I’m sure many of you have noticed that I haven’t been blogging as much recently. It’s not due to lack of desire, but due to lack of time and mental energy. I have a full list of topic ideas I want to blog about, but by the end of the day after interesting and bureaucratically taxing events, kids, dinner, husband, baths, teeth brushing, catching up on Babble Soft stuff and personal emails, I feel pretty dazed.
I have blog posts floating around in my head with rarely enough thoughtful time to get them down in a post. Fortunately, I have had some timely guest posters who have filled in some of the gaps.
I can’t say I’ll be able to get to a blogging pace (in the near future) that can keep up with my blogging ideas given my current schedule and life situation, but so far I’ve done a better job at posting than Marc Andreessen, founder of Ning and formerly Netscape, who hasn’t consistently blogged since May 2008! But he’s running a heavily venture backed company so I’m guessing he has just a few more people breathing down his neck than I do.
I’m glad I’m not in his shoes right now in this economy, with the news constantly talking about the questionable results of social networks from a business model perspective, and with some of the widget partner issues his company is facing. But Marc’s a tried and true entrepreneur so I’m sure he and his team will figure something out. If not, he is a millionaire and married to a millionaire so chances are they won’t be out on the streets any time soon.
Yep, it’s all relative and I’m thankful for the opportunities I’ve been given and the opportunities yet to come. Thank you to all of you loyal readers for sticking around!
UPDATE: On an interesting note, Seth Godin, the famous author and blogger on marketing tips & ideas, did a post on September 10 called How often should you publish? and in it he says: “Key assertion: you don’t publish it unless it’s good. You don’t write more blog posts than you can support, don’t ship more variations of that software than your engineers can make marvelous.” So I guess my haphazard blogging is OK because it fits what I can support!
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: blogging,
entrepreneur,
entrepreneurship,
social networks,
venture capital |
Tags: blogging,
blogging schedule,
marc andreessen,
Ning,
social networks |
4 Comments »
I’m making some progress on my personal 2008 goals. I signed up for yoga and have lost between .5 and 1 pound. Regarding my business goals, I’m still working on the executive summary, financial projections, visuals, and finding an attorney in order to raise funds. If all goes well documents will be substantially ready by end of next week, and I’ll be well on my way to finding the perfect lawyer…if that’s even possible. 🙂
Posting will be light over the next few weeks so in the meantime please check out the Work It, Mom! interview of me where they asked me the following questions:
- What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
- You’ve written that you and the other founder of your first company were “washed out.” How did you recover from that? Was it hard to jump back into the entrepreneurial game after that experience?
- Many women entrepreneurs have mentioned that they felt they were not taken as seriously as businesswomen once people knew their companies were geared toward mothers. Has this been your experience?
- What lessons from your first company are you applying to your second?
- What’s most challenging part of your working-mom juggle?
- What advice would you give a working mom who is trying to start her own company? What pitfalls would you tell her to avoid?
- You have a great general attitude — what motivates you besides, well, creating a super-successful company?
Then pop on over to Thom Singer’s Some Assembly Required blog and check out my guest post on Building your e-Network where I expand on the following tips:
- Do what you say you will do when you say you will do it.
- When someone reaches out to you for help, answer them.
- Build and foster trust by being consistent.
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: blogging,
entrepreneur,
entrepreneurship,
mom,
mother,
social networks |
Tags: attorney,
building your e-network,
entrepreneurship,
executive summary,
financial projections,
finding a laywer,
finding an attorney,
mom,
personal goals,
social networks,
some assembly required,
thom singer,
work it,
yoga |
Comments Off on Yoga and Other Blog Mentions
A fascinating thing happened to me and many a folk on Twitter last week. I went from 30 followers to over 175 followers worldwide in just over 24 hours all because of a woman known as @SusanReynolds. Susan blogs at Artsy Asylum and started a new blog called Boobs on Ice to document her journey fighting breast cancer. A woman who I have mentioned frequently on my blog, Connie Reece, helped start a campaign called the Frozen Pea Fund. You can see a great interview of Connie on this particular topic called PEAS and Passion on Thom Singer’s blog. Connie also helped start Frozen Pea Friday where people change their twitter avatars to “peavatars” in support of Susan Reynolds and to build awareness of the Frozen Pea Fund.
As I mentioned in my Social Media Mania – What’s A Gal to Do? post I joined Twitter on December 13, 2007. Near the end of last week, I saw @lizstrauss, @princess-belle and others making challenges that they will donate money to the Frozen Pea Fund if twitterdom would help them get to X number of followers within a certain time period. I decided to join in late on December 27 and put forth the challenge of 175 to donate $50. I had 30 followers at the time. It was down to the wire but just as midnight was closing here in US CST on December 28 a tweet went out to some Aussie twitter folk and I ended up with close to 180!
I would have donated even if I didn’t make it to 175. I was having so much FUN seeing people take action based on 140 character or less tweets to help fight cancer, a worthy cause. Talk about instant gratification for almost all parties involved! I donated my $50 right then and there. To me, the Frozen Pea Fund endeavor has been the best example of a social media campaign I have seen or been a part of. Kudos to people like @conniereece for taking the time to show us how social media can be used to make a difference!
Now I’m going to see if twitter can help me find a good reference for a beginner yoga class to take in 2008. I’ve got a lot to do in 2008 and Yoga will be a big part of it. I even saw that they are offering a Deepak Chopra Center Yoga Retreat at the Crossings in March.
If you’d like to follow me on twitter, you can find me @aruni. If you’d like to see how I figure out how attempt to use social media to help build awareness of my company, Babble Soft, you might want to subscribe to this blog’s feed. If you have any suggestions on how to reach our target market, please don’t hesitate to send me your ideas…they are always welcome!
Happy New Year! Oh and don’t forget to donate to the Frozen Pea Fund…
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: charities,
social media,
social networks,
twitter |
Tags: american cancer society,
breast cancer,
connie reece,
frozen pea friday,
frozen pea fund,
frozen peas,
peas,
peas and passion,
social media,
social networks,
susan reynolds,
twitter |
6 Comments »
So I’ve been putting off joining Facebook mostly because I haven’t had time to set it up (lame I know) but partly because I wanted to be one of the last people on the planet (just kidding) to join. I sometimes refer to myself as the late adopter high-tech CEO. Kind of strange to think about really. I broke down and joined Facebook today.
So why did I join now? Here are some reasons:
- I had some friends invite me to join
- I saw Robert Scoble post about Facebook ad noseum. I think he has to get a commission or something from Facebook or maybe he got a finder’s fee for Microsoft’s recent investment, which probably made him very happy. I tried to add him as a friend but I got a notice saying he has too many friends
- I started to feel like I was missing out on something (peer pressure, curiosity)
- I wanted to learn more about the advertising options on Facebook (Facebook Ads) that Fred Wilson has been mentioning in some of his recent posts.
- I’m hoping someone at Facebook will discover me and my company and give me lots of moola. 🙂
There are quite a few parenting and baby groups on Facebook so I’ll sit back and observe and see if that might be a good avenue to advertise Babble Soft.
If anyone has long term experience with Facebook (or has any news on what they are planning to do with the Microsoft money) I’d love to hear about your experiences. Do you click on the ads and if you do, do you purchase anything?
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: advertising,
babble soft,
entrepreneurship,
networking,
social networks |
Tags: advertising,
facebook,
microsoft,
parenting groups,
social networks |
8 Comments »
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