The Power of Peer Support: Creating your Professional Community — even from home

Ditching the 9-to-5 life for one of flexibility and independence has some pretty obvious perks. Even so, there may be one thing you’re hesitant to leave behind as you start your own marketing business — the co-worker camaraderie. After all, we’re marketers, we’re movers and shakers, we’re people persons. We feed off the energy and ideas of others! But working from home doesn’t mean you have to give that up. In fact, now more than ever, building your own professional community of marketers is both doable and critical.

Find your tribe

You may be a solopreneur now, but you’re certainly not the only one (*waves*). There are tons of us out here! Remember that just because you’re a marketer and she’s a marketer doesn’t mean you’re in competition with each other.

The beauty of an online marketing community is that more often than not, we’re all operating from different corners of the country — or the world! Our local markets look different, our clients have diverse needs and our areas of expertise are varied. But our basic goal — bringing our clients’ vision to life (or, well, helping them figure out what their vision IS) — is the same.

Find those like-minded ladies and network your little heart out. We, *ahem*, recommend getting started with the iMarketer community, naturally. But there are others, too! Online Geniuses, for example, is a Slack community for marketers that offers networking opportunities, question and answer sessions, and even in-person meet-ups through local chapters.

A great community is like a warm blanket everyone can huddle under on a brisk winter day.

Exchange ideas

We can’t keep all those killer ideas and delicious best practices to ourselves! No, it’s way more fun to celebrate our wins — and help each other along the way.

Maybe you’ve figured out a great invoicing system to implement with your subcontractors. Meanwhile, a fellow marketer in your online community has researched any and all project management tools and swears she’s landed on the absolute best. Or maybe you’re just stuck on how to impress a particularly finicky client and you need a space to bounce some ideas off those of us who’ve been there, stressed about that.

Inbound.org is one such site that hosts a discussion board where marketers log on to ask each other for opinions on a wide range of topics, from whether “contact forms” are still relevant to the best social media platforms for promoting their business. Another great place to get all your questions answered, especially as you start out? Reddit!

Give at least as much as you take

Remember that a community is only as robust, supportive and lively as its members. Once you find your marketing tribe, make sure to give, give, give, especially as you morph from Newbie to O’ Wise One. Share all the emotions and struggles of your Boss Lady life, and empathize with the emotions and struggles of others. We’re all in this together!

We’ve got a community ready and waiting for you to try! Meet the iMarketer community of professional women on Facebook and Instagram.