When we begin speaking in terms of marketing, invariably the question comes up, are my marketing efforts true marketing efforts or are some viewing them as spam? Spam is about taking the choice away from someone and delivering them information about products and services without their permission. Spam comes in the way of unsolicited emails, junk mail and telemarketing. Spam leaves a bad taste in our mouths and for good reason. We have not asked to be inundated with the information that we find floods our inboxes these days. Marketing when done responsibly can be fun and witty. Commercials that reach us emotionally are effective marketing tools. People who care about their audience take the time to consider their message and how it will reach others. On Twitter we each have an option as to who we will follow. And one might suggest it is that choice that gives others the right to “spam”. Wrong. Spam is irresponsible and annoying. More will tune out than tune in. Take time to consider your message and how it will connect with your followers. Are you sharing a valuable service, product or resource? Do you take the time to share on a personal level as well as sharing on a business level? Have you established a relationship with your followers? Is the information you are providing timely and appropriate? If you can answer these questions with a yes answer then your message can effectively be considered marketing rather than spam. Your followers will welcome your post rather than turn away from it. Share your tweet with others and in turn respond in kind to their own messages and tweets. After all, marketing is all about the relationship and spam is about nothing more than the bottom line. Add Comment What Should You Be Tweeting About? 02/13/2012
Many of us have taken on the social networks as marketing tools for our businesses. And in doing so, we have decided to use Twitter. Now we have accounts, at which we stare blankly. What should we be tweeting about? We have 140 characters to work with and while that seems easy, it can prove more difficult to provide a valuable post in 140 characters or less. We want to engage our audience, but the question then becomes how. What should you be sharing with your followers? What is it that they want to see? They want great conversation. Give them a statement worth replying to. Reply in kind and open the lines of communication. They want to get to know the person behind the tweets. Give them the opportunity to get to know you, your personality, as well as your company and services. They want links to great sites, videos or information. If you find it relevant and useful, chances are someone else will appreciate the resource as well. They want a tweet worthy of sharing with their own followers. Whether that comes in the form of a particularly humorous quip or a great article you have read, give them something they can retweet. While you want to engage your followers, they want to engage you as well. Don’t be afraid to jump in and get involved yourself. Join in on the conversations, thank a fellow Twitterer for sharing a resource you found helpful. Retweet their posts as well. In any good relationship there is balance, give and take. Don’t ask anything of your audience that you are unwilling to give yourself. If you are afraid to take your social networking to the next level, don’t expect that others will find you approachable and worthy of their time and effort. Give them what they want and what you will get in turn will be invaluable to you and your business. Who to Follow on Twitter 09/29/2010
Knowing who to follow on Twitter is important in your marketing efforts. You want to follow those who are of interest to you. You want to follow those who are of use to you and your business. Your hope is that they will in turn follow you back, if they aren’t already following you, thus opening up the lines of communication between your business and your audience. There are several tools that can be used to make these efforts easier and more streamlined. http://mrtweet.com/ Mr. Tweet - Show the influencers and followers you should follow and suggests you to enthusiastic users relevant to you. http://justtweetit.com Just Tweet It - A user directory for Twitter organized by genre to allow for users to easily find other Twitter users to connect with. http://www.retweetrank.com Retweet Rank - Retweetrank lets you find rank of any twitter user. With the rank, latest retweets of the user are shown and an RSS feed can also be grabbed for the same. http://www.twellow.com/ Twellow - A directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you. http://twitterel.com/ TwitteRel - By using Twitterel.com you can make your life a lot more interesting, we thought of a way to connect to other twitter users who share the same interests as you do. http://friendorfollow.com/ Friend or Follow - Who are you following that's not following you back? Who's following you that you're not following back? http://twitoria.com/ Twitoria - Twitoria is a web app that tidies up your Twitter friends list by revealing inactive friends that haven't tweeted in a long time so you can unfollow them. http://topify.com/ Topify - Twitter application that improves Twitter's email notification and allows to follow and reply to direct messages by email. http://tweepler.com/ Tweepler - A Twitter application that allows you to organize followers. http://twimailer.com/ Twimailer - Tired of shallow e-mails from Twitter when someone follows you? Want to know more about the people who are following you? Twimailer is a free service that delivers that information right to your inbox! http://www.tweetertags.com/tags TweeterTags - Get the most out of Twitter by finding the right people to share the conversation: Tweeter Tags makes it easy to declare your interests and find new, like-minded friends. Have a question you need answering? Find relevant people on Twitter to ask. Reasons To Tweet About Your Business 09/23/2010
If you've done any reading on the Twitter marketing, you probably realize that tweeting can be an effective, cost-free or low-cost solution for marketing your business. All too often, however, we may be left wondering what to tweet about our businesses. We are under the mistaken impression that we simply have nothing worthy of sharing. A good tweet can not only inform your followers about new developments in your company, but it can also educate, inform, or entertain them. .Once you achieve visibility, both your company profile and your client prospect levels will rise. The word of mouth that can come from a particularly intelligent tweet or series of tweets can result in hundreds or thousands of dollars in free advertising. If you provide tweets that appeals to your followers, you'll gain credibility and be on your way to forming a valuable relationship. This can be very powerful from a marketing point of view. If you’re looking for things to tweet about in relation to your business, consider some of these ideas. This is a list of 19 reasons to tweet about your business and help you get started today in utilizing this amazing promotional strategy for your business:
The Virtual Assistant Internet Researcher 07/24/2010
The Internet is an amazing tool for many people but it is not necessarily easy to decipher. A virtual assistant with the skills to dig out relevant information from the rest of the jumble can specialize in research. Internet researchers are in great demand for all sorts of clients. In school they teach students to pick out the theme of a paragraph or story. After reading it is the job of the student to figure out what is the most important part of what they have read. As a researcher, that is what you will do for others who do not have the time or the skill to find it themselves. Compiling information that is useful to others is a part of your business. The Market The Internet provides access to a massive amount of information. Experts in different fields post their knowledge in articles and blog posts. Governments, agencies and professional organizations have digitized their databases and directories for use on the Internet by anyone who desires the information. With so much information it is easy to see how the average person or business owner may get lost in the sauce, so to speak. Who uses that information? Businesses use the Internet to compile statistics and to learn about their competition. Writers, book authors, journalists and television professionals use information from the Internet for their work. With their busy jobs, they don’t have time to research. Conducting research can be a lengthy process. On the Internet, it begins with knowing how search engines work and the best way to find exactly what you are looking for from them. Most people use Yahoo!, Google or MSN but there are plenty of other search engines that the average person doesn’t know about. An Internet researcher is familiar with all of them and uses the one that will yield the greatest harvest of useful information. Virtual assistants who want to niche into Internet research provide some of these services to their clients:
As a virtual assistant Internet researcher you may find that you have a niche subject in mind for your business. Maybe statistical information gathering and analysis are your forte. You can build a client base around just that for small and large corporate-type businesses. It is not easy to perform research and your clients will want the best. The Internet Marketing VA 07/24/2010
As a virtual assistant, you know how important it is to have an online presence. Making yourself visible in as many places as possible is important for anyone in business. If you have the skills, you can be an Internet marketer and help others. If you have never been on the Internet you are living in the Stone Age. The cyber world is filled with businesses with virtual storefronts, advertising and people talking on forums and in real-time. Those businesses want to know what those people are talking about so they can tailor their advertising to bring in sales. That is where you come in as an Internet marketer. The Market Every online business needs a marketing plan. The plan is designed to get the products or services in front of the millions of people surfing the Web each day. Unless people know about the product and its advantages, they will buy from someone else. Implementing a marketing plan takes time and effort that many business owners just don’t have with all of the other jobs on their plate. There are no easy shortcuts to Internet marketing success. Most business owners use the trial and error method to see what works. With the help of an expert Internet marketer, that process gets a whole lot easier. As a virtual assistant Internet marketer, you can make the difference between creating a powerful new brand and obscurity. Virtual assistants who can function as Internet marketing experts are in high demand. You take the pressure off of companies both small and large that want to concentrate on their product or service. It is your job to draw the traffic to the site to see the products. Some of the tasks you can perform as an Internet Marketing VA include, but are not limited to:
Each of these areas is a part of Internet marketing but you don’t have to offer each service. You may be interested in email campaigns or search engine optimization. You can further niche into these areas to build foolproof campaigns no business can ignore. Build your business by bringing business to others as a virtual assistant Internet marketer. As the industry grows, you will profit from being on the forefront of technology and an expert in your field. The Virtual Assistant Bookkeeper 07/18/2010
Keeping the books organized is a major battle for most small businesses. Sure, the business receives money from clients and pays for equipment but as far as the bookkeeping goes, it may be a drawer in the office with tons of paper receipts. The virtual assistant bookkeeper sorts through these papers to sort out the books. Someone has to do record keeping. In a small online business, that person is the owner. If they don’t have time during the day, then after they have dealt with other issues, it is time to record some numbers. That makes for a long day – every day. The Market More than one business has ended up bankrupt because of bad bookkeeping. One day, the owner looks up and sees that they have sucked their resources dry. Not keeping accurate records can lead to problems with the IRS and no one wants that. When a business owner doesn’t possess a certain expertise, they hire someone to do it for them. For small businesses, hiring a bookkeeper is not just interviewing and choosing one from many. An employer has to pay for health insurance and other particulars for each employee and that means money they don’t have. Another solution is a virtual assistant like you. With a virtual assistant, businesses don’t pay for space, insurance or sick time. They pay for services rendered and that is it. In today’s economy, that is a smart business move. You might say that a virtual assistant bookkeeper is a hot commodity. You provide a needed service for small and large businesses. Keeping on top of business accounts is easy for someone with the knowledge. Some of the services you might offer are:
There are a number of ways to conduct your business. Local clients can mail their receipts to you for your expert help. All of the information can be organized using bookkeeping software and sent as an attachment to your clients. For online clients, you can reconcile the software that they use with their account records. A virtual assistant bookkeeper can feel good about the job that they do for businesses. Staying ahead in financial matters is at the crux of business success. Your management of the books gives them one less thing to worry about. The Virtual Assistant Transcriptionist 07/02/2010
Audio and video media are becoming commonplace in online business. It is easier to record this way for later use. Businesses will need the services of a virtual assistant to turn the recorded media into print. Medical professionals have used Dictaphone and dictating services for a long time. Doctors later have their notes transcribed for patient and hospital records. The same goes for legal proceedings. It is more convenient to use a recording device and later create a written copy. The Market Online businesses have found ways to market their products with audio and video. Tutorials, how-tos and interviews are uploaded to websites for viewing and hearing. But, we all know that sometimes you can’t always understand what is being said. That requires the need for a transcribed record of the recording. Just like movies, audio and video can be translated into other languages to increase your marketing efforts. Many business owners would like to do that but they don’t know how to transcribe or translate. They need the help of a professional like a virtual assistant well versed in transcription and translation. Transcribing recordings is not as easy as you might think. As a virtual assistant transcriptionist your clients will not have to struggle with this issue. Using your transcription software you will be able to handle all sorts of recordings for them using the format that they choose for the written copy. Some of your services can include:
For the virtual assistant transcriptionist who is also fluent in another language, you can offer translation services to your clients. This gives them the opportunity to expand their customer base with products for non-English speaking customers. Each area of transcription can become a sub-niche if you want to specialize further. Medical or legal transcription alone can turn into a lucrative business. Transcription services are one area that a virtual assistant can specialize in as a business idea. As more and more online businesses use other media as marketing tools, they will need the skill of a transcriptionist and even a translator for their work. The Database Management VA 07/02/2010
Businesses are all about the client and the product. There are files for clients and files for products. With so much paperwork, it is hard to keep everything organized. Businesses, especially smaller ones, need a virtual assistant database manager. It would be nice for business owners if they could just talk about and sell their products or services all day long. Unfortunately there is more to it than that. Nowadays, businesses live and die on statistical analysis and other reports. In order to generate these reports you need the data to back them up. Poorly organized data can weaken a company. For instance, how would a business ever know how their products are doing in certain areas of the country? What about customer feedback? The Market A business captures data in order to grow. They would never discover their strong areas, weak areas or whether marketing campaigns were a success. Information is king in the business world. To that end, it is important to manage data in an organized fashion. Customer names and information need to be logged, reports need to be generated about product demographic, customer surveys and profits to name just a few important areas. Database management is another area that small business owners especially don’t have time to look after. It takes time to organize this information and that takes away from the business of promoting and creating new products. It is a catch-22 that a virtual assistant can help with. Do you have expertise in the area of setting up databases in different formats? You can assist online and offline businesses. Each business keeps records of customer names, demographic data, product inventory, monthly revenue and other vital information. Virtual assistants, who specialize in database setup and management, provide such services as:
The basic infrastructure of the company’s records is in your hands. A small business can go from a desk full of loose papers with information to a well-organized database that can be updated in a few keystrokes thanks to you. Any information that the client needs right away, you can access with ease. Businesses thrive on information and as a virtual assistant database manager; you are a major part of that winning equation. If you like working with data and are good at organization, this might be the niche for you. Customer service is an important aspect of every business. When customers aren’t satisfied they go elsewhere. For business owners that don’t have the time to provide proper customer service, they can hire a virtual assistant with the skills to do the job. What is customer service? It can be as simple as answering an email from a customer in a timely fashion. Or, it is providing a FAQ page on the business website. To a customer, having their needs met is the definition of good customer service. The Market After business gains clients through marketing and advertising, that is only half of the job. They may have fifty one-time customers who spend $100 each on the site. That is $5,000 worth of business. If poor customer service drives them away, that $5,000 will seem like small change in the long run. Better still are the same fifty customers spending $50 each time they visit because of customer loyalty inspired by great customer service. Now, the business makes $2,500 each time these fifty customers visit. A satisfied customer is the best marketing tool a business can have. Because the customer has the power to make or break a business, treating them like they are important (which they are) is a crucial step in the business plan. Businesses use email systems, answering services, automated phone messages and instant messaging services to deal with customer issues. But, each of these types of service ideas needs someone to effectively manage them in order for it to work. Customer Service Expert Virtual Assistant Tasks When sales drop off because of customer dissatisfaction, it’s time to get help. Virtual assistants are trained in communication skills. These skills not only benefit you in finding clients but doing your job as well. As a virtual assistant customer expert you will be working with the client to solve their customer problems. Your work for them will be done with their customers and reported back to them. Part of your job will be: · Addressing customer complaints (calls, emails, IM) · Handling product issues between client and their customers · Answering customer questions · Sending out emails, catalogs and newsletters to subscription customers How broad your services really depend on what the business is in need of. They can give you leeway to offer customer refunds, exchanges and other offers depending on the situation at hand. This requires that you have access to customer accounts databases and privileges to update them. Much dissatisfaction with outsourcing customer service by customers is the lack of knowledge of the product or the company. As a virtual assistant specializing in customer service, you will become familiar with the company and their products as a common practice so that you can do your job well. It is an added bonus for you to have worked in the customer service industry before. A virtual assistant brings skill in communication to the table when dealing with customer service issues. Your work with create lifelong customers for your clients. | CATEGORIESAll ARCHIVESFebruary 2012   |
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