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.

There are a few ways that involvement can be addressed that may fit into your company strategy and profile.

Should you become involved in Social Media – YES.  According to the Nielsen 2010 Media Fact Sheet, Time spent on social networking sites in the U.S. increased 277%; The average U.S. worker spends 5 hrs a month visiting social networks at the office; Facebook reaches 56% of the active U.S. Internet universe with an average usage of 6 hrs a month per user; Twitter grew 500% over a year; and 32% of all mobile web users visit social network sites.

Due to these statistics, it would definitely be in your best interest to become involved in social meeting as a company and marketing strategy.  Now, to what extent do you become involved?

This will really depend on your staff and time allotment.  Adding a blog to your site and providing content and resources to your viewing audience and member is a huge commitment but one that will pay off in the long one as establishing yourself as a knowledge leader in your field.  Blogs do take time and commitment to write, but is it possible to spend about 1 hour a week on your blog work?  Consider video blogging vs. writing a blog.  Make it a point throughout the day jotting/writing down blog topics and key points (approximately 5-10). Schedule an hour to sit in front of a video (does not have to be a professional production) and tape a 5 minute blog session on each topic that you’ve recorded. The video blogs can then be posted weekly to your site and based upon the number of video blogs that you recorded, you could have about a  months or a little more of video blogs to post that took you a few hours to complete.

Assign social media sites to various people in your organization. Arrange for these people to be in charge of each site and check/perform searches on the selected keywords for your organization, and interact with others. A schedule can be arranged where this occurs at least 3 times a day for approximately 1/2 hour each time. This provides some type of interaction with the social media main stream and enables your organizations name and content to be seen and discussed.

Becoming involved in Social Media does involve a commitment of time and resources. But if this is planned according to your companies goals and staffs schedule and abilities, can become a positive tasks to any ones day while increasing company awareness, site visitors and potential members.

These are powerful results and only proves that networking is the key to any successful person or organization.

Networking does take time and effort and can be done using a few different mediums. These could include:

Social Media – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.  Get your name and organization out there in the mainstream and interacting with clients, consumers or people with the same interests;

Blogging/Website – Keep your website content updated and have a blog where you provide your users with relevant and useful information;

Groups – Join Groups and interact. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn all provide Groups that you can view/join and meet and interact with people within the group;

Organizations – Join Organizations that are of interest to you or your organization. Take some time and attend the events that they offer and meet/mingle with the other members;

RSS Feeds and Blog Updates – Subscribe to your favorite websites or blogs RSS feeds so that you are kept up-to-date with the latest and greatest news.  Comment on the posts and interact with the other subscribers when able.

The key to networking is creating friends and fans that would recommend you to their fans and friends.  Meeting these friends/fans does require time, but worth the effort.  Take a minute and say hello.

Currently, it is estimated that there are 240Million Smartphones in use and 56% of US Smartphone users are using their phones for news and information (web/internet and social media), while 50.8% of US Smartphone users are using their phones for email. The US is far and above Smartphone usage in other countries such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, who on average have a 30% usage of Smartphones for Web/internet and social media accesses.

Based upon Smartphone usage and the amount of units that are available in and in use in today’s market, is your web site Smartphone friendly and providing users access to your site and site information via the Smartphone?

Sites can be developed that provides users with easy access to content and navigation through the site. (Take CNN, ESPN, or Home Depot). These sites have been set up specifically to allow for Smartphone user to access, search and navigate throughout the site effortlessly.

Applications and applets can be developed that enables you with the ability to provide users ease of access to content, updates, and relevant materials found on your site.  There are approximately 50,000+ apps available for iPhone user, with an ever increasing amount of apps availalble for other Smartphone users as well. These provide users with quick and easy access to informtion, from inventory, to marketing/sales information, etc. These can also allows users the ability to subscribe via RSS feeds to newly posted information and provide your publications via Smartphone download and access, as well as member interaction and forum posting are advantages that can be offered to members or potential new members.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to provide members with a Smartphone app that provided them with newly released member updates and information that is delivered directly to their smart phone? Wouldn’t it be great to deliver upcoming events to registered users (whether members or not), notifying them of upcoming events and providing them with options to order the event via their phone and or log in and order via their member access?

Quick and easy is the term and phrase for the future, and providing data to users in a quick an easy method provides you with the leading edge in user interactivity with your site, thus increasing users and their overall experience.

To be successful in Social Media there is an investment of time.  Social Media is exactly as it sounds – being Social through media streams such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, blogs, etc.  What a lot of people & organizations forget and fail to recognize is that the main point in Social Media is being Social.  The definition of Social by Websters.com:

• relating to human society, the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society 
• tending to form cooperative and interdependent relationships with others of one’s kind 

Investing time is how you will be successful and how you will learn and grow in the social media community.  There have been some great posts with information and suggestions on how best to handle the social media tools and tips to help organize the various social media items.  Instead of re-inventing the wheel, I’ve included a few of the most helpful to me below:

• A Quick ‘n Dirty Guide to Setting up Social Media Monitoring -http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/2009/02/18/a-quick-n-dirty-guide-to-setting-up-social-media-monitoring/
• Get More Comments with a Better Discussion Experience http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/get-more-comments-with-a-better-discussion-experience/
• Twitter tools for every one http://etsygreekstreetteam.blogspot.com/2009/02/twitter-tools-for-every-one-for.html
• Choosing Social Networks -http://mashable.com/2008/12/16/choosing-social-networks/

These are only a few tools that will provide you with ideas and information on how best to set your social media monitoring.  Try a few to find what works best for you then establish a schedule.  Don’t forget, social interaction is important and is the key to your overall success.