Does your network work for you?  Mine sure does!

I attended my monthly eWomenNetwork luncheon yesterday which is one of the highlights of my month.  I love seeing all my friends and re-connecting each month.  And I really enjoy meeting the guests who have dropped by to check out our group.

Plus the door prizes are great too! Take a look at what I won.  They’re called Cakesicles and they are Yummy!

eWomenNetwork is based on an Accelerated Networking concept where you have an opportunity to speak directly to at least 14 people about you and your business.  It’s fast-paced but very effective and in that short period you can learn a lot about the people at your table and how you can help them grow their business.

By attending these monthly meetings, along with other events throughout the month, you build a strong bold with other members and can easily refer them when someone needs their product or service.  The motto of eWomenNetwork is to “give first, share always.”  And this group of women (and a growing number of men) do exactly that.  As we gathered at the buffet line today, I spoke to several people who told me that they had referred me to someone at their table.  They were able to do this because, they knew me and the type of services I offered and we had a relationship as friends and members of eWomenNetwork.  So basically, my “network” was working for me through the entire room.  And that’s the power of networking!  When someone else can promote you or your business, that is true networking.

So is your network working for you?  If not, I strongly suggestion you find an eWomenNetwork chapter in your city and get connected. (and tell them I referred you!)

I love to network! Of course, I love being around people, so it makes it very easy for me to network. When you are just starting to grow your business, networking is crucial to your success. I know it was mine!

These are the top three ways I network to keep my business growing, meet new and interesting people and keep my sanity as a home-based business owner!

Join Local Networking Groups like:

• Business and Professional Groups
• Groups targeted to your niche
• Local Chamber
• BNI/REO or other organized referral exchange group
• eWomenNetwork Luncheons

Form your own Mastermind Group

• Invite others who are looking for connections, support and brainstorming opportunities
• Build from each other strengths
• Share each person’s business with your list and ask them to do the same
• Look for ways to work together as partners to grow your business, i.e., teleseminars, joint venture partnerships, affiliate partnerships, etc.

Social Neworking (This is my favorite!)

• Establish your profile on as many social media sites as you can effectively manage
• At least, start with Facebook and move to Twitter
• Give and share on these sites
• Don’t come out of the gate, asking for the sale
• Drive traffic back to your website through the many tools available using social media
• Have Fun!

These are just a few of the things I do to grow my business and it has been working pretty successfully. So give it a try!

If you know me, you know I love Facebook and work hard to keep up with all the new features and applications that can make this explosive social media site work for me and my clients. Last week, Facebook rolled out several new features and I’m going to share two of them with you.

Facebook had offered the ability to filter your friends by the city they lived in, but recently disabled this feature. However, as of last week, they have now re-instated it.

Click the Browse by: Drop Down Box to select to sort by city, workplace, high school or college

So basically, you can sort your friends by the city in which they live. Why would you need this? You might want to visit some of your Facebook friends if you are planning a trip to the city where they live or you might want to schedule meetings to introduce yourself and your business if you are in the same city. Or you could plan a conference and look for joint venture partners in the area you are hosting it.

The other feature that Facebook introduced last week (but is not available as of this post) was a feature similar to a Twitter ID using the @ symbol. Now you can type the @ symbol and a list of your friends will drop down so that you can “tag” them in your status update. It’s similar to tagging of a photo, but without the photo! You can tag groups, Pages, events and more.

The @ symbol will provide a dropdown box in which to select the name of the person you are tagging. The symbol will not show in the post when it’s live.

Once you have tagged a friend, page or event, the tag will turn blue and be clickable to the person’s information on Facebook based on their privacy settings. The person you tagged will receive a notification and a wall story and also, will be notified when someone comments on the tagged post.

These new Facebook features will add more opportunities to really target your marketing and enhance your communication with your friends, partners, clients and prospects. Keep watching Facebook for them to unveil the tag feature. It is planned to be rolled out to all users over the next few weeks.

I just spent the weekend with about 3000 girlfriends! Man, what a slumber party!

Here are some of my Knoxville girlfriends in OUR limo on our way to dinner.

It was the 9th Annual eWomenNetwork International Conference in Dallas and to say I had a great time is quite an understatement. This event was loaded with incredible speakers, trainers and thought leaders who freely shared their expertise and their road to success with us.

From sessions on finance to personal growth, social media and publishing to how to change your Brain to succeed; these breakout sessions were worth thousands of dollars if attended separately. However, it was a girlfriend’s weekend and it was all given freely. New friendships were made and existing ones were made stronger.

Not to brag (too much!) but one of the highlights of my weekend was the unveiling of the eWomenNetwork Facebook Fan Page that I developed and will be managing for eWomenNetwork! Yea! How exciting! The intention is to have this Fan Page as an outlet for eWomenNetwork members, as well as potential members, to have a voice directly to Founder, Sandra Yancey and President, Kym Yancey. They will both be commenting on the site and will answer questions as they come up.

As with most conferences there was an exhibit area where vendors gave away samples and promotional items. They were all great. I stopped by the Best Buy/Geek Squad booth looking to charge my cell phone because I had left my charger at home. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a charger to fit my phone (which is one reason I’m getting a new one), but they asked me to drop my card in for the 42″ Plasma TV they were giving away. So I said, OK, but I never win anything.

After I got off the plane and was driving home, I checked my voice mail and heard a message from the Geek Squad that I had WON the TV! Now that was too cool!

So overall my weekend was Great! I gained many new friends, some awesome ideas on maximizing my business and a new TV. Can’t get any better than that!

Have you ever wanted to run a business from home? A lot of entrepreneurs are now relying on the power of the Internet to market their products or services. Home-based businesses are gaining more and more. Maybe it’s time for you to consider becoming an Online Business Entrepreneur.

As baby boomers juggle taking care of their children and their parents many of them are forced to leave their jobs just so they can manage their family responsibilities. When this happens families struggle to meet their financial obligations with only one income.But the good news is that when you’re at home and taking care of your family, you can run an online business!

There are a lot of home-based business opportunities online. Look for business opportunities that you are already skilled in, or take a leap of faith and start a business that you are truly passionate about. Search out training opportunities to assist you in beginning your new business. If you have the qualities of an entrepreneur, an Internet home-based business will be the answer to your needs.

You can quickly become an entrepreneur with just a computer, an Internet connection and a desire to succeed. However, be sure that the business is legitimate to avoid any problems in the future, by getting all the appropriate licenses and permits for your area.

Tomorrow I’ll share one of the easiest options for starting an Internet home-based business.

Talk to you tomorrow!

Prior to starting my Online Business Management company, I owned a Professional Organizing Service, called Completely Organized. I have always had a knack for sorting, stacking, and putting like things together, so it came quite easy for me to share my natural gifts with others through a business. The unfortunate part was that this was prior to Social Networking and my market was local, and they weren’t ready to pay someone to get them organized.

But I still have those skills and I use them in my business today. Now I have to be honest. I’m not always good at doing them, I know what to do and I talk a good game, but sometimes I just don’t manage to stay as organized as I would like. So in honor of “Organize Your Home Office Day”, here are a few things that will keep you organized and start and end each day with a clean desk.

• Start your day by reviewing your To-Do List (more about this further down)
• Tackle your priority tasks first
• Set times throughout the day to check email and respond. Close it down when you have finished
• Make phone calls in bundles (except for urgent calls)
• When working on projects, let the calls go to voice mail and return them when finished with the project
• Keep current files in a stack-file on your desk or nearby for easy retrieval
• When working with documents make a decision to only handle once – file, follow-up, or shred
• Keep all your tools handy, but tucked away, not on your desktop
• At the end of the day, review your To-Do list again. Congratulate yourself on your successes and progress. Start a new one with the top three priorities of the next day. These are the three things, that will make the biggest impact on your business if you didn’t get them completed.

Well, that’s my list. Hope you found something useful to help you get more organized. What are some of the things you do daily to stay organized?

I had the opportunity to attend a teleseminar this morning by L. Drew Gerber CEO & Partner of PressKit 24/7. It was part of the Big Fish Nation program I am a member of. Big Fish empowers women entrepreneur’s to take their business to the next level through hard core business skills with a spiritual approach to success. Today’s teleseminar focused on Online Press Releases.

Drew shared with us that he defines PR as, Your Relationship with the Public and that you should begin using PR from the onset of your business. It will increase brand recognition, and boost your sales of products and services. 90 percent of reporters are getting their information from the Internet, so an Online Press Kit is essential to your Online Business Success!

As part of his company, PressKit 24/7 he has established a source to bring potential media opportunities right into your Inbox. PitchRate.com is the name of this site and it’s completely free! You can register, include a profile, select your area of expertise, along with subcategories and daily you will receive a digest of media opportunities. You can also search on the site for keywords relative to your business.

Drew loves games, and so do I! So he has offered the participants of today’s teleseminar an incredible prize for the person that gets the most people to sign up for PitchRate. That’s where I need your help! If you would like to get daily feeds of media opportunities and grow your business through online press release marketing, please sign up for this free service. And then send me a quick email to (terri.avirtualbiz@gmail.com) and put your name in the subject line. And of course, I’d love to get your feedback to share with Drew.

It’s very important that you send me an email, otherwise, I won’t know that you signed up and can’t count you in my group. I’ll follow up and let you know if YOU helped me win!

I am constantly amazing by the number of plugins, widgets and features that are available for my WordPress Blog. I actually have this one and I have a static page that I have set-up through the blog platform for my Tasting The Internet, One Byte at a Time Program.

I am hosting a Free Webinar on February 26th at 2 pm eastern, “Why Should I use Twitter?” and I needed a sign-up form for people to register for the webinar. After checking with my friend and colleague, Rebecca Zwar with Social Web diVA and Invisible Assistant, she shared an incredible plugin called GWA Autoresponder for WordPress.

I have been very pleased with this plugin so far. People have registered for my webinar and they receive an automatic autoresponder with some freebies that I’m giving away and then I’ll be able to add them to my newsletter list and communicate all the details of the webinar.

If you are looking for a easy to set-up, fast to learn and effective autoresponder for your blog, look no further than GWA Autoresponder for WordPress.

Oh, and by the way, there’s still time to register for my Free Webinar, “Why Should I use Twitter.”

Not sure what to blog about this Valentine’s Day? Here are 22 ideas to get you started:

• Ideas for romantic gifts
• Ideas for last-minute gifts
• Inexpensive gift ideas
• Expensive and extravagant gift ideas (for bigger affiliate commissions!)
• Homemade gift ideas
• Don’t forget gifts for kids, classmates and teachers
• Valentine’s Day recipes
• Valentines party ideas
• Post poems your readers can copy and share with their sweetie
• Post love letters your readers can copy and share
• Craft ideas
• Printable Valentine-themed coloring sheets and cards
• Share Valentine traditions from around the world
• History of St. Valentines Day
• Decorating ideas
• How to show love without spending any money at all
• Romantic date ideas
• Share your own Valentines Day plans
• Valentine’s Day horror and funny stories of the past
• Creating your own Valentine’s Day traditions
• Valentines Day idea contest (best recipe, craft, gift idea, story etc.)
• Valentine’s Day for singles

Get More Blogging Ideas 24/7 365 Days Per Year

Always on the look out for more blogging ideas and content to keep
your blog fresh and up-to-date? Never worry that you have nothing to blog about again…Kickstart your blog by signing up for your free Blog Energizer account.

At the end of 2008, I had an opportunity to read many blog posts from Internet experts making their predictions for 2009 and guess what was at the top of their list: Social Media Marketing. It is anticipated that Social Media will grow at unprecedented rates in 2009 and beyond as more and more businesses seek to leverage this powerful new marketing channel.

A further prediction is that Social Media Marketing Services will be in very high demand through 2009! Most businesses either lack the time or expertise to effectively carry out all the necessary Social Media Marketing Activities and will be seeking to delegate these tasks to skilled Social Media Marketing Specialists.

VAClassroom.com has recently released a high calibre 7 module training program based on the seven hottest Social Media Marketing Services requested by businesses today including:

- Social Media Strategy and Action Planning
- Social Networking Profile Set-up and Management
- Facebook Marketing
- Twitter Marketing
- Online Video Marketing
- Online Reputation Management
- Social Media Content Distribution

The Social Media Marketing Specialist Training Program offers a self-directed training system for Virtual Assistants and Online Professional seeking to offer these in-demand services to their new and existing client base, or anyone looking for more knowledge of Social Media Marketing. The program features 8 modules, 30 videos, an interactive and supportive learning community, comprehensive resource guides, assignments and a Social Media Marketing Specialist Certification.

Claim your seat now Social Media Marketing Training and don’t miss out on one of the most important training opportunities you will take this year.