How Mompreneurs can Make More Money using Social Media

Momprenuers is a relatively new term that is quickly gaining in popularity. Countless stay-at-home moms are discovering the wide-range of online opportunities where they can make extra money while still ensuring their children’s needs are met. Some moms are making products at home and selling them online, some are working as freelancers, and others are making money as affiliate marketers. Regardless of the money-making method they choose, mompreneurs can always make more money by using social media sites.

Marketing Your Business Online

Social media is the ideal tool for marketing any business online. It offers mompreneurs countless different ways to market themselves to other social media users. Simply start off by offering free advice in your field of expertise to your existing contacts and then encourage people to share it with others.

Once you have established a loyal following, you can then focus your content on offering your social media fans products or services that may benefit their lives. Always remember to generate social media content that is focused on your follower’s needs. You can quickly lose followers if everything you post sounds like a sales pitch.

Making Money with Facebook

Facebook is the most popular social media network and the third most visited website in the world. With close to a billion users,  you'll have no problems with finding a large enough audience interested in what you have to promote. Additionally, Facebook is a great money-making social media site, because it has the ability to generate income even if you don’t have a product or service that you are trying to sell. If you get enough fans on Facebook, you can be paid by big businesses for advertisements on your fan page. You can also earn a passive income by creating a Facebook app and selling it, provided you have any programming experience.

Generating Followers on Facebook

Mompreneurs must give their existing followers a reason to share their content to generate more followers. Offering useful information or “act now” incentives is the fastest way to increase fans on your Facebook page. You can also post incentives with links to your Facebook page on relevant pages or groups. For example, if you are a mompreneur marketing homemade sweaters and scarves, you can post your content on Facebook groups that pertain to knitting.

Selling on Facebook

If you sell items, either online or via a brick-and-mortar business, you can use Facebook to turn fans into paying customers. Before you begin selling on Facebook, you’ll need to create a Facebook page which will allow you to be in compliance with Facebook’s Terms of Service as well as affording you additional advantages that just aren’t available if you were to use a regular profile. For example, having a business page allows you to add custom tabs, which can be done with a Facebook app, so that you can build your online store.

One way to do this is with Soldsie, a social commerce platform that turns your Facebook page into a virtual storefront, so that you can easily start selling on Facebook. With Soldsie, Mompreneurs can sell gently used children’s toys, clothes or anything else that they desire right from their Facebook page. You just post a picture and description of the item you want to sell and customers can purchase by just commenting 'sold'. The benefit of this method of selling and purchasing is that it incorporates a social aspect, which allows your customers to actually engage with your brand. These interactions then push your post onto the News Feeds of their friends which can help you with attracting new customers for your business, especially since people are four times as likely to conduct a transaction inside Facebook if the referral comes from a trusted friend.

Making Money with Twitter

Twitter is a close second to Facebook and it is quickly becoming a popular marketing tool for mompreneurs. It is great for promoting a website, product, or service, plus it has its own money-making opportunities. You can tweet another business’ ad and then get paid each time someone clicks on the link (PPC) to the other business. This type of ad service is known as pay-per-click or sponsored tweets and any mom with a good twitter following can generate substantial money from home tweeting about other businesses’ products or services. Additionally, you can use twitter to help with generating leads and selling your products and/or services, however unlike Facebook, with Twitter you want to go with more of a 'soft' selling approach.

Generating Followers on Twitter

Twitter only gives you 140 characters to create a statement that will influence potential followers. It is important to summarize what you can offer followers in as few words as possible. Don’t offer complex deals that can’t be accurately described in a sentence or two using tweets.    

Selling on Twitter

The trick to selling on Twitter is to 'soft' sell which means spending your time with finding and connecting with people who are truly in need of any products, services or advice that you have to offer and then, take the time to reach out and help them.

You should look to tweet about 5 to 10 messages a day when your first starting out so that fans as well as potential customers see that you're active. Keep your information brief and follow the 80/20 rule which basically states that 80% of your tweets should be of help to your audience or something that they would find interesting, with the other 20% dealing with promoting your business and services.

When sending a tweet, make sure to make use of hashtags. The use of a proper hashtag will help with making your tweets as effective as possible as it'll consolidate all related information into one thread and allow you to attract the customers who would be most interested in your brand and what it has to offer.

As part of the 'soft' sell you should provide special offers and freebies which will increase the chances of gaining more followers and being retweeted by potential clients.

The Mommy Blog

There are so many great websites and social media fan pages dedicated to helping busy moms. These popular mommy blogs provide free parenting advice, healthy recipes, time-saving solutions, and child-care tips to moms all over the world. Starting a mommy blog is a fun way to make more money using social media. Once you’ve attracted a sizeable social media following, other related businesses will pay to advertise their products or services on your site.

It is incredibly challenging balancing a family and a career, which is why so many moms are pursuing more flexible online opportunities. There are plenty of different ways for mompreneurs to contribute financial to the home without having to leave their children for eight or nine hours a day. Mompreneurs can make even more money from home when they use social media sites to either market their own home-based business or promote another company’s services. Social media is the most effective and cost-efficient way to connect with an endless supply of new leads.

Emily is a mother of two and is in the middle of getting her MBA at NYU Stern. When she isn't busy with her children or classes, she works on her fashion line. You can follow her on Google+ or through her website.