Does a Virtual Assistant Make Sense

You thought that owning your own business would be some fantasy where you'd set your own schedule, work only when inspired, take breaks or a vacation whenever you wanted, and be able to go to the gym in the middle of the day! But now you’re there and the reality is - you have more work to do and less free time than you did when you worked for a company.

As entrepreneurs, we don’t mind putting in the extra hours because we crave the freedom of working for ourselves. We have a passion. There is something we love to do that we’re great at doing and we’re turning it into a career. It belongs to us.

However, beyond following our passion, there is a lot of work that goes with running a business: selling products, designing a website, setting up shopping carts, running marketing campaigns, setting up promotions, managing social media, maintaining appointment calendars, writing newsletters, submitting articles, the list goes on.

Leaving our 9 - 5 jobs also meant leaving behind our IT and marketin department and the comfort of our administrative staff. Now, we are on our own.

However, being an entrepreneur doesn’t mean you have to go it solo. Hiring professional, experienced help is faster, easier and cheaper than you think. In most cases, you can have projects up and running or finalized in the time it would take to to figure out how to add a business Facebook page to your profile.

Why to Hire a Virtual Assistant

◦ There is little to no training necessary for most tasks.
◦ You only pay for the time your VA works on your project.
◦ You are not responsible for overhead costs like insurance and benefits.
◦ Each VA has her/his own office space, computer and software.
◦ Because we work in the virtual arena, VAs are more savvy with technology and Internet marketing than some employee (because we have to be. Remember, no IT dept).

Of course, if you’re a person who needs to communicate with your employees face-to-face, a VA is not for you.

On the other hand, if you are comfortable with technology and can work with someone solely through email with the occasional phone call, and feel you can clearly communicate your needs without being in the same room with someone, a VA would be a perfec fit for you.

Don't Advertise Like a Big Business

The trend of companies traditional ad dollars are most certainly heading towards social media and as companies look for more ways to take advantage of technology to connect with customers, Titter is becoming high on their list.

For a long time, Facebook was one of the few ways to effectively promote a brand through social media. But recently, Twitter has made a splash with their promoted accounts and tweets. Twitter has announced that they will soon be opening their advertising options up to smaller business, which is good news for social media marketers.

Promoted Tweets “are a new form of advertising that enable you to speak to users that don’t currently follow your account.” They appear in a follower’s timeline as a search result and can be interacted with just like a regular tweet. When users search for a keyword, your tweet will appear. Currently, promoted tweets appear in search on Twitter and Hootsuite.

Promoted accounts were Twitter’s first form of advertising and are used for large brands like McDonalds and Starbucks who are looking to expand their user base. Promoted Accounts appear in Twitter’s Who to Follow section on a user’s homepage. Twitter “looks at your account and followers to identify similar accounts and similar followers” when deciding to place a Promoted Account ad in their follow box.

Although, Facebook ads will continue to be the primary option for small business, Twitter is also planning to market to small business. Everything I have read says that their pricing model will not be as competitive, but we will have to wait and see.

Stay Tuned for more on Twitter advertising.

How important is a website to my business

In today’s social network dominated world, many companies are asking themselves if they need to have a website for their company or if they can just maintain all thier company information online.

With Facebook pulling in millions of viewers, why not just be there? There is alot of truth to that, but let's face it, a company without a website is a company without a face. And, as great as Facebook is, if all your eggs were in that basket and they closed down, you'd be in trouble.

At the end of the day, it’s all about the cross-promotion of your different properties and maximized utilization of each and every one of them. Each of your social channels should promote the other. Your blog should be promoted on your Facebook page, your Youtube videos should be promoted on your Twitter profile, your Twitter page to your blog and back again.

Hopefully not only you will be promoting your different properties but others will as well and this will in turn help your SEO and increase the traffic to your site while also helping your social profiles thrive.