There will never be more hours in the day for a stay-at-home working mom, but there are a few ways to make them all more productive. In this issue of Working Mom 3.0, Stephanie Taylor Christensen offers three tools that can give all working moms an extra hand in managing the demands of work and parenting.
When you’re a stay-at-home working mom, technology and social media tools can be invaluable resources for keeping you connected to existing contacts and for starting new conversations with industry insiders and customers who can help your nontraditional career flourish. But effectively using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook to promote your brand or services is a real-time commitment. While having a robust social media following is great for business, it takes time and effort to keep readers engaged, get real work accomplished and tend to your family. As all stay-at-home working moms know, the only solution to doing it all lies in working smarter and faster. Here are three “must have” tech tools for all stay-at-home working moms that will make your job of doing it all a little more doable.
Google Docs
Gone are the days when waiting at the doctor’s office or for your child’s soccer practice to end is spent mindlessly texting or browsing the Web. You can now access Google Docs files from your computer on your mobile phone and get some real work accomplished during what would otherwise be downtime. Google Docs have a convenient auto-save feature every few seconds to help working moms who are constantly juggling work and family tasks. If you collaborate with others on projects, the document-sharing aspect of Google Docs is a great time-saver and efficiency booster, reducing the potential for error and need for ongoing conversation about which is the latest versions.
Evernote
Essentially a project management tool for your life, Evernote is an easily accessible, free Web-based tool that can help you manage work and personal commitments. As a writer, I love this tool for its ability to let me “clip” websites of interest that I find and file them into relevant project folders. As a working mom, I love the virtual “sticky notes” that I can access anywhere. (After having a child, I’ve found that paper notes and lists now tend to end up wadded at the bottom of my purse, stuck somewhere in between “Puffs” crumbs and hairbands.) The free app also allows you to record audio “reminders” to yourself from anywhere, and the search feature allows you to easily find all the miscellaneous notes you’ve recorded — when you finally get a moment to work!
HootSuite
Heather Allard, founder and editor of The Mogul Mom calls this technology “an amazing social media management tool that allows me to manage multiple social media accounts, update my Twitter + Facebook page on the go with their iPhone app, track the results of my social efforts with click-through stats, add team members to my account and my favorite … schedule tweets and Facebook posts in advance. So even if I’m sleeping or on vacation, my social media accounts don’t have to be!”
Tell usWhat are your favorite tech tools?Share with us in the comments section below! |
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The modern woman is redefining what it means to have a successful career. Rather than feeling torn between climbing the corporate ladder and having a happy family life, many women are choosing to merge the two and transition careers from a traditional role to a more flexible one.
Working Mom 3.0 is reinventing the definition of “working mom,” as office hours are held at home and revolve around nap times. This column begins by chronicling the experiences of Stephanie Taylor Christensen, a former marketing professional turned self-employed stay-at-home mom, writer and yoga instructor, as she strives to redefine “having it all” on her own time and terms. |
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Working Mom 3.0: What’s my worth?
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