Posts Tagged ‘Small business’
How do you Build Links to Your Site?
Seems everyone is always asking, what’s the best way to build links to your site? This is an easy one to answer. Hands down, the absolute best way to get others to link to your website is to offer them quality content that’s worth linking to.
Link building is a valuable way to increase your page ranking, website or blog exposure and help increase your traffic, sales and business. However, not all back links are created equally and therefore it is important to decide what your goals are and how you will achieve them.
Quality content can vary depending on what your niche is and your target audience. But it will almost always include fresh and original content on various aspects of your niche, resources to help those who are looking for what you have to offer and information that website visitors want.
Quality content—the kind that encourages others to link to your website—is relevant to your topic, offers value to your visitors and potential customers, fits within the overall industry of the topic of your site (such as related products or services), and provides value to your site visitors.
Building links involves offering your website visitors what they want and that’s what quality content is all about. It’s the old WIIFM thing… (What’s In It For Me?). If you can answer that question with your website visitor in mind, and create content aimed at that visitor, you’ve just provided quality content. The odds of your visitors linking to that content will increase tremendously.
If your website deals with cocker spaniels, there will be some competition there, that’s probably not one of the most popular topics online. It should be relatively easy to create original content to build links to your site.
What if your niche is more common and your competition is stiffer? What if your site focuses on Internet Marketing? You can still create quality content to build links to your site. For instance, your content could include original reviews of Internet Marketing (IM) products that you write yourself or have someone write for you. You can include resource lists of software products, eBooks and websites that are truly useful to other Internet Marketers. It could include original articles and tutorials on every aspect of Internet Marketing.
The idea—regardless of your niche—is to create a site with content that is just a little different, or just a little better than anyone else is offering. Content that others will say, I need to tell my contacts about this. When people ask me what’s the BEST way to build links to your site, my response is Quality Content, without a doubt.
If you want to establish yourself and your business for the long haul, then offering quality content and encouraging your readers to link to it is by far the best and most effective strategy.
Time to Break Up?
I invited Donna to blog today because I felt her message could be transposed to many industries not just Virtual Assistants. There are many industries where clients and business owners have similar relationships, and this is great advice!
Guest post by Donna Toothaker, CEO, founder and coach of Step It UP VA Coaching
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The phone rings. It is who you think it is, calling AGAIN. How many times has it been today? Three? Four? You know you should answer, but you dread the conversation. You slump in your seat and sigh. Is that an e-mail from her now? Is this a headache coming on? You can no longer avoid the inevitable. It’s break-up time.
Just about every VA has had a client who presented challenges that proved too much to deal with for too little payback. These challenges were not about difficult projects or tasks, but about difficult people, making the issues more personal, and therefore harder to resolve.
You may be afraid of confrontation, or of losing income; however, as in a dating relationship, the worst thing you could do for your business would be to stay with the wrong person. Continuing to let such a conflict persist will sour the way you feel about yourself, and your business. So, if you’re involved with one of the following client types, come clean about your feelings, and if you can’t make it work, make a break!
Control freak. Your client is an entrepreneur who, until now, has had the reins on every single aspect of her business. Unfortunately, over the past few months, you have discovered they have no plans to hand them over. Why did they bother hiring you, anyway? Micro-managers are time- and energy-vampires who display little respect for your time and abilities.
Needy. Another sort of time- and energy-vampire, the needy client does not micromanage, but requires a lot of hand-holding and constant communication throughout the course of a project, sometimes expecting you to take on more than your agreed upon workload. Needy clients require extra boundaries. Discourage telephone calls with the needy type. Keep it a strictly online relationship if possible, so you have control over how and when you respond to questions and requests. If that doesn’t work, it’s not worth keeping the client.
Inattentive. The opposite of the needy client, this client makes it difficult to get anything done because of their lack of communication. They’re often wondering why a project isn’t getting done, when all the while it’s because you can’t spend your days chasing them down for answers, information and approvals. You shouldn’t have to jump through hoops and spend excess time trying to do your job. If communication is a one-way, dead-end street, it is probably a good idea to reverse direction!
Penny pincher. This is the client who wants to cherry pick your services, or negotiate you down from your hourly rate or minimum monthly hours. This client will make your life very difficult, nit-picking, disputing bills and expenses, or asking for you to do extra, all the while taking extra time to pay your bill! If you sense a potential client is a penny pincher, take hourly rates off the table, and offer only package services. If you are currently serving a penny-pinching client, consider letting go. Their money issues are holding you back from enjoying a prosperous, fun business.
Establishing boundaries with clients early in the relationship AND becoming clear on who is an ideal client for you will help to eliminate having difficult clients but some will sneak through on occasion, and these difficult clients will eat up your time, energy and passion for your business…but only if you let them. Identifying these behaviors early on will give you the chance to either ask your client to make some changes, or get out before they take a toll on you and your business. Do not be afraid to let go. You’ll be freeing yourself from negativity, and opening up an opportunity for better clients to come in.
Donna Toothaker is CEO, founder and coach of Step It UP VA Coaching. These highly sought-after VA coaching programs have been created for established, successful VAs who wish to now create the 6-figure business of their dreams. Visit www.stepitupva.com for a free report, The Top 3 Mistakes to Avoid in Creating a 6-Figure VA Business.
Backup Time – what system do you have in place?
Don't let this be you!
I always start thinking of organizing and filing near tax time. Gotta be ready for the taxman and if you have a system in place you are probably not getting all stressed out right now.
I also have a system in place for backing up my computer files and information. Working virtually for many clients I have all sorts of information on work I do for them stored on my computer. I simply cannot afford to lose it.
Having a backup system in place means I have a copy of all those files when needed.
How often?
I back up to a portable hard drive every night, which is then disconnected from my PC after so no damage can occur to it and then there is an online one I do weekly as well. I do this nightly because some days I can enter a lot of information for clients – and I really don’t have any time to re-do or recapture the information. When I head out of my office to make supper – I plug in the hard drive and let it back up everything new. A simple process and very painless.
What is your back – up process or system? Any tricks up your sleeve with regards to backing up your computer system? Please share them here, or on our Facebook Page we are always open for new info to share on our Fanpage.
Training is vital to Growth
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.
Livin’ & Lovin’ my Work in Nova Scotia
Last year James Mielnik of the Halifax Area Chamber of Commerce asked if I was interested in becoming a Charter Member of the Nova Scotia Come to life program. I jumped at the opportunity for two reasons;
1 – I love Nova Scotia and talking about how great it is to live, work, study, invest and play here is very easy for me (Just ask any of the recent participants at the Forum on Virtual Assistance ~ Everyone who attended now knows something about Nova Scotia. No one left there wondering where I came from, though technically it is Alberta!)
2 – It seemed a good way to do some more networking, which I truly enjoy.
That opportunity presented by James has turned into many more; a networking event where we signed a ‘charter’ document with the Premier of Nova Scotia, a day of media training, as well as meeting other contacts which has lead to new clients for my business. I also ‘gave back’ by helping the Come to Life staff customize their Twitter profile and showed them how it can help connect their program with more people.
Recently, I was contacted by a journalist, Marie Weeren of 10th floor Solutions. She was assigned by the Come to Life program to “Tell my Story”. It was slightly daunting being interviewed for this; complete with tape recorder, notepad and all. However, my story has now been told and is published on the Come to Life website should anyone like to take a read.
Thanks to the people who helped Ms. Weeran with by providing background information about me for her story – Tawnya Sutherland of VAnetworking , Donna Toothaker of 1stVA and David Eisnor from the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Education & Development (CEED). Your time is also appreciated!
For any business, joining in similar type programs (although this one is very unique) may take a bit of time and effort, but you’ll always find rewards in the end!
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