VA New Year Goals
December 30, 2008 | 1 Comment
Just in case you are not able to make your new year goals, we have assembled a list of possible resolutions for virtual assistants to choose from.
- Follow up with clients more
- Document things better
- Give 111%
- Insist on clear objectives before beginning a task
- Meet someone new every day
- Speak at 3 local business events
- Network with new people
- Write 250 blog posts for my virtual assistant blog
- Increase my billing rate
- Become an expert in 3 new skills I can offer
- Have a great attitude
- Add 5 new products to my income stream that I can sell via the web.
- Get testimonials and publish them online
- Dominate search engines for my chosen keywords
- Make two new friends that have nothing to do with my business
- Increase my income by ____%
- Read one business book per month
- Do 2 important tasks every day before I start chatting on twitter.
- Go on a trip to someplace I have not been
- Create a process I follow that generates leads for me.
Is Your Business Blog Failing?
December 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Is your business blog failing? A virtual assistant can help your business blog be a big success.
Blogging has some very tricky elements. People fall in love with the idea but they fall short on execution. Here is why.
Business blogs do not have as much personality.
Business blogs do not connect well with the audience.
Business blogs are often not updated enough.
Business blogs are too much about the business and not enough about what people care about.
—- Enter the Virtual Assistant —-
If you hire a virtual assistant to help you with your business blog, you are making a marketing decision – not falling in love with the free blog idea. Because it is a marketing decision, you are going to think about the results you want and how to achieve them.
Are you writing a business blog for SEO? For relationships? To keep clients up to date?
Your virtual assistant will have a clear set of tasks and clear outcomes they need to meet. They can help you with a publication schedule, with proof reading your blog posts, with research for blog topics and with the actual posting, including doing search engine optimization on your post.
They can also get out there and promote the thing.
If you find your business blog is dying on the vine, you need to get a virtual assistant to water it, prune it, care for it and show it some love. Then you will have a successful business blog.
Virtual Assistant as Affiliate Manager
December 24, 2008 | 3 Comments
On this Virtual Assistant Blog I argue that you cannot be successful as a general virtual assistant. We help people become much more targeted in their skill set and become Virtual Marketing Assistants – or Virtual Buzz Assistants, as we call them.
But even that is rather broad.
You can specialize in just one expertise and be very effective, and very valuable to your clients.
For example, what about becoming a Virtual Affiliate Manager?
Affiliate programs are easy to set up, but not easy to make successful. You have to create all the affiliate tools, interact with the affiliates and keep motivating them. You are a marketing expert, sales coach and community manager all in one.
The upside of having a dedicated virual affiliate manager is that they will be responsible for many activities that will directly impact a client’s online income.
If you want to make good money from home as a virtual assistant, think about specializing in being an affiliate manager and it will only take a few clients to keep you busy full time. And they will not dare part with your services if you are getting results.
Free Blogs
December 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment
- Image via Wikipedia
Virtual Assistants can help clients set up and maintain free blogs. My two favorite places to set up free blogs are blogger.com and wordpress.com.
Do not get me wrong – everyone should have a hosted blog on their own domain. This is not a free blog, but it is not expensive and it can generate great marketing results.
The reason to also set up some free blogs is that they can help someone in many ways.
- Free blogs will help you lock up more search engine slots.
- Free blogs can help you with linking to important resources.
- Free blogs get indexed very fast.
When I post something that I want to drive traffic to on a blog, such as this post, I would also go out to some of my free blogs and write summaries (just a few unique sentences) and include a link with good anchor text in it linking to this blog post. For example, I would use free blogs as the anchor text to this article.
The reason this is a perfect job for a Virtual Assistant is because it does have long term value, is often glossed over by time-strapped clients and because it is not something that takes a great deal of Internet Marketing Training to do.
Once the free blogs age some, they have high value and will help your posts rank higher for their keywords.
Virtual Assistants need to know how to do this and to understand the benefit, so they can convey to the client exactly why they are paying for this service.
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Virtual Assistants Grow Databases
December 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
How can Virtual Assistants help you grow your databases?
…and why am I saying databases? Well, lists is too general. For example, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management System) is much more than a list. It is losts of lists with different percentages and categories.
So what can a Virtual Assistant do to grow your databases?
- Design Squeeze pages – webpages that convince people to add their information, usually in exchange for a free white paper or eBook.
- Design an auto-responder – much list a squeeze page, an auto-responder is where people sign up to get a series of emails.
- Contests – A Virtual Assistant can help you design and promote a contest to get all kinds of traffic and information from people.
- CRM management – have a virtual assistant manage your CRM – including, follow ups, prorogation and cleaning.
- Data Entry – Simple data entry can be a great way to get value from your virtual assistant.
- Followup call – Do you have some information about your database of customers but need more? Have a virtual assistant do a follow-up phone call to collect more information.
I am sure there are more creative ways to use a virtual assistant to help you manage your databases of information about customers, contacts and leads. There are just some ideas to get you thinking.
10 Musts in a Virtual Assistant Request
December 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Working successfully with any Virtual Assistant, Virtual Buzz Assistant or otherwise, comes down to making your requests crystal clear. If you are one of those entrepreneurs who thinks it is someone else’s problem to figure out what you mean, that is fine as long as you are OK with not getting what you want.
Here are 10 things you want to get confirmed at both ends before doing a task with a virtual assistant.
- Expected time it will take for the virtual assistant to do the task.
- Maximum time the virtual assistant can use on the task.
- The rate it will run to do the task.
- The exact outcome you expect the virtual assistant to achieve. (What does the deliverable look like)
- Who will be doing your task? Is it the virtual assistant or an intern?
- When will the task be completed?
- What questions does the virtual assistant have before starting – make them repeat the project back to you in their own words.
- How do they complete the task, step by step.
- Are there any unexpected things the virtual assistant may encounter and how do they deal with them?
- Billing and payment details – when will you get the virtual assistant invoice and what are the terms? Do you need to pay a portion in advance?
This seems like a lot of stuff for one task, but most of it will be standard if you keep working with the same virtual assistant long term. If the tasks are something you request frequently from multiple virtual assistants, consider using camtasia or another screen capture software to demonstrate how to do the task. Then you can host it on Amazon S3 for pennies per month and send people to the video whenever there is a question on how to do something.
Crystal Clear Projects that are well thought out and defined rarely let you down.
Task Oriented or Strategy Oriented?
December 6, 2008 | 1 Comment
I just had a nice conversation with someone that was on the Virtual Assistant Network and gave me a call.
She was very excited because she got the need right away. She’d experienced the same frustration I had when trying to hire virtual assistants and finding then lacking even basic Internet Marketing skills despite advertising services such as web design and marketing.
She happened to already be a Virtual Buzz Assistant in everything but official title. She does daily work with client with social media, blogging, web design and PR.
She asked me an interesting question: Is there work in the virtual assistant network for people that are Internet Marketing Strategy oriented? That question made me realize we really have two types of people in the Virtual Buzz Assistant network. We have virtual assistants that are task oriented and we have virtual assistants that are strategy oriented.
Clients just want to hire a Virtual Assistant that is very good and not expensive. But what they really need to ask themselves first is, Do I need a Virtual Internet Marketing Strategist or do I need someone to do exactly the tasks I train them to do?
Either is fine. Someone that just completes tasks will be less expensive, but you should not hold them responsible if the strategy fails. They are only executing your strategy.
If a Virtual Assistant is hired as an Internet Strategist, then they are responsible for the outcome of the tasks as well. Higher risk, and higher reward in the form of a higher paying virtual assistant job.
Also, there is a good chance that your Internet Marketing Strategy-Oriented Virtual Assistant is going to need to hire Internet Marketing Task-Oriented Virtual Assistants to complete the work. Strategists rarely enjoy doing the tasks every day.
Ultimately, the answer to the question is that we have both. There are strategists and there are task-oriented virtual assistants. Just be clear which one you are looking for and ask them the right questions when you are hiring your Virtual Assistant.
41 Rewards for your Virtual Assistant
November 30, 2008 | 6 Comments
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
- Increase hourly rate
- Give bonus
- Send gift card to AppleBee’s, TGI Fridays, Olive Garden….
- Send flowers
- Send a gift certificate to Office Max, Staples
- Send Webcam
- Send box of promotional items branded with your company logo.
- Send movie tickets
- Send Starbucks Cards
- Send Sweets, Cookies
- Do they like to read? Amazon or Borders Cards
- Buy them a nicer office chair
- Send them a card and hand written note.
- Send something for their kids if they have young kids.
- Digital Photo Frame
- MP3 Player
- Have pizza delivered
- Massage (By a professional, do not offer to do it yourself.)
- Send real cards on all major holidays
- Nice Pen set
- Something engraved for office
- Wine – Be sure they like it first.
Free Things to Reward your Virtual Assistant and show you care.
- LinkedIn Testimonial
- Letter of Recommendation/Recognition
- Refer a client to virtual assistant, assuming you do not need them full time.
- Give Award – Maybe Virtual Contractor of the Month?
- Upgrade the title of their role, if they have one.
- Give them a call to check in on how they like working on your projects.
- Video testimonial and post to video sharing site.
- 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?
- Offer long term contract
- Weekend in Bed and Breakfast
- Upgrade their computer and software
- Pay for additional marketing training or online learning.
- Vacation to Beach
- Trip to your office for team building and to meet everyone in person.
- Home office makeover
- Ski Classes
- Attend Conference
- Blackberry on company plan
- 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.
Specialized Communication Channels
November 20, 2008 | 1 Comment
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:
- Experience Building Communication Channels
- Experience Maintaining Communication Channels
- Resale Value – Once you develop a strong channel, you can sell advertising or affiliate products.
- 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.
Open Source Software Virtual Assistant
November 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
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.
- Open Source Software testing
- Open Source Software Documentation
- Website Design
- Demo Management
- Open Source Online Community Management
- Donation Solicitation
- Promotion via Social Networks and Media
- Write white papers on how your open source software saves money
- 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.
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Project Manager Assistant
November 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
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 Assistant Business Plan
November 15, 2008 | 1 Comment
How to write a Virtual Assistant Business Plan
If you want to write a virtual assistant business plan, begin with a good business plan template. I do not suggest the software that is out there, because there are many free resources that will get you a fast start. Go to www.docstoc.com and find a business plan template that you like.
Virtual Assistant Business Plan Tip #1
It is important to plan your virtual assistant business. However, I have never seen planning generate a penny of income. Do not spend weeks or months with your business plan. Instead, do some research and set some goals. Then understand that your business plan will continually need to be modified as you learn more about the business.
Virtual Assistant Business Plan Tip #2
Your Virtual Assistant financial projections should be based on facts, or you need to start out with a realistic financial projection. For example, if you have never sold your services before, projecting 5 new clients next month is not realistic. 5 leads might be.
Does that mean that 5 clients is impossible? No. Just not realistic because you have not done it before and experience with selling your services does improve your odds on getting clients.
Virtual Assistant Business Plan Tip #3
Business Plan Monthly Projections are supposed to be used. That means, the first week of every month schedule time to update your projections and revise your future projections if it is clear you are not going to hit your number – or if you are going to exceed your numbers.
Virtual Assistant Business Plan Tip #4
In your virtual assistant business plan, have a section that clearly explains your plan if you get too busy. Are you just going to stop taking clients, are you going to hire someone or are you going to outsource some of the work?
Virtual Assistant Business Plan Tip #5
Don’t get lost in the research. Business plans are a generic document that can be used for retail, consulting and any other type of business. While it is great to go see what your successful competition is doing, you are really not competing directly with them so much as you are trying to carve out your own special niche and differentiate yourself.
The virtual assistant business plan tip that is the most important is that your business is all about making money and making you happy. That means you need to focus on ways to create income, and the income must be substantial enough to cover your expenses and make you feel good about the work you are doing. This is a huge deal. I spent years in business losing money the first time. You keep telling yourself the story that you are growing a business and it is necessary to lose money at first. That is only the case if you believe the story.
Write a business plan that is realistic and makes you happy. That may mean that you are only working with three clients at a time, but you make a good income and they value your work. That is a far better business plan vs one that projects selling your services to half of China.
For a thirty day guide to everything you need for your virtual assistant business planning and launch, download the free eBook – Start a Virtual Assistant Business.
Virtual Assistants should be MAD!
November 14, 2008 | 8 Comments
The problem with a trend becoming popular is that everyone starts doing it.
For example, I liked Shakira before she ever did an English song. Years before. With Hips Don’t Lie how can anyone not like her? I am just a part of the masses now.
Virtual Assistants have been around for a long time. However, with the The 4-Hour Workweek, hiring virtual assistants became in vogue. The company specifically mentioned in that best selling book became so busy that they could not handle the rush to hire their services and lost a lot of opportunities.
Now I see a trend for Virtual Assistants, and if you are one of the pre-4 hours work week virtual assistants, you should be mad as hell. (Although maybe not, since you cannot do anything about it.)
Everyone is a virtual assistant.
Here are just a few of the careers of people that I know that are calling themselves virtual assistants but still doing the other work as well.
- Business Consultants
- Life Coaches
- Business Coaches
- Freelance Writers
- Internet Marketers
- Graphic Designers
- Web Designers
- Accountants/Book keepers
I am sure the list is much bigger, but you get the idea. If you are a Virtual Assistant and that is all you do, you are now competing with everyone. You might ask yourself WHY?
The answer is simple. Virtual Assistants are people that work remotely and help businesses or people achieve particular goals by completing specific tasks. Many activities can be done virtually, including most of the jobs I mentioned above.
The reason that people are calling themselves virtual assistants is because it is a gateway into a client. In Internet marketing, we know that a client that is willing to pay $10 today has a good chance of paying $100 tomorrow. So a business consultant or coach may begin by assisting a client with a few tasks, all the while offering valuable advice. Later, that client may chose to upgrade and become a coaching client.
For this same reason, general Virtual Assistants should specialize and up-sell their specialized skills. For example, a virtual assistant might do general tasks at $25 an hour, but charge $50 an hour for copyrighting or website design.
Oddly enough, a VA that has specialized skills will find it easier to sell their services as well. Sure, not everyone will need the specialized skill, but when someone does, it is much easier to get that work. Think about it from the client perspective.
Client: Do you do Internet Marketing?
VA: Sure, we do everything.
- Yeah, I am going to hire this VA. NOT!
Client: Do you do Internet Marketing?
VA: Absolutely. That is my specialty. I help people with adword management and conversion analysis. I am also quit good at SEO (Search engine optimization). I do not design HTML, but I have a partner that does that.
- Wow, that VA has got her act together. And yes, I will pay her much more per hour than the generalist.
So let me propose something. The term Virtual Assistant is dead. It is as general as saying you are a Worker. Imagine someone asking what you do and you replying, “I am a worker. I work. I do whatever I am told.”
The good news is you just have to become good at something by focusing on it for a while. Here we do Internet Marketing and call the virtual assistants Virtual Buzz Assistants. You could also do accounting, technology, design, sales support – there are a ton of things. But don’t try to do them all.
10 Reasons Virtual Assistant Projects Fail
November 6, 2008 | 5 Comments
I’d love to say that most of the time Virtual Assistants are a great buy. The fact is, it is a lot like hiring a normal employee. You get better at it over time. You learn what to look for and what to ask. And you eventually realize that you have to manage them, not just tell them what to do and hope it turns out OK.
Here are the 10 top reasons a project with a virtual assistant will fail:
- Poor definition of tasks the Virtual Assistant must do.
- Hiring the VA for a big project without first doing a small project to test the Virtual Assistant.
- Not setting clear outcomes that you expect from a group of tasks.
- Hiring the cheapest Virtual Assistant.
- Not monitoring progress and setting milestones.
- Having unrealistic expectations of the outcome (especially with internet marketing)
- Hiring a virtual assistant that tries to do too many different things – they will not be very proficient at any.
- Failure to cut project quickly. If things are not going well and you are spending more time with the virtual assistant than it would take to just do it yourself, cancel the project and move on.
- Assumptions – Failure to carefully explain each thing will doom your project. Assume nothing and document everything.
- Forgetting about the VA over time and not giving them encouragement. It is easy to forget they are out there doing tasks for you and they may not stay enthusiastic if you do not connect with them occasionally.
Really all of these items can be summed up into this. You need to carefully hire, train and manage a virtual assistant if you expect them to preform well for you. And if you do not succeed with the first one you try, don’t give up. Assess what went wrong and hire a virtual assistant that is better the next time.
Internet Marketing Assistant
October 24, 2008 | 2 Comments
Internet Marketing Assistants are in hot demand. The problem is, everyone thinks of themselves as an Internet Marketing Assistant even though they are not offering anything that is special or highly skilled. Read this post about hiring internet marketing assistants from oDesk.
John Cow is a good group of Internet Marketing Experts and they are desparate for some quality help. The problem is, finding quality help amoung the multitude of people claiming to be internet marketing assistants is difficult.
The fact is, once you get really good, you make more money doing the marketing for yourself. So to find a good internet marketing assistant, you need to find someone that is experienced, but not so good that they do not need the work.
Another solution is to hire different assistants for different tasks. For example, instead of hirning an internet marketing assistant, you may want to hire several people and each specializes in one task.
- Blog Writing
- Online Advocacy
- Online Contest Manager
- Editing
- Social Bookmarking
- Newsletter Management
- Help Desk
These are just some of the ideas. If you hire individuals to run one area well, then it is easier to assess their skills and less likely they will become good at overall internet marketing and start doing things for themselves.
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