Women in Business Creating Profit and Lifestyle!

What is the most important personal trait for an entrepreneur? It’s the people, stupid! Do you need to be really smart, determined, inspirational, visionary, organised, innovative or creative? Ideally, a bit of each would be great.

Networking can be enriching for female entrepreneurs.  The interaction with other business owners is one way to get around entrenched, old-boy groups to grow sales, but it goes beyond building relationships. Women need to leverage their networks, one expert says.

12 Tips for PR Targeting and Marketing to Women! The Buyer Group CEO Lisa Buyer subscribes to award-winning copywriter and branding consultant Stuart Dornfield’s email gems of wisdom. Stuart’s latest email is especially invaluable to those in the Social PR mix, so we wanted to share:

10 Ways To Market To Women On Facebook  Brette Borow, author or the Girls Guide To… series, suggests the top 10 musts for marketing to women on Facebook.

It costs more to lose women in science than keep them.  An industry that loses its highly skilled workers when they take time out of the workforce is doomed to fail.  Yet a successful scientific career relies on continuous research output – this practice is both unsustainable and unrealistic.

Four in 10 Small Businesses Planning Cloud Computing, Says Microsoft.   Almost 40 percent of SMEs expect to be paying for one or more cloud services within three years, according to a Microsoft report.

Small Business News: Entrepreneur Tips and Tricks  Entrepreneurs must wear many hats. Here are tips for just about all of them. Mastering various aspects of your business is an important aspect of what you do. Keep learning. Keep reading. Let this small business news roundup from Small Business Trends be your starting point.

Everything You Know About Entrepreneurship May Be Wrong. Perhaps you have an idea for a new business or your corporation is looking to grow into new areas. What should be your first step? Size the market? Write a business plan? Put together a pitch to raise funding? Start building your product?

Three Cool Ways Entrepreneurs Use iPads for Business  The iPad 2 may be on many consumers' wishlists, but should you buy in?  Some entrepreneurs may be on the fence — perhaps deterred by the up to $829 price tag or the up-to-five-week wait. Others may think the Apple device is overhyped and not as useful as some say.

The Man Behind Google Docs on Opportunities in the Cloud for Small Business  Jonathan Rochelle, 47, knows what Google can do for a small business. As group product manager for Google Docs, he is responsible for developing some of the Web giant's most innovative small-business software. Google Docs grew out of a Web spreadsheet company he started and sold to Google in 2005. Rochelle also plays an advisory role in Google's secretive process of acquiring startups.

Are You A Small Business, A Startup, Or An Entrepreneur?  I hear these three terms used interchangeably, but in my mind, they all mean slightly different things. It’s semantics, of course, but here’s my take on what these three words mean. Which do you identify with the most? 

Female entrepreneurs and the 'lifestyle business' Over the past couple of decades we have seen a steady increase in the number of women becoming entrepreneurs. At Belmont University, for example, 45 percent of students studying entrepreneurship are women. Across the country, women now make up more than 40 percent of all entrepreneurs as well.  While the number of women choosing an entrepreneurial career path is approaching that of their male counterparts, the factors that motivate or drive female entrepreneurs are often quite different.

New Book: Single. Women. Entrepreneurs.  Women are now earning more, going to college and graduate schools more, and finding ways to become more indepedent. Also, according to the Kauffman Foundation, single, divorced and widowed women start more businesses as entrepreneurs than men in their respective categories.

Overlooked Small-Business Tax Deductions: 5 Things You Need to Know  In business, just about every expense you have can become a tax break. In most cases, you can subtract the expense from your revenue to determine your profit (or loss) for tax purposes.

Small Business News: What’s Your Brand?  What’s your brand? Branding in small business can be the key to success. When marketing globally or locally, branding sets you apart. But there is much more to establishing a brand for yourself or your business than might at first meet the eye. In a world of infinite choices, it is one of the most important ways you can distinguish your business or yourself as an entrepreneur. Let the following roundup be your guide to the art and science branding for your small business.

7 Tips to a Better Small Business Website   With the economy the way it is right now, many of us are looking for ways to improve our situation. For some that is starting a small business. In the internet age that means having your small business on the web with a business website. If you are going to be successful in your small business, you need an effective website that ranks high in the search engines. That means understanding search engine optimization and using it to your best ability. Here are seven tips that will help any business achieve better online search rankings:

Study: Small Businesses Favour Facebook.  Facebook, with its 500 million active users and (unofficial) movie and books, is also quite the hit with small businesses, according to a new report.  MerchantCircle found that Facebook is the favorite online marketing service of small businesses, and Facebook Places is doing quite well, too.

Brisbane Women is a free women in business network.  We pride ourselves on providing interesting and valuable content for our members, all women in their own business and solo entrepreneurs.  If you would like to contribute your own business articles or others that you have found of value, then please email mail@brisbanewoman.com with ‘Women in Business Update’ in the subject line.  We will endeavour to publish and share this with our talented business network.

3 Winning Startups and Keys to Success.  What do award-winning entrepreneurs have in common? The \three here won the Entrepreneur.com Entrepreneur of the Year awards for 2010.

Top 10 Reasons Small Businesses Fail: One of the least understood aspects of entrepreneurship is why small businesses fail, and there’s a simple reason for the confusion: Most of the evidence comes from the entrepreneurs themselves.

Why So Many Men and Woman Fail In Affiliate Marketing: Much more and A lot more people today are lured into affiliate advertising and also you may be one of them. Indeed, affiliate advertising is among the most useful signifies of generating a full-time earnings by way of the web.

7 Reasons Why Internet Marketing Works Well For Women: Internet marketing, or marketing a product/business on the internet, is fast becoming a popular way to build a business. It appeals because you don’t need your own product to be successful, you have a market that shops while you sleep and you can work at your own pace.

Brand Yourself an Entrepreneur: The two major benefits of branding yourself an entrepreneur are 1) You give yourself a better chance of remaining with and growing in your current job or business, and 2) If you are forced to seek out new employment or self employment, your value-based entrepreneurial skills will serve you well in landing a better opportunity quickly and painlessly.

Brisbane Women is a free women in business network.  We pride ourselves on providing interesting and valuable content for our members, all women in their own business and solo entrepreneurs.  If you would like to contribute your own business articles or others that you have found of value to your business, then please email mail@brisbanewoman.com with 'Women in Business Update' in the subject line.  We will endeavour to publish and share this with our talented business network.

I was recently interview by the talented Megan Hills from My Marketing Thing to discuss how I use social media for Brisbane Woman…

Hobnob Angel, Kylie Welsh sheds light on Twitter and Facebook

Kylie Welsh uses social marketing tools better than anyone I know…except maybe Seth Godin (with that said, Kylie seems more enthusiastic about Twitter than Seth).

Kylie is founder and director of Brisbane Woman – an organisation that is dedicated to promoting, educating and connecting women in business. She’s usually co-ordinating a busy schedule of networking/workshop nights and masterclasses. But don’t worry if you’re not in Brisbane. Kylie also has a great blog (where there’s also a free member directory) and is about to launch the first of many Brisbane Woman webinars.

If you ever see Kylie you will notice that she is ALWAYS wearing a beautiful dress, looks wonderful in glasses and – for such a dynamic hobnobber – somehow maintains a sweet, quiet humility…quite rare these days.

Perhaps it’s because Kylie’s a genuine enthusiast – rather than a big ‘me’ megaphone – that social marketing has worked well for spreading the word about Brisbane Woman.  Read the full Social Media interview here!