Virtual Assistant

Join hands with Virtual Assistants for designing a perfect landing page

The effectiveness of a landing page cannot be over emphasized for conversions in digital marketing. A landing page is usually the first web page where you land when you visit a website or when you search for a service or product. Some landing pages are specifically designed for a particular audience segment or used for capturing lead information with a fill-up form for the visitors. Investing your resources in a good landing page will aid you in meeting your revenue targets. Statistics show that firms which have used 30 or more landing pages generate up to 7 times more leads than the ones which have used 10 or less landing pages. Some of the well known benefits of using landing pages are as follows: Using good landing pages will enable you to focus your efforts towards conversions Landing pages also make it easier to target audiences Landing pages are sources of information about converted audience. So, they are useful for earning insights into the factors which convince browsers to convert into leads. So, they are useful records for analysis and improvement of your marketing efforts.   The appropriate design for a landing page depends on the goals of your marketing campaign. The tasks which are involved in making a landing page are content writing, designing and coding. It requires creative, logical and analytical thinking for systematically aligning your landing page with your marketing goals. So, hiring people of all the required skills for making a good landing page and employing them full time within an organization could be a costly affair for a small business. Virtual Assistance, if used judiciously for designing landing pages, might prove to be effective in terms of time and money. What should you outsource to a virtual assistant for your landing page design? Here we list out a few tasks which goes into designing a landing page, which are best, outsourced to Virtual Assistants. For making the layout and flow of the page: Layout and flow of a landing page are two aspects which make the page presentable. Hiring a Virtual Assistant for implementing the code for a good layout and flow is very worthy as it is time consuming and as well as it requires knowledge of coding. For customization of a landing page according to target segment: Landing pages convert visitors into leads, but they yield the best results when audiences are segmented and the page is designed to meet their expectations. So if you use a virtual assistant for making a landing page with an extended logic of segmentation which reaches audience with customized content, you will reap the best results. Earn relevant backlinks: Earning relevant backlinks for your landing page will optimize it for search engines. It is good if your landing page earns backlinks from popular review sites, directories and other referral pages relevant to your business. Content writing for your landing page: You landing page must include succinct and lucid content which raises the interest of visitors and encourages them to click through the page. The content must suit all the icons and call to action graphics used in the page. A Virtual Assistant meets all these requirements at cost-effective rates. Keyword optimization: Keyword optimization is another important practice apart from backlinking for search engine optimization. Though a landing page usually contains less content, it must include the right keywords. This is another aspect where virtual assistance is very useful. Hiring Virtual Assistants for creating landing page is beneficial when it is an occasional requirement for marketing.

Join hands with Virtual Assistants for designing a perfect landing page Read More »

The effectiveness of a landing page cannot be over emphasized for conversions in digital marketing. A landing page is usually the first web page where you land when you visit a website or when you search for a service or product. Some landing pages are specifically designed for a particular audience segment or used for capturing lead information with a fill-up form for the visitors. Investing your resources in a good landing page will aid you in meeting your revenue targets. Statistics show that firms which have used 30 or more landing pages generate up to 7 times more leads than the ones which have used 10 or less landing pages. Some of the well known benefits of using landing pages are as follows: Using good landing pages will enable you to focus your efforts towards conversions Landing pages also make it easier to target audiences Landing pages are sources of information about converted audience. So, they are useful for earning insights into the factors which convince browsers to convert into leads. So, they are useful records for analysis and improvement of your marketing efforts.   The appropriate design for a landing page depends on the goals of your marketing campaign. The tasks which are involved in making a landing page are content writing, designing and coding. It requires creative, logical and analytical thinking for systematically aligning your landing page with your marketing goals. So, hiring people of all the required skills for making a good landing page and employing them full time within an organization could be a costly affair for a small business. Virtual Assistance, if used judiciously for designing landing pages, might prove to be effective in terms of time and money. What should you outsource to a virtual assistant for your landing page design? Here we list out a few tasks which goes into designing a landing page, which are best, outsourced to Virtual Assistants. For making the layout and flow of the page: Layout and flow of a landing page are two aspects which make the page presentable. Hiring a Virtual Assistant for implementing the code for a good layout and flow is very worthy as it is time consuming and as well as it requires knowledge of coding. For customization of a landing page according to target segment: Landing pages convert visitors into leads, but they yield the best results when audiences are segmented and the page is designed to meet their expectations. So if you use a virtual assistant for making a landing page with an extended logic of segmentation which reaches audience with customized content, you will reap the best results. Earn relevant backlinks: Earning relevant backlinks for your landing page will optimize it for search engines. It is good if your landing page earns backlinks from popular review sites, directories and other referral pages relevant to your business. Content writing for your landing page: You landing page must include succinct and lucid content which raises the interest of visitors and encourages them to click through the page. The content must suit all the icons and call to action graphics used in the page. A Virtual Assistant meets all these requirements at cost-effective rates. Keyword optimization: Keyword optimization is another important practice apart from backlinking for search engine optimization. Though a landing page usually contains less content, it must include the right keywords. This is another aspect where virtual assistance is very useful. Hiring Virtual Assistants for creating landing page is beneficial when it is an occasional requirement for marketing.

Prepare to save cost for your business post Brexit: hiring a VA can help you great deal

Julia Brown (name changed), a successful doctor and founder of an scientific event hosting firm, found her business in trouble when Britain voted to exit EU in June 2016. Suddenly, she saw a huge dip in signups for the events she hosts. There was a sense of procrastination from the sponsors because of the uncertain market sentiments. Moreover, the trend seemed like it would continue for the next one year at least. In these troubled times, when she is expecting a reduction in work for her employees, one way to reduce costs and save her business is to downsize. Generally, while deciding on large scale layoffs, employers are faced with questions like how to ask employees to leave, how to manage the exit, and how to decide whom to retain and whom to hand the pink slip over to? All these questions, in themselves, are enough to give any business owner sleepless nights; dealing with reduced business just makes it even worse. Thankfully for Julia, she had acted smart a few years back when she began to outsource her repetitive, non-core activities to a highly effective virtual assistant firm ‘GetFriday’ in India. She did not have to worry about the negative effects of downsizing; instead she could focus on her business. All she had to do was send an e-mail to GetFriday about her decision to reduce usage hours and it was done. NO Hassle, NO overthinking..!! Now she will be using 120 hours of GetFriday’s assistants every month till the uncertainty surrounding small businesses in UK fades away. She was, earlier, utilizing 250 hours of GetFriday’s assistant’s time per month for her business activities. GetFriday provided her, the flexibility to upgrade or downgrade the usage without any hassle and with the assurance of availability of skilled resources whenever she requires. Julia is willing to upgrade her plan with GetFriday once her business picks up pace. Katie Green, Consultant at Palms Resourcing in UK, is also going through a similar downfall in her business due to Brexit. She also downgraded her monthly plan to use fewer hours of GetFriday.“GetFriday has been a great support at the time of Brexit, a time of financial uncertainty for England. GetFriday has provided the flexibility for me as a small business. We have cut back on hours for a month or so without being rigorously held to the terms of my contract notice and also provided great support on working on the company website. As ever, I can rely on GetFriday to be there for me”, she said while sharing her experience of working with GetFriday during Brexit. GetFriday had experienced this pattern of downgrading, cancellation, then upgrading, and re-signing of the clients last year, when the Australian market was in trouble. GetFriday supported its Australian business clients the same way it is supporting its Brexit affected clients. These market conditions are cyclical and as a small business owner you need to be flexible with your workforce to effectively manage costs without compromising on the optimum number of resources required to handle a sudden spurt in your business. Having a balanced team with a combination of permanent employees and a team of virtual assistants, provide the much needed flexibility to your business. A virtual assistant team is fully capable of handling any process oriented business tasks with proper backups with the added advantage of it being fairly economical if planned well. One more advantage associated with these virtual assistant firms is the flexibility of downgrading and cancelling the contract at any point of time. Moreover, there won’t be any negative ripple effects on your business due to this immediate lay-off. We, at GetFriday, provide business support services to clients from all over the world with our closely knit team of Virtual Assistants. With more than 10 years of experience in handling business requirements using Virtual Assistants, GetFriday is the best option for any SME looking to offshoring their non-core repetitive business processes without worrying about the availability of skilled resources due to political turbulence in their country.

Prepare to save cost for your business post Brexit: hiring a VA can help you great deal Read More »

Julia Brown (name changed), a successful doctor and founder of an scientific event hosting firm, found her business in trouble when Britain voted to exit EU in June 2016. Suddenly, she saw a huge dip in signups for the events she hosts. There was a sense of procrastination from the sponsors because of the uncertain market sentiments. Moreover, the trend seemed like it would continue for the next one year at least. In these troubled times, when she is expecting a reduction in work for her employees, one way to reduce costs and save her business is to downsize. Generally, while deciding on large scale layoffs, employers are faced with questions like how to ask employees to leave, how to manage the exit, and how to decide whom to retain and whom to hand the pink slip over to? All these questions, in themselves, are enough to give any business owner sleepless nights; dealing with reduced business just makes it even worse. Thankfully for Julia, she had acted smart a few years back when she began to outsource her repetitive, non-core activities to a highly effective virtual assistant firm ‘GetFriday’ in India. She did not have to worry about the negative effects of downsizing; instead she could focus on her business. All she had to do was send an e-mail to GetFriday about her decision to reduce usage hours and it was done. NO Hassle, NO overthinking..!! Now she will be using 120 hours of GetFriday’s assistants every month till the uncertainty surrounding small businesses in UK fades away. She was, earlier, utilizing 250 hours of GetFriday’s assistant’s time per month for her business activities. GetFriday provided her, the flexibility to upgrade or downgrade the usage without any hassle and with the assurance of availability of skilled resources whenever she requires. Julia is willing to upgrade her plan with GetFriday once her business picks up pace. Katie Green, Consultant at Palms Resourcing in UK, is also going through a similar downfall in her business due to Brexit. She also downgraded her monthly plan to use fewer hours of GetFriday.“GetFriday has been a great support at the time of Brexit, a time of financial uncertainty for England. GetFriday has provided the flexibility for me as a small business. We have cut back on hours for a month or so without being rigorously held to the terms of my contract notice and also provided great support on working on the company website. As ever, I can rely on GetFriday to be there for me”, she said while sharing her experience of working with GetFriday during Brexit. GetFriday had experienced this pattern of downgrading, cancellation, then upgrading, and re-signing of the clients last year, when the Australian market was in trouble. GetFriday supported its Australian business clients the same way it is supporting its Brexit affected clients. These market conditions are cyclical and as a small business owner you need to be flexible with your workforce to effectively manage costs without compromising on the optimum number of resources required to handle a sudden spurt in your business. Having a balanced team with a combination of permanent employees and a team of virtual assistants, provide the much needed flexibility to your business. A virtual assistant team is fully capable of handling any process oriented business tasks with proper backups with the added advantage of it being fairly economical if planned well. One more advantage associated with these virtual assistant firms is the flexibility of downgrading and cancelling the contract at any point of time. Moreover, there won’t be any negative ripple effects on your business due to this immediate lay-off. We, at GetFriday, provide business support services to clients from all over the world with our closely knit team of Virtual Assistants. With more than 10 years of experience in handling business requirements using Virtual Assistants, GetFriday is the best option for any SME looking to offshoring their non-core repetitive business processes without worrying about the availability of skilled resources due to political turbulence in their country.

How you can get Your VA to help manage your blog while you start business

The marketing of your business is comprised of a number of different activities and blogging is indisputably one of them. If you are a perfectionist or used to doing everything on your own, you might find it difficult to outsource activities. But doing every little task yourself dilutes your focus and leaves you with little time for core activities. First, one needs to prioritize all the activities and decide which of these need your personal attention and which can be delegated or outsourced. The key to driving a successful business lies in allocating the right amount of time and efforts towards the activities that are strategic to the business. You must give the lion’s share of your focus to those tasks. At the same time, you must maintain the quality of other activities such as blogging, book keeping and such other activities. Now you might be wondering why blogs matter so much. Blogs help in generating interest among the target audiences and thereby increase the traffic to your business. Your blog educates your potential customers about the services and products you offer and their value proposition. Now blogging consists of many sub-tasks like content creation, SEO i.e. hyperlinking, keyword usage etc., using the right blog format and the like. In addition to the informational aspect of your blog, its format should be easy to browse and well connected to the relevant pages of your business website. It thus requires a range of professional inputs. Compromising on these aspects might lower the quality of your blog and result in a loss of traffic. Such insights might be best filled in by a professional blogger but at times hiring a full time professional blogger might be expensive. That’s where Virtual Assistant providers like GetFriday come into the picture. They lend the services of professional bloggers at pocket-friendly rates. If you look for a list of best tasks to outsource to Virtual Assistants, blogging and the sub-tasks related to blogging will definitely find a mention in it. But to reap the benefits from outsourcing blogging to a Virtual Assistant, proper planning is required. When you choose your assistant, you must be careful that he/she is the right person to perform your task. Moreover it?s best to have all facets of your blog looked into by your Virtual Assistants. Blogging is a special task which involves content writing, graphic/web designing and developing. So your blog will be better managed by a team of Virtual Assistants who handle different aspects of the blog. While outsourcing your blog, do not miss out on these tips. Make the most of the designers: An attractive blog design gives a sharp edge to your competitiveness. So, you must make sure you have professional designers in your team and they understand the purpose of your blog. Get backlinks to your blog: Submit your blog to directories so that you get backlinks from relevant sources. This is a highly time demanding task and it’s wise to outsource it. Your Virtual Assistant must know the right platforms to submit your content because the quality of backlinks impact your SEO. Let your Virtual Assistant update your blog post: When you outsource blogging to a Virtual Assistant, give him/her a clear idea about the agenda of blogging. Let him know about the monthly or weekly schedule for updating your blog. You don’t need a specialist for that activity but it consumes a lot of time. Let it be handled by your Virtual Assistant. Integrate SEO to your blogging: Make sure your Virtual Assistant takes care of SEO for the blog. The content must also be created accordingly. It should have the right keyword density and variation. An SEO specialist can enrich you blog with expert inputs. Make the content writer familiar with your business: You content speaks for you. So, your content writer should have a deep understanding of your business; its brand goals and most importantly the purpose of your blog. Only then will your content serve its intended purpose. Once you outsource these activities of blogging, you can give your valuable time to the core activities of your business. So get started with these tips to outsource blogging today!

How you can get Your VA to help manage your blog while you start business Read More »

The marketing of your business is comprised of a number of different activities and blogging is indisputably one of them. If you are a perfectionist or used to doing everything on your own, you might find it difficult to outsource activities. But doing every little task yourself dilutes your focus and leaves you with little time for core activities. First, one needs to prioritize all the activities and decide which of these need your personal attention and which can be delegated or outsourced. The key to driving a successful business lies in allocating the right amount of time and efforts towards the activities that are strategic to the business. You must give the lion’s share of your focus to those tasks. At the same time, you must maintain the quality of other activities such as blogging, book keeping and such other activities. Now you might be wondering why blogs matter so much. Blogs help in generating interest among the target audiences and thereby increase the traffic to your business. Your blog educates your potential customers about the services and products you offer and their value proposition. Now blogging consists of many sub-tasks like content creation, SEO i.e. hyperlinking, keyword usage etc., using the right blog format and the like. In addition to the informational aspect of your blog, its format should be easy to browse and well connected to the relevant pages of your business website. It thus requires a range of professional inputs. Compromising on these aspects might lower the quality of your blog and result in a loss of traffic. Such insights might be best filled in by a professional blogger but at times hiring a full time professional blogger might be expensive. That’s where Virtual Assistant providers like GetFriday come into the picture. They lend the services of professional bloggers at pocket-friendly rates. If you look for a list of best tasks to outsource to Virtual Assistants, blogging and the sub-tasks related to blogging will definitely find a mention in it. But to reap the benefits from outsourcing blogging to a Virtual Assistant, proper planning is required. When you choose your assistant, you must be careful that he/she is the right person to perform your task. Moreover it?s best to have all facets of your blog looked into by your Virtual Assistants. Blogging is a special task which involves content writing, graphic/web designing and developing. So your blog will be better managed by a team of Virtual Assistants who handle different aspects of the blog. While outsourcing your blog, do not miss out on these tips. Make the most of the designers: An attractive blog design gives a sharp edge to your competitiveness. So, you must make sure you have professional designers in your team and they understand the purpose of your blog. Get backlinks to your blog: Submit your blog to directories so that you get backlinks from relevant sources. This is a highly time demanding task and it’s wise to outsource it. Your Virtual Assistant must know the right platforms to submit your content because the quality of backlinks impact your SEO. Let your Virtual Assistant update your blog post: When you outsource blogging to a Virtual Assistant, give him/her a clear idea about the agenda of blogging. Let him know about the monthly or weekly schedule for updating your blog. You don’t need a specialist for that activity but it consumes a lot of time. Let it be handled by your Virtual Assistant. Integrate SEO to your blogging: Make sure your Virtual Assistant takes care of SEO for the blog. The content must also be created accordingly. It should have the right keyword density and variation. An SEO specialist can enrich you blog with expert inputs. Make the content writer familiar with your business: You content speaks for you. So, your content writer should have a deep understanding of your business; its brand goals and most importantly the purpose of your blog. Only then will your content serve its intended purpose. Once you outsource these activities of blogging, you can give your valuable time to the core activities of your business. So get started with these tips to outsource blogging today!

Are You An Entrepreneur? Build Your Virtual Team and Watch Your Business Grow

If you are an entrepreneur, you love to pave your own path and make a huge fortune out of it. You often play the game of risk because you can turn risks into opportunities. All these risks and struggles in the journey of entrepreneurship – have to be ousted to become the cynosure of the market. The, path to the ultimate glory and success has its own challenges. You have big dreams but a thin pocket. Your business needs diverse skills and rich inputs. And, managing administrative work around the business adds to the ever growing challenges. Even when you manage the work and budget, you are not able to find that right pool of talent for your business in your geographic market. So, what should you do? How to overcome these challenges thrown in your path by the market? The best way to deal with these problems for long term is to categorize interrelated challenges and then find solutions which can be effectively applied to mitigate each challenge. For every budding entrepreneur and small business owner, almost all the challenges can be categorized into 3 categories – budget constraints, quality issues of your products and services, and fierce competition in the market. Once you sort out the primary challenges, you must realize that there are smart ways to break free from these confinements of entrepreneurship. Many smart solutions have evolved with the help of IT such that growing businesses can work within a little office space with minimum resources. Teams work in decentralised structures from geographically detached places. This is where the most frequented term ‘Virtual Teams’ comes into play. Virtual Teams are composed of talent from different parts of the world and works by co-ordinating through IT resources. Virtual teams have the advantage of using minimum resources to bring in the required flexibility to the organization in terms of budget and resource utilization. Some of the best benefits of building Virtual teams are: You make a lean organisation: Your virtual team is made up of most productive resources. You are not spending to buy office space, you are not breaking your head to recruit and pay salaries to your full time employees, yet you are availing the most professional inputs to your business. You are not incurring maintenance cost of extra resources without compromising on productivity of your limited resources. You enrich your organisation culture: You are not narrowed by your geographic and demographic cultural commonalities. Your virtually assorted team will give you wide-ranging inputs and ideas which might not have stroked you without your virtual team. Moreover with Virtual Teams you are making a flexible organisation culture, in which your team members can give you ideas freely without being suppressed by your authority. You are not confined by talent limitations of geography and demography: You can pick resources from any part of the world. So you can pick the best choice for your business if you can do a proper research to pick your resources before building a virtual team. So if you don’t find talent in your geographic area to fit into your business, it’s not a matter of worry at all! Building Virtual Teams has manifold benefits for your business but it again brings along its own challenges. There are challenges in managing the virtual teams i.e. team communication, project management, meeting scheduling, and blending of the virtual teams with the organisation culture. The following tips will help you to manage your Virtual Team gracefully. Use tools for seamless team communication: You can manage your projects and have transparent updates on them by integrating tools like Trello. A combination of different tools will give you better results. Schedule your meetings mutually: You virtual team members are geographically scattered and hence don’t share the same time zone. Find a mutually agreeable time before scheduling the meetings. Once you are conscientious enough to follow the above tips, all you need is to watch your virtual team driving your business to success!

Are You An Entrepreneur? Build Your Virtual Team and Watch Your Business Grow Read More »

If you are an entrepreneur, you love to pave your own path and make a huge fortune out of it. You often play the game of risk because you can turn risks into opportunities. All these risks and struggles in the journey of entrepreneurship – have to be ousted to become the cynosure of the market. The, path to the ultimate glory and success has its own challenges. You have big dreams but a thin pocket. Your business needs diverse skills and rich inputs. And, managing administrative work around the business adds to the ever growing challenges. Even when you manage the work and budget, you are not able to find that right pool of talent for your business in your geographic market. So, what should you do? How to overcome these challenges thrown in your path by the market? The best way to deal with these problems for long term is to categorize interrelated challenges and then find solutions which can be effectively applied to mitigate each challenge. For every budding entrepreneur and small business owner, almost all the challenges can be categorized into 3 categories – budget constraints, quality issues of your products and services, and fierce competition in the market. Once you sort out the primary challenges, you must realize that there are smart ways to break free from these confinements of entrepreneurship. Many smart solutions have evolved with the help of IT such that growing businesses can work within a little office space with minimum resources. Teams work in decentralised structures from geographically detached places. This is where the most frequented term ‘Virtual Teams’ comes into play. Virtual Teams are composed of talent from different parts of the world and works by co-ordinating through IT resources. Virtual teams have the advantage of using minimum resources to bring in the required flexibility to the organization in terms of budget and resource utilization. Some of the best benefits of building Virtual teams are: You make a lean organisation: Your virtual team is made up of most productive resources. You are not spending to buy office space, you are not breaking your head to recruit and pay salaries to your full time employees, yet you are availing the most professional inputs to your business. You are not incurring maintenance cost of extra resources without compromising on productivity of your limited resources. You enrich your organisation culture: You are not narrowed by your geographic and demographic cultural commonalities. Your virtually assorted team will give you wide-ranging inputs and ideas which might not have stroked you without your virtual team. Moreover with Virtual Teams you are making a flexible organisation culture, in which your team members can give you ideas freely without being suppressed by your authority. You are not confined by talent limitations of geography and demography: You can pick resources from any part of the world. So you can pick the best choice for your business if you can do a proper research to pick your resources before building a virtual team. So if you don’t find talent in your geographic area to fit into your business, it’s not a matter of worry at all! Building Virtual Teams has manifold benefits for your business but it again brings along its own challenges. There are challenges in managing the virtual teams i.e. team communication, project management, meeting scheduling, and blending of the virtual teams with the organisation culture. The following tips will help you to manage your Virtual Team gracefully. Use tools for seamless team communication: You can manage your projects and have transparent updates on them by integrating tools like Trello. A combination of different tools will give you better results. Schedule your meetings mutually: You virtual team members are geographically scattered and hence don’t share the same time zone. Find a mutually agreeable time before scheduling the meetings. Once you are conscientious enough to follow the above tips, all you need is to watch your virtual team driving your business to success!

AJ Jacobs Talks About His Experiences With Life Outsourcing Company, GetFriday

GetFriday’s Virtual Assistance Services has won the hearts of many around the globe, due to their timely, professional personal and business support services. A fitting example of a happy client is the editor of Esquire Magazine, AJ Jacobs. AJ Jacobs is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist who has been on a long and fruitful journey with GetFriday for the past ten years. In the quest to improve his life, AJ Jacobs experimented with outsourcing and chose to work with GetFriday. In his testimonial video, AJ Jacobs recounts his experiences and throws light on how quickly and efficiently GetFriday’s Virtual Assistants responded to his needs and enquiries. In a light-hearted moment in the video, AJ Jacobs mentions that if he had outsourced the making of the video testimonial to Team GetFriday, they would have done a ‘quicker and a much more efficient’ job. He also talks about a gamut of services offered by GetFriday. From carrying out online purchases on his behalf to managing his e-mails, AJ Jacobs had a helping hand at every step of the way, with GetFriday’s Virtual Assistants.See how GetFriday’s Virtual Assistant can help you. It is a matter of great pride and honor for GetFriday, to have worked with AJ Jacobs. Just like AJ Jacobs, GetFriday has successfully served clients from different parts of the world across multiple domains and industries. GetFriday’s Virtual Assistants have proved that they are capable of multi-tasking and handling work, no matter how simple or complex. On a closing note, GetFriday eagerly looks forward to serving hundreds others and making a small difference to their lives in every possible way. Because, Life gets better with GetFriday! New to outsourcing? – Six Things You MUST outsource to a Virtual Assistant

AJ Jacobs Talks About His Experiences With Life Outsourcing Company, GetFriday Read More »

GetFriday’s Virtual Assistance Services has won the hearts of many around the globe, due to their timely, professional personal and business support services. A fitting example of a happy client is the editor of Esquire Magazine, AJ Jacobs. AJ Jacobs is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist who has been on a long and fruitful journey with GetFriday for the past ten years. In the quest to improve his life, AJ Jacobs experimented with outsourcing and chose to work with GetFriday. In his testimonial video, AJ Jacobs recounts his experiences and throws light on how quickly and efficiently GetFriday’s Virtual Assistants responded to his needs and enquiries. In a light-hearted moment in the video, AJ Jacobs mentions that if he had outsourced the making of the video testimonial to Team GetFriday, they would have done a ‘quicker and a much more efficient’ job. He also talks about a gamut of services offered by GetFriday. From carrying out online purchases on his behalf to managing his e-mails, AJ Jacobs had a helping hand at every step of the way, with GetFriday’s Virtual Assistants.See how GetFriday’s Virtual Assistant can help you. It is a matter of great pride and honor for GetFriday, to have worked with AJ Jacobs. Just like AJ Jacobs, GetFriday has successfully served clients from different parts of the world across multiple domains and industries. GetFriday’s Virtual Assistants have proved that they are capable of multi-tasking and handling work, no matter how simple or complex. On a closing note, GetFriday eagerly looks forward to serving hundreds others and making a small difference to their lives in every possible way. Because, Life gets better with GetFriday! New to outsourcing? – Six Things You MUST outsource to a Virtual Assistant

WHERE DID ALL MY TIME GO? – A Beginner’s Guide To Simplifying Life & Work

It is said that time is money but money can be redeemed when lost, while the same cannot be said for time. Do you often find yourself asking this question? “Where did all my time go?” Don’t hesitate, admit it. If this question pinches your heart every night when you go to bed, you know that there’s something drastically wrong with what you are doing with your life. But, do not fret. You are not an alien. Just like you, there are many others around the world who feel the pinch, when they think of where their time went. Let’s take for example, the life of an average, hard-working Joe – ‘Ben’. Ben’s Dilemma – A Story Ben lives in New York. He has a loving wife and a four-year old son. Ben is a small business owner and though he was proud of himself for starting his dream venture, he very quickly grew unhappy with his business, because he always seemed to be busy. This also impacted his relationship with his wife and son, who were always complaining about him not being around. Everyday, he had too much to handle on his platter. It was the same old charade, with e-mails, juggling bank accounts, attending meetings for investments and so on and so forth. Ben worked hard to meet both ends – his work and his family. But the harder he tried, the more he failed. But why did that happen? Ben dreamt of taking his business international , but his hopes were crushed when he started to notice that his clients and his profits began to fall because of the erratic schedules that Ben had to work with as a small business owner and also because he also had other responsibilities as a family man. Ben?s world started to fall apart. One fine evening, Ben returned to find his wife upset. She accused him and threw a fit because he had conveniently forgotten their anniversary. “How could you forget our anniversary?”, she yelled. Ben slowly started to realize that he desperately needed a quick solution to balance both, his work and life, otherwise he risked losing both. To make matters worse, Ben didn’t find time to play with his son either. Suddenly 24 hours in the day were not enough for Ben. He wished he had just one more hour in the day to sort his life out and get his business back in order. That’s when reality struck him. He had let his business and personal life slip out of control because he believed he could handle everything by himself. He slapped his head in embarrassment and asked himself, “Where did all my time go?” If this story rings a bell and feels extremely familiar, you should ask yourself one more question, “Why did all my time go?” But, there’s nothing to worry about just yet. Ben can bring back the balance and happiness in his life and so can you. It’s true that time can’t come back but the bigger truth is you can compensate for all the lost time by making the best use of time you already have in your hands. It is really not that hard to be happy! By making a few quick but drastic changes to your life, not only will your life become more manageable, but you’ll begin to believe that you have more hours in the day. 1. Strike out the things you hate to do! Maybe you love to walk your dog, go for a swim, do the dishes or sing to your plants in your kitchen garden. But unfortunately, you are stuck with paying electricity bills, calling vendors for your business, arranging data or responding to ceaseless e-mails. If this sounds like something you don’t like to do, then why do it in the first place? Start by making a list of all the activities that you don’t like doing. Once you have done that you will be able to identify the areas that take away a lot of your time unnecessarily and you will be able to channel your energies and time better to other activities that actually need your attention. 2. Make A List Of Everything You Did In The Past Now that you have eliminated the things you don’t like to do, you are already one step ahead to living a happier and a more productive life. To make it easier for you, also write down the list of activities that you indulged in before your life started to spiral out of control and you started to feel helpless. Think of all those activities that brought a smile to your face and de-stressed you rather than burden you mentally. Your goal now should be to allot at least 2-3 hours to pursue these activities that you love to do, every single day. In doing so, you’ll find that you are more relaxed and charged to take on the world. Sure, business is important, but not more important than you are. Give yourself a break once in a while. You deserve it. 3. Make Time For The Activities That Don’t Interest You Now that you have gotten back to doing the things you love, you can finally look at squeezing in the other activities that once took up a lot of your time and you ‘thought’ required your attention. Be it making calls to clients, sifting through complicated bookkeeping work, handling administrative tasks for your business or just paying the regular bills for your house, slot at least 4-5 hours in the day for these activities. With 2-3 hours devoted towards doing what you love and 4-5 hours channeled towards other activities, you’ll slowly start to regain the lost work-life balance and still have a few more hours at your disposal at the end of the day! 4. Or… Explore Other Options! If you find that you are still not able to strike the perfect work-life balance, even after making amends to your life,

WHERE DID ALL MY TIME GO? – A Beginner’s Guide To Simplifying Life & Work Read More »

It is said that time is money but money can be redeemed when lost, while the same cannot be said for time. Do you often find yourself asking this question? “Where did all my time go?” Don’t hesitate, admit it. If this question pinches your heart every night when you go to bed, you know that there’s something drastically wrong with what you are doing with your life. But, do not fret. You are not an alien. Just like you, there are many others around the world who feel the pinch, when they think of where their time went. Let’s take for example, the life of an average, hard-working Joe – ‘Ben’. Ben’s Dilemma – A Story Ben lives in New York. He has a loving wife and a four-year old son. Ben is a small business owner and though he was proud of himself for starting his dream venture, he very quickly grew unhappy with his business, because he always seemed to be busy. This also impacted his relationship with his wife and son, who were always complaining about him not being around. Everyday, he had too much to handle on his platter. It was the same old charade, with e-mails, juggling bank accounts, attending meetings for investments and so on and so forth. Ben worked hard to meet both ends – his work and his family. But the harder he tried, the more he failed. But why did that happen? Ben dreamt of taking his business international , but his hopes were crushed when he started to notice that his clients and his profits began to fall because of the erratic schedules that Ben had to work with as a small business owner and also because he also had other responsibilities as a family man. Ben?s world started to fall apart. One fine evening, Ben returned to find his wife upset. She accused him and threw a fit because he had conveniently forgotten their anniversary. “How could you forget our anniversary?”, she yelled. Ben slowly started to realize that he desperately needed a quick solution to balance both, his work and life, otherwise he risked losing both. To make matters worse, Ben didn’t find time to play with his son either. Suddenly 24 hours in the day were not enough for Ben. He wished he had just one more hour in the day to sort his life out and get his business back in order. That’s when reality struck him. He had let his business and personal life slip out of control because he believed he could handle everything by himself. He slapped his head in embarrassment and asked himself, “Where did all my time go?” If this story rings a bell and feels extremely familiar, you should ask yourself one more question, “Why did all my time go?” But, there’s nothing to worry about just yet. Ben can bring back the balance and happiness in his life and so can you. It’s true that time can’t come back but the bigger truth is you can compensate for all the lost time by making the best use of time you already have in your hands. It is really not that hard to be happy! By making a few quick but drastic changes to your life, not only will your life become more manageable, but you’ll begin to believe that you have more hours in the day. 1. Strike out the things you hate to do! Maybe you love to walk your dog, go for a swim, do the dishes or sing to your plants in your kitchen garden. But unfortunately, you are stuck with paying electricity bills, calling vendors for your business, arranging data or responding to ceaseless e-mails. If this sounds like something you don’t like to do, then why do it in the first place? Start by making a list of all the activities that you don’t like doing. Once you have done that you will be able to identify the areas that take away a lot of your time unnecessarily and you will be able to channel your energies and time better to other activities that actually need your attention. 2. Make A List Of Everything You Did In The Past Now that you have eliminated the things you don’t like to do, you are already one step ahead to living a happier and a more productive life. To make it easier for you, also write down the list of activities that you indulged in before your life started to spiral out of control and you started to feel helpless. Think of all those activities that brought a smile to your face and de-stressed you rather than burden you mentally. Your goal now should be to allot at least 2-3 hours to pursue these activities that you love to do, every single day. In doing so, you’ll find that you are more relaxed and charged to take on the world. Sure, business is important, but not more important than you are. Give yourself a break once in a while. You deserve it. 3. Make Time For The Activities That Don’t Interest You Now that you have gotten back to doing the things you love, you can finally look at squeezing in the other activities that once took up a lot of your time and you ‘thought’ required your attention. Be it making calls to clients, sifting through complicated bookkeeping work, handling administrative tasks for your business or just paying the regular bills for your house, slot at least 4-5 hours in the day for these activities. With 2-3 hours devoted towards doing what you love and 4-5 hours channeled towards other activities, you’ll slowly start to regain the lost work-life balance and still have a few more hours at your disposal at the end of the day! 4. Or… Explore Other Options! If you find that you are still not able to strike the perfect work-life balance, even after making amends to your life,

Six Things You MUST outsource to a Virtual Assistant

Focus is one of the biggest secrets to success. So, start focusing on the core tasks of your business. But, what if you have a long, boring list of trivial tasks to handle before you can even begin to focus on the core tasks? What if you are too confused and can’t figure out what you should be focusing on? Aren’t these questions becoming barriers to your business growth? Today, many start-ups and small business owners suffer from the ‘superhero syndrome’ -a condition where business owners believe they can take on anything and everything on their own! While taking responsibility for your business is good, juggling too many hats at the same time, could eventually lead to your downfall, as you slowly begin to lose focus on the core tasks and what you should ideally be concentrating on as a business owner. You start dissipating your valuable resources across trivial tasks which can be better taken care of by someone else. This is where the need for a convenient solution arises. If you are seriously looking at business growth or a balanced, personal life, you must think of hiring a Virtual Assistant. Now, before you get all excited and make a hasty decision of hiring a Virtual Assistant, ask yourself if there are aspects of your life that you need a break from and if there is a long list of other activities that you need to focus on. Once you have filtered out the activities that are best handled by a third party provider like an outsourcing company, you can then finally get down to hiring a Virtual Assistant.If you are new to outsourcing and don’t know where to tread yet, let us take a look at some of the tasks that you can outsource to a Virtual Assistant. Managing e-mails Managing e-mails can be a whale of a job. Sifting through junk and responding to countless e-mails can eat into a good chunk of your productive time. Consider outsourcing e-mail management to a reliable virtual assistant. It will free up a lot more of your time than you would have imagined. Trust us! Bookkeeping We all know how monotonous bookkeeping can get. It involves the time-consuming process of recording bills, invoices, payments etc. Imagine how much you can achieve in your business or personal life with the free time you get after outsourcing bookkeeping tasks to your virtual assistant! Numbers can get harrowing and with a Virtual Assistant in the picture, you won’t have to worry about one more complicated entry or computation. Online Research     Online research is another important task that many individuals and businesses carry out in their day to day lives. It also consumes a good fraction of your precious time. Online research, if outsourced, can earn you that much-needed time to focus on the activities that matter the most to you and that are crucial to your business. Travel and trip arrangement We all know how much effort goes into planning a journey. One may face a lot of hurdles along the way when it comes to booking a hotel to suit the budget, hiring a taxi, booking cheap flight tickets and the like. With the help of a virtual assistant, focus on the destination and let your Virtual Assistant take care of all the nitty-gritties of making your journey a comfortable one. Setting Reminders/Calendar management A well-managed calendar can help you sail smoothly through the month. Setting reminders is also an integral part of a well-maintained schedule. Outsource your calendar management activities to a Virtual Assistant and rest assured you will never miss another important deadline or family event! Data Entry Data entry is a simple task but can be monotonous and tiresome. Consider outsourcing data entry to a Virtual Assistant. It will give you a lot more time to do the things you love.

Six Things You MUST outsource to a Virtual Assistant Read More »

Focus is one of the biggest secrets to success. So, start focusing on the core tasks of your business. But, what if you have a long, boring list of trivial tasks to handle before you can even begin to focus on the core tasks? What if you are too confused and can’t figure out what you should be focusing on? Aren’t these questions becoming barriers to your business growth? Today, many start-ups and small business owners suffer from the ‘superhero syndrome’ -a condition where business owners believe they can take on anything and everything on their own! While taking responsibility for your business is good, juggling too many hats at the same time, could eventually lead to your downfall, as you slowly begin to lose focus on the core tasks and what you should ideally be concentrating on as a business owner. You start dissipating your valuable resources across trivial tasks which can be better taken care of by someone else. This is where the need for a convenient solution arises. If you are seriously looking at business growth or a balanced, personal life, you must think of hiring a Virtual Assistant. Now, before you get all excited and make a hasty decision of hiring a Virtual Assistant, ask yourself if there are aspects of your life that you need a break from and if there is a long list of other activities that you need to focus on. Once you have filtered out the activities that are best handled by a third party provider like an outsourcing company, you can then finally get down to hiring a Virtual Assistant.If you are new to outsourcing and don’t know where to tread yet, let us take a look at some of the tasks that you can outsource to a Virtual Assistant. Managing e-mails Managing e-mails can be a whale of a job. Sifting through junk and responding to countless e-mails can eat into a good chunk of your productive time. Consider outsourcing e-mail management to a reliable virtual assistant. It will free up a lot more of your time than you would have imagined. Trust us! Bookkeeping We all know how monotonous bookkeeping can get. It involves the time-consuming process of recording bills, invoices, payments etc. Imagine how much you can achieve in your business or personal life with the free time you get after outsourcing bookkeeping tasks to your virtual assistant! Numbers can get harrowing and with a Virtual Assistant in the picture, you won’t have to worry about one more complicated entry or computation. Online Research     Online research is another important task that many individuals and businesses carry out in their day to day lives. It also consumes a good fraction of your precious time. Online research, if outsourced, can earn you that much-needed time to focus on the activities that matter the most to you and that are crucial to your business. Travel and trip arrangement We all know how much effort goes into planning a journey. One may face a lot of hurdles along the way when it comes to booking a hotel to suit the budget, hiring a taxi, booking cheap flight tickets and the like. With the help of a virtual assistant, focus on the destination and let your Virtual Assistant take care of all the nitty-gritties of making your journey a comfortable one. Setting Reminders/Calendar management A well-managed calendar can help you sail smoothly through the month. Setting reminders is also an integral part of a well-maintained schedule. Outsource your calendar management activities to a Virtual Assistant and rest assured you will never miss another important deadline or family event! Data Entry Data entry is a simple task but can be monotonous and tiresome. Consider outsourcing data entry to a Virtual Assistant. It will give you a lot more time to do the things you love.

Things You Should NEVER Outsource As a Small Business

As a small business owner, it can be a real struggle to stay at the “top of things”. What you should ideally be focusing on is how to run your business and attract new prospects. Like any business however, the things you may want to do may slam into the things that have to be done on a daily basis. A great way to free up some time so that you can focus on growing the business is by engaging an experienced Virtual Assistant from an experienced outsourcing provider like GetFriday. A Virtual Assistant could be the answer to your growing business demands and help offload run-of-the-mill tasks like handling social media accounts as well as mundane jobs like contacting clients, email management, setting up reminders or devising a travel itinerary for you. The possibilities are endless! If you have decided to take the leap, be wary, because a bad outsourcing decision can be costlier than not outsourcing in the first place. Keeping that in mind, this post highlights three of the major things that you should NOT outsource as a small business and that are best handled internally. Take a look! 1. NEVER Outsource Your Core Competencies Never make the mistake of farming out your core competencies to virtual assistants. If you are a tech start-up, do not subcontract your technology or if you are a recruiting firm, don’t outsource your recruiters. Figure out what your company is really good at doing and outsource the auxiliary services that are related to these core competencies, if you must. Let us take the following example. You could hire virtual assistant specialists to write and edit the content that you want to include in your inbound marketing efforts. But make sure that your in-house team makes the business or the editorial decisions as to how the content has to be written, what topics should be covered or the channels that should be used to propagate the content. Part of developing an effective outsourcing plan is to understand what your company is really good at doing and keep it in-house. Outsource the rest to a dependable, virtual assistance service provider. 2. NEVER Outsource What You Don’t Understand There are probably a hundred things that you might want to outsource at the moment, such as getting an assistant to manage your CRM, designing a shopping cart, developing a WordPress website and so much more! While most of these can be outsourced, if you don’t really comprehend how they work precisely in accordance to what you need – be it now or later, you could end up investing a lot of money on something that you’ll end up substituting very soon. For example: You are unsure of how to create an online shopping cart, but you know that you require one that connects to your catalogue, can be easily modified, agrees for coupons etc. Even if you don’t know how to manually design a shopping cart, you will at least know how it works from an operational point of view. This is a situation that is considered safe for outsourcing. However, if you don’t understand the basics of how online shopping carts work at all, it is not advisable to blindly outsource it to a third party like a Virtual Assistant company. Chances are, you will never find out if the solutions they have recommended are effective enough. This is especially true when it comes to outsourcing software issues or technology and if you are a start-up. By relying on Virtual Assistants from the onset, you may miss out on the chance to understand the full picture on how the technology works. Outsource only what you need to. Ensure that the teams in charge have at least a basic understanding of what needs to be accomplished and the yardsticks that will be used to evaluate the final suggestions. 3. NEVER Fully Outsource Your Brand Identity If you are starting out, you need to focus on brand-building. Understand that you will attract more opportunities if you have built an effective brand strategy. Think of whether you have created an effective logo or brand message that will go on to resonate with your future clients. While there are Virtual Assistant professionals who can help build your brand message, tag lines or designs; your message and your brand identity need to strictly come from YOU. This is because, only you and your in-house teams know what it stands for and how the brand needs to be communicated to target audiences. Even if you insist on outsourcing this aspect to the experts because you don’t have the time for it yourself, you need to at least be involved in the logo/brand creation process every step of the way so, that your brand still retains your identity. For example, would you mind walking into a tattoo studio and letting the tattoo artist instinctively create what he/she wants to, onto your skin? Tattoos are permanent and the first impressions that people get of your brand, are equally indelible. Though the tattoo artist will be creating the final art work, your inputs on how you want it done, the styles, colours or the design will solely come from you and will echo your thoughts/experiences. Now, think of your brand in the same way Would you want to fully outsource your brand identity to a third party? You might think that you can subcontract every small task to your Virtual Assistant. Though there are a lot of tasks that you CAN outsource to your virtual assistants, certain aspects such as the ones mentioned above, could risk colossal business damage. You need to do some prior homework on what your company does best, understand when the right time is to outsource and the credibility of your outsourcing provider. What do you think? What are some of the functions or tasks that you will never outsource?

Things You Should NEVER Outsource As a Small Business Read More »

As a small business owner, it can be a real struggle to stay at the “top of things”. What you should ideally be focusing on is how to run your business and attract new prospects. Like any business however, the things you may want to do may slam into the things that have to be done on a daily basis. A great way to free up some time so that you can focus on growing the business is by engaging an experienced Virtual Assistant from an experienced outsourcing provider like GetFriday. A Virtual Assistant could be the answer to your growing business demands and help offload run-of-the-mill tasks like handling social media accounts as well as mundane jobs like contacting clients, email management, setting up reminders or devising a travel itinerary for you. The possibilities are endless! If you have decided to take the leap, be wary, because a bad outsourcing decision can be costlier than not outsourcing in the first place. Keeping that in mind, this post highlights three of the major things that you should NOT outsource as a small business and that are best handled internally. Take a look! 1. NEVER Outsource Your Core Competencies Never make the mistake of farming out your core competencies to virtual assistants. If you are a tech start-up, do not subcontract your technology or if you are a recruiting firm, don’t outsource your recruiters. Figure out what your company is really good at doing and outsource the auxiliary services that are related to these core competencies, if you must. Let us take the following example. You could hire virtual assistant specialists to write and edit the content that you want to include in your inbound marketing efforts. But make sure that your in-house team makes the business or the editorial decisions as to how the content has to be written, what topics should be covered or the channels that should be used to propagate the content. Part of developing an effective outsourcing plan is to understand what your company is really good at doing and keep it in-house. Outsource the rest to a dependable, virtual assistance service provider. 2. NEVER Outsource What You Don’t Understand There are probably a hundred things that you might want to outsource at the moment, such as getting an assistant to manage your CRM, designing a shopping cart, developing a WordPress website and so much more! While most of these can be outsourced, if you don’t really comprehend how they work precisely in accordance to what you need – be it now or later, you could end up investing a lot of money on something that you’ll end up substituting very soon. For example: You are unsure of how to create an online shopping cart, but you know that you require one that connects to your catalogue, can be easily modified, agrees for coupons etc. Even if you don’t know how to manually design a shopping cart, you will at least know how it works from an operational point of view. This is a situation that is considered safe for outsourcing. However, if you don’t understand the basics of how online shopping carts work at all, it is not advisable to blindly outsource it to a third party like a Virtual Assistant company. Chances are, you will never find out if the solutions they have recommended are effective enough. This is especially true when it comes to outsourcing software issues or technology and if you are a start-up. By relying on Virtual Assistants from the onset, you may miss out on the chance to understand the full picture on how the technology works. Outsource only what you need to. Ensure that the teams in charge have at least a basic understanding of what needs to be accomplished and the yardsticks that will be used to evaluate the final suggestions. 3. NEVER Fully Outsource Your Brand Identity If you are starting out, you need to focus on brand-building. Understand that you will attract more opportunities if you have built an effective brand strategy. Think of whether you have created an effective logo or brand message that will go on to resonate with your future clients. While there are Virtual Assistant professionals who can help build your brand message, tag lines or designs; your message and your brand identity need to strictly come from YOU. This is because, only you and your in-house teams know what it stands for and how the brand needs to be communicated to target audiences. Even if you insist on outsourcing this aspect to the experts because you don’t have the time for it yourself, you need to at least be involved in the logo/brand creation process every step of the way so, that your brand still retains your identity. For example, would you mind walking into a tattoo studio and letting the tattoo artist instinctively create what he/she wants to, onto your skin? Tattoos are permanent and the first impressions that people get of your brand, are equally indelible. Though the tattoo artist will be creating the final art work, your inputs on how you want it done, the styles, colours or the design will solely come from you and will echo your thoughts/experiences. Now, think of your brand in the same way Would you want to fully outsource your brand identity to a third party? You might think that you can subcontract every small task to your Virtual Assistant. Though there are a lot of tasks that you CAN outsource to your virtual assistants, certain aspects such as the ones mentioned above, could risk colossal business damage. You need to do some prior homework on what your company does best, understand when the right time is to outsource and the credibility of your outsourcing provider. What do you think? What are some of the functions or tasks that you will never outsource?

Four Fool-Proof Ways To Overcome Writer’s Block With a Virtual Assistant

Writer’s block is something every writer struggles with at some point in their lives. Since the lifeblood of every writer’s success lies in their ability to churn out quick quality content, a writer’s block could throw you off balance, especially if you have strict deadlines to meet. The feeling of not being ‘good enough’ to write is all too familiar. But most of the time, a writer’s block is not really a ‘block’ at all. It’s just endless self-criticism and a noiseless outburst of the ‘stress’ you experience when you have to produce work that will not be viewed by your readers as flaming pieces of garbage. If people pen their thoughts down without worrying too much about perfecting the sentences, the flow of writing improves and gives the writers a rough skeleton to work with for later. Contrary to popular belief, a writer’s block usually occurs during the initial phases of writing and is common among professional writers, novelists, academicians, researchers and the like. Many a time, people put their lives on hold until they can find the inspiration to write. Some of the activities that people indulge in for inspiration include going through ‘how-to’ blog posts on overcoming writer’s blocks (shooting myself in the foot?), taking long walks outside, completing household chores, reading poetic novels or hoping to find some inspiration by watching the plants in their backyards grow. Though these may provide stimulus for some, it does not necessarily work all the time. What You Should Ideally Be Doing? Writers have to invest countless hours of research and pore over a number of resources before they actually get down to writing the first few drafts. With hours of prep work, professional writers almost always struggle for time. All this creates an even bigger problem if the writer is prone to experiencing writer’s blocks every now and then. The trick to overcoming a writer’s block is to work around the problem smartly. Though a request for help with writing at this point may be perceived as a critical weakness, it is in fact one of the smartest things a writer can do for his/her writing, without taking away the glory they deserve. Hiring a Virtual Assistant can give you enough room to work around your creativity and will give you the space to write at leisure without letting the brass tacks or prep work get in the way. Though indirectly, this could help with overcoming writer’s block because you will have fewer things to worry about and will be able to concentrate better on the composition of your thoughts. Leave the research, keyword searches, vocabulary sheets and lots more to your VA. You’ll find that no matter what you compose, be it an online blog or a book, outsourcing a few aspects of preparatory writing work to a personal virtual assistant can definitely ease the pressures of a writer’s block. Get your VA to: Do The Research Work Whether you are working on a research paper or writing a blog series, you will be required to do some amount of research if you want your final, written piece to look credible. Engaging your audience is crucial and presenting data or checking out the facts behind people, locations, characters and subjects can help you do just that. For example, in the following two sentences, you’ll notice a difference in how the information is presented. The research and detail that goes into the second sentence will make you understand why the second sentence will be considered more reliable in the eyes of a reader. Example 1 “Mike stole an orange bag from the Selfridges store and ran out as quickly as he could.” Example 2 “Mike stole an expensive, orange, suede satchel from the Selfridges store and ran out as quickly as he could.” A reader would most definitely be drawn to the second line, because it is a lot more descriptive and also gives the illusion that the bag is stolen from the store actually exists at Selfridges. The devil is in the details and carrying out proper research before any kind of writing, will only make your writing piece honest. If you are starting out as a writer, you may not know where to look for information. Even if you do, you may find that ‘research’ can get exasperating and take up a lot of your time. That’s where a Virtual Assistant steps into place. No matter what online research you require for writing your blog, book or paper, you can outsource ‘research work’ of various natures to your VA and focus more on composing your written work. Generate Blog Post Ideas & Page Optimization If you are struggling with finding suitable keyword-rich titles for your blog posts, give your Virtual Assistant a rough idea of what you are expecting in terms of the title for the post and what the blog will contain. Your VA will carry out all the keyword research required to target the right audience and also come with up ideas for your next blog posts. Apart from this, get your VA to keep your blog pages optimized and can carry out competitor research so that you can gauge where you stand. All this data, presented in a comprehensive, easy-to-understand format by your VA, should be able to ease a part of the writer’s block and give you the freedom to write your piece in a relaxed manner. Drafting Blog Posts If you continue to have a problem with writing in a lucid manner or you are not finding the time to complete your blog for the week, have your specialist Virtual Assistant work on a draft for you. All you will have to do in the end is go through it, format the content and hit the ‘publish’ button. Your Virtual Assistants, being jacks of all trades, are also talented wordsmiths. You’ll be surprised with the lucrative ideas they give you and the quality work they can come up with! They can

Four Fool-Proof Ways To Overcome Writer’s Block With a Virtual Assistant Read More »

Writer’s block is something every writer struggles with at some point in their lives. Since the lifeblood of every writer’s success lies in their ability to churn out quick quality content, a writer’s block could throw you off balance, especially if you have strict deadlines to meet. The feeling of not being ‘good enough’ to write is all too familiar. But most of the time, a writer’s block is not really a ‘block’ at all. It’s just endless self-criticism and a noiseless outburst of the ‘stress’ you experience when you have to produce work that will not be viewed by your readers as flaming pieces of garbage. If people pen their thoughts down without worrying too much about perfecting the sentences, the flow of writing improves and gives the writers a rough skeleton to work with for later. Contrary to popular belief, a writer’s block usually occurs during the initial phases of writing and is common among professional writers, novelists, academicians, researchers and the like. Many a time, people put their lives on hold until they can find the inspiration to write. Some of the activities that people indulge in for inspiration include going through ‘how-to’ blog posts on overcoming writer’s blocks (shooting myself in the foot?), taking long walks outside, completing household chores, reading poetic novels or hoping to find some inspiration by watching the plants in their backyards grow. Though these may provide stimulus for some, it does not necessarily work all the time. What You Should Ideally Be Doing? Writers have to invest countless hours of research and pore over a number of resources before they actually get down to writing the first few drafts. With hours of prep work, professional writers almost always struggle for time. All this creates an even bigger problem if the writer is prone to experiencing writer’s blocks every now and then. The trick to overcoming a writer’s block is to work around the problem smartly. Though a request for help with writing at this point may be perceived as a critical weakness, it is in fact one of the smartest things a writer can do for his/her writing, without taking away the glory they deserve. Hiring a Virtual Assistant can give you enough room to work around your creativity and will give you the space to write at leisure without letting the brass tacks or prep work get in the way. Though indirectly, this could help with overcoming writer’s block because you will have fewer things to worry about and will be able to concentrate better on the composition of your thoughts. Leave the research, keyword searches, vocabulary sheets and lots more to your VA. You’ll find that no matter what you compose, be it an online blog or a book, outsourcing a few aspects of preparatory writing work to a personal virtual assistant can definitely ease the pressures of a writer’s block. Get your VA to: Do The Research Work Whether you are working on a research paper or writing a blog series, you will be required to do some amount of research if you want your final, written piece to look credible. Engaging your audience is crucial and presenting data or checking out the facts behind people, locations, characters and subjects can help you do just that. For example, in the following two sentences, you’ll notice a difference in how the information is presented. The research and detail that goes into the second sentence will make you understand why the second sentence will be considered more reliable in the eyes of a reader. Example 1 “Mike stole an orange bag from the Selfridges store and ran out as quickly as he could.” Example 2 “Mike stole an expensive, orange, suede satchel from the Selfridges store and ran out as quickly as he could.” A reader would most definitely be drawn to the second line, because it is a lot more descriptive and also gives the illusion that the bag is stolen from the store actually exists at Selfridges. The devil is in the details and carrying out proper research before any kind of writing, will only make your writing piece honest. If you are starting out as a writer, you may not know where to look for information. Even if you do, you may find that ‘research’ can get exasperating and take up a lot of your time. That’s where a Virtual Assistant steps into place. No matter what online research you require for writing your blog, book or paper, you can outsource ‘research work’ of various natures to your VA and focus more on composing your written work. Generate Blog Post Ideas & Page Optimization If you are struggling with finding suitable keyword-rich titles for your blog posts, give your Virtual Assistant a rough idea of what you are expecting in terms of the title for the post and what the blog will contain. Your VA will carry out all the keyword research required to target the right audience and also come with up ideas for your next blog posts. Apart from this, get your VA to keep your blog pages optimized and can carry out competitor research so that you can gauge where you stand. All this data, presented in a comprehensive, easy-to-understand format by your VA, should be able to ease a part of the writer’s block and give you the freedom to write your piece in a relaxed manner. Drafting Blog Posts If you continue to have a problem with writing in a lucid manner or you are not finding the time to complete your blog for the week, have your specialist Virtual Assistant work on a draft for you. All you will have to do in the end is go through it, format the content and hit the ‘publish’ button. Your Virtual Assistants, being jacks of all trades, are also talented wordsmiths. You’ll be surprised with the lucrative ideas they give you and the quality work they can come up with! They can

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