Facebook: Women in Business: Boost Your Business

Today I attended a 2 hour training session tailored to women who want market their small business brand through Facebook. The information was fantastic.

Grace Hilty, from the Facebook Small Business Team, was the moderator and she was composed and as clear as a bell. The topics ranged from tips for taking better photos (white foam board can bounce light and marble contact paper can make your work surface look expensive when photographing food) and the importance of capturing people's attention in the first few moments of a LIVE video when the sound is off. Great information and we were only a few minutes into the program.

I appreciated that the content was part presentation, part video learning, so that the Facebook team could show us exactly what the screen looks like when you use the CreateAds tool or boost a post. 
  
What I found most valuable was that I can learn more about how to use the Facebook products for my business in these 3 places. It makes sense, but I didn't realize that they had organized a learning area and I know that I will benefit from it.

https://www.facebook.com/business
https://business.instagram.com/
https://www.facebook.com/blueprint

The event included a panel discussion with 3 local women business owners and they did a terrific job. Debbie Page (business mentoring), Claire Sumadiwirya (Bellden Cafe in Bellevue) and Jennifer Jedda (JJ Caprices (accessories). They gave real-life examples of how they use Facebook to connect with customers and target their advertising specifically to the demographic that generate sales for their business.

There are a lot of classes/seminars/events that promise results for small business people, but this session felt like it was truly loaded with helpful guidelines. As with any endeavor, the time and effort required to learn to use Facebook as a marketing tool rests solely on the business owner. For their part, I think Facebook has done a good job making the tools easy and user friendly. And with any worthwhile session, I felt antsy for it to finish so that I could get started. Nice work and thank you for providing this free training.

#shemeansbusiness #finddelight  #womeninbusiness 

Tweeting from an IT Conference

I thought that this was an absolutely genius idea.  As attendees checked into the HR2013 conference in Las Vegas, they were offered the chance to pick up an "I Tweet" adhesive banner.  If they were active on Twitter, they could attach the banner to their name badge and let people know that they tweeted on topics related to the conference as well as Human Resource IT concepts.

By wearing this little prompt, attendees could more easily identify, meet and "follow" industry leaders.  I told my husband that I wish I could wear an "I Tweet" badge in my daily life.  So many people are just beginning to participate on Twitter, but they don't know who to follow, other than celebrities.

I tweet "of the moment" ideas and photos from my daily life that can bring delight.  New products that I think are noteworthy, images from art exhibitions, beautiful photos of food.  Often they are something with a time constraint - a sale on something that usually isn't on sale.  A limited edition product that is in stores now etc.  I don't tweet every day, but I do share things when I think that they are valuable and interesting.

This post is my sticky badge saying: I tweet!