Business Mums Magazine

I have a vision for the magazine - how I want it to look, the sort of content I want included, and so on.

Over at Assential Scrapbooking, Jenny shared how she is scrapbooking a business vision board for her business. It has a combination of photos, images from magazines and inspiring words and she is planning to mount it somewhere to remind her of what she wants her business to be.

This is a great idea - not only does it get your vision out of your head, but it is somewhere to remind you about it. This is something I definately want to do Now, to start collecting magazines to cut up to create a board.

A great promotion idea is to share your expertise. This can be done in a number of ways including writing articles, speaking and blogging.

Katrina over at Joliv regularly shares natural skin care tips. These fit in well with her products, which are all natural, and they don’t take away from her core business.

Tash from Word Constructions has a blog with communication tips and regularly writes articles. You can find many of these articles for free reprint on The RepOZitory. These showcase her writing as well as her expertise in a variety of topics. She will also be presenting at the Business Mums Conference.

These are just a few ideas of how business mums are sharing their expertise. What do you do?

The New year is a great time to refresh your business, whether you restsart something afresh like Elena from EP Designs is doing (you can read about it on her blog), or launching a new business like Becky from Fortun8gal, or simply giving your website a facelift like we are here at Business Mums Magazine. The start of the year is the perfect time to breath new life in to your business.

Are you doing anything to breath new life into your business? If so, share it with us by leaving a comment.

Today we celebrate Australia Day. Other than it being a public holiday, we don’t do too much in our family, however I have noticed lately a number of online businesses having Australia Day promotions in the lead up to today.

They have included:

• highlighting Australian Made products
• stocking Australiana (ie Aussie flags, animals, etc)
• offering free reports with Aussie recipe’s
• offering free tips on having a fantastic Australia Day BBQ
• instructions on how to play beach/backyard cricket
• creating and promoting Australia Day gift and picnic/BBQ hampers

Many sites are also putting an Australia Day message on their sites.

Have you done any promotions for Australia Day this year or in past years? Please share them with us.

You’ve all heard people say you need to find a niche for your business. Many of us look at the obvious - women, mums, working mums, etc. But few look outside the square.

Reading Ingrid Cliffs blog while I was away, I came across a post titled “Age is a niche“. In Japan, there are specialist dating agencies for people over 50.

Is there any way you can define your niche more by looking outside the square? Instead of “women”, consider a niche such as “women over 50″ or “women under 50 with full time jobs”.

Is there any way you can define your niche or find a different one using age or another defining factor?

On Monday, I went to a workshop on goals presented by Tash Hughes of Word Constructions. During the talk, she read out a definition of challenges:

Challenge: Interesting difficulties

I love this definition of a challenge. Having something that’s interesting makes it more fun to do! And this definition makes it seem like challenges aren’t hard, they aren’t scary, they are interesting and something fun to do.

For me, much of business and business growth is changing my mindset. By seeing challenges as interesting difficulties rather than something to be dreaded and avoided is something that will help my business grow.

There are many business mums who have free downloadable colouring sheets on their sites as a promotion and value add for their visitors, especially if they have products for families.

These are great for a number of reasons:

• parents/kids will use them
• each sheet has the business branding on them, so whenever someone sees the sheet, they will see the branding of the business
• if kids do a good job colouring, then parents are likely to put them on display somewhere in the house, thus reinforcing branding of the business

The other thing with most of these businesses is they have come up with images and characters for their businesses, rather than using readily available images, so the kids are colouring in something new.

I have also found them useful because I supply colouring sheets at Business Mums Network events to keep little ones busy. Where possible, I use ones that I can print off from business mums websites, and I’m sure none of them have any objections to me using them in this way.

A couple of sites where you can find free colouring sheets, either to print off for your kids or to give you some ideas, are:

• Precious Water
• Haggus and Stookles

There are more, however I can’t put my hands on the links at the moment.

If you want to add some free colouring pages to your site, either create the images yourself or invest in a designer to create colouring sheets for you.

With two boys having birthdays around Christmas time (one on 18th December, the other on 14th January), I try and get ideas early.

I was browsing the Piktorize site and on her blog, Olivia is showing off her new range of photo ornaments. These are a great idea for parents and grandparents. As business owners they could also be a great gift for clients, and not necessarily with your photo on them!

If you have a photo competition, you could get an ornament done with the photo of the winner and give it to them as a gift. You could put your logo on them and send them to valued clients, or even a photo of some of your products or your shop. There are heaps of ideas from these ornaments. The biggest challenge will be choosing what to put on them!

First, please excuse any typo’s in this post. I hurt my left hand today while dancing to Veggie Tales with Zac. I whacked it so hard on a door frame that I felt sick! My poor fingers are now covered in band aids and it makes typing rather challenging at times!

As most who know me know, I love hearing the story behind the business or product created by business mums. They are fascinating, and I’m always on the look out for stories to feature in the magazine. Annette Piper shares many of the stories behind her jewellery on her blog. Almost every post has a photo of one piece of jewellery. I love the story behind her latest piece of featured jewellery. You can read about it here. It is a great example of turning a mistake or a difficult situation around. It is a beautiful necklace and I’m sure the owner loves it too.

When you are blogging about your business, share the story behind your products and services. Why did you choose a product or start your service. You never know who is reading it

While reading the Pink Heels blog, I came across a post titled “Thank You is Enough“. It contained a great quote:

If the only prayer you said in your whole life

was thank you,

that would suffice.

~ Meister Eckhart

This got me thinking about saying Thank You to the people around us. Especially in business, I find that we forget to say Thank You to those who support us in our business, our customers, suppliers and really anyone else we come in contact with.

As customers, we also often forget to say thank you for great service, great products, and so on.

My challenge to you is to say Thank You to at least one person each day. You may write a testimonial for someone who has given you great service, send a thank you card to someone who has supported you, send a gift to your biggest fan, or whatever.  By saying Thank You to others, it will come back at you in amazing ways.