Time to PlayWritten by Deborah Carraro
One of biggest challenges faced by solo-entrepreneurs is scheduling personal time - time away from business. It's particularly challenging when you're first starting your business. Your natural impulse is to throw everything you have into your business - time, money, energy - but that may not be wisest course of action.Spending your entire day living, breathing (and if you spend that much time in your business - dreaming) your business, you're bound to burn out - or at very least, not be as effective as you want to be. Consider these tips: Out To Lunch: Whether you work in an office or at home, you need to take breaks and recharge your batteries. You're not going to be able to concentrate on closing a sale, writing a proposal, or crunching numbers if you forgot to eat lunch and sugar levels are scrambling your gray cells. Post Your Business Hours: Sounds pretty obvious but establishing work hours even if you work at home, sets boundaries and helps you pace yourself. I'll admit it, this is hardest tip for me to follow in my own business. I love doing what I do and have a strong workaholic tendancies and probably a slight addiction to e-mail :-) I've learned, however, that it's crucial to set business hours and not give in to temptation of being available 24/7. Most days I can stick to hours I've posted and some days I can't - trick is learning that to-do list will always be there and prioritizing your projects and deadlines.
| | Blogging for BusinessWritten by Biana Babinsky
Not long ago a blog was simply an online diary. Initially, people decided that blogging was describing, in excruciating detail, how their day went, what they had for dinner last night, and why they spent whole weekend doing laundry.Since then, blogging made transition into business arena. Now blogs are frequently being used as business journals, tools that can help keep your customers and web site visitors up to date with what is going on with your company. A business blog is an excellent tool to toot your own horn, let world know about your new products, and tell your target customers why they should do business with you, rather than your competitor. Don’t have a blog for your business yet? No problem! Here is how you can start blogging in just five easy steps: * Set up a blog for your business. If you don’t want to have to set up things on your own, visit Blogger.com. Blogger will host your blog on its server, so that you don’t have to add anything to your own web site. On other hand, if you’d like to set something up on your own, get blogging software from WordPress.org * Make your blog an extension of your business identity. The look and feel of your blog should match that of your business web site. Don’t forget to include your logo! * Don’t make blog into a giant ad. Your readers will immediately recognize that ruse and stop reading blog. Instead, post items that are of interest to your current and potential customers. Use blog to post tips and ideas, articles, information about new products, etc.
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