Today with the New Year full underway and the end of January almost here, I thought I’d cover the importance of setting up your home office effectively for your home business success.

First and Foremost, you want to run your business as a business and not a hobby, unless it is simply a hobby.

Have a separate or designated area for your office, if at all possible try to keep it as far away from home distractions as possible, such as the family room and kitchen.  If your space is limited, keep your work area organized with rolling drawers or portable cases  so that you can put these out of the way when not using your “office”.

Set a fixed amount of hours that you will dedicate to your business each day and stick to it.  It can be hard at times when working from the comfort of home to stay focused on business, so by setting certain hours that you’ll be working will help you stay focused.  Even if it is only 2 hours a day after work if you still have a j.o.b., mark down that you’ll be working on your business from say 8 to 10 after the kids are off to bed and then do that.  Spend that time updating your blog, making a few tweets, placing some ads, following up personally with prospects, making your phone calls, and end by going over your agenda for tomororw.

Get a separate phone line or number for your business and use it just for your home based business. You don’t even have to call the phone company these days as their are great virtual number services out their.  This keeps you free from giving out your true home or cell phone number, which is great for privacy.  But even better it allows you to know that when someone is calling you on that number it is a business call and lets you answer accordingly.  This way you can also set up a business related voice mail greeting rather than putting that message on your home or personal cell phone voicemail, so that friends and family don’t’ have to hear your business greeting every time they call.  Its a business expense so you can deduct it on your taxes at the end of the year, but most importantly it will give your business that professional feel and may just help you take your business more seriously, which you should if you plan on making a living with it. See my recommendation for a 2nd line on my home page www.rhondalwagner.com

Take some time to organize your office, a place for you business files, your notes, a white board or cork board to put important notes like conference calls, meetings, ad deadlines, and even just reminders.  Use an online reminder program or calendar if you want, for me while I use my reminder with my email program frequently… I still work best with the white board notes and post its!

With a little organization and motivation you’ll have your home office running smoothly and keeping you on top of things!

Looking for great resources for your internet marketing, entrepreneur tools, webhosting, wordpress tools, social media tools, or other areas that interest you like cooking, gardening, or even homemaking?

Check out www.stumpleupon.com/home and get an account and start stumbling, you can even look me up and see some of my favorite recommended sites!  Choose categories that interest you, and search by category, your sure to find lots of great resources in the areas you are looking for with this great website. You can mark your favorite sites, look up your friends (rhondalwagner) and see their favorites, and discover lots of great interesting websites to help you, entertain you, and educate you as well.

A great little tool I’ve found that will help you share on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail, or your email is www.Shareaholic.com It makes sharing sites you find on the internet that you think others will find useful simple and easy.  I use Firefox so I simply downloaded the toolbar and I think it is a fantastic little tool that can make your life just a bit easier.  : )

Today I thought I would step away and take a break from the normal posts.

What do you blog about?  What to put on your Facebook Page?  Your Tweets?

I know sometimes it seems like such a daunting task, finding something to write about or tweet.  Even on this blog, most of what I will tell you on setting up your Facebook Page, how to utilize Twitter, or effective marketing methods and avenues online you can find on dozens and dozens of sites on the internet.  What works just plain works and their isn’t any reason to break the mold and try to re-invent the wheel, but I still enjoy posting about it and hoping at least one person who reads it can take something away from it.

However, I know I struggle with what to blog about or post on my Facebook page just like most everyone else, wanting to write about something that gives the readers of my posts value, that little nugget they may have been looking for to help their marketing campaigns or their blog posts, or a site or tool online that they may not have known about that just may be what they are looking for…. but often it can seem like such a big task, maybe it’s not going to be interesting enough, maybe it’s something that everyone already knows about.

The fact is alot of the times things we know about, or even our “circle of friends” know about, we’d be surprised how many people didn’t know about it and are excited to learn about it, but yet we don’t post it thinking it may be to “boring” or something that is not that big of a deal.  The fact is, just write, post what you find interesting whether you think others already know about it or not and let those that read your blogs and posts be the ones who determine the value in it and get those nuggets that you may not have even known existed.  Just start writing, then edit it after your done, this way your flow isn’t broken and you can write from the heart and often times are more effective this way.

And yes of course you can post about your business or what you are doing online.  I mean that’s why so many people blog and tweet for anyway for the most part, but you don’t want your tweets, blogs, or facebooks pages to constantly look like a billboard or 24/7 advertising medium… it gets boring and people lose interest as you don’t have anything interesting to say.

Write about what you enjoy doing and share with others and you may be surprised how many enjoy what you do as well or just like reading about what you enjoy.  The internet is a big place and often times we get lost in and what to do with it.

Personally I love being online, I like reading blogs and learning new things, new tools and new resources and sharing them with others.  I love building and designing web pages, lead capture pages, and making marketing systems for others. I enjoy sharing with others how to do some of the things I’ve done to build a business and be able to do it as a living from home.  But, I also enjoy alot of other things too.  I like cooking alot even when I don’t have time it makes me relaxed and calm.   While I’m not an avid t.v watcher, I love watching the cooking shows, Rachel Wray, Robin Millers Quick Fix Meals,  and Big Daddy’s House and trying to adapt those recipes to my own.  Personally I like the down to earth meals and not the fancy stuff, and while I bake from time to time, it’s not my favorite.  I prefer cooking over baking. I love making spaghetti sauce with our own tomatoes in the summer, playing around with our produce stand at the end of our house lane when the whether gets nice, and enjoying time outside with my youngest who turned 7 this past August.

I love candles,  “girlie” stuff… you know the lotions, perfumes, creams, skincare and all that good stuff, I mean what woman doesn’t really love that kind of thing… I make my own soy candles from time to time and have even thought about attempting to make my own body lotions and soaps, but never really got around to doing that.  Even while I love making candles, I only like doing it from time to time.  Crafty I’m not, so you won’t see me making wreaths, or home decor, beaded items, etching glass, sewing, or anything like that.

So if you love that kind of stuff too and enjoy doing your own thing, that is just another area you can enjoy blogging about, whether it be from time to time on your home blog to share with others a little bit about your life, or start an entirely separate blog to share with the world what you love.

Setting up your social media sites can be challenging, and hopefully you’ve gotten your profile set up on Facebook and are ready to start tweeting.

I have to be honest, with Twitter becoming more and more popular with I think it being said about 7 million twitters, I still just didn’t quite get it.  What would I tweet that’s interesting in such a short format, you only have 140 characters to tweet!  I just thought it was useless and a waste of my time and didn’t bother to set up an account.  Until recently I realized the value twitter can have for you.

Twitter is a great advertising medium for you, like having your own advertising station so to speak.  Put your tweets out there and let people know what you are doing with your business, new announcements, new products, upcoming specials, and more.  It is a great way to get the word out to your followers.

When setting up your Twitter Account use your own personal brand or name, and be sure to use your real name when setting up your account if you want people to be able to find you.  You can put a link to your website, I recommend your own personal website and not a company site if you are with an affiliate or network marketing program.  If you haven’t set up your own personal website yet, see the Building Your Business Online Page of this blog to help you get started.

List an interesting Bio of yourself on Twitter, using your name, your company name you represent, and what you do so that if  people search for someone to follow they will find you if your interests are the same.  Plan it out ahead as Twitter only gives you  160 characters for your Bio, keep it short but make it count.

Once you have your Twitter Profile set up you can choose your background page under settings in the Design area and give it your own look and feel, you can have one designed specifically for your page if you want or choose one of the nice backgrounds twitter already offers you.  I highly recommend choosing one other than the default background.

You also want to upload your own photo to make it more personal.  I recommend using the same photo you used to set up your Facebook account. If you aren’t comfortable with that at least put a nice graphic there that you like rather than the default twitter image so that it isn’t so generic looking.

While you want to get into the habit of posting to Twitter a few times a day keep it interesting, try a balance between personal and business and don’t tweet the same post (especially an ad) for your business over and over, this will get you looked at as a spammer and you don’t want that.

That’s all til next time guys and remember try to spend at least an hour a day on your social media posts (including facebook and others) but don’t get so busy in posting and reading everyone elses pages and posts that you lose track of time and aren’t spending it on other important areas of building your business.

After a long break from the holidays and New Year, it’s time to get back to business. Last year was an exciting time and I look forward to an even better place in 2010.

Marketing online to build your business and yourself can be fun and challenging, and many people are looking for the right direction with their efforts.   So are you doing social media?  Facebook, Twitter, blogging?

I’ll be the first to admit, I was slow to come around to social media.  It is fun, but also challenging trying to come up with daily posts and what to say, keeping a balance between business and personal depending on what you are using your social media for.

If you haven’t tried Facebook yet, this is a great place to start.  Go to http://www.facebook.com and set up your profile, it’s simple and easy.  You can use your name (recommended) and or your business.  Once you get set up on facebook send me a friend invite.  (www.facebook.com/rhondalwagner)

What many people do is set up their facebook profile with their name or brand and then create a fan page for whatever business they are working.  This will be the next step, but for now get your profile set up, invite your friends to stay connected with you, and take a peak at other peoples profiles to see what they are doing as you are learning.

So go get set up and I’ll see you over on facebook!