Motivating Mum UK

I’m still very much a newbie at this blogging thing.  When I took over Motivating Mum in September last year, I had a personal facebook account (and had mastered Bejeweled Blitz and Farmville) but not much else. I did once have a try at blogging a couple of years ago but I soon realised that writing the blog is only the smallest part of it – promoting it and getting it out there is what matters.  I was rubbish at that, and soon gave up.

This is why Motivating Mum has been such an opportunity for me.  An established website and brand all nicely set up and ready to go, with a ready audience, and some fairly clear instructions from the previous incumbent about how to go about promoting it. Get on facebook. Get on twitter. Blog weekly.

So I’ve been doing that – although it hasn’t exactly been with a sense of purpose as yet.  People tell me I can write and yet I feel I still need to discover my true blogging voice and get a sense for what my blog is really ‘about’.

One of the best ways to go about this research, and indeed one of the best ways to promote my own blog while I’m about it, is to go visiting other people’s blogs, commenting where I can, and also taking notes of cool things that make their blog interesting and different.

It was on one of these blog visiting missions that I first came across Networked Blogs. I was aware of Google Friend Connect – I have it on my own site – and this widget seemed to be just another version of that. I clicked it to follow the blog I was on and found to my delight that it is so much more than that.

Like I said above, I’m still a complete newbie, and the fact that having never heard of the site before, I was able to connect my blog to my facebook page and twitter stream within minutes, shows how simple it really is.  Having got my own blog set up nicely on facebook I was further delighted to find out how easy it is to visit other mummy blogs from within the Networked blogs application.

Fast forward a few months and I’ve found loads more interesting blogs I want to read, and connected to a few of my favourites in a more user-friendly way than the clunky RSS feed. Not only that, but readers for my own blog are pouring in – it seems like the “I like yours and you like mine” etiquette so beloved of twitter, is alive and well here too.

So I can warmly recommend Networked blogs on facebook – give it a go – You can find my blog as a separate tab on my facebook page www.facebook.com/MotivatingMumUK , and with it the link to get on Networked Blogs yourself. This isn’t an affiliate link, it’s just that since Facebook mixed things up again, I’m not sure where else you can get hold of the app. But do please stop by and have a look at my blog on your way through – I promise I’ll follow you back…

I saw a statistic the other day that over half of all adults are now on Facebook. It was probably based on the USA, but I guess that figures in the UK are not far off. A significant number of these are now using Facebook for Business.  Not bad for a tool that when I joined it only three or four years ago, I felt a bit embarrassed and thought I was one of the oldest people on there.

So I’m guessing, if you are the kind of person who has found Motivating Mum and is reading my blog page, that you probably have your own personal Facebook account. Maybe you keep in touch with friends – maybe you post photos and look at other people’s- maybe you share interesting stuff on the web. Maybe you play online games to pass the time (I have recently kicked a fairly serious FarmVille and Bejeweled Blitz habit that was threatening to take over my life).

But although most of us are old hands now at the personal stuff, many small business owners have yet to discover the joys of Facebook as a business tool. Quite a few people that I’ve met at Motivating Mum networking events say they just haven’t got round to it yet, or they just don’t know where to start.

It doesn’t help that Facebook changes the formats round and moves the goalposts every few months, so that even if you find out from a friend what to do, by the time you get to doing your own page it all looks completely different and could confuse the heck out of anyone.

I will freely admit that my Facebook page has been the most neglected of my social marketing efforts to date. I have focussed big time on twitter and had huge success there (more on that another month I think). I set up my Facebook page, and thanks to the wonders of Hootsuite, and Networked blogs (which I will cover in other posts if you haven’t got them yet),  it is now just about a carbon copy of my twitter stream, with my blog added in for good measure.

However, I’m well aware that Facebook can be so much more. There are all kinds of apps out there to make your Facebook page really stand out and attract people to your business. Also there is just so much scope for connecting with people, getting to know them and hanging out, which has got to be good for business. I promised myself that once I had time, I would get over there, tidy up my page and make it the best that it can be.

The time for my Facebook cleanup has come. For the next month I’m going to be really concentrating on my Facebook page, cleaning it up, getting to know the users and finding a lot of other peoples sites to like and share information from.

I wil keep you posted about what I’m doing on this blog, and on the site itself, and I also intend to blog about the basics – setting the page up in the first place and what you can use it for.

So if you want to come with me and find out about Facebook in the next month or so, please hop over to the Motivating Mum Facebook page and press Like. Once you have done that, watch your own Facebook stream, as these blog posts should appear in it each time I write them.

Please join in too with my discussions, polls and competitions, and don’t be afraid to post up your own page details too. I’ll follow/like anyone who stops and says hello!