Working from home can be one of the most rewarding ventures a person can embark upon, especially if they have children. Working this way offers you the ability to be able to balance work and home life in a way that suits you. Rather than having to be away from home forty hours a week, you can instead spend as much time as possible with your kids whilst also taking care of business. So you can wash baby clothes then do a business deal, all within the hour! There are lots of great benefits, but you also need to find a way to keep your business ticking over too. Managing this without dedicating a huge amount of time to it is somewhat of a balancing act. If you’re a work-at-home parent, you’ll probably already have experienced how tricky it is to manage, but have you ever thought of using social media to give you a push in the right direction?

Where to get started

Social media marketing has quickly become the new big thing in business. It’s hard to find any advert which doesn’t also push the address of the company’s Facebook or Twitter profiles. And, as a work-at-home parent, you too can reap the rewards of social media marketing, and find out how useful it can be to discover new clients and also stay in touch with your existing ones. Best of all, you can take full advantage of social media marketing completely free. Creating a profile on Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networks won’t cost you a penny – and could mean a big uplift in the amount of business you receive. So how do you get started with social media, and what are the steps you need to take to start seeing the benefits?

First things first

Your first stop should be creating your profiles. This means heading to Facebook, Twitter, and the other networks that you want to use, then creating profiles for free. When you choose the name for your profiles, you can either decide on a name for your business as a whole, or simply use your own name. A lot of work-at-home parents operate as freelancers, so try to use whichever name you do when you speak with your customers. After you’ve made the profiles, you’ll need to find followers and/or fans. You can do this in a number of ways, but if you already have an established base of clients, one of the easiest ways to do it is to send out a blanket email to all of them letting them know you’re now on social networks. With any luck, they’ll click through from the email and then ‘Like’ you, or follow your Twitter feed.

Make the most of your followers

Once you’ve got your base of followers and users in place, your next step is to keep them interested. Remember that when people are ‘spammed’ with lots of promotional material at once, they can easily switch off and remove themselves from your network. If this happens, your social media efforts might end up being in vain. The key to making good, relevant and interesting posts is to be sure that you offer your users something other than just adverts; if you can create a blog to post too, all the better. Then you can start to produce regular, relevant content which your users should lap up. If it’s good enough, you may see your social media numbers go up even further. Then, once they’re happy that you’re not just a spammer, you can start to introduce some offers and adverts for your products and/or services. It’s all a bit of a balancing act, but you’ll get there with a little perseverance.

So what are you waiting for? Get on to the social networks now and show the world that work-at-home parents can make just as much of a mark as their ‘big hitter’ peers!

Dee Mason

Hi everyone.  I just wanted to take a few moments and introduce myself.  My name is Debra and I’ve had the pleasure of working at Berries & Cream Blog Design for a year now.  You will be hearing more from me here on our blog in the coming weeks, so I wanted to “formally” introduce myself.

I have a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and a Masters Degree in Business Administration (MBA). I spent years in the corporate world, doing budget work, software analysis, software training and was the Chief Financial Officer for an organization before I made the decision to leave the corporate world and focus on my growing family.  While working on my Master’s degree, I fell in love with designing web sites.

My dream was to use the degrees and experience that I have to work from home. I am very blessed to have two young children and a wonderful husband. It is a great blessing to have the opportunity to work and help others from my home along the beautiful Gulf Coast.

It is my passion, to work with people (especially women) to help design an online showcase for their passions and dreams…whether it is a small business, entrepreneurial endeavor or a website to showcase their family or organization. I have a good understanding of how small businesses operate and their design and developmental needs.

It gives me great joy to be a part of this process and to create beautiful designs. It is a pleasure to be a part of the Berries & Cream Design team.