an infographic about the growth of Women Business owners and their role as America’s new job creators.

Generally, I’m not a huge fan of infographics – they can misrepresent data, and don’t always cite their sources. But after a quick check on this one, I’ve found that this one fairly represents the sources it cites, though it will take more time to investigate those sources for accuracy.

With that in mind, I’ve included the infographic below for your perusal.

Before you have a look, it may interest you to note that in 2007, women owned 7.8 million businesses and accounted for 28.7 percent of all businesses nationwide, employing about 7.6 million people, according to the US Census. When you include businesses owned equally by men and women, another 4.6 million companies were responsible for employing another 8.1 million workers.

Therefore the idea of women business owners as job creators sounds like a topic worth exploring.

However, the summary of Census data that I linked to later references a quote from Census Bureau Deputy Director Thomas Mesenbourg, who stated that “women-owned businesses still lag behind businesses owned by men” in terms of numbers of businesses and receipts generated.

What do you think of the infographic? Do you feel the impact of your business is reflected in this sampling of data? What does it say about the impact of Women in Business? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Via: Bolt Insurance

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: [Infographic] Growth of U.S. Women Business Owners

It’s been quite a while since we had a chat with our community member Allen Mireles, who enlightened us about the social media site LinkedIn.

Before our chat LinkedIn was definitely not my favorite place to be online – in my mind I saw it as a place to keep my resume updated and formally ask for favors or introductions.

Of course, as a business owner, I’m much more likely to be looking to hire people than look for a new position – and most people I’d be comfortable asking for favors or intros from phones. So aside from the Answers section, and a few isolated incidents of assistance, it didn’t click for me why I needed to be there on an on-going basis besides basic presence.

However, through Allen’s tutelege and helpful tips from community members in the audience, I gleaned several helpful insights from the discussion, as did many others in the audience. The discussion was invaluable in helping me form a sound strategy for LinkedIn.

We had 48 participants in December as well – as you look at the summary, feel free to connect with some of the other people in the Women Grow Business community.

You can click links to their tweets to discover their Twitter profiles, where you’ll find their links. And on their sites, you can learn more about them, subscribe to their blogs, and find them on other social media properties, if Twitter just isn’t your thing.

You can view and download a summary of the December Twitter chat with Allen Mireles here: [3 mb PDF]. The report is a bit different this time – there are two issues. First, the data cuts off at question 5. We’re looking to get it restored if possible.

Secondly, the format is different – this is generated from my backup source for hashtag reporting, which is a RowFeeder export, produced in Excel. The advantage is that it’s sortable by time, so this report is in chronological order, rather than the reverse order that the TweetReach report I normally use comes in.

However, the photos/avatars don’t show up, and the presentation of the report is missing all our normal bells and whistles. But alas, since the TweetReach report wasn’t generated in time, it’s this or nothing. And I like switching to RowFeeder every now and again, as it’s refreshing to see the tweets in the order that they appeared.

Please join us at our next chat on February 13th, from noon to 1 pm, where you can learn about How to Be An Effective Digital Storyteller, with Marketer and Author Extraordinare, Stephanie Diamond.

There might be another book giveaway. You never know…

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Recap of Our #WgBiz Twitter chat with Allen Mireles (@allenmireles)

Our Twitter chat with Maddie Grant was enormously successful, and may have set a record for us at Women Grow Business. Please be sure to click though to Maddie’s profile in the report and thank her if you benefitted from the chat or the summary.

Maddie Rocked It!

One of my favorite comments that she made was part of her answer to the question “What things do organizations miss about social media? Specifically things that companies just “get”"

One of the things she said was:

So true. You can see more tweets like this, and links to her website and to where you can pick up her book on Amazon, in the downloadable report. Be careful though – the link to follow is to a PDF that’s 33 pages long!

Meet Your Fellow Community Members too.

We had 127 participants this time as well – as you look at the summary, also connect with some of the other people in the Women Grow Business community.

You can click any of their names to discover their Twitter profiles, where you’ll find their links. And on their sites, you can learn more about them, subscribe to their blogs, and find them on other social media properties, if Twitter just isn’t your thing.

You’re also welcome to participate in our next chat as well. There are instructions in the link to the next chat, which you’ll see at the end of this post. When you do, remember to arrive early and tell us what you do, or how the community can help you reach your goals.

You can view and download a summary of the January Twitter chat with Maddie Grant here. If you have any problems with the link, please comment so I can alert you to the direct download link when I update this post tomorrow.

(I’m having technical problems with the October and December chats, but the best verson I can make of those will be up soon as well.)

Please join us at our next chat on February 13th, from noon to 1 pm, where you can learn about How to Be An Effective Digital Storyteller, with Marketer and Author Extraordinare, Stephanie Diamond. We may have a book giveaway, you never know. Keep up with our Women Grow Business posts to find out. The subscribe link is in the upper right hand corner of the site.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Summary of January #WgBiz Twitter Chat with Maddie Grant (@maddiegrant)

Our monthly Women Grow Business Twitter chat is coming up again in about two weeks, on Monday, February 13th. As often as possible we like to have a featured guest expert come by and talk to the Women Grow Business community. And this time we have somehow managed to get marketing great and four time author Stephanie Diamond to fit us into her busy schedule.

About Stephanie Diamond

Many people can claim to be marketing mavens but Stephanie Diamond can back it up with both real world experience and hands-on knowledge. Founder of Digital Works Inc., she was also once the Marketing Director at America Online (AOL).

The most referenced citation of her marketing knowledge that I came across was this: when she joined AOL, they had 1 miillion subscribers, and by the time she left they had 36 million. Of course, she’s also the author of four books – three of them are part of the famous “For Dummies” series. The fourth book is about Web Marketing for Small Business.

After asking Stephanie to come talk to us, we were conflicted about what her topic would be. I was led to ask her to be a guest expert when some community members asked me about her.

Curiousity centered around the back story of how she came to author Dragon Naturally Speaking for Dummies, and Prezi for Dummies, as well as co-author Social Media Marketing for Dummies. She also wrote Web Marketing for Small Businesses: 7 Steps to Explosive Growth. Naturally, many of the aspiring business authors in our community wanted to pick her brain a little.

My professional connection to her, however, is through her expertise in web marketing – after all, this IS what she’s known for, and no discussion with her would be complete without its mention.

In order to hit on both points of interest, Stephanie came up with a brilliant idea that touches on the intersection of these two worlds. Our discussion will be about How to Be an Effective Digital Storyteller. That way we can touch on her journey as a successful author, and still have a conversation about one of the elements of marketing that she believes is central to success.

We’ll talk about how you can connect with Stephanie Diamond in a moment. Let’s make sure you know how to participate in our Twitter chats first.

How do you follow The #WgBiz Twitter chats?

1. Log into Twitter, Tweetchat, Tweetgrid, Tweetdeck, 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 Stephanie Diamond(@DiamondSF), so you can send questions or follow up with them later.
5. Have yourself a ball. Twitter chats are meant to be educational, sure, but also lighter than a teleconference or webinar.

Where to Read More About Stephanie

Stephanie’s home on the web is Marketing Message Mindset, where you can find an instant webinar to help you hit the ground running in your marketing mission. You can follow her posts at the Marketing Message Blog as well. And then there’s the Stephanie Diamond Amazon author page. Social Marketing for Dummies isn’t available yet, but you can pre-order it.

See you at the chat!

Excerpt is from “Web Marketing for Small Businesses: 7 Steps for Explosive Business Growth”.

​

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Coming February 13th: #wgbiz chat with Stephanie Diamond (@diamondsf)

It’s my honor and pleasure to have been included as a member of the media covering the 2012 What’s Next DC Conference.

I’d been covering it the morning of Monday’s conference using Storify, but unfortunately had problems using the drag and drop interface to include tweets, pictures and videos on an iPad.

Initially, a travel conflict was preventing me from attending, but after Vanessa French contacted me personally, it was just too good to pass up.

What was so great about this conference that I changed cross-country travel plans?

Well, What’s Next DC is striving to be a conference that you get actionable, engaging content from, looking more toward future trends and ideas you can start using right away, rather than re-hashing ideas you’ve already learned.

Started in 2011,  Tod Plotkin of the Green Buzz Agency explained that his idea was for this to be an event that wasn’t all pitch-fests or just another gathering where smart people talk in monotones over boring slides. I’m paraphrasing – there’s a more eloquent quote on the event site.

My snapshot analysis is that in comparison to the first one, (which wasn’t bad), What’s Next DC is significantly closer to hitting this mark. It isn’t quite there yet, but the amount of progress they’ve made in just one year is nothing short of remarkable. (Insert elbow poke for people who attended in 2011.)

There’s more detail in my What’s Next DC 2012 Storify synopsis, below, but do note that it’s not complete.

It will take me a few days to get all the pictures and video up, as well as tweets from the stream, as there was a lot of great information being shared – be sure you’re following Women’s Grow Business on Facebook, Email, or Twitter to get the final update. (If I include your tweet in the collection you’ll get an @ response in the next few days from my @Tinu handle.)

So in the meantime, be sure to

• have a look at the What’s Next DC Twitter hashtag stream,
• see What’s Next DC photo highlights on Facebook,
• get updates from What’s Next DC on Twitter,
• view Lisa Bryne’s wrap-up,
• peruse Melanie Spring’s Storify link as well, and,
• don’t forget to tell the What’s Next team your ideas for making the event better next time around.

Overall it was a great way to spend a Monday. And sidenote? After parties at the British Embassy are ten times better than you’d expect them to be.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: What You Missed at What’s Next DC 2012 (#whatsnextdc)

Vet turned corporate turned entrepreneur – with change comes opportunity.

Susan Joyce is the force, literally and figuratively, behind the mega-job-resource board  known as Job Hunt.

Today’s interview focuses on what she has learned which may offer you ideas for your own career transitions and choices. Because, yes, most of us have multiple transitions.

“I started my web development company in 1994, after I was laid off from Digital Equipment (DEC). DEC was the second largest computer company in the world at the time – with over 100,000 employees – and a Fortune 50 company, but completely gone by 1998.”

“The web was new and very few businesses had websites.” My company, Netability, helped companies get onto the web. I ran it as a solopreneur and developed a cadre of sub-contractors to support my clients’ needs.”

In 1998, she bought Job-Hunt. “It was a large, popular site receiving more traffic than any of my clients; so whenever it ran into problems, what I learned could help my clients avoid them.”

In 2008, Susan sold off her web development work with other clients to focus on Job-Hunt. This was a difficult decision. She had been running it in her ‘spare time’ – read that as nights and every weekend for years!

But she realized she really had her ‘heart’ there. “The DEC layoffs made a big impression on me — that’s really why I do what I do now. The impact on the people and economy were incredible. A few people, when they were laid off, left the office with their personal items in a box, went home, and ended their lives. The suicides continued for years.”

So I do what I do – running Job-Hunt.org – to try to help people see they have options when career changes occur.

“I run a uniquely 21st Century business. We provide people with the best advice and resources to help with current job search techniques and career management needs. My most important clients are the job seekers, but they do not pay for the service. My revenue comes from the site’s sponsors, visible on each page. My ‘customers’; however, also include search engine spiders, which tell the world about Job-Hunt. So I am always balancing three ‘customers’ needs and wants.”

It is a pretty simple business model. Focus on the visitors – what do they need and want? Understand the search engines – what do they need to understand and appropriately digest our content?

“No visitors; no advertisers. No advertisers; no revenue.”

During the past three years Job-Hunt has been ‘my only business, my only product.’

“When Google made a major shift in 2011 (aka Panda), I realized that was not smart.” External forces could change the whole landscape without notice or recourse. “I knew that vulnerability existed but had not believed it was critical. I assumed good content would always be rewarded.”

So what is ahead for Job-Hunt?

“Moving more to embrace mobile technologies; expanding social media activities; looking at conference sponsorships and marketing for added visibility.”

What can you learn from Susan’s experiences?

• “Most important mistake was ignoring the ‘big picture’ of the business and planning. I got too bogged down in daily actions and my ‘to-do’ list.”
• “I really need a current business plan and I need to use it, to review and update it regularly. Technology changes, market changes – these come fast.”
• “Marketing is very helpful, not an after-thought or for others. I know – DUH.”
• “That I cannot learn everything from the Internet. Just not true now!”

What’s in the future?

• Job-Hunt will continue and grow. “That is a personal passion based on my own experiences.”
• “I am writing a book and working with a co-author to expand my realm.”
• “A second website acquisition is pending.”
• “Attending professional conferences to enhance my network and my knowledge.”

“These activities will provide greater stability than having everything in Job-Hunt.org. They also mean its back to hiring and managing again.”

Susan and I attended VWISE Baltimore in September – a great program for entrepreneurial women veterans. I have recommended Job-Hunt.org to job seekers for years, so it was terrific to connect with its owner and discover some common bonds. And, full disclosure, now I write a column for her too.

For further reading

• Job-Hunt
• Entrepreneur programs for vets and families
• The value of professional development

Patricia A. Frame is an experienced management consultant, speaker, and executive with expertise in human capital, and founder of Strategies for Human Resources. She helps small to mid-size organizations achieve their goals through more effective human capital strategy and management.

She can be reached through her website SHRinsight.com, where archives for her ongoing management series can be found.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: An Interview with Susan Joyce of Job Hunt

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.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Join us for a Women’s Leadership Soiree During Social Media Week DC (#smwwdc)