Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

No one likes being pitched to all the time? How do you feel about telemarketers calling to sell you a new service? What about your neighbor who talks about how great he is all the time?  If you are like most people, you are turned off by these behaviours.  The same is true for social media!

• Friends, Connections and Followers are People Too!

Value their time just as you value yours. Just because they are on Twitter does not mean they are right for your target market or that you are for them.  You will have much greater success connecting with like minded people.
If someone adds you to their network, check them out. Is there a relevant reason they may be interested in you and your business? Check out their profile.  Many people have a rule that they do not follow anyone who doesn’t include a photo in their profile.  Over time, you’ll have to set some boundaries about who you follow and who you let follow you.  These boundaries will allow you to form greater, more meaningful connections with those you want to do business with.
For instance, if your business is centered around creating products that help parents keep their kids away from non-kid friendly sites online, then you obviously don’t want to be talking with (or associated with for that matter) someone who owns an adult-only website. Yes, that’s a bit extreme, but you get the point. You really should pay attention to (or hire someone who can monitor) who follows you and who you follow in return.

• Social Media is about connections NOT sales.

One of the surest ways, short of posting completely inappropriate content, to lose all credibility is to use your social media for selling yourself and your services exclusively.  No one wants to be chased at a store by a sales clerk any more than they want to follow someone who is constantly selling something.  It is okay to tell people about your products and services but this has to be a part of your interaction, not your only interaction.

• Having unrealistic expectations

Please don’t expect that you are going to create a new account, start posting great content and immediately see your sales and traffic increase.  It will happen, but it takes some time and effort. One of the amazing things about social media is that your efforts are multiplied over and over when people who you are connecting with share your content.  Social media is very powerful and can and will benefit your business, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will a list of thousands of followers all ready to purchase from you. Based on my experience with more than 50 clients, you can expect to take 3 to 6 months to build a presence which you can then use to build your business.

• Letting your social media involvement become a time drain

It is easy to lose track of time with your social media networks and unless you keep on task, it can become a time waster.  You need to learn how to make it work efficiently; read about how to do this here.
There is no right or wrong way to work social media into your schedule, but it is essential to find a system that works for you.  Be aware of your time and make plans on how and when to use social media to help market your business.

Hopefully these 4 tips will help you stay on track with your social media marketing.  Feel free to ask us how we can help on our facebook page, or simply post a comment here – We’d love to hear some of your tips and pitfalls to avoid.

Technorati Tags: efficient business, office organization

Social Media

Well, today was quite a day… as a social media virtual assistant, I had a very hairy day as Twitter and Facebook both succumbed to Denial of Service Attacks, which appeared to be coordinated attacks too. Their systems in effect were shut down and people could not sign in nor post any updates.

It meant that several items of work done for clients and also to do for clients could not happen.  It also was a wakeup call to me, and hopefully many others, that you should not keep all your social networking eggs in one basket. Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Marketing, Social Media, social networking, virtual assistant

Paul McCartney is playing in Halifax this Saturday, his only show in Canada too! He’ll be playing on the Halifax Common – a green space meant to be open to share for use by all residents and I believe they are expecting 60,000 people.

Anyhow, in my attempt to win tickets for my brother-in-law, I have been listening to News95.7 and the Beatles & Paul McCartney have been playing over and over in my head. I won’t describe to you the horror I put so many people through today as I sang my song (made up by me) to the listeners of the show -  you had to go on air and sing to be in the draw to win.

That’s my segue to, the title of my blog post today! I chose this song to showcase my social media experience this past week to my readers. Social media is more than a marketing channel/tool, it is also about networking and connecting with others.

Last Friday I had a client run into some issues with her Facebook fanpage. I was asked to figure out why it wasn’t working properly. After much searching, I found myself stumped. So… I started putting out my ‘feelers’ to see if anyone else could help figure it out. I used Twitter, facebook and some blogs all weekend and through until yesterday.

Finally this morning, 5 days later, I found the answer with a little help from a friend of sorts; but many ‘friends’ were trying to help me figure it out. These were not people I have ever met, yet they were attempting to help me just the same.

What was in it for them, you might ask? Nothing.  So why would they bother? Simple, to help out a ‘friend’ who happens to be someone they have never met and probably never will. Being helpful is the only reason why any of these people made contact with me. Connecting and networking… that’s all it was about and I am so grateful they took the time to help me, and ultimately my client.

The next time you are talking about social media and Twitter and Facebook and don’t seem to get it all… try thinking of it as the water cooler or staffroom in your office. When you are sitting at your office stumped on a problem, where do you turn? To your co-workers in the office… well, social media works in the same way sometimes; the only difference being that the ‘office’ of each party involved most likely spans a great distance and they may never meet face to face.

The ‘bug’ was noticed by Salman Ansari, with  Involver .   Salman, I really appreciate your help. It was a simple solution, but one that took an extra set of eyes!  Involver is a company that has some great Facebook Applications for Pages – definitely check them out! I use them with many of my clients. Salman, you also helped out someone else having the same problem, she contacted me after seeing the posts, and once I found the fix, I passed on the info to ehr as well!

Thanks to everyone else  (I hope I do not forget anyone) who helped by retweeting my posts or commenting back on a blog or sending me a message on Facebook or Twitter.  I am grateful for the time you gave to me and my problem.

Melissa Ward Dawn Riley Net Weave Mari Smith

Darlene Victoria Cindy Bruce Green Lasagna

Technorati Tags: facebook, networking, Social Media, thanks, virtual assistant

I realized the other day after finishing a consultation with a new client, that my business has grown almost 40% since completing a certification course this past April.  It was kind of a wake up call on how important training is to growing your business.

Of course training is always beneficial in that you gain new knowledge and skills. As small business owners,  we sometimes forget that it is these very items that make us more valuable to our clients.

Bringing in new ideas and abilities helps clients, and in my line of business the primary goal with any client is to help them get their work done, no matter the task and doing so in a way that saves them time and money.  For most the goal of having a virtual assistant is to free up time to devote to generating more revenue or in some cases to having more time for family and life.

What training did I complete? A Certification course for Social Media Marketing. The course from VAclassroom gave me deeper insight into this type of work. Social Media Marketing is quickly turning into my niche, or niche, as some people say (…sorry, I couldn’t help that, so many people pronounce that word differently!)

This training taught me how to focus on my clients, their targets and goals; creating a strategic plan for them.  It helped me clarify and define a process and system with my work in social media. I discovered how to be as efficient as possible for my clients and to be always thinking of new ways to use social media in order to help my clients grow their business.

Will I stop at this course? No way, as more opportunities to learn arise, I will sign on! This past year I have taken a bookkeeping course, have taken weekly seminars at VAnetworking and joined in many other courses that saw me making improvements in how I  manage my own business or work for my clients.  I’m even going to lead a class myself on July 16th as part of a Summer Speaker Series. I will be teaching others – exciting and scary at the same time!

There is always more to learn to improve yourself, your work and your business – and by doing so you will  grow and prosper your business.

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If you’d like to partake of 28 Seminars for $27 this summer, please check out the VAvirtuosos site. The topics are varied and very applicable to many types of businesses.

If you are interested in taking VAclassroom’s Social Marketing Training, it is a self study and open to anyone. If you use the coupon code SUMMER09, you can save $100 off the course.

Technorati Tags: efficient business, Small business, Social Media, social networking, virtual assistant

This weekend there was a flurry of activity and messages and collaboration between strangers all over as businesses tried to gain enough fans on their Facebook Page to create a vanity url for it.
Facebook changed the rules last minute and upped the ante from 25 fans to 100.  Sunday night was a busy night online for many… but if you have yet to reach your goal and are looking for a short url to use for this same purpose, why not add the Memorable Web Address to your Facebook Page?

It’s there,  it’s available to everyone and it can be customized as you wish. Ours is http://companies.to/timeontaskva.

Simply sign in to Facebook, click browse applications on the bottom left menu bar and look for Memorable Web address. You can assign one to your personal profile as well. For people with a more common name, it may be an option if you missed out on your facebook username a few weeks ago.

Once you add this to your Page, go to the page and hit edit, under your page profile picture.  It is in this area that you will scroll down the list of applications on your page. Once you find Memorable Web address, click edit and it is in here you can assign the address to your page.

Great thing about the Web 2.0 world, someone is always using their brains and talent to create applciations that help out others.

Any questions using this, feel free to leave a comment and I will help you out as best I can!

Technorati Tags: facebook, Social Media, social networking, virtual assistant