PRESS RELEASE: Raleigh’s Business Alliance Rally 2012 Spotlights Industry Experts to Lead Breakout Sessions at Expo

Women’s Power Networking’s annual event features breakout sessions with local business owners and entrepreneurs at the WPN Business Alliance Rally May 19^thbusiness expo.

Raleigh, NC (April 5, 2012): On May 19^th Women’s Power Networking will present their fourth annual business expo. This year, the day-long Business Alliance Rally 2012, has assembled a group of outstanding industry experts to lead sessions in the breakout tracks.

“We are excited to offer a great selection of breakout sessions. The speakers are outstanding,” said Leslie Flowers, breakout session coordinator for the Rally.

The first round of spotlight speakers include:

• Bill Davis, Owner, Team Nimbus of North Carolina. His timely business growth topic is “Opportunities not Conversion is the Name of the Game”  
• Sherrie Wilkolaski, Founder and President of Author's Boutique will cover “Authors Crash Course to Publishing”
• Geanine Thompson, CEO of Live Your Personal Legend will present “Answering the Call to Adventure: Your Life Purpose Awaits!”
• Honey Beth Wiggs, Certified Health Coach at Take Shape for Life will speak to achieving optimal health in her talk “Are You as Healthy as You Think?”
• Clare Luffman, Owner, Dream Unlimited will coach attendees on “Common Mistakes of Running an In-Home Business”
• Danielle Cooley, Financial Advisor at Edward Jones. Her topic is “Invest In Yourself First, You Are Worth Every Penny.”

The annual business expo offers a balance of shopping, networking, learning and fun. Re-named the “Business Alliance Rally,” the event underscores how by building alliances in business and in life everyone succeeds.  The “Rally” is the organization’s premier business event of the year and is anticipated to attract over 1000 attendees.

The 2012 expo will be held Saturday, May 19th at the McKimmon Center on the North Carolina State University Campus, 1101 Gorman Street in Raleigh, from 10am–5pm.

To apply to register for an exhibitor space or to be a Breakout Session Spotlight Speaker go to http://www.wpn-bar.com/

Tickets are on sale now for admission to the Business Alliance Rally and the “Meet the Media Luncheon” at http://WPN-Business-Alliance-Rally-Tkts-2012.eventbrite.com/. Group discounts are offered.

Sponsorship opportunities are currently available. For more information on sponsorships contact Marilyn Shannon at marilyn@powerofdialogue.com.

About Women’s Power Networking (WPN)

Founded originally as Coffee and Contacts in 2007, Women's Power Networking "Alliances for Business - Alliances for Life" is a growing, national women's business referral network. WPN is the umbrella organization for monthly Power Lunches, Women Executives Roundtable and the after hours networking event, Cocktails and Contacts. Weekly Coffee and Contacts chapter meetings offer women a positive environment to grow personally and professionally.  The WPN Speakers Bureau arranges professional keynote and business speakers for conferences, business meetings, retreats or galas. Visit: http://www.WomensPowerNetworking.com

Media Contact:

Eileen Batson

Batson Group Marketing and PR

919.413.2318

Eileen@BGMPR.com

###

---

Your Time To Tweet

Content may be King [or Queen], but timing your tweets plays a big part. 

Great article by Matthew Royse - a marketing communications manager for a global IT firm in metropolitan Chicago. Read more from Royse at his blog Knowledge Enthusiast. Follow him on Twitter @MattRoyse.

According to data compiled by the marketing firm Lemon.ly, the most traffic on Twitter occurs from 9 to 11 a.m. ET and 1 to 3 p.m. ET. Research from HubSpot’s Dan Zarrella found that the best time to tweet is 5 p.m. ET. 

The takeaway: Spread your tweets out throughout the day with an emphasis on late afternoon.

KISSMetrics pulled data compiled by Zarrella to show the breakdown of tweets in the United States:

• 48 percent of tweets are from the East Coast;
• 33 percent of tweets are from the Central time zone;
• 14 percent are from the West Coast.
• Nearly 80 percent of the U.S. population is located in the Central and Eastern Time zones. 

The takeaway: Think East Coast time.

Day of the week

According to Zarrella’s report “How to Get More Clicks on Twitter,” your Twitter links will get the most attention from your followers toward the end of the week and on weekends. 

The takeaway: Don’t forget Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Tools

Tailoring your tweeting schedule is essential to reaching the greatest number of followers. Here are 13 tools to help you. An asterisk next to the description indicates it's not free. 

1. WhenToTweet helps you determine when most of your followers are online.*

2. TweetWhen shows you the best times to tweet based on your last 1,000 tweets.

3. Tweriod looks at tweets that you and your followers have sent and provides times on when you should tweet.

4. TweetStats  offers a detailed analysis of your best tweeting time.

5. Timely creates a schedule based on your last 199 tweets.

6. Tweue is basically a Twitter queue that will evenly space up to 10 tweets, from 15 minutes to eight hours apart.

7. TweetReports gathers the stats from your top 25 influential followers and analyzes the times when keywords are most discussed, and when you might want to participate in these conversations.

8. Lookacross identifies the best time to reach people.*

9. 14Blocks analyzes your followers’ activities to find out the best times to tweet each day.*

10. Socialflow publishes your content when it will resonate the most with your Twitter followers.*

11. Hootsuite is a Web-based social media dashboard in which you queue up and post updates in a timely fashion.

12. Buffer is an app that enables you to add articles, photos, and videos, and it automatically shares them throughout the day.

13. TweetDeck enables you to schedule tweets and can help you manage your social media platforms.

Frequency is a key part of timing

Timing based on tools and metrics goes just so far, of course. Clumping all your tweets in the 4–5 p.m. hour won’t do much good. To reach your wide array of followers, post at least five times a day, spaced throughout the day according to the analytics above, and your tweets will achieve their maximum impact.

When do you tweet?