Building a community for your customers, members or employees can be a benefit to your organization.  Communities are a great way to:

• Facilitate open, two way dialogue with your audience
• Obtain direct and immediate feedback about your product or services
• Extend product reach and open new market opportunites
• Deliver information to customers and partners quickly and efficiently

By creating a community, you have the ability to not only reach your target audience and encourage the interaction listed above, but establish yourself as a leader and a thoughtful innovator of customer service and relations.

Communities offer a wide range of functionality from Community groups within an organization that can interact amongst the group members themselves, to a larger scale communities which includes forums, blogs, and community member interaction.

Determining which is best for you and your organization goes a long way in determining the best type of community set up and software. There is a wide range of paid and free community software packages available. Deciding which one is best for your organization can be overwhelming if you don’t have a good sense and idea of your community goals.

Establish these goals first, what do you want your community to do, who do you want to reach with your community, and what type of interaction do you want your community members to have?  These are all important aspects of being able to set up the correct community for your organization to further your web presence and customer interaction.

A few open source communities that I’ve recently interacted with and have found to be terrific are:

While Ning offered a great community structure previously, the changes that they are undergoing currently will provide an even better community structure in the future. Check out the proposed changes at: http://about.ning.com/announcement/

DotNetNuke (www.dotnetnuke) also offers a great open source structure that provides you with the ability to add and purchase modules according to your needs and customize as needed with a developer.  The support by the DotNetNuke module developers is also excellent and they can assist with alterations if necessary depending on your needs and the module.  I’ve found them to be more than willing to assist.

Communities allow you to reach your audience and interact in a larger and much more open way. Adding this ability onto your website and/or establishing a separate community site is a terrific way to engage your audience and members and provide them with a vehicle for quick and easy interaction.

Finding “balance” when working from home is one of the most difficult challenges for the home work force.  By “balance” I mean finding the balance between “work” and “personal” time.

For a lot of people, working from home sounds like the “dream job”.  Get up whenever you want to, stroll down the hall to your “office”, stay in you PJ’s all day long, take lunch whenever, work whenever, and get all of your personal chores done during the day.  Life is great working from home.

For the people that actually work from home the “dream job” can become overwhelming.  I currently work from home and have worked from home for another employer throughout my career.  Working from home takes dedication.

The misnomer is because you are home you have more time.  Not true. It seems that you work more when you are home because you don’t leave the office.  Your office is your home therefore, there is no disconnect at the end of the day. According to some of my peers who also work from home, they also try and find balance from work and home and experience the same struggles.

I’m not saying that working from home is all bad. There are some advantages of having the opportunity to juggle your schedule when needing to more easily. But keep in mind, you are still juggling and find yourself compensating for the time by working earlier or later.

Finding the balance is difficult but can be achieved.  For myself, I had to create a routine that I follow each morning. I get up at the same time and go through my morning routine as if I was actually leaving for the day.  Instead of getting into my car to drive to the office, I go to my office down the hall.  I try and schedule lunch at the same time (if possible) and stay within my working boundaries, the same as if I was at an office.  I do still struggle with keeping work and home separate, but we all do at times when there are deadlines and projects/items that needs to be completed.  It’s making sure that we don’t allow ourselves to become overwhelmed by trying to do everything and learn to shut down the computer for the night and walk away.  It’s OK – really.

Having a support system of family, friends and peers is a great help to finding how to achieve your balance.  I found a few groups that can help plus an article that is inspiring to finding a healthier you.  Check out this article called How to Be Happy With Yourself from HowStuffWorks.  Offers great insight and advice and definitely worth the read.

Also, if you  belong to LinkedIn and are a female, join the Groups: Girlfriends In Business and Women’s Network of Entrepreneurs.  You’ll find great people to connect with who offers support and insight.

How do you find your “balance”?  Do you have helpful advise that others can use? Feel free to comment.

Are you ready to market your company in today’s technology and social media stream? Based upon recent results, the average consumer and business is no longer using mail to deliver messages and engage consumers. Recent results posted by the USPS show a steady decline in mail volume over the previous three years results with a projected 10 Million piece decline from 2009 to 2010.

Internet usage, smartphones and social media have become more popular and show a steady increase in popularity not only from personal use but from business marketing as well. The below graphic displays B2B and B2C companies Social Media profiles and the popularity of social media in business marketing.

The emarketer.com reports that Social Media Marketing spending for B2B and B2C businesses is projected to increase over the next several months and years.  Customer Relationship Management and Brand Building will be the focus of business social media marketing practices as these play key roles to a company’s success.

Technology, internet and smartphones are the content delivery mediums today and your marketing needs to adjust to reach your target audience. Not quite sure where to start?

1. Start with a plan, who is your target audience and what is your message?
2. Make sure that your website is up-to-date and relays your company message.  Is your web site smart phone readable and friendly?  Can users interact with your website via their smart phone and current web browsers easily?  These are important as trends show that 83% of adults have cell phones or smartphones and, among them, over 35% have access the internet via their phone.
3. Create a Social Media Strategy – see related post with strategy and social media sites information found at: http://www.isisinternettechnologysolutions.com/social-media/social-media-adventure-continued/
4. Initiate Marketing Plan – how are you going to reach your target audience with your message? Social Media is certainly an item that will be used but there are also alternatives such as Personalized Email Campaigns and Personalized URL’s. These provide an alternative to customary print marketing and are personalized and targeted to that specific person or persons vertical market, enabling you to target your marketing message.

The key is to plan your marketing strategy, ensure that your message is reaching your target audience and engage your audience with your brand and customer relations.   Getting involved in Social Media is more than just posting, but involves interaction and getting to know/responding to your consumers.