Virtual Buzz Assistant

This Virtual Assistant Blog is not just to help Virtual Assistants that want to specialize in Internet Marketing be more successful.  It is also a blog to help people that hire virtual assistants hire the best virtual assistants and get the best return on investment.

So what if you hire a Virtual Assistant and they turn out fabulous?  What if they make you gobs of money or go that extra mile and simplify your life more than you thought possible?

To retain any virtual contractor long term, you cannot just assume they are happy and ignore them.  If they are good, find a way to reward them and encourage them to do EVEN better.  This does not have to be gifts.  I am listing some free things you can do below as well that will show them you really appreciate the work.

Here are 41 Ways to Reward a Virtual Assistant

The Obvious Virtual Assistant Rewards

1. Increase hourly rate
2. Give bonus
3. Send gift card to AppleBee’s, TGI Fridays, Olive Garden….
4. Send flowers
5. Send a gift certificate to Office Max, Staples
6. Send Webcam
7. Send box of promotional items branded with your company logo.
8. Send movie tickets
9. Send Starbucks Cards
10. Send Sweets, Cookies
11. Do they like to read?  Amazon or Borders Cards
12. Buy them a nicer office chair
13. Send them a card and hand written note.
14. Send something for their kids if they have young kids.
15. Digital Photo Frame
16. MP3 Player
17. Have pizza delivered
18. Massage (By a professional, do not offer to do it yourself.)
19. Send real cards on all major holidays
20. Nice Pen set
21. Something engraved for office
22. Wine – Be sure they like it first.

Free Things to Reward your Virtual Assistant and show you care.

1. LinkedIn Testimonial
2. Letter of Recommendation/Recognition
3. Refer a client to virtual assistant, assuming you do not need them full time.
4. Give Award – Maybe Virtual Contractor of the Month?
5. Upgrade the title of their role, if they have one.
6. Give them a call to check in on how they like working on your projects.
7. Video testimonial and post to video sharing site.
8. Link to virtual assistant’s website from your company website as a partner, resource, etc.

Rewarding Big Impact Virtual Assistants

What if your Virtual Assistant does some marketing work that causes a big sales jump or work that creates major savings?

1. Offer long term contract
2. Weekend in Bed and Breakfast
3. Upgrade their computer and software
4. Pay for additional marketing training or online learning.
5. Vacation to Beach
6. Trip to your office for team building and to meet everyone in person.
7. Home office makeover
8. Ski Classes
9. Attend Conference
10. Blackberry on company plan
11. Spa

The bonuses a good sales person gets are often killer.  Why not other people that make a difference, even if they are virtual assistants?  The people I know that are successful online spend a lot of time testing various virtual assistants to see which one’s work out.  That that turn out exceptional get the red carpet treatment because you do not want to lose them and start over looking.

I get a lot of comments on this blog.  Many are obvious spam.  Others are borderline spam.

If you are a virtual assistant and you are going to blogs and commenting, you are doing it for one of three reasons.

1. To participate in the blog and conversation.
2. Promote your services.
3. Promote your client.

Understand something here.  I have no problem with people promoting things via blog comments.  It is not always going to be the best use of your time, but it is a solid way to jump start awareness and start building a relationship with someone that might write about you later.

If you are doing #1, here is an important tip:  Say something that demonstrates you read the post. When I get a comment like, Nice Job, Man. – I assume it is spam because I have nothing to tell me otherwise.

But if you are doing #2 or #3 – promoting something via blog comments, then you really need to consider some basic rules.

1. Show you read the blog post by saying something meaningful.
2. Do not try to promote a competing product.  THIS IS HUGE – I always delete posts by virtual assistant agencies that come on this blog and say, “Nice Blog.  If you need a great virtual assistant for $2 an hour visit….”   WTF?  Didn’t they read anything on this site?  No, they did not.
3. Don’t think SEO.  Most blogs use NOFOLLOW tags, so comments do not provide any SEO benefit.  The biggest benefit you get is by commenting on a popular blog post that will generate traffic and interest to click through.  That means your post must be relevant and interesting.

You might think that you have to be kind and polite as well, but I have approved a variety of negative comments on this blog.  I am happy for honest feedback from real readers, even if they do not agree with me.  Although too many might just cause me to ban someone as a flamer.

I know this post will not lessen the number of bad comments I get.  They are not reading my blog anyway.  However, I hope that this Blog Commenting Strategy helps you become more effective in commenting and getting noticed.

Email Marketing is a critical skill to develop.  Even with all the social media outlets, blogging, rss and twitter stuff going on, email Marketing is still almost always the top converter of sales and results.  In fact, I see most of those other efforts as just generating the email list.  And talk to any email marketer and they will quote the famous line:  The Money is in the List.

As a virtual assistant that helps clients with Internet Marketing, you are obligated to develop a better understanding of what works in email marketing.

I suggest you take this free test drive to learn about it more.

I have recommended aWeber for years.  I have watched many friends find different services instead that were pennies cheaper.  Once your experience aWeber, you will know why I use them.  They are my top sales source and have excellent support and service.  I am surprised they do not bring me coffee every morning, but maybe that is planned in the next upgrade.

Here are 7 tips for Better Email Marketing for Virtual Assistants

1. Email your list things they care about.  You can develop a personal relationship with your list via stories, but they should always be built around something that your list can use.
2. Encourage people to sign up to your email list – give away an eBook, Report or course.
3. Use double-opt in.  It means a smaller email list, but a more responsive one.
4. Use multiple lists – I have a “friends only” list that gets a 250% open rate.
5. Use a consistent brand – When an email comes from you people should know it is from you.  If you gave them information valuable to them in the past, they will want to open your next one.
6. Forget the Newsletter – If you want to post company news, that can be added to your company blog.  Your email marketing effort is to build confidence, awareness and expertise.
7. Try negative subject lines – Negative subject lines usually get a higher open rate.  Don’t believe me?  If you are using a good tool like aWeber it will allow you to do email marketing split tests and you can see for yourself.

We coined the phrase “Virtual Buzz Assistant” which actually is a virtual assistant that assists clients with their internet marketing needs.  A Virtual Marketing Assistant, if we want to stay more straight forward.

The great thing about being a Virtual Marketing Assistant is that you can earn income from assisting clients, and earn income from honing your virtual marketing skills.

What do we mean?

First, as a virtual marketing assistant, you can do a variety of Virtual Jobs and earn an income from hourly or monthly retainer work with clients.  But it is what an assistant does with their free time that really makes a difference.  As a virtual marketing assistant, you have to realize that Internet Marketing is always changing and you have to keep your skills sharp and continue to develop them, or you will lose your value as a virtual marketing assistant.

That means that when you are not busy, you should be looking for new virtual marketing assistant clients to make yourself busy, or you should be using your Internet Marketing skills to develop a passive income.

This is not something you master in a few days or weeks, but with a solid strategy you can develop a great passive revenue stream as a virtual marketing assistant, and use the experience and outcomes to support your sales efforts with potential clients.

Building a passive income stream is not unique to Virtual Marketing Assistants.  For example, I often encourage coaches, consultants and trainers to join iLearning Global and develop it as an income stream.  iLearning Global fits well with the other things that these people are doing and it just makes sense to include it as part of your package.

In the case of a virtual marketing assistant, you can include many different passive income sources.  In the Virtual Assistant Network we have a whole section devoted to all the different income streams that it makes sense for you to develop.

Virtual Assistant Passive Income Experiment

There is a lot of information on the web about how video sites are better vs blogs for dominating search engines.

I will admit that posting video is less work maintianing long term, but I am not sure that they have the staying power of a blog that has built itself up as an expert site.

I signed up for a trial account at one of the video posting sites to test this out and broadcast a video about how Virtual Assistants can develop passive income to improve their income. Link: Virtual Assistant Passive Income

The goal? To target reasonable longtail key words: Virtual Assistant Passive Income

Within 48 hours, a video did land on the second page of Google at the #20 spot. But I also need to do a blog post about this subject so I can really compare which one is better. This blog post is going to be my test. The results will change day to day, so I am not posting the outcome here. You need to go out and look in Google for virtual assistnt passive income and see where things are ranked at.

One point: I am using this blog to strengthen the MySpace video which showed up first, so even if the video ranks higher for passive income for virtual assistants, it might end up being because this blog post gave it some extra link strength.

Since I posted the same video to 5 different sites with similar keywords, I will know that the blog helped if it turns out that the MySpace video is much more strongly ranked vs the others.

I know that this is just a micro-test and does not prove anything, but it is always interesting to see people do experiments, and I am very curious what will happen in this Virtual Assistant Passive Income experiment.

Update:  Within 2 minutes of linking to the video from this blog the video shot from #20 to #2.  To me, that means the blog is a powerful tool worth developing – and it can be used to develop a passive revenue steam anyway.

Should a Virtual Assistant have a newsletter?

This is the question that Danielle Keisterof the Gritty Virtual Assistant answers.

The thing I find most interesting in the post is that she acknowledges a big problem.  Many Virtual Assistants start blogs and newsletters and talk about themselves and being a virtual assistant.  This is a great strategy if your goal is to bond and make friends with other virtual assistants.  It is a terrible strategy if you want to find new clients – they only care about how a virtual assistant can help them grow their business.

She also mentions aWeber.  That is my email newsletter tool of choice as well.  It is not the cheapest enewsletter software, but it is so much better than other solutions out there – and the support is wonderful.  See my other article on Email Marketing for Virtual Assistants.

Now if you are a Virtual Assistant that has chosen to specialize in Internet Marketing, such as the members of the Virtual Buzz Assistant network, then the eNewsletter and Blog are no longer good ideas.  They are required.  You have to demonstrate your knowledge with these tools because they are the backbones of creating a strong internet marketing strategy.

Serious Internet Marketers needs to be aware of Specialized Communication Channels.

That is a general term to help you think about what you are trying to achieve in todays Internet Marketing environmant.

Virtual Assistants that have chosen to specialize in Internet Marketing cannot just sit back and do the tasks assigned to them.  They need to be developing their own specialized communication channels.  The reasons virtual marketing assistants want to do that is:

1. Experience Building Communication Channels
2. Experience Maintaining Communication Channels
3. Resale Value – Once you develop a strong channel, you can sell advertising or affiliate products.
4. Lead Source – You will find clients from a good communication channel

Most of what internet marketing is can be thought of as communication channels.  Here are some examples that I use or have used.

• Email list with Auto-Responder Course – Like my Free Buzz marketing Course
• Blogs – Like this Virtual Assistant Blog and my Buzz Marketing Blog
• Twitter – Here I am
• LinkedIn – Go ahead and connect to me – Then I use questions to utilize this channel.
• Online Communities – Like Ning
• Video Channels – On many video hosting sites
• Micro-Blogs like Tumblr – Buzz Marketing example.

These are just some of the examples of specialized communication channels.  You need to develop your own in order to understand the tools and help clients better.  (Not this exact list, these are just more common things I use)

Several things are missing from the list:  Social Bookmarks and Photo Sharing Sites I consider too weak to be considered communication channels, but I could be wrong in some cases where there is a lot of interaction and people actively follow other people.  Also, this does not include search engine strategies or advertising.  Those are hugely important to Internet Marketing as well.

Nearly everything in the above list of specialized communication channels is free or very low cost.  There is no reason not to develop good habits of building these channels for yourself, and eventually helping clients build them as well.

Why does every Open Source Software effort need a Virtual Assistant?

Usually I write about how virtual assistants can use open source software to their advantage.  Today I want to write about how open source software developers can use virtual assistants to their advantage.

Let’s face it.  Open source software developers are technical.  They love technology and are passionate about what they do.  They probably do not get too excited about documentation, testing and promoting the open source software.

Since Open Source means they have a limited (or no) budget, they often have to do everything through volunteers.

Simply by adding a donate button, a group of open source developers could hire a Virtual Assistant that could help their effort get noticed.  Here are some of the things a virtual assistant could do to aid an opensource software project.

1. Open Source Software testing
2. Open Source Software Documentation
3. Website Design
4. Demo Management
5. Open Source Online Community Management
6. Donation Solicitation
7. Promotion via Social Networks and Media
8. Write white papers on how your open source software saves money
9. Open Source Software Project Coordination

I am sure there are more ways a virtual assistant can help an open source software development effort.  The point is that you are far more likely to succeed if you have someone focusing on the tasks that they excel at and leave the other tasks to an expert virtual assistant.

Managing projects well is a complex job.  The best way to manage a project well is to have the project manager focus on their core skills and have a project manager assistant do the mundane tasks and daily management that needs done to be sure that everything is being coordinated and is on schedule.

For example, if you are doing Internet Marketing yourself you have no chance to really do a good job of managing your internet marketing projects, doing SEO, managing your PPC campaigns, writing quality content every day and any number of other tasks that need done.

That is why you need to use a Virtual Buzz Assistant as a Project Manager Assistant.

This does not mean that you hire one person to do all the tasks and manage themselves as well.  That is not practical.

Instead, hire a really good, experienced virtual assistant that has a talent and understanding of Internet Marketing and is highly organized.

Then ask them do do some of the tasks that are in their core competency and hire and manage other virtual assistants, blog writers, SEO specialists and anyone else you need for your Internet marketing project.  This trusted Project Manager Assistant then becomes the person that drives the project forward each day.  They are also responsible for reporting progress and problems to you before they escalate.

Ultimately, this is a great way to get the best results from outsourcing your internet marketing.  Trust me, I have tried to outsource portions before and I often spend more time managing and training people than  I want.  That is why one virtual assistant project manager – acting as your project assistant – will help you get much better results, keep your time freed up and be focused on the project’s success.

Virtual Jobs – 7 You Can Do Fast

People all over the world are searching for virtual jobs.  I know, because I see the search engine key words they are searching for when they arrive on this site.  And many people are searching for Virtual Jobs, Virtual Assistant Jobs and Virtual Marketing Assistant Jobs.

That got me thinking.  People want to work virtually, but what is holding them back?

First, you have to be able to provide exceptional value from day one without a great deal of training.  If you are not really very good at something but someone hires you to do that job with no oversight, you run the risk of losing that job quickly.  Working virtually means your results have to speak for themselves, because the employer is not getting to know you personally.

Second, if you cannot show you really know what you are doing in a focused way and convey confidence to a potential employer/client, then they will be unlikely to risk giving you important virtual tasks.

So while I can list 7 broad virtual careers, I would rather list 7 virtual jobs you could become good at quickly, would provide value to clients and are in demand.

1. Blog Writer – The blog writer virtual job is something you can offer immediately and you can clearly demonstrate returns via traffic you generate.
2. PPC Manager - Many businesses do PPC but because they do not focus on results oriented campaigns, they are often throwing away a lot of money.  With a little bit of studying and some experience, you can offer to oversee these ppc campaigns and make them profit oriented.
3. Book Keeping – I do not know a single business owner that enjoys doing their own financial data entry.  OK, I do know one, but he is weird.
4. Support - A virtual job simply supporting the operations by answering emails and forwarding requests can ensure a business does not miss opportunities.
5. Social Media Manager – Conversations are going on about organizations and the key employees rarely have time to keep an eye on it.  A great virtual job is to monitor the brand online and respond to conversations.
6. Online Community Manager - A robust online community can be a gold mine of information for a company.  Managing the community and keeping people engaged is a great virtual job that can have a big impact on the organization when done well.
7. Virtual Executive Assistant – If you are organized and good at formating presentations, documents, etc. you can quickly become a virtual executive assistant and help key employees create better deliverables.  (Proposals, power points, contracts, marketing material)

Certainly there are many more jobs that can be done virtually.  I have tried to come up with several that would require minimal training assuming you have a basic understanding of the topic already.  (For example, you have done your own book keeping before or write for your own blog.)

Keep in mind that while there are many virtual jobs out there, many are not the full time virtual job with benefits type.  You may need to find several clients that use your services part time, and you will need to charge enough for your services to pay your own taxes and purchase your own health benefits.

Virtual Jobs may seem ideal, but it is not as easy as just showing up at your desk every day.  You have to consider the challenges and think about if a virtual job is right for you.