Business & Social Networking

I think networking and professional organizations are critical to your sanity and your business well being. Being a small biz owner often means starting out with long hours after your “day job” or working from home by yourself or small staff. It make it very hard to keep motivated, inspired and informed. I have found some great resources for all 3, within the Bath & Body world.

Donna Maria is the founder of Indie Beauty Network. She helps independent business owner to maximize their success through the deliberate, thoughtful and fun process of business ownership.

All I can say about this resource is that I wish I would have known about it sooner. In addition to having Donna Maria be such a daily part of my life through her blog, emails, tweets and various events, I have a circle of Indie kinship and a few people who I consider to be real- life friends.

You can read or subscribe to the Indie Business Blog and you can also become a member of the IBN or Indie Beauty Network . Follow Indie Beauty on Twitter

Click Here to see the benefit chart for joining the Indie Beauty Network.

The Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild was formed in 1998 by a small group of enterprising soapmakers. The first annual conference was held at the Woodspirits Farm in Ohio. Since that initial gathering the Soap Guild has grown and expanded to include soapmaker and vendor members from all 50 US states, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, 4 Canadian provinces and 14 other countries on 4 continents.

Follow me on Twitter! I’m sure you’ve heard it. It is something really hard to explain- I think. You have to see it it to even half way understand it.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications like Twitterberry on your Blackberry. While the service is free you do have to have some sort of service to access the internet through you computer or phone.

Confusing? Check me out on my La Dolce Diva Twitter Page.

Twitter is a lot of fun and another good source of biz information, fun stuff and cool people. If you don’t like someone- Unfollow or block them, just like in Facebook.

WARNING: It can be  tremendous black-hole of time wasting or time-suck. It is useful and fun, but you have a biz to run and a life to live too.

Also, even though you may see differently on various Twitter pages, every thought that runs through you head is not worth Tweeting.

Lastly, Think Before You Tweet. Even if  you delete your Tweet or Twitter account, you Tweet are out there on the net, just waiting to be found. No need for paranoia, just use the Golden Rule and don’t share every morsel of your personal life.

This page is still a work in progress…..