Outsourcing for small business

Things to consider- Before Getting an Outside Blogger/ Writer

“Whether it is a blog or an e-commerce store, at the end of the day, it is the traffic that drives online business.” -Unknown A blog is a marketing tool that you can play around with, test and adapt to suit your needs and measure for effectiveness, as you go along, just like any other form of marketing. If you have a small business which plans to reach out to its audience using a blog, it is a good time to think whether you want to do it yourself or want to hand it over to someone, while you engage yourself in a supervisory role. There could be many reasons, why you would want to assign the responsibility of blog writing to someone else: It could be that your writing skills are just above average and you want some one better than you to manage it.   Your writing skills are good, but the time factor does not permit you to devote the amount of time required to churn out a decent blog.   It is cumbersome for you at this point of time to do all the research. So it is prudent to hire someone to do research and blog as well.   As said above, the intention behind writing the blog is to attract more traffic to your website. In such a case you have to make an important decision to make sure the blog ticks. These are some of the important pointers you might want to adhere to while selecting the blogger: Your rapport with your readers It is possible that over the years you have created a credible following for your blog among your readers. And as your business has scaled up, time has become a precious and a limited resource for you. In such a context you would want to think twice before you outsource your blog writing. The option available before you could be to reduce the number of posts of your blog. But, this could result in a loss of some of your readers. In such a scenario, it is better to hire a blog writer and weather the storm of losing some readers. And you would see, things stabilizing after a certain period of time. Overall, it is about you posting good content on the blog. As long as the content is good, your readers will hang in there, without bidding goodbye. The Type of Blogger You are entrusting your business reputation with the blogger, when you make the choice of hiring someone from outside for your website. It becomes equally important to see whether: a. The blogger has similar personality traits as yours b. His/ her writing style is in sync with yours c. The writing style fits the brand d. The blogger has knowledge of the job You are looking at someone, who can take it one notch up and enhance your reputation. The person needs to fire up your reader’s imagination and get them to talk about your business. By doing so, it leaves you with additional time on your hands and lets you focus on streamlining your business. Blog Marketing It becomes very obvious that the time you save from assigning your blog to someone outside, can be used by you in doing other strategic activities for your business. While the blogger can help you in blog marketing, it is seen that Google places special emphasis on good content. By hiring a blogger from outside who is proficient in SEO, your website will achieve a higher page rank on Google. This would apparently invite more traffic to your website than before. Fresh Perspective As a business owner, there are times when you could become oblivious to certain aspects of the business. These can be termed as blind spots, which get overlooked most times. However, getting help from outside brings in a fresh pair of eyes and perspective to the business because the outside blogger would associate with the brand differently than you. The fresh view can help bring out never before heard stories about your brand, which could popularise your brand. In due course of time, you will learn to appreciate and associate yourself with this fresh perspective. Access to Updated Knowledge This luxury of having a blogger from outside means you are dealing with a professional. Since his/her profession calls for updating knowledge every now and then, it comes by default that the blogs he/she writes is always up to date on knowledge and happenings in the stipulated domain. The final deliverable that you come across would always be updated on SEO, content standards and the trends in the industry. Poorly written Posts Hurt Your Brand In a world where Google ranking is very important it becomes tremendously important that your blog is well written. Google’s page ranking algorithm is seen to be positively inclined towards high quality content. Else, there are chances that a blog with grammatical errors and spammy links is not going to get you a higher page rank. There needs to be consistent effort from your side to succeed at Google page rank, every time you post a blog. A professional can bring about the consistency, then it is a good idea to assign your blog writing to some one outside the company. You could also hire a virtual assistant (VA) from GetFriday to write a blog and keep yourself free to do other things, which would help your business in the longer run. You can also hire a freelancer from Hubstaff Talent.Your brand and its growth among other blogs can be completely taken over by the VA, while you provide the macro view on how the blog post must be managed.

Things to consider- Before Getting an Outside Blogger/ Writer Read More »

“Whether it is a blog or an e-commerce store, at the end of the day, it is the traffic that drives online business.” -Unknown A blog is a marketing tool that you can play around with, test and adapt to suit your needs and measure for effectiveness, as you go along, just like any other form of marketing. If you have a small business which plans to reach out to its audience using a blog, it is a good time to think whether you want to do it yourself or want to hand it over to someone, while you engage yourself in a supervisory role. There could be many reasons, why you would want to assign the responsibility of blog writing to someone else: It could be that your writing skills are just above average and you want some one better than you to manage it.   Your writing skills are good, but the time factor does not permit you to devote the amount of time required to churn out a decent blog.   It is cumbersome for you at this point of time to do all the research. So it is prudent to hire someone to do research and blog as well.   As said above, the intention behind writing the blog is to attract more traffic to your website. In such a case you have to make an important decision to make sure the blog ticks. These are some of the important pointers you might want to adhere to while selecting the blogger: Your rapport with your readers It is possible that over the years you have created a credible following for your blog among your readers. And as your business has scaled up, time has become a precious and a limited resource for you. In such a context you would want to think twice before you outsource your blog writing. The option available before you could be to reduce the number of posts of your blog. But, this could result in a loss of some of your readers. In such a scenario, it is better to hire a blog writer and weather the storm of losing some readers. And you would see, things stabilizing after a certain period of time. Overall, it is about you posting good content on the blog. As long as the content is good, your readers will hang in there, without bidding goodbye. The Type of Blogger You are entrusting your business reputation with the blogger, when you make the choice of hiring someone from outside for your website. It becomes equally important to see whether: a. The blogger has similar personality traits as yours b. His/ her writing style is in sync with yours c. The writing style fits the brand d. The blogger has knowledge of the job You are looking at someone, who can take it one notch up and enhance your reputation. The person needs to fire up your reader’s imagination and get them to talk about your business. By doing so, it leaves you with additional time on your hands and lets you focus on streamlining your business. Blog Marketing It becomes very obvious that the time you save from assigning your blog to someone outside, can be used by you in doing other strategic activities for your business. While the blogger can help you in blog marketing, it is seen that Google places special emphasis on good content. By hiring a blogger from outside who is proficient in SEO, your website will achieve a higher page rank on Google. This would apparently invite more traffic to your website than before. Fresh Perspective As a business owner, there are times when you could become oblivious to certain aspects of the business. These can be termed as blind spots, which get overlooked most times. However, getting help from outside brings in a fresh pair of eyes and perspective to the business because the outside blogger would associate with the brand differently than you. The fresh view can help bring out never before heard stories about your brand, which could popularise your brand. In due course of time, you will learn to appreciate and associate yourself with this fresh perspective. Access to Updated Knowledge This luxury of having a blogger from outside means you are dealing with a professional. Since his/her profession calls for updating knowledge every now and then, it comes by default that the blogs he/she writes is always up to date on knowledge and happenings in the stipulated domain. The final deliverable that you come across would always be updated on SEO, content standards and the trends in the industry. Poorly written Posts Hurt Your Brand In a world where Google ranking is very important it becomes tremendously important that your blog is well written. Google’s page ranking algorithm is seen to be positively inclined towards high quality content. Else, there are chances that a blog with grammatical errors and spammy links is not going to get you a higher page rank. There needs to be consistent effort from your side to succeed at Google page rank, every time you post a blog. A professional can bring about the consistency, then it is a good idea to assign your blog writing to some one outside the company. You could also hire a virtual assistant (VA) from GetFriday to write a blog and keep yourself free to do other things, which would help your business in the longer run. You can also hire a freelancer from Hubstaff Talent.Your brand and its growth among other blogs can be completely taken over by the VA, while you provide the macro view on how the blog post must be managed.

Digital Marketing Trends of 2017

As 2016 came to an end, organisations are getting challenged every year, about their digital marketing strategy. Here are some of the digital marketing strategies that will dominate the year 2017. Video Marketing YouTube happens to be the second most used search engine in the world. Online video happens to be 50% of all mobile traffic. As users get savvier, they will have the need to connect with brands and engage with their stories. Platforms like Periscope and Facebook make it easy for brands and businesses to connect with their fans and followers in real time and get their message across by streaming live broadcasts. Also 2017 video will see tremendous growth, from Facebook news feeds to family groups on Whatsapp. With NASSCOMM estimating 700 million smartphones in India by 2020 and with every phone being a potential video device. The growth of video is only going north in 2017. With 4G becoming the norm, we’ll be getting a lot more videos in our newsfeeds. With eye balls migrating to small mobile screens, time spent on social media rising, video is going to see growth in 2017. Mobile to Dominate Desktop It has been seen that Google has already phased out websites that are not optimized for mobiles. With this trend on the rise, we are going to see an increasing number of marketers giving more attention to mobile search and optimization. This would mean Google is prioritizing mobile sites and will have Google ads oriented around mobile. This means ads are going to become more localized. So a search for ‘fast food’ will not come up with KFC, if there is no KFC with a 10 km radius. This trend is going to continue not only in 2017, but in the years to come. Instore Marketing There isn’t much connection between in-store marketing and digital marketing, but the difference between the physical and online sales techniques are fast shrinking. In a smartphone dominated world, 80% of the millennials use their phone inside the store and 75% of them are willing to receive location based text alerts. An organization with optimized mobile strategy, capturing customers in-store through digital techniques will prove to be an effective means of conversion. A fine example of this comes from the American supermarket Target. The store launched a reward app to present their customers with special offers as they walked through various departments of their stores. The method becomes even easier, when you use the new beacon technology (After downloading the app, customers can be sent customized content, when they happen to be at the vicinity of the store through beacon technology). Interactive Content In the current digital environment, engagement is everything and marketers succeed when users not only consume the content, but also enjoy it and act upon it. This makes it certain that interactive content will be the way forward in coming times. It is seen that when compared to static content interactive content is able to notch conversion rate of up to 70% higher conversions. In fact, it also is a good way of educating buyers and making your brand to stand out among competitors. It is a win-win situation, when people are turning away from traditional means of advertising in favor of online reviews and research. With digital technology getting more sophisticated, the scope to engage interactively is seemingly endless. Interactivity can come in the form of quizzes and polls to contests. It is for the brand to choose which type of interactive content it plans to choose from. Wearable Mobile Devices Currently there are 7.22 billion active mobile devices, that’s more technology in the world than people. Hence it is important to understand the importance of smartphone marketing and its relevance to an organization. The wearable market is expected to reach $4billion in 2017. Much like the emergence of mobile, brands and businesses will have to develop their platforms to cater to the average user who uses a wearable, and ensure they are optimized for small, more interactive screens to ensure quality user experience and prompt sales. In 2017, the giant network of wearables will provide marketers with more marketing data. The unprecedented access to this kind of knowledge will help marketers to focus on their target audience more accurately like never before. Disappearing Social Content One big change the social media is going to experience in the times to come will be in the form disappearing content. Disappearing or expiring content enables the brands and businesses to cut through the noise and clutter, gaining the attention of the target audience without spending massive amounts of money. The pioneer in this technology is Snapchat. To create a real sense of urgency users were given limited time to read or view the content before it disappeared. Meanwhile, the technology got copied by Instagram, causing rivalry between the two platforms. Expiring content is going to become a trendsetter in 2017, as per estimates. Influencer Marketing There is seamless amount of information, which is broadcast through the web. To make sense of it all, web users are turning to an unbiased expert with knowledge to share – the influencer. Today’s consumer is more likely to trust an influencer than a brand message. In 2016, there was a realization from the brand that the fastest way to reach the audience’s heart is through a trusted thought leader. Hence, today influencer marketing has become a line item in the marketing budget of brands’. In 2017, we are going to see more brands willing to spend their budget on a thought leader, who not only believes in the brand, but also is able to communicate it to the right following. Behaviour Based Email Marketing Digital marketing in 2017 would be all about segmented & behavior based e-mail marketing. With more and more users subscribing to brands online, there are more emails hitting the inbox and low open rates are becoming fairly common. This can only be combated by sending customized emails to users that are

Digital Marketing Trends of 2017 Read More »

As 2016 came to an end, organisations are getting challenged every year, about their digital marketing strategy. Here are some of the digital marketing strategies that will dominate the year 2017. Video Marketing YouTube happens to be the second most used search engine in the world. Online video happens to be 50% of all mobile traffic. As users get savvier, they will have the need to connect with brands and engage with their stories. Platforms like Periscope and Facebook make it easy for brands and businesses to connect with their fans and followers in real time and get their message across by streaming live broadcasts. Also 2017 video will see tremendous growth, from Facebook news feeds to family groups on Whatsapp. With NASSCOMM estimating 700 million smartphones in India by 2020 and with every phone being a potential video device. The growth of video is only going north in 2017. With 4G becoming the norm, we’ll be getting a lot more videos in our newsfeeds. With eye balls migrating to small mobile screens, time spent on social media rising, video is going to see growth in 2017. Mobile to Dominate Desktop It has been seen that Google has already phased out websites that are not optimized for mobiles. With this trend on the rise, we are going to see an increasing number of marketers giving more attention to mobile search and optimization. This would mean Google is prioritizing mobile sites and will have Google ads oriented around mobile. This means ads are going to become more localized. So a search for ‘fast food’ will not come up with KFC, if there is no KFC with a 10 km radius. This trend is going to continue not only in 2017, but in the years to come. Instore Marketing There isn’t much connection between in-store marketing and digital marketing, but the difference between the physical and online sales techniques are fast shrinking. In a smartphone dominated world, 80% of the millennials use their phone inside the store and 75% of them are willing to receive location based text alerts. An organization with optimized mobile strategy, capturing customers in-store through digital techniques will prove to be an effective means of conversion. A fine example of this comes from the American supermarket Target. The store launched a reward app to present their customers with special offers as they walked through various departments of their stores. The method becomes even easier, when you use the new beacon technology (After downloading the app, customers can be sent customized content, when they happen to be at the vicinity of the store through beacon technology). Interactive Content In the current digital environment, engagement is everything and marketers succeed when users not only consume the content, but also enjoy it and act upon it. This makes it certain that interactive content will be the way forward in coming times. It is seen that when compared to static content interactive content is able to notch conversion rate of up to 70% higher conversions. In fact, it also is a good way of educating buyers and making your brand to stand out among competitors. It is a win-win situation, when people are turning away from traditional means of advertising in favor of online reviews and research. With digital technology getting more sophisticated, the scope to engage interactively is seemingly endless. Interactivity can come in the form of quizzes and polls to contests. It is for the brand to choose which type of interactive content it plans to choose from. Wearable Mobile Devices Currently there are 7.22 billion active mobile devices, that’s more technology in the world than people. Hence it is important to understand the importance of smartphone marketing and its relevance to an organization. The wearable market is expected to reach $4billion in 2017. Much like the emergence of mobile, brands and businesses will have to develop their platforms to cater to the average user who uses a wearable, and ensure they are optimized for small, more interactive screens to ensure quality user experience and prompt sales. In 2017, the giant network of wearables will provide marketers with more marketing data. The unprecedented access to this kind of knowledge will help marketers to focus on their target audience more accurately like never before. Disappearing Social Content One big change the social media is going to experience in the times to come will be in the form disappearing content. Disappearing or expiring content enables the brands and businesses to cut through the noise and clutter, gaining the attention of the target audience without spending massive amounts of money. The pioneer in this technology is Snapchat. To create a real sense of urgency users were given limited time to read or view the content before it disappeared. Meanwhile, the technology got copied by Instagram, causing rivalry between the two platforms. Expiring content is going to become a trendsetter in 2017, as per estimates. Influencer Marketing There is seamless amount of information, which is broadcast through the web. To make sense of it all, web users are turning to an unbiased expert with knowledge to share – the influencer. Today’s consumer is more likely to trust an influencer than a brand message. In 2016, there was a realization from the brand that the fastest way to reach the audience’s heart is through a trusted thought leader. Hence, today influencer marketing has become a line item in the marketing budget of brands’. In 2017, we are going to see more brands willing to spend their budget on a thought leader, who not only believes in the brand, but also is able to communicate it to the right following. Behaviour Based Email Marketing Digital marketing in 2017 would be all about segmented & behavior based e-mail marketing. With more and more users subscribing to brands online, there are more emails hitting the inbox and low open rates are becoming fairly common. This can only be combated by sending customized emails to users that are

Digital Nomads

Picture this – how would you like it if you get to work for at least a few months on the endless white beaches of Bali while the turquoise-emerald waters splashed against the shore? You could even work out of a dreamy village tucked away on the alluring coast of Spain. Take your pick. No daily commute in the traffic and no rush. Sounds unbelievable right? Believe us when we say that a new breed of techies is doing just that. They are called ‘digital nomads’. It is a combination of 2 words – digital and nomad. Here the digital part means someone, who is tech savvy and nomad is someone preferring a nomadic lifestyle compared to a regular one. These are people who have let go of the comforts of their home and offices to live nomadic lives. They are just like you and me but prefer to live location independent life. Meaning they have chosen to let go of the stability and comfort of living in one place; either with or without a regular income. There are several kinds of digital nomads – people who have jobs with regular organisations but happen to telecommute; freelancers and entrepreneurs. All of them move about from place to place and complete their jobs using a laptop and with the help of high speed internet connectivity. There are a couple of advantages of living like this. It helps not being tied down by organisational rules and responsibilities and experiencing the freedom to travel and explore new cultures. Most of the nomads are more focussed on eventually becoming online entrepreneurs or freelancers by leveraging the advantages offered by technology, such as high-speed internet through which it is possible to create a viable career online in almost any location. There are increasing number of careers that have been created online, jobs such as web design, software engineering, programming, graphic design, English teacher, travel writer, SEO consultant are some of the careers an aspiring digital nomad can look forward to. There needs to be a certain willingness to let go of the familiar and embrace the unknown. Excelling at a particular skill and being able to make money out of it happens to be the most important trait for a nomad. It is especially meant for folks who are tired of a 9-5 grind and want freedom from it. They prefer to have the luxury of freedom to travel on their part and would not like to be tied down by a regular office job. Freelancers among them happen to work on their own schedule and complete the task assigned to them. If you are successful at becoming a digital nomad, then your workstation could be under the blue sky on sandy beaches. There are a number of possibilities available such as being able to meet new people and explore new places every few months. There is also a flip side to being a digital nomad. Getting used to the idea having to deal with no internet at times and coping with different cuisines, having to continuously deal with booking your own hotels, flight tickets and other living arrangements in the new place. You also tend to miss the birthdays and parties hosted by your loved ones. Getting to date someone becomes a luxury, since you are not around in a regular place most of the time. If you happen to dream of having a life like this, then it is important to find organisations that will help you in this endeavour. There are sites that help hire freelancers through their portal. Next there are sites that help in finding accommodations. Then there are sites that help compare the cost of living in cities around the world. There are also organisations like GetFriday, to whom you could assign a chunk of mundane tasks that you want someone else to do on your behalf. Stuff like booking your tickets and hotel reservations can be taken care of by a virtual assistant (VA), while you focus on the more important core job that you are good at. Suppose you’re good at writing, you could assign – answering emails, calendar management, blog posting to a virtual assistant (VA), thus ensuring you have enough time to do things that you enjoy the most. It is about finding out what your non-core tasks are and then assigning these tasks to a VA to have more clarity and focus on your core tasks.

Digital Nomads Read More »

Picture this – how would you like it if you get to work for at least a few months on the endless white beaches of Bali while the turquoise-emerald waters splashed against the shore? You could even work out of a dreamy village tucked away on the alluring coast of Spain. Take your pick. No daily commute in the traffic and no rush. Sounds unbelievable right? Believe us when we say that a new breed of techies is doing just that. They are called ‘digital nomads’. It is a combination of 2 words – digital and nomad. Here the digital part means someone, who is tech savvy and nomad is someone preferring a nomadic lifestyle compared to a regular one. These are people who have let go of the comforts of their home and offices to live nomadic lives. They are just like you and me but prefer to live location independent life. Meaning they have chosen to let go of the stability and comfort of living in one place; either with or without a regular income. There are several kinds of digital nomads – people who have jobs with regular organisations but happen to telecommute; freelancers and entrepreneurs. All of them move about from place to place and complete their jobs using a laptop and with the help of high speed internet connectivity. There are a couple of advantages of living like this. It helps not being tied down by organisational rules and responsibilities and experiencing the freedom to travel and explore new cultures. Most of the nomads are more focussed on eventually becoming online entrepreneurs or freelancers by leveraging the advantages offered by technology, such as high-speed internet through which it is possible to create a viable career online in almost any location. There are increasing number of careers that have been created online, jobs such as web design, software engineering, programming, graphic design, English teacher, travel writer, SEO consultant are some of the careers an aspiring digital nomad can look forward to. There needs to be a certain willingness to let go of the familiar and embrace the unknown. Excelling at a particular skill and being able to make money out of it happens to be the most important trait for a nomad. It is especially meant for folks who are tired of a 9-5 grind and want freedom from it. They prefer to have the luxury of freedom to travel on their part and would not like to be tied down by a regular office job. Freelancers among them happen to work on their own schedule and complete the task assigned to them. If you are successful at becoming a digital nomad, then your workstation could be under the blue sky on sandy beaches. There are a number of possibilities available such as being able to meet new people and explore new places every few months. There is also a flip side to being a digital nomad. Getting used to the idea having to deal with no internet at times and coping with different cuisines, having to continuously deal with booking your own hotels, flight tickets and other living arrangements in the new place. You also tend to miss the birthdays and parties hosted by your loved ones. Getting to date someone becomes a luxury, since you are not around in a regular place most of the time. If you happen to dream of having a life like this, then it is important to find organisations that will help you in this endeavour. There are sites that help hire freelancers through their portal. Next there are sites that help in finding accommodations. Then there are sites that help compare the cost of living in cities around the world. There are also organisations like GetFriday, to whom you could assign a chunk of mundane tasks that you want someone else to do on your behalf. Stuff like booking your tickets and hotel reservations can be taken care of by a virtual assistant (VA), while you focus on the more important core job that you are good at. Suppose you’re good at writing, you could assign – answering emails, calendar management, blog posting to a virtual assistant (VA), thus ensuring you have enough time to do things that you enjoy the most. It is about finding out what your non-core tasks are and then assigning these tasks to a VA to have more clarity and focus on your core tasks.

Six Virtual Assistant services you must opt for a merrier Christmas

It’s time to make merry, decorate trees with mistletoes and stars, because Christmas is just around the corner. We all know that it is a busy season for Santa Clause and so it is for small business owners like you. It’s a shorter working month for you, above that you have to launch seasonal campaigns, host parties, dinners and manage all sorts of festivities. Santa manages his load of work with the assistance of his elves but what about you? Don’t worry, just like elves are there for Santa, there are Virtual assistants for you. Doing everything on your own in this festive season could be overwhelming. Now is a good time to outsource some of those piled up tasks to Virtual Assistants. It will decrease your stress; ensure quality deliverance along with timely accomplishment. In order to reap the best benefits of outsourcing you must outsource the right things. Here, we list out six such tasks you must outsource this holiday season to make the most of Virtual Assistance: Sending your clients Seasonal Greetings: Let your business clients know how much you value them -wish them a merry Christmas and a happy new year. You can easily outsource such seasonal greetings campaign to a virtual assistant. If outsourced to an expert e-mail marketer, it will run smoothly and efficiently without adding to your stress. Calendar maintenance and reminder setting: As already stated, Christmas season is loaded with festivities as well as business errands and it is likely to miss out on something important. Maintaining a calendar and setting reminders to accomplish everything on time will help you sail smoothly through the season. Outsourcing calendar maintenance will save time and make your schedule easier to manage. Settle all accounts: This season awaits a fresh New Year and it is good to start the New Year with a fresh financial account. Which means it is an ideal time to settle your payable and receivable accounts. It requires a lot of time and patience, so outsourcing this to your virtual book-keeping team will save you time and money. Gifting your clients: Just like sending seasonal e-mails to delight your clients, you may send them gifts as well. Sending gifts is again a time consuming procedure. All the tasks, right from segmenting your list of clients for personalizing the gifts till purchasing the gifts and sending them to their respective addresses can easily be offloaded to a Virtual Assistant. Social media marketing: An interesting new social media campaign is a magnet of client attraction for this season. Creating Christmas themed videos for Facebook and YouTube, initiating a contest in twitter or Facebook, making an Instagram film and other similar initiatives will help further your brand goals. Outsourcing seasonal social media marketing to expert virtual assistants will improve the engagement your audience. Making travel itinerary: After working for a long year you need a break away from the routine and to spend quality time with your loved ones. But you can enjoy the vacation only after going through a host of boring errands like booking flight tickets, finding the right hotel, hunting a suitable travel agent and the like. These errands can also be very efficiently accomplished by virtual assistants. Outsourcing the above mentioned errands will free up your time to focus on your core business and wrap up the important things on time before you leave for your much awaited vacation. You will be able to strike a balance between your work and festivities, which in turn will help you enjoy longer and happier hours with your family.

Six Virtual Assistant services you must opt for a merrier Christmas Read More »

It’s time to make merry, decorate trees with mistletoes and stars, because Christmas is just around the corner. We all know that it is a busy season for Santa Clause and so it is for small business owners like you. It’s a shorter working month for you, above that you have to launch seasonal campaigns, host parties, dinners and manage all sorts of festivities. Santa manages his load of work with the assistance of his elves but what about you? Don’t worry, just like elves are there for Santa, there are Virtual assistants for you. Doing everything on your own in this festive season could be overwhelming. Now is a good time to outsource some of those piled up tasks to Virtual Assistants. It will decrease your stress; ensure quality deliverance along with timely accomplishment. In order to reap the best benefits of outsourcing you must outsource the right things. Here, we list out six such tasks you must outsource this holiday season to make the most of Virtual Assistance: Sending your clients Seasonal Greetings: Let your business clients know how much you value them -wish them a merry Christmas and a happy new year. You can easily outsource such seasonal greetings campaign to a virtual assistant. If outsourced to an expert e-mail marketer, it will run smoothly and efficiently without adding to your stress. Calendar maintenance and reminder setting: As already stated, Christmas season is loaded with festivities as well as business errands and it is likely to miss out on something important. Maintaining a calendar and setting reminders to accomplish everything on time will help you sail smoothly through the season. Outsourcing calendar maintenance will save time and make your schedule easier to manage. Settle all accounts: This season awaits a fresh New Year and it is good to start the New Year with a fresh financial account. Which means it is an ideal time to settle your payable and receivable accounts. It requires a lot of time and patience, so outsourcing this to your virtual book-keeping team will save you time and money. Gifting your clients: Just like sending seasonal e-mails to delight your clients, you may send them gifts as well. Sending gifts is again a time consuming procedure. All the tasks, right from segmenting your list of clients for personalizing the gifts till purchasing the gifts and sending them to their respective addresses can easily be offloaded to a Virtual Assistant. Social media marketing: An interesting new social media campaign is a magnet of client attraction for this season. Creating Christmas themed videos for Facebook and YouTube, initiating a contest in twitter or Facebook, making an Instagram film and other similar initiatives will help further your brand goals. Outsourcing seasonal social media marketing to expert virtual assistants will improve the engagement your audience. Making travel itinerary: After working for a long year you need a break away from the routine and to spend quality time with your loved ones. But you can enjoy the vacation only after going through a host of boring errands like booking flight tickets, finding the right hotel, hunting a suitable travel agent and the like. These errands can also be very efficiently accomplished by virtual assistants. Outsourcing the above mentioned errands will free up your time to focus on your core business and wrap up the important things on time before you leave for your much awaited vacation. You will be able to strike a balance between your work and festivities, which in turn will help you enjoy longer and happier hours with your family.

Gift your Loved ones the ‘Gift of Time’ this Christmas

Ho ho ho Christmas is just around the corner.   Christmas kindles our emotions. It is the season for expressing love and joy in the form of family get-togethers, merry making and gifting. In fact, gifting is one of the most enjoyed traditions of Christmas. The joy of gifting is in delighting our loved ones. So, gifts must actually satisfy the desires and needs of our loved ones. During Christmas, almost everyone yearns to spend more time with their families, take days off in dream destinations, revel with old friends, and decorate trees and all the more. More than anything else, the first thing we all need for fulfilling these wishes is time. Yes, ‘time’ makes for a unique gift this Christmas season. In order to make your Christmas merrier than usual GetFriday brings to you ‘the Gift of Time’. On the flip side, festive season also means a lot of chores, both business and personal. For businesses it means wrapping up all your pending accounts and initiating new marketing promotions/activities for the festive sales. While back at our home, our loved ones wait for us to be a part of in a string of festivities and parties. It’s a challenge to strike a balance between our work and personal life amid this load of activities until and unless someone assists us. GetFriday’s Gift of Time is a package of hours for which the recipient may avail Virtual Assistance for a range of errands from travel arrangements to data curation. So, while the Virtual Assistant handles all these errands, the recipient may enjoy these free hours. So, you may send this Gift of Time to your loved ones and help them offload the seasonal workload and thereby help them enjoy a carefree holiday season. Follow the steps below to gift time to your near and dear ones this Christmas: 1. Purchase a GetFriday digital gift card 2. Gift it to your loved ones or your friends/family. 3. Your loved one will outsource errands to a Virtual Assistant who will take care of everything. So while a Virtual Assistant takes care of these chores, your loved one may use his/her freed up time to travel, revel and focus on things that are more important for making a merrier Christmas.

Gift your Loved ones the ‘Gift of Time’ this Christmas Read More »

Ho ho ho Christmas is just around the corner.   Christmas kindles our emotions. It is the season for expressing love and joy in the form of family get-togethers, merry making and gifting. In fact, gifting is one of the most enjoyed traditions of Christmas. The joy of gifting is in delighting our loved ones. So, gifts must actually satisfy the desires and needs of our loved ones. During Christmas, almost everyone yearns to spend more time with their families, take days off in dream destinations, revel with old friends, and decorate trees and all the more. More than anything else, the first thing we all need for fulfilling these wishes is time. Yes, ‘time’ makes for a unique gift this Christmas season. In order to make your Christmas merrier than usual GetFriday brings to you ‘the Gift of Time’. On the flip side, festive season also means a lot of chores, both business and personal. For businesses it means wrapping up all your pending accounts and initiating new marketing promotions/activities for the festive sales. While back at our home, our loved ones wait for us to be a part of in a string of festivities and parties. It’s a challenge to strike a balance between our work and personal life amid this load of activities until and unless someone assists us. GetFriday’s Gift of Time is a package of hours for which the recipient may avail Virtual Assistance for a range of errands from travel arrangements to data curation. So, while the Virtual Assistant handles all these errands, the recipient may enjoy these free hours. So, you may send this Gift of Time to your loved ones and help them offload the seasonal workload and thereby help them enjoy a carefree holiday season. Follow the steps below to gift time to your near and dear ones this Christmas: 1. Purchase a GetFriday digital gift card 2. Gift it to your loved ones or your friends/family. 3. Your loved one will outsource errands to a Virtual Assistant who will take care of everything. So while a Virtual Assistant takes care of these chores, your loved one may use his/her freed up time to travel, revel and focus on things that are more important for making a merrier Christmas.

Quickbooks and Virtual Assistance – a golden duo for book-keeping

The journey of thousand miles begins with one step – Lao Tzu.   Ben the owner of a startup in Australia, was overwhelmed by his business errands. Owning a startup in a competitive business environment and growing his business was in itself a challenge. On top of that, handling and tracking expenses added to his worries. He knew, the solution was in efficient book-keeping but he lacked resources for the same. So he decided to outsource one of his book-keeping tasks to GetFriday. He started with outsourcing monthly invoice maintenance which included updating bills from vendors and invoice for the clients. This was his first step towards success and it worked out wonderfully. GetFriday’s team of QuickBooks experts created Ben’s QuickBooks account which was linked to contact details of all his clients and vendors. They customized invoices with ‘create invoice’ feature of QuickBooks. Apart from customizing invoices, Ben’s Virtual Assistance team scheduled, tracked and sent invoices to his clients. All these activities of invoicing were accomplished through QuickBooks’s built-in features. Just like they managed invoicing, GetFriday team also updated Ben’s bills from vendors in an accurate and timely manner. Thus with QuickBooks and virtual assistance, Ben’s accounting became simpler and efficient. After he got comfortable with GetFriday’s assistance, Ben started outsourcing the task of budget tracking. For this, Ben’s Virtual Assistants matched and verified his income and expense accounts. This freed his accounts from errors and kept his finances safe. Thus, Ben got a better control over his expenses. By now, GetFriday Assistants had won Ben’s trust and he outsourced the task of reconciling his expenses with his bank statements. As a direct result of outsourcing, finances turned out to be the most efficiently managed function of his business. He did not have to invest extra resources for making financial reports as it was auto generated by his QuickBooks account. QuickBooks‘s report generation feature yielded financial details of various aspects whether it be transaction details or a customer report. Ben could now understand his financial loopholes and opportunities. With all these insights, he was able to focus on realizing his objectives. Just like Ben, many other small-business owners crave for more efficient solutions for managing their finances. QuickBooks is a leading software for managing the accounts of small business. It comes with many features to simplify the accounting processes but its benefits are best seen with expert handling. Ben’s decision of outsourcing to GetFriday paid him in the long run, because GetFriday boasts of a team of QuickBooks experts. GetFriday’s QuickBooks team’s expertize includes: Account maintenance: Creating and sending invoices to customers based on requirement. Updating customer payments Sending weekly pending invoices to clients based on follow up Matching bank transactions with invoices Reconciliation of customer, vendor and stock accounts: It involves matching of all balances of band and books of accounts. Reporting and Analyzing financial statements: Analyzing monthly, quarterly and annual comparison report. Preparing customized reports For small business owners, it is often an expensive affair to hire and employ an expert bookkeeping team in-house. Even if he/she is enough rich to employ an in-house team, it is definitely a leaner choice to outsource bookkeeping to Virtual Assistants. There are two types of Quickbooks accounts viz, ‘the online account’ and ‘the desktop account’. The online account is a real time account and it can be availed by paying a monthly fee. The desktop account is accessible only when the account manager shares the details with an authorized person and one can use a desktop account with installed payments. So, one may avail any of these QuickBooks accounts as per one’s convenience. One advantage of using Quickbooks is that is customizable. It has customized industry specific packages for contractors, retailers, health care and non-profit organizations. Above that, when virtual assistants manages your Quickbooks accounts, your accounting overheads are reduced. Thus, a Quickbooks’ account managed by a Virtual Assistant makes book-keeping easier and efficient for small businesses.

Quickbooks and Virtual Assistance – a golden duo for book-keeping Read More »

The journey of thousand miles begins with one step – Lao Tzu.   Ben the owner of a startup in Australia, was overwhelmed by his business errands. Owning a startup in a competitive business environment and growing his business was in itself a challenge. On top of that, handling and tracking expenses added to his worries. He knew, the solution was in efficient book-keeping but he lacked resources for the same. So he decided to outsource one of his book-keeping tasks to GetFriday. He started with outsourcing monthly invoice maintenance which included updating bills from vendors and invoice for the clients. This was his first step towards success and it worked out wonderfully. GetFriday’s team of QuickBooks experts created Ben’s QuickBooks account which was linked to contact details of all his clients and vendors. They customized invoices with ‘create invoice’ feature of QuickBooks. Apart from customizing invoices, Ben’s Virtual Assistance team scheduled, tracked and sent invoices to his clients. All these activities of invoicing were accomplished through QuickBooks’s built-in features. Just like they managed invoicing, GetFriday team also updated Ben’s bills from vendors in an accurate and timely manner. Thus with QuickBooks and virtual assistance, Ben’s accounting became simpler and efficient. After he got comfortable with GetFriday’s assistance, Ben started outsourcing the task of budget tracking. For this, Ben’s Virtual Assistants matched and verified his income and expense accounts. This freed his accounts from errors and kept his finances safe. Thus, Ben got a better control over his expenses. By now, GetFriday Assistants had won Ben’s trust and he outsourced the task of reconciling his expenses with his bank statements. As a direct result of outsourcing, finances turned out to be the most efficiently managed function of his business. He did not have to invest extra resources for making financial reports as it was auto generated by his QuickBooks account. QuickBooks‘s report generation feature yielded financial details of various aspects whether it be transaction details or a customer report. Ben could now understand his financial loopholes and opportunities. With all these insights, he was able to focus on realizing his objectives. Just like Ben, many other small-business owners crave for more efficient solutions for managing their finances. QuickBooks is a leading software for managing the accounts of small business. It comes with many features to simplify the accounting processes but its benefits are best seen with expert handling. Ben’s decision of outsourcing to GetFriday paid him in the long run, because GetFriday boasts of a team of QuickBooks experts. GetFriday’s QuickBooks team’s expertize includes: Account maintenance: Creating and sending invoices to customers based on requirement. Updating customer payments Sending weekly pending invoices to clients based on follow up Matching bank transactions with invoices Reconciliation of customer, vendor and stock accounts: It involves matching of all balances of band and books of accounts. Reporting and Analyzing financial statements: Analyzing monthly, quarterly and annual comparison report. Preparing customized reports For small business owners, it is often an expensive affair to hire and employ an expert bookkeeping team in-house. Even if he/she is enough rich to employ an in-house team, it is definitely a leaner choice to outsource bookkeeping to Virtual Assistants. There are two types of Quickbooks accounts viz, ‘the online account’ and ‘the desktop account’. The online account is a real time account and it can be availed by paying a monthly fee. The desktop account is accessible only when the account manager shares the details with an authorized person and one can use a desktop account with installed payments. So, one may avail any of these QuickBooks accounts as per one’s convenience. One advantage of using Quickbooks is that is customizable. It has customized industry specific packages for contractors, retailers, health care and non-profit organizations. Above that, when virtual assistants manages your Quickbooks accounts, your accounting overheads are reduced. Thus, a Quickbooks’ account managed by a Virtual Assistant makes book-keeping easier and efficient for small businesses.

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.

Give your business a winning edge with effective content marketing strategy

Content marketing is an aspect of marketing which focuses on creating, distributing and analyzing content for target audience. In fact, content marketing is a cyclic process which includes the broad steps of content creation, content distribution, evaluation, analysis and content optimization. Nowadays content marketing is usually driven online but it is not limited to online activities. Billboard ads, TV ads, FM ads, jingles and the like are all various forms of content and their effects are augmented with content marketing. Content marketing is usually objectified to draw in more customers but nowadays the use of content has moved beyond merely attracting prospects. Nowadays content marketing is used even for sales conversion and closing. Thus, content marketing has evolved to be a broad field with deep influence in multiple aspects of the overall marketing. Content is an umbrella word with its significance in every step of marketing, whether it is in introducing a new brand in the market or closing sales with a customer of the brand. In fact, the process of fan building for a brand starts with the making of good content. Thus, content is important in every step of a marketing process and so is content marketing. A mere content marketing is not enough to fetch the best benefits. The results you reap from your content marketing depend on the quality of your content marketing. But it is also very important to strategize the marketing of the generated content. A good way to begin this would be to align it with the fundamentals of your business – the basic objectives of the business, the customer value proposition, brand value et al. Strategizing content marketing is an expansive term to be explained in this blog. A lot depends on the present state of your business, its target audience, it short and long term goals. So, content marketing strategies would differ according to these factors. Yet, a few standard rules must be followed by every content marketer and they are stated as below. The entire content marketing includes broadly the steps of creation, distribution, evaluation and analysis. Each of these steps must be fortified with some rules as follows: Rules for the making of great content: Understand your target audience: Understand your target audience in terms of their lifestyle, behavior, demographics and similar relevant parameters. Once you understand your target audience, analyze and list out their needs and how they react to their needs, what information they seek in regards to their needs and what information might excite them. Make your content easily understandable: Make your content easily understandable for your audience by avoiding jargons, using a reader friendly language, including infographics, etc. Enrich your content with information: Customize your content with relevant information by understanding where your audiences stand in the buyer’s journey. This will help to create useful content. For instance, if your audience is in the state of comparing you with your competitors for making the purchase decision your content must assist the decision making by reflecting how your service or product is differentiated from your competitors. And if your audience is interested in making the purchase, make it easier by using simple easy to navigate payment options and call to action buttons. Tips for content distribution: Reflect and decide: As you start with your content distribution you must reflect upon the following questions: Why do you want your audience to use your content? Where do your audiences mostly consume content? How frequently do they use content? The answers of these questions will set the guidelines for your content distribution. For instance, if you want your content to boost engagement and talk about your brand, a social media platform like Facebook is a good bet for you. Otherwise, if you want a large reach, you should opt for a paid search advertising network. If you want high returns with reach to niche audience, you should stress on SEO or organic marketing of your content in a media like LinkedIn. Optimize for Social Media: Optimize your social media distribution strategy by posting your content at the optimum frequency, using share buttons, using visuals, sharing bite-sized succinct and attractive content. Distribute your content uniformly: You may distribute your content in multiple media yet there must be a uniformity of your content throughout all media. The essence of your content like the value proposition, unique selling proposition should be the same in all the media. It will enhance your brand equity in your audiences. Measuring ROI: The right parameters reflect right ROI: If you want to measure the success of your content marketing, select the right parameters to measure it. Selection of parameters for measuring ROI depends on your content marketing objectives. If your want more fans for your brand then engagement rate and rate of shares found are two parameters which will give you the right ROI. Analyze and improve: Once you measure ROI for your content marketing, start analyzing to close the gaps and opportunities. Make a SWOT matrix and utilize the scope for improvement. This way, you will step up your content marketing strategy towards perfection at every cycle. The above discussed rules of content will help you meet the expectations of your audience, it enhances the success of your business. Content marketing is often a time consuming task. It requires regularity, dedication and most importantly professionalism. Specially, if you are already occupied with other tasks, content might become an unmanageable burden for you. A worthier way of managing content marketing is to outsource it to content expert virtual assistants, may be a content expert from GetFriday.

Give your business a winning edge with effective content marketing strategy Read More »

Content marketing is an aspect of marketing which focuses on creating, distributing and analyzing content for target audience. In fact, content marketing is a cyclic process which includes the broad steps of content creation, content distribution, evaluation, analysis and content optimization. Nowadays content marketing is usually driven online but it is not limited to online activities. Billboard ads, TV ads, FM ads, jingles and the like are all various forms of content and their effects are augmented with content marketing. Content marketing is usually objectified to draw in more customers but nowadays the use of content has moved beyond merely attracting prospects. Nowadays content marketing is used even for sales conversion and closing. Thus, content marketing has evolved to be a broad field with deep influence in multiple aspects of the overall marketing. Content is an umbrella word with its significance in every step of marketing, whether it is in introducing a new brand in the market or closing sales with a customer of the brand. In fact, the process of fan building for a brand starts with the making of good content. Thus, content is important in every step of a marketing process and so is content marketing. A mere content marketing is not enough to fetch the best benefits. The results you reap from your content marketing depend on the quality of your content marketing. But it is also very important to strategize the marketing of the generated content. A good way to begin this would be to align it with the fundamentals of your business – the basic objectives of the business, the customer value proposition, brand value et al. Strategizing content marketing is an expansive term to be explained in this blog. A lot depends on the present state of your business, its target audience, it short and long term goals. So, content marketing strategies would differ according to these factors. Yet, a few standard rules must be followed by every content marketer and they are stated as below. The entire content marketing includes broadly the steps of creation, distribution, evaluation and analysis. Each of these steps must be fortified with some rules as follows: Rules for the making of great content: Understand your target audience: Understand your target audience in terms of their lifestyle, behavior, demographics and similar relevant parameters. Once you understand your target audience, analyze and list out their needs and how they react to their needs, what information they seek in regards to their needs and what information might excite them. Make your content easily understandable: Make your content easily understandable for your audience by avoiding jargons, using a reader friendly language, including infographics, etc. Enrich your content with information: Customize your content with relevant information by understanding where your audiences stand in the buyer’s journey. This will help to create useful content. For instance, if your audience is in the state of comparing you with your competitors for making the purchase decision your content must assist the decision making by reflecting how your service or product is differentiated from your competitors. And if your audience is interested in making the purchase, make it easier by using simple easy to navigate payment options and call to action buttons. Tips for content distribution: Reflect and decide: As you start with your content distribution you must reflect upon the following questions: Why do you want your audience to use your content? Where do your audiences mostly consume content? How frequently do they use content? The answers of these questions will set the guidelines for your content distribution. For instance, if you want your content to boost engagement and talk about your brand, a social media platform like Facebook is a good bet for you. Otherwise, if you want a large reach, you should opt for a paid search advertising network. If you want high returns with reach to niche audience, you should stress on SEO or organic marketing of your content in a media like LinkedIn. Optimize for Social Media: Optimize your social media distribution strategy by posting your content at the optimum frequency, using share buttons, using visuals, sharing bite-sized succinct and attractive content. Distribute your content uniformly: You may distribute your content in multiple media yet there must be a uniformity of your content throughout all media. The essence of your content like the value proposition, unique selling proposition should be the same in all the media. It will enhance your brand equity in your audiences. Measuring ROI: The right parameters reflect right ROI: If you want to measure the success of your content marketing, select the right parameters to measure it. Selection of parameters for measuring ROI depends on your content marketing objectives. If your want more fans for your brand then engagement rate and rate of shares found are two parameters which will give you the right ROI. Analyze and improve: Once you measure ROI for your content marketing, start analyzing to close the gaps and opportunities. Make a SWOT matrix and utilize the scope for improvement. This way, you will step up your content marketing strategy towards perfection at every cycle. The above discussed rules of content will help you meet the expectations of your audience, it enhances the success of your business. Content marketing is often a time consuming task. It requires regularity, dedication and most importantly professionalism. Specially, if you are already occupied with other tasks, content might become an unmanageable burden for you. A worthier way of managing content marketing is to outsource it to content expert virtual assistants, may be a content expert from GetFriday.

Tips for Successful E-mail Marketing

If the title of this blog fascinated you, you must be an e-mail marketer. As you start your e-mail marketing you must reconcile the varied experiences invoked by e-mails – your inbox brimming with numerous mails every morning, finding useful information from an unexpected yet valuable mail, getting bombarded by spam e-mails, your delight at the reception of a long awaited mail and the like. In simple words, your e-mails are an intimate part of your daily life. E-mails are a mode of daily communication for over billions across the world Over 144 billion e-mails are sent daily all over the internet. In an era of versatile communication channels, e-mail remains one of the choicest channels of marketing communication all the time. There are a number of reasons behind this lasting popularity of e-mails. A few of them are: E-mails have a large reach. E-mails reach the recipients at their individual level. E-mails allow you a speedy communication at a lesser price. No wonder, E-mail is an expedient tool for marketers. E-mail marketing, if supported by an effective strategy, might drive the fortune of your business. Here, we sort out some useful tips to make your e-mail marketing all the more effective: Segment your e-mail recipients: As you start your e-mail marketing journey, you must segment your recipients. Segmenting is a very systematic process, which may be based on different parameters like demographics, geographic or psychological. Once you segment your audience in a systematic manner you will be able to understand many other aspects like at what frequency you must send your e-mails to different segments, tone of writing a message for striking the interest of a segment and the like. This way you will be able to tailor customized e-mails for each segment and address the specific needs of each segment. This improves your e-mail open rate. Reach your recipients at their individual level: Taking a step forward on segmentation as discussed above, marketers may create mails to reach recipients at their individual level. In fact, customizing mails is an art reinforced by segmentation. E-mails are an excellent mode of one- to-one communication, so make the recipient feel special by addressing his/her specific needs. Segmenting helps you in understanding the specific behavior, emotions and lifestyle of your audience and thus write unique e-mails to each segment of your audience. Make your e-mails mobile friendly: Survey shows that 64% of American e-mail users delete their mails if they are not mobile friendly. So, making your e-mails mobile friendly is an obligation to avoid high bounce rate. Generate a pleasurable experience for your audience by sending them mobile friendly e-mails i.e. write crisp messages suiting mobile screens, include visuals, include call to action points etc. Mobile screens occupy audience attention for most of the time. Hence customizing e-mails for mobile phones will improve the open rate as the recipient will be able to check your e-mail immediately. Well Written Subject Lines: Subject lines are the first impression makers of your e-mail. A well written subject line intrigues your readers and motivates them to open and read the entire mail. A well- written subject usually reflects the essence of your mail in a short one-liner. Good subject lines are usually limited to 50 characters. It is not a hard bound limit but try to keep your subject line as short as possible. Incentivize e-mail subscription in social media: Incentivizing e-mail subscription will help to draw in new e-mail subscribers and increases the number of your prospects. It will also improve the open rate of your mails. Sharing sign-up forms, giving discounts on subscription, winning subscribers with sweepstakes are a few ways to use social media for adding subscribers. Develop and maintain an e-mail list: You must own and maintain an e-mail list which includes all the people who showed interest in your marketing initiatives and who are likely to open and read your mails. You must update the e-mail list from time to time with systematic analysis of email statistics, open rates, engagement rates, active subscribers, new prospects, new segments and the like. A systematic execution of e-mail marketing will enhance your customer loyalty and value. Keeping your fans updated about your brand will increase your brand value and recognition amongst your fans. It will also add new fans and improve the success rate of your business. The rewards of e-mail marketing are remarkable but it needs a string of regular activities to drive successful e- mail marketing. If you are already occupied with other marketing activities you might not have enough time for e-mail marketing. A cost effective option for busy marketers is to outsource e-mail marketing to virtual assistants. Errands like keeping and maintaining e-mail list, research and segmentation, sending regular mails are easily and efficiently handled by Virtual assistants.

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If the title of this blog fascinated you, you must be an e-mail marketer. As you start your e-mail marketing you must reconcile the varied experiences invoked by e-mails – your inbox brimming with numerous mails every morning, finding useful information from an unexpected yet valuable mail, getting bombarded by spam e-mails, your delight at the reception of a long awaited mail and the like. In simple words, your e-mails are an intimate part of your daily life. E-mails are a mode of daily communication for over billions across the world Over 144 billion e-mails are sent daily all over the internet. In an era of versatile communication channels, e-mail remains one of the choicest channels of marketing communication all the time. There are a number of reasons behind this lasting popularity of e-mails. A few of them are: E-mails have a large reach. E-mails reach the recipients at their individual level. E-mails allow you a speedy communication at a lesser price. No wonder, E-mail is an expedient tool for marketers. E-mail marketing, if supported by an effective strategy, might drive the fortune of your business. Here, we sort out some useful tips to make your e-mail marketing all the more effective: Segment your e-mail recipients: As you start your e-mail marketing journey, you must segment your recipients. Segmenting is a very systematic process, which may be based on different parameters like demographics, geographic or psychological. Once you segment your audience in a systematic manner you will be able to understand many other aspects like at what frequency you must send your e-mails to different segments, tone of writing a message for striking the interest of a segment and the like. This way you will be able to tailor customized e-mails for each segment and address the specific needs of each segment. This improves your e-mail open rate. Reach your recipients at their individual level: Taking a step forward on segmentation as discussed above, marketers may create mails to reach recipients at their individual level. In fact, customizing mails is an art reinforced by segmentation. E-mails are an excellent mode of one- to-one communication, so make the recipient feel special by addressing his/her specific needs. Segmenting helps you in understanding the specific behavior, emotions and lifestyle of your audience and thus write unique e-mails to each segment of your audience. Make your e-mails mobile friendly: Survey shows that 64% of American e-mail users delete their mails if they are not mobile friendly. So, making your e-mails mobile friendly is an obligation to avoid high bounce rate. Generate a pleasurable experience for your audience by sending them mobile friendly e-mails i.e. write crisp messages suiting mobile screens, include visuals, include call to action points etc. Mobile screens occupy audience attention for most of the time. Hence customizing e-mails for mobile phones will improve the open rate as the recipient will be able to check your e-mail immediately. Well Written Subject Lines: Subject lines are the first impression makers of your e-mail. A well written subject line intrigues your readers and motivates them to open and read the entire mail. A well- written subject usually reflects the essence of your mail in a short one-liner. Good subject lines are usually limited to 50 characters. It is not a hard bound limit but try to keep your subject line as short as possible. Incentivize e-mail subscription in social media: Incentivizing e-mail subscription will help to draw in new e-mail subscribers and increases the number of your prospects. It will also improve the open rate of your mails. Sharing sign-up forms, giving discounts on subscription, winning subscribers with sweepstakes are a few ways to use social media for adding subscribers. Develop and maintain an e-mail list: You must own and maintain an e-mail list which includes all the people who showed interest in your marketing initiatives and who are likely to open and read your mails. You must update the e-mail list from time to time with systematic analysis of email statistics, open rates, engagement rates, active subscribers, new prospects, new segments and the like. A systematic execution of e-mail marketing will enhance your customer loyalty and value. Keeping your fans updated about your brand will increase your brand value and recognition amongst your fans. It will also add new fans and improve the success rate of your business. The rewards of e-mail marketing are remarkable but it needs a string of regular activities to drive successful e- mail marketing. If you are already occupied with other marketing activities you might not have enough time for e-mail marketing. A cost effective option for busy marketers is to outsource e-mail marketing to virtual assistants. Errands like keeping and maintaining e-mail list, research and segmentation, sending regular mails are easily and efficiently handled by Virtual assistants.

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