Articles
Articles
5 Routine Tasks You Should Stop Doing On Your Work Shift
Rachel Weeks couldn’t get through the workday without constant interruptions. Realizing that routine tasks were taking over her day, she started signing checks once a week, sending out packages at a set time each day, and addressing staff questions at weekly meetings. Those changes have helped Weeks grow the business by developing a new e-commerce site and partnering with a big-box retailer. Here are five daily tasks you probably can eliminate from your workday to help you stay focused and be more productive. (more…)
5 Mistakes Companies Should Avoid On Twitter
Social media marketing can be a difficult beast sometimes, but small and medium businesses who struggle with social networks can take comfort from the fact that even the big brands get it wrong too at times. Here are five of the most common Twitter mistakes made by major brands that we should avoid:
1. Only Tweeting during office hours
While we may be doing a good job of targeting the daytime crowd, it is largely ignoring all its followers who are online in the evenings, who are more likely to be at home and, thus, possibly more responsive to out of hours messages than during the day while they’re at work. (more…)
Training Your Virtual Employees
As a busy online entrepreneur, you know how valuable it is to have an outsourced staff of freelancers and virtual assistants to help you grow and sustain your business. Virtual assistants can be located as close as the same town as you, or they can be located across the globe in another country and time zone. Regardless of their location, you want to make sure that they are properly trained to do exactly what you want them to do for your business. In this article we’ll share some tips that will help you train your freelance staff so that t
hey are able to do the tasks you require.
Create training videos
Depending on the task you can create a talking head video where you are actually talking to the camera and explaining each step, you can create a slide show video with text instructions that they can follow along with, or you can record a screen capture video that follows along as you demonstrate how to perform a task on the computer. The benefit of creating these, ‘how-to’ videos is that you can tell and show them exactly what you want them to know. While they are watching, they can pause the video to take notes, or rewind a section and watch it again.
Create an online course
There are websites online that will allow you to create an online training course to teach your virtual assistants the content that you want them to learn. There are several online vendors that provide either free, or low cost solutions for creating online training courses. One of the benefits of designing a course using a web based solution is that it allows you to create a quiz at the end of each module of training so that you can measure their understanding of the materials.
Have you ever had trouble training your virtual employees? Was this article helpful?
How To Make Your Facebook Fan Page Rock
For social media, Facebook Fan Pages can really enhance your business and catapult it into greatness. There are some awesome tools to use for your business and the added ability to connect with your audience. The following is a list that will help you to “rock” your Facebook Fan Page.
Don’t Mock your Twitter Strategy
On Twitter, you tweet your information over and over again to make sure it gets out there. This isn’t what you’d want to do on Facebook. Usually, revealing the message once or twice a day is sufficient. Most likely, your fans on Facebook are connected with you on Twitter as well, so they will be seeing the same message there too. Also, Facebook doesn’t have a 140 character limit thereby allowing you to craft your messages differently and take full advantage of the entire space provided. (more…)
How To Follow-Up Networking Prospects
Networking is widely considered one of the keys to succeeding as a virtual professional. It really is ‘who you know’ that can help to build and sustain a successful business. Many Virtual Assistants (and other small business owners) get out and start networking, but they fail to do the follow up necessary to keep the interest of the person they have come into contact with. Here are a few ways that you can build a follow up system that will work for you and your business: (more…)
4 Ways To Build Products For Ideal Clients
Once you start to build an email list, you will be starting to build relationships with people who will want to work with you. The more information you provide for them, the faster that trust will grow. The key is to provide good content, and to provide it regularly so that they will always be in touch with you. So here are a few ideas to get you started at developing content for them.
Freebie Report
This is your ‘foot in the door’ – the content rich report that you can provide to people when they give you their email address. Your free report can be anything that will be of value to your ideal client or prospect. It can be a step by step procedure, a list of tips, a checklist, or some research information. By knowing what it is that your ideal client will respond to, you determine the topic. It’s set up as a one-time download in exchange for their email address. (more…)
4 Popular And Effective Ways To Grow Your Email List
Hopefully by now you have an email list set up. It doesn’t matter what stage of your business you are in, it is essential to start building an audience of prospective clients that you can start to make that connection with. Growing your list is not a difficult thing to do, if you concentrate on doing a few simple things:
1. Freebie: We often talk about providing something for your prospect, that they will receive for giving you their email. There a many different types of freebies you can offer: an audio, a video, a podcast, a report, an ebook, an ecourse, etc. The better your offer, the more people will want to sign up for your list. Put some effort into this product (you only have to do it once!) and make it valuable – your prospects will appreciate your generosity! (more…)
How Virtual Assistants Can Find Their Target Market
Many VAs make the mistake of thinking they can help everyone. When you don’t focus on specific groups of people to connect with, you end up blurring the message you are sending out, and quite often you won’t be heard. Here are a few tips on how to determine who you should be targeting:
1. Who do you want to work with?
Think about who you have worked with before. Men? Women? Corporations? Small business owners? Married? Single? Give your ideal client a description. You know the types of people you have worked with before, so think about who you found easy to work with, who you enjoyed working with (and why!). When you own your own business, it is very important to work with clients that suit you, and that you can work well with. (more…)
Learning Basic Social Networking Etiquette
Working virtually means that we don’t see people face to face every day. We know that we need to perfect the skill of social networking in order to expand our audience and, well, our network. But it takes skills in order to be able to do this effectively. We can’t just walk into a virtual ‘room’ and greet everyone we know and meet them. So here are a few tips on how to engage people while exercising etiquette:
Introduce yourself. Sounds simple, but some people just never do it. When you join a group or forum of your potential clients or colleagues, let them know that you have joined. Introduce yourself and let everyone know what you do and why you joined the group. It’s the best conversation starter! (more…)
Creating Customer-Based Social Media Strategy
Successful brands don’t simply speculate about their strategies, they visualize them. In its most basic form, strategy is the process of determining the best way to get from Point A to Point B. As a business, your challenge is to overcome the obstacles that stand between you and where you want to be. Taking the right actions helps to create a connection between your brand and your audience. The more your content sparks the needs of your audience the greater the likelihood you will create real brand loyalty. (more…)
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