We, business owners and consultants can get distracted very often.  As human beings, we can also have down periods in our productivity cycle.  In my case for example, the 5 months of bed-rest in 2009 were pretty hard.  However the final outcome of that period was Nora.  My first baby girl, worthy of every minute of the sacrifice.  Once the bed-rest was over, I had to get back to business.  It was almost like starting all over again but social media really helped me make a speedy progress and almost a painless re-birth.  Here is what I did:

Engaged in my communities: It was so easy to smoothly go back to my online communities.  Some I never left, while others became irrelevant during the down period but the minute I returned were great soul lifters.  The Entrepreneur community from LinkendIn went out of its way to help me find some work.

I was honest about the situation: Often we find it hard to accept the fact that we’re going through a hard time (lost a job, business is slow).  Even harder it’s to share the situation with others.  Maybe out of shame or fear of rejection.  The more you reach out in social media, the higher the response you’ll get.  It was actually easier for me to ask for business help to my online friends that it was to many others.  However the end result had to always be an offline meeting or sale.

Ongoing networking event: How often we need to wait for that monthly networking event to see if we meet Mr. Client or to see if we make the right connection? How often, nothing happens and we must wait until the next month? With social media, there’s no need to wait.  The networking is constant and the engagements with potential clients (if you do it right) happen every minute.  Take advantage, make those connections and dare take them offline. You might have noticed that I’m traveling like crazy lately.  Well, that’s exactly what I’m doing.

So what do you think? I’m sure I’ve left a couple of points. What else would you add?