Eli Logan – Social Media

It’s not enough to have various staff members tweeting here and there, or posting to your Facebook page sporadically. In order to maximize the benefits of social media, you need a definitive strategy.
Why? Mandy Stahl, community manager, American Society of Association Executives, who spoke at Expo Next, said a strategy helps you ensure that you give your audience what they want and keep them engaged with you. It also should prevent you from "selling" via social media. This is a big no-no in the social sphere. Followers will be turned off by the hard sell.
A well-planned strategy will enable you to make use of all of your resources, and it can help you plan ahead and create unique experiences in each platform.
On the flip side, operating without a set strategy can create a disjointed and ineffective social-media effort.

Ask Yourself These Questions

Stahl suggests that, in developing your social media strategy, you ask yourself the following:

1. WHAT formats are we going to use? (Blogs, video, charts.)
2. WHY does anyone care about what we’re doing?
3. WHY does this provide business value?
4. HOW are we going to deliver the message? (What are the best social media platforms for reaching your audience?)
5. HOW should we say it? (Tone of voice.)
6. WHERE will we get the content?
7. WHERE can we syndicate the content?
8. WHEN will content be published?
9. WHEN will it need to be updated (and how frequently)? Set expectations. (For example, Twitter: one to two tweets per week starting six months in advance of your event, and three to four tweets per week from two months out.)
10. WHO is responsible for the content? Assign content to the appropriate parties, and assign someone to oversee the efforts.
11. WHO will maintain it over time?

Where Will We Get the Content?

An integral part of your strategy will be in determining what content you are going to post and where your social media team will get the content. Stahl suggests these areas are among the most valuable content sources:

1. Editorial: Magazine and online news.
2. Marketing and public relations: Printed pieces, website, and industry and event news.
3. Educational/learning: Session tracks and speakers.
4. Show-logistics updates.
More Hands-On Tips
1. Tweet each new speaker you book, using the speaker’s or his/her company’s Twitter handle to alert them of the tweet; Encourage all speakers to retweet your announcement (most will anyway). Also, tag them on Facebook mentions and via other social media channels you use. This can significantly expand your reach and expose your speakers’ followers to your show.
2. Tweet every exhibitor and sponsor you sign on, using the company’s Twitter handle. Same idea as above.
3. Organize Facebook chats or Twitter chats with select speakers; promote them to your audience via social media and e-mail alerts. Ensure that the chats include information your audience will find valuable.
4. Conduct Q&As with select speakers, providing information and teasing (soft-sell) the upcoming session and event. Publish it online and promote it via social media channels.
5. Conduct Q&As with select exhibitors and sponsors about emerging products and trends among their clients. Be sure these are not sales pitches.
6. Encourage your speakers and vendors to use their social media channels to promote their participation in your events. Provide them with event hashtags (e.g., #growyourshow) and industry hashtags (e.g., #expochat), as well as the event URL. Tell them how to shorten links (or better yet, provide shortened links).
7. Determine the leading tweeters (or people on other platforms) and bloggers in your industry and invite them as guests to your show to tweet and/or blog about it.

Focus on accomplishing the most for the least investment. Thats not to say that revenue invested smartly isnt good business. The check and balance of doing more with less gives a lean operating mindset.

One good thing about being young is the opportunity of exploring beyond your boundaries with a good excuse of “because we’re young”. And this is what makes young entrepreneurship fun and ideal.

A big advantage that teenagers have is less responsibilities and more time to waste. Unlike adults who are stretching their 24-hour life thinking on how to make a living. Although the risk would be immense with lack of experience and knowledge, a teenager can start with what he knows…being young.

New entrepreneurs aging 16-21 are showing more vitality and perseverance to engage in a profitable market industry. Growing adolescent minds develop as fast as mobile companies introduce new breed of mobile phones. An ideal teenager can earn as much as $50 a day. Now, are you paying attention?

Think Young

Majority of our population is composed of teenagers with curious mind. Introducing a new line of clothing that looks like a blast from the past would not catch their attention. When you think of putting up a business intended for the youth like yourself, is should coincide with their heart’s desire. Look at the path where they trod.

Extract it From Reality

Practical people always go for what they need instead of buying what they want. Recognize the difference? Something you want wouldn’t turn out as something you need. You would want apple juice to quench your thirst but all you need is water. Yet something you need would always be something you want. Pacify the masses with what’s essential.

But don’t settle to what is traditional and basic. Instead, add up to what’s already there. Invent. Awake you innovative mind. Improvise. Water would always be water. But when you mix minerals and electrolytes, wham! an energy drink is born.

Be a Techie

Information before is wired up to a tube. But now, it flies with the wind. Computer technology is becoming a must among everyone. It has successfully improved the lifestyle of business establishments, big or small. If you try to dig into the internet, billions of advertisements flood your screen. Why not clicking on one of them? You never know when it might interest you.

Count Your Savings

A penny for your thoughts? Nah, keep your thoughts, I’ll keep my penny. Putting up a business is a tough deal especially when you don’t have the appropriate amount of money to fund it. But where would a kid like you get it when your piggy bank has been used up? If you’re 13, talk convincingly to your parents or your close relatives and try to make them understand that you are old enough to run your own business and don’t let them think that you’ll just use the money for a video game.

If you’re 16, you could borrow it from your friends or significant someone. The moment you turn 18, more opportunities to borrow money or capital would come through. Business firms allowing enthusiasts to accumulate a certain kind of amount plus interest. Lending companies as we call them. With determination, you could see your money rolling.

Fine a cure for teenage immaturity. Engage yourself with what you’re made of. Don’t be satisfied sitting at one corner reading your notes. Being small doesn’t mean you have to aim and act small. Live to conquer. Start with something.

Being a young entrepreneur, your small business is only as good for all those people who know about it. And for those who don't know, well they simply don't care.

After all the hardships you have gone through while starting up your business. After all those attempt to give it all up and return back to more secured corporate living. After all the risks you have to pass through. And now that you have toughed them all, the only aim that you now have is to make your small business grow.

Well, that actually is not as simple as it may sound. Making your small business grow will lead you to more compromises. This entails you to take further risks. It is harder this time of course because you are delving into deeper realms of risk. Sometime, the absence of assurance for success will make it more difficult for you to get on through the next level.

One of the many paths to growth from your youth in entrepreneurship towards maturity is to spread words of your small home based business. You may posses the best of the products in the industry but there would be no sense to them if the only people who know are those that are within your block. Your product may have the potentials of breaching million dollar sales but if no one buys it, there is no sense in dreaming of becoming a tycoon.

Start promoting yourself and your services. Some small home based business young entrepreneurs begin promoting their products even before they were fully launched. However, there are many who do promotions only when they have tapped the estimated potentials of their items. You always have the choice between the two though.

There are two basic techniques that you may use to take your small home based business into the scene. One is through paid advertisement and the other through public relations.

Paid advertisements require the process of negotiating with advertising agencies and stations to have your product promoted. Mediums like televisions, websites, newspapers and radio spots are among the most typical options you have.

In public relations however, you would have to ask an author to have your story and your business venture written on articles or an expert as search reference. The only problem though is that you have to be convincing or your story must have that extra pop so as to be worthy of mention.

While publicity may oftentimes require you to share the toll of finding a writer to work for your home based business, there is still no way for you to disregard the benefits of having your story advertised. It also has cost effective feature since you seldom pay for such an advertising medium. But the better part goes with the truth that you can be better remembered with an article rather than in a TV commercial. People normally have more trust on a write-up rather than paid advertisement showed in TV or in the internet. Publicity also offers the potentials of reaching through various people and if you have that good streak of luck, the national audience may be reached by your story.

Even the online world recognizes that actual power of television advertisements than using links and postings on message boards. There are many times when the website has become successful because it was featured on a television show. Thus, discarding all the "almost useful" power of drawing people through creating juggling lines of links in the web.

The media works on herd mentality. Once a program caught site of what your home based business has to offer, other programs may have the hitch of spreading the word further. Thus, you can expect other shows to modify your own story to supplement for their own. This is very effective indeed since you will have your advertisement without spending a dime while reaching wide spectrum of audience.

The problem though comes with attracting journalist and writers towards your home based small business story.

Plan your target points. Your aim is to court writers towards writing your tale. Never put them off by sending bulks of email to virtually all journalists that you know. Point only towards those who are in the beat with your story. Identify what publications will find your venture useful and know which kind will use your story. Try making a list of newspapers, radio programs and television spots that will work well with your aim. If you truly want publicity, go direct with personal emails or letters to those who are most likely to find your small home based business story interesting.

Are you one of the women who happened to be yourself, a mom, a wife and a businesswoman altogether? Well, American women seem to have morphed into super ladies who can do any works demanded from them. From house cleaning to child rearing and into developing their own businesses.

Well, there are just too many opportunities for mom entrepreneurs that you may even find yourself overwhelmed when you see the whole spectrum of chancing on the career of your life. You may not have realized it but you see, you have the potential of not only becoming a housewife to you husband or mom to your kids but also the master of your own business unit.

However, not all of us women can tough the tides and perform all our tasks simultaneously. Somehow, we have to sacrifice a thing or another. But this must not be the case. If there is a way that you may find to balance everything, then you no longer would have problems on sacrificing anything. You just have to divide things equally in the many aspect of the life you are trying to pursue.

Being a mom entrepreneur entails you to find your vein, find where you are really good at and find an activity that you love doing and in return would generate an income for you. This way, you need not get tired of your "work' but will only enjoy working on your income.

If you would not want compromising anything from your being you, you can try a business that is home based. Atleast, you can have income while staying at the comforts of your home and while raising your kids. Thinking that this would not allow you focus? Actually, it will.

Think of this- you can help your husband with the support for your finances while rearing your children.

Home based opportunities for mom entrepreneurs

§ Pet-Based Products
There is nothing that indulgent pet owners wont do for their pets. If you can tap on the opportunities that this reality presents, you are sure to be on the road to financial freedom. You may try retailing pet products among your friends first to test grounds. Then go about the block and spread the news. There is too little chance that this wont click. The next phase would deliver you to promoting your products online. There, real business happens.

§ In-Home Beauty Services
Some women just have the talent making people feel good about themselves. You can choose to enterprise on home beauty services. We have this unexplainable contentment when someone knocks to our doors and deliver beauty and youthful look. Well, probably that's one way of experiencing luxury. Being a mom, you can invest less on this while actually earning good cash.

§ Catering services
Great for mom entrepreneurs with passion in kitchen stuffs. Catering doesn't start with big parties alone. Because America has grown too busy to take charge in the kitchen, many families are now finding themselves eating outside for dinner or having their foods brought in from the restaurant. Well, this type of living can be monotonous at times and all we have to do is to create innovations on making dinner a little more exciting while cutting the prices down. If you have the kick for careful planning in preparing and planning nourishment for people, and make appealing foods and deliver them straight to the customers doorsteps then catering services will be a great one for you. Who knows, this might also be a good time for you and your children to spend time.

Those were only three of the business opportunities any mom may try venturing into. Be careful though, as a mom entrepreneur you also have other commitments that you must keep in mind. Commitments to your husband, to your kids, to you business and to your self. And somehow, there'd be days like you cant actually have sufficient time for anyone of them, not even for yourself.

Once you see this coming, take things slow and give a break for yourself. And keep in mind that there should always be a day off from all these. A time for yourself so you wont have to deal with burning out and loosing touch of your goals later.

Alright, let us examine the world of business. Before, business was dominated by men. Change, as it always is, was inevitable. Daring to oppose the male dominated world of business, women entrepreneurs stepped forward and offered some serious competition. Effectively cornering markets that men did not focus fully on, women entrepreneurs managed to beat men in unfamiliar territory.

From this, men learned that underestimating women was a very bad idea. Good thing, they learned quickly about the value of fair treatment of every person. Had they tried to ignore the growing number of women entrepreneurs, men would have found themselves facing downfall.

In true business fashion, men gave way to a compromise. Jacks gave way to Janes, and more women were brought in to different businesses. Killing prejudice in offices and the market took time, but were accomplished. Lately, we have observed how women can accomplish great things.

Moments in history have occurred when women have outperformed men in business. Nowadays, no one can judge you by your gender, but by your accomplishments.

Of course, there is the question of equality. People have been asking, what does equality really mean? Quite a few groups, especially feminists, insist that equality can be attained only if women totally rule everything. Respecting their views is a pretty good way of treating them, as most people have found out. Some people, however, think that their views are twisted in the sense that, equality means that each side should have the same opportunity.

Thankfully, this seems to be the case today. Under today's laws, you can not base a business decision on a person's sex. Very few people now are still narrow-minded enough to look down upon a woman, and these people often end up facing a lawsuit.

Women entrepreneurs changed the world by showing us how women can understand some things better than men can. XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes, we are now officially equal under law. Young people, however, tend to take this fact for granted. Zany teenagers think that equality always existed, and the women entrepreneurs who pioneered the change are forgotten.

And that, my friend, is the story of women entrepreneurs from A to Z.

What do women entrepreneurs face today? Well, as you may have observed, there are a lot of opportunities today that open up the world for women entrepreneurs. These opportunities need to be watched out for and taken advantage of. Thankfully enough, there a lot of places out there where you can get help to get your business going.

Check out the internet. You can find a lot of useful websites and organizations that specialize in helping women entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground. In fact, the different organizations out there can actually help you realize your dream of owning a globally competitive business.

Remember that you exist in a free-for-all environment. When you stepped into the world of business, you have joined the cycle of kill or be killed. In today's world, you need to have the ability to stand up to every kind of competition and problem.

Women entrepreneurs face the same kind of threats that their male counterparts do. They face the hardship of finding capital, building a customer base, and basically trying to shape their businesses into a globally-competitive machine. You'll need to be able to focus fully on your job and make decisions based on sound reasoning mixed with a bit of human emotion.

Remember that there should always be a balance. Too much of anything can be very bad for you. What you need to do is arm yourself with information. Study yourself and your environment for anything that can either help you, or bring about your downfall. Make sure that you are prepared for anything, bad or good, that can affect your business.

These are but few of the things that the woman entrepreneur of today is facing. However, the technology of today makes it easy for anyone to be competitive in the world of business. You now have the tools at hand that will help you rise above your opponents. However, one question still remains. In order for you to succeed, you must look within yourself and ask: Do you have the will?

People enjoy a lot of comforts as they go through life each day. Have you ever wondered who are responsible for all these life's comforts? You have to thank the entrepreneurs for it. But, what is an entrepreneur?

Entrepreneur has many meanings. If you want to know exactly what it means, just keep on reading.

A person who assumes business responsibility and the risks that comes along with it is called an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, one expects to make profits, whether big or small, depending on the business he or she is involved in. generally, the entrepreneur decides which product or service to offer, obtain the needed facilities, hires the required labor force, acquire production materials, and provides for the capital.

There is no assurance that the business will become a success. However, if the business proves to be a success, the entrepreneur will reap all the benefits and rewards in terms of the profits. In case of a loss, the entrepreneur will also be the one to suffer.

Assuming business responsibilities is definitely not an easy task. Not many individuals are willing to take huge responsibilities, and most especially take all the risks. Only an experienced and knowledgeable individual will dare to become an entrepreneur. The ultimate goal of an entrepreneur is to earn profits.

By putting up a small business, you will also earn limited returns but by establishing a big business, you will also earn more profits. The choice will depend on the entrepreneur and his or her available resources.

As the most important person in a business venture, an entrepreneur will be the one to decide which product or service to offer. He or she must be able to determine the needs of the people and provide the answer to such needs. A careful study of the targeted market is required. This takes time because one can't decide immediately what product or service to offer.

Once the products or services are identified, it is now time for the entrepreneur to obtain all the needed facilities. This will include the building or the place of business.

Along with it are the other things needed such as the office furniture, fixtures, and many other things. The capital is usually provided by the entrepreneur and a part of it will be allotted for the acquisition of the facilities. Later on, these things will be considered as one of the assets of the business.

Recruitment of the labor force is also an important part of being an entrepreneur. The business will not succeed if it doesn’t have a loyal labor force. Everyone should work together in order to achieve success. It is therefore of utmost importance to hire only the qualified employees.

As you can see, the entrepreneur has to take care of many things. This may be one reason why not many individuals are willing to become one. If the business succeeds or fails, it is all because of the entrepreneur.

Now that you know what an entrepreneur is, would you like to become one? Well, if you have the right attitude, skills, and qualifications, you too can become an entrepreneur. It would be best to embark on a humble beginning. Don’t attempt to reach the peak of success all at once. It takes hard work, dedication, and perspiration. You must take one step at a time.

Do you want to earn your own money but you are too young to qualify for a part time job? Do you have the drive to earn money through hard work and perseverance? Would you rather prefer to be your own boss and earn your own money? Then you surely have the raw ingredients to become a successful entrepreneur. These are the beginnings of an entrepreneur: a good business idea, a desire to make good money, an aspiration to become your own boss. Successful businesses grow from these seeds. If you have these, then you should consider becoming an entrepreneur.

Steps to becoming a Teen Entrepreneur

Entering the world of entrepreneurship is not an easy endeavor. It requires a lot of thought and careful thinking. The first step is very important: you must understand and know yourself and what kind of entrepreneur you can be. Evaluate yourself and find out what interests you; what are the things that are most fun to you; what stuff do you know most about. From your answers to these questions, you can find many excellent ideas to start your own business. You should also ask yourself how hard you are willing to work to make your business a success.

Great Ideas for a Teen Entrepreneur

Being a teen doesn’t mean you can not think up a great idea for business. Think creatively and innovatively, explore different possibilities and solutions to problems, observe the latest trends – from these you can surely spot an excellent business idea you can start on. You can also get great entrepreneurial ideas from friends, family, teachers, library research and the internet. Afterwards, you can start researching about your business idea. Strive to know and understand the ins and outs of your prospective business. You should understand that business essentially involves “buying” and “selling”. Some understanding of the law of supply and demand will go a long way.

Got a great business idea! What now?

Now that you’ve found an excellent business idea, ask yourself the following important questions: Is it practical? Will people take notice of it? Will it fulfill a need? Do you have the capability to realize this business idea? Can you deliver high quality products or services? Is there a substantial demand for your business? If not, can you create that demand? Where will you get the capital to finance your business? All these questions must be addressed before you start establishing your business.

Business Ideas for Promising Teen Entrepreneurs

With the huge array of business ideas that are available for the budding teen entrepreneur, finding the one right for you may be a daunting task. Here are some promising business ideas that promising teen entrepreneurs like you may find interesting.

Teen Entrepreneur Idea # 1: Candle Making

Candles are very popular as home décor and accessories nowadays. You probably have a decorative candle in your bedroom or living room. Why not create your own personalized candles and sell them to your friends and acquaintances. Learning how to make candles is actually quite easy. This makes candle making an excellent idea for money-making. You can start by learning how to make candles and where to buy your materials.

You can find candle making resources and materials from craft stores, community centers and candle-making studios. If you already have family and friends who make candles as a hobby, you can ask them to teach you the basics of the craft. Just be creative and display your artistic nature in the candles you make. Afterwards you can sell your personalized candles to your friends, family members, neighbors, flea markets, bazaars, farmers’ markets, etc. You can also sell your candles through internet malls and eBay.

Teen Entrepreneur Idea # 2: Run Errands

If you like moving around, keeping busy and multitasking, then running errands for other people for a fee can be a good idea for business. As we all know, today’s fast paced lifestyles means that many of the people you know might not have the time to do simple chores such as buying groceries, walking the pet, mowing the loan, washing the car, etc. Why not start your own service business by offering to do these errands for a fee. Ask around your friends, neighborhood and even family members to see if they need someone to do their errands for them. You can also post brochures and flyers that advertise your services.

These are just two of the many business ideas that teen entrepreneurs like you can consider. Just remember that any business endeavor requires hard work and perseverance to be successful. With the right mindset and the right dose of enthusiasm, you can surely start your own business and make money in no time at all.