outsourcing for small businesses

Barnacle SEO – A key to a winning SEO marketing

If you are an SEO marketer, this phrase, ‘A key to a winning SEO strategy’, must have spontaneously reminded you of keyword marketing, website restructuring, URL structuring, link building, back-linking and the like. In fact, SEO is a mixture of analytical and creative practices and each of these is important to get the benefits of SEO. The importance of each of the SEO practices, be it keyword research or link-building, depends significantly on the algorithm of the search engine you select for marketing. So, a good SEO strategy is implementation of SEO practices according to their relevance. It’s just like a master-chef cooking that perfect recipe using the right ingredients in the right proportions. There are some SEO practices which have not received their due importance from search engine marketers. One of them is Barnacle SEO. If you are a marketer who emphasizes on local search marketing then Barnacle SEO is an important aspect that cannot be overseen. You might be wondering what this Barnacle SEO is all about. What is Barnacle SEO? Barnacle SEO is inspired by the nature of barnacles. A barnacle is a marine creature with a hard shell which sticks permanently to rocks or other huge marine animals like whales. So the motive of a Barnacle SEO is – “attaching oneself to a large fixed object and waiting for the customers to float by in the current”. Barnacle SEO leverages on earning reviews and listings in a high ranking directory or review site. Essentials of Barnacle SEO implementation: Select and prioritize your review sites: First, use the right keywords and track all the top-ranking review sites and directories in the result page. For instance, if your business is about Eco Resorts, then type keywords such as Eco Resorts or Eco Tourism, or Eco Resort in Bangkok considering if your Resort is in Bangkok. Your Search Engine Result page will give you a number of reputed review sites like Tripadvisor and Expedia. You must prioritize reputed sites to get reviews. In fact, a listing in a standard review site will earn you more clicks than an individual website. Build good profiles in reputed sites: Make your profile as attractive as possible in the directory or the review site. Include all basic information details sought by searchers like your business name, address, phone number, website and e-mail. Also include pictures of your business in review sites. Link Building: In order to rank well in a SERP, earn links to your reviews and listings. Link it from your own website as well as other locally oriented websites like charities, Chambers of Commerce and the like. Advantages of Barnacle SEO: Some of the advantages of Barnacle SEO are Brand Equity building: Just imagine you are looking for a family restaurant in your town. You will obviously be interested in a restaurant with a 5 star rating over another with a 3 star rating. Customer ratings are also an important factor considered by Google algorithms for determining a Google rank. Moreover, potential customers are more likely to take reviews published on a reputed site more seriously. Right answer to right audience: Just Getting listed in reputed local directories like Yellow Pages will connect with the right audiences looking for your service or product. This bridges the usual disconnect between the information on your website and your searchers. Mobile friendly experience: Barnacle SEO emphasizes on listings and reviews in reputed sites. The loading time of such sites is much faster than regular websites. These sites are friendly for information extraction and browsing. Reviews are not the only factors for getting better ranking. The recent updates in Google algorithm are increasingly emphasizing on quality and quantity of reviews. The extent of influence of reviews also depends on the industry of your business. Some industries are more influenced by reviews. For instance, the tourism industry and the entertainment industry are more likely to be influenced by user reviews because people seek peer recommendations before opting for these services and products. Barnacle SEO is often a time consuming task. Its takes a lot of effort to find reputed sites and create good content to be listed. Some of these activities related to Barnacle SEO are better outsourced to a SEO expert assistant. It is inexpensive as well as more efficient.

Barnacle SEO – A key to a winning SEO marketing Read More »

If you are an SEO marketer, this phrase, ‘A key to a winning SEO strategy’, must have spontaneously reminded you of keyword marketing, website restructuring, URL structuring, link building, back-linking and the like. In fact, SEO is a mixture of analytical and creative practices and each of these is important to get the benefits of SEO. The importance of each of the SEO practices, be it keyword research or link-building, depends significantly on the algorithm of the search engine you select for marketing. So, a good SEO strategy is implementation of SEO practices according to their relevance. It’s just like a master-chef cooking that perfect recipe using the right ingredients in the right proportions. There are some SEO practices which have not received their due importance from search engine marketers. One of them is Barnacle SEO. If you are a marketer who emphasizes on local search marketing then Barnacle SEO is an important aspect that cannot be overseen. You might be wondering what this Barnacle SEO is all about. What is Barnacle SEO? Barnacle SEO is inspired by the nature of barnacles. A barnacle is a marine creature with a hard shell which sticks permanently to rocks or other huge marine animals like whales. So the motive of a Barnacle SEO is – “attaching oneself to a large fixed object and waiting for the customers to float by in the current”. Barnacle SEO leverages on earning reviews and listings in a high ranking directory or review site. Essentials of Barnacle SEO implementation: Select and prioritize your review sites: First, use the right keywords and track all the top-ranking review sites and directories in the result page. For instance, if your business is about Eco Resorts, then type keywords such as Eco Resorts or Eco Tourism, or Eco Resort in Bangkok considering if your Resort is in Bangkok. Your Search Engine Result page will give you a number of reputed review sites like Tripadvisor and Expedia. You must prioritize reputed sites to get reviews. In fact, a listing in a standard review site will earn you more clicks than an individual website. Build good profiles in reputed sites: Make your profile as attractive as possible in the directory or the review site. Include all basic information details sought by searchers like your business name, address, phone number, website and e-mail. Also include pictures of your business in review sites. Link Building: In order to rank well in a SERP, earn links to your reviews and listings. Link it from your own website as well as other locally oriented websites like charities, Chambers of Commerce and the like. Advantages of Barnacle SEO: Some of the advantages of Barnacle SEO are Brand Equity building: Just imagine you are looking for a family restaurant in your town. You will obviously be interested in a restaurant with a 5 star rating over another with a 3 star rating. Customer ratings are also an important factor considered by Google algorithms for determining a Google rank. Moreover, potential customers are more likely to take reviews published on a reputed site more seriously. Right answer to right audience: Just Getting listed in reputed local directories like Yellow Pages will connect with the right audiences looking for your service or product. This bridges the usual disconnect between the information on your website and your searchers. Mobile friendly experience: Barnacle SEO emphasizes on listings and reviews in reputed sites. The loading time of such sites is much faster than regular websites. These sites are friendly for information extraction and browsing. Reviews are not the only factors for getting better ranking. The recent updates in Google algorithm are increasingly emphasizing on quality and quantity of reviews. The extent of influence of reviews also depends on the industry of your business. Some industries are more influenced by reviews. For instance, the tourism industry and the entertainment industry are more likely to be influenced by user reviews because people seek peer recommendations before opting for these services and products. Barnacle SEO is often a time consuming task. Its takes a lot of effort to find reputed sites and create good content to be listed. Some of these activities related to Barnacle SEO are better outsourced to a SEO expert assistant. It is inexpensive as well as more efficient.

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.

Tips for Successful E-mail Marketing Read More »

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.

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.

Tips to steer your small business with an e-book

An intelligent marketer strives to create awareness, educate and aid in the decision making of his customers. These days, marketers lure their target segment using an array of nifty digital tools. An important one amongst them is the E-book. An e-book augments a small business’s entry into the market and reinforces its identity from the very beginning. Every small-business marketer will benefit if he/she uses E-books prudently to further the business. An e-book has benefits for both, the customers as well as the marketers. It is the source of maximum information for customers at minimum cost for marketers. So, e-books are value marketing in the true sense. So, your E-book must be designed strategically to appeal to a large number of visitors and close your business with a majority of them. Before embarking on the design of your E-book, you should reflect upon the objectives of your marketing and relate them to your e-book. This will further decide the content of the e-book, the tone and style of the content and the like. Such prudence in the making of an e-book will reinforce your marketing strategies and align them with the same. So, if you are a small business marketer and you are going to launch an e-book, take a look at the following tips on e-book marketing. They will enhance the benefits you harvest from your e-book. Tailor your e-book for your right audience: Your e-book should meet the expectation of your target audience. They should get the exact information they are seeking and further it should entice them to choose your products or services over your competitor’s. Get good book-reviews for your e-book: Good book reviews increase the merit of your book. They corroborate the faith of your readers in your book and entice them to read it. Get reviews from reputed personalities and industry experts. It will establish and affirm your expertise in your business. Delight your readers by gifting: Delight your readers by gifting your e-book as a prize. You may decide the winner by holding an engaging contest or any other pull strategy like e-mail sweepstake. It’s a good bait. Send e-mail scripts of your e-book to relevant customers: Send best liners and e-mails to the relevant customers and prospects. By doing this, you will make your e-book an attractive portal which invites qualified prospects. Get links from reputed link sharing social websites: Getting your link shared by a reputed social network is useful to trigger the word of mouse. But be mindful to respect the rules of such reputed social sites. Take care to state a few key insights from your book briefly without being over promotional. Address the buyers from the perspective of their journey: Your e-book should help close sales with your buyers. So, it should be linked to your landing pages. You e-book’s content should address the whole journey of your buyers. It should be informative, differentiating your business from your competitors by stating facts and figures, helping your buyer to make the decision by giving details of the buying procedure. The above tips of e-book marketing will add value to your marketing efforts and help you reap good results. So if you are a passionate digital marketer, you must steer your business to success by the right usage of an e-book. In fact, there are no hurdles for e-book marketing. If you are losing out on time for e-book marketing, you have a smart option to outsource the same. Or if you want an expert’s advice on e-book marketing, the same might be availed through outsourcing. Right from sending e-mail scripts to content writing, there are virtual experts to handle everything about e-book marketing. One stop Virtual Assistance service providers like GetFriday are one of your best bets in this regard. So, get started with your e-book marketing from today!

Tips to steer your small business with an e-book Read More »

An intelligent marketer strives to create awareness, educate and aid in the decision making of his customers. These days, marketers lure their target segment using an array of nifty digital tools. An important one amongst them is the E-book. An e-book augments a small business’s entry into the market and reinforces its identity from the very beginning. Every small-business marketer will benefit if he/she uses E-books prudently to further the business. An e-book has benefits for both, the customers as well as the marketers. It is the source of maximum information for customers at minimum cost for marketers. So, e-books are value marketing in the true sense. So, your E-book must be designed strategically to appeal to a large number of visitors and close your business with a majority of them. Before embarking on the design of your E-book, you should reflect upon the objectives of your marketing and relate them to your e-book. This will further decide the content of the e-book, the tone and style of the content and the like. Such prudence in the making of an e-book will reinforce your marketing strategies and align them with the same. So, if you are a small business marketer and you are going to launch an e-book, take a look at the following tips on e-book marketing. They will enhance the benefits you harvest from your e-book. Tailor your e-book for your right audience: Your e-book should meet the expectation of your target audience. They should get the exact information they are seeking and further it should entice them to choose your products or services over your competitor’s. Get good book-reviews for your e-book: Good book reviews increase the merit of your book. They corroborate the faith of your readers in your book and entice them to read it. Get reviews from reputed personalities and industry experts. It will establish and affirm your expertise in your business. Delight your readers by gifting: Delight your readers by gifting your e-book as a prize. You may decide the winner by holding an engaging contest or any other pull strategy like e-mail sweepstake. It’s a good bait. Send e-mail scripts of your e-book to relevant customers: Send best liners and e-mails to the relevant customers and prospects. By doing this, you will make your e-book an attractive portal which invites qualified prospects. Get links from reputed link sharing social websites: Getting your link shared by a reputed social network is useful to trigger the word of mouse. But be mindful to respect the rules of such reputed social sites. Take care to state a few key insights from your book briefly without being over promotional. Address the buyers from the perspective of their journey: Your e-book should help close sales with your buyers. So, it should be linked to your landing pages. You e-book’s content should address the whole journey of your buyers. It should be informative, differentiating your business from your competitors by stating facts and figures, helping your buyer to make the decision by giving details of the buying procedure. The above tips of e-book marketing will add value to your marketing efforts and help you reap good results. So if you are a passionate digital marketer, you must steer your business to success by the right usage of an e-book. In fact, there are no hurdles for e-book marketing. If you are losing out on time for e-book marketing, you have a smart option to outsource the same. Or if you want an expert’s advice on e-book marketing, the same might be availed through outsourcing. Right from sending e-mail scripts to content writing, there are virtual experts to handle everything about e-book marketing. One stop Virtual Assistance service providers like GetFriday are one of your best bets in this regard. So, get started with your e-book marketing from today!

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!

Top tips to build your online business brand with your Virtual Assistant

When you build your online brand, you create your business signature in terms of your company name, the product or service you offer, your brand logo, the jingle, the tagline etc. Your online brand bolsters your business identity and thus your business becomes more worthwhile in the market. The otherwise naive crowd then starts to visit your website, clicks through your pages, likes and reacts to your social media promotions, and start engaging with your content present online. Gradually your brand buzz turns on. This is how doing right the online branding earns you wonder. However, online branding in itself is a challenging process. Before going to build your business brand, you need to realize the essence of your brand and the risks associated with it. Your online brand speaks for your business. So, before building it, get into the crux of your business, understand it, and determine what impression you want to create for your business. Since your online brand is going to create your business impression in the market, you must ascertain that your brand is strongly likable. The brand elements like logo, name, jingle and tagline should be relevant to your business and attractive enough to make your customers and prospects feel happy whenever they approach your brand. Your brand is going to build the trust amongst your clients; your brand is a promise of the value offered to your clients. In long run it determines whether your clients will like to avail services from you. So, the strength of your online brand determines your revenues and profits. Your brand helps you to stand out of the competition. It convinces your prospects that your service/product is the best out of all the options they can choose from. Though building a strong brand fetches you brownies, it’s not an easy process. You, as a small business owner or an entrepreneur are tied in the limit of resources, whether it is money, people or time. In addition, you are overwhelmed with too many responsibilities to handle. You need to manage somehow everything on your own. Hiring full time experts to help you with branding is too expensive. Despite of all these limitations you need expert inputs to fetch expected returns on your marketing investments. So the best solution is to hire an expert virtual assistant and involve him or her in the brand building process. There are Virtual Assistant service providers that have the knack of marketing and drive your marketing efforts with rich inputs. They will help you to reap the expected returns on your marketing investments. Before hiring a Virtual Assistant to help you in your marketing efforts, you should have some nifty tips to avail the best results of hiring a Virtual assistant. Here are some tips to avail the best out of Virtual Assistance for your brand building. Let your Virtual Assistant be a part of your business: Your Virtual Assistant is your remote assistant, who will serve you without his/ her physical presence in your organization. Your brand is the reflection of your business, its culture and objectives. So your Virtual Assistant should be familiar to these very important elements. Make him a part your business, instead of treating him like a third party agency or part-time worker. Let your Virtual assistant have the full knowledge about your business. Let him have a deep insight about your objective, the purpose of your brand, the culture of the organization. Content Creation: Your brand is closely related to the value offered by you with your products and services. It creates an identity of your business to increase the reputation in the market. Content chosen by you for your brand communication is going to create that identity for your brand. People like to invest in less risky products and services. Your brand identity is going to offset the risks for your prospects. Avail your Virtual Assistant’s help in creating communication message and content for your brand. Content helps you in growing fans for your business and shapes the identity of your brand. Hiring a content expert team in the form of Virtual Assistants is very critical step towards your brand building exercise. Educate the customers through your blogs and other online content: You have to prove the differentiated value your business offers to your customers. Your prospect have lots of other known brands to choose from; to win amongst all, you need to prove that your brand is better and stronger than the rest. Get your Virtual Assistant to create blogs and other informational content for your target audience, where you highlight your unique value proposition. Make your brand relatable: Build social value for your customers. Get the help of your Virtual Assistant to do a proper study of your target segment and understand their self image and social identity that they seek. You may hire a Virtual Assistant with market research skills and build your brand persona to diligently match the social need of your customers. Make an active presence in social media: An active presence in social media requires a lot of time and persistence. A Virtual Assistant offers you the best help in this field. Giving prompt responses to consumer queries, creating engaging content, posts and activities to increase the involvement of your consumers, and increasing the frequency of posts in social media will strengthen the identity of your brand and improve your Social Media Engagement. It’s time to come out of your worries of ‘Brand Building’. Build your online business brand through Internet marketing experts of GetFriday and Relax!

Top tips to build your online business brand with your Virtual Assistant Read More »

When you build your online brand, you create your business signature in terms of your company name, the product or service you offer, your brand logo, the jingle, the tagline etc. Your online brand bolsters your business identity and thus your business becomes more worthwhile in the market. The otherwise naive crowd then starts to visit your website, clicks through your pages, likes and reacts to your social media promotions, and start engaging with your content present online. Gradually your brand buzz turns on. This is how doing right the online branding earns you wonder. However, online branding in itself is a challenging process. Before going to build your business brand, you need to realize the essence of your brand and the risks associated with it. Your online brand speaks for your business. So, before building it, get into the crux of your business, understand it, and determine what impression you want to create for your business. Since your online brand is going to create your business impression in the market, you must ascertain that your brand is strongly likable. The brand elements like logo, name, jingle and tagline should be relevant to your business and attractive enough to make your customers and prospects feel happy whenever they approach your brand. Your brand is going to build the trust amongst your clients; your brand is a promise of the value offered to your clients. In long run it determines whether your clients will like to avail services from you. So, the strength of your online brand determines your revenues and profits. Your brand helps you to stand out of the competition. It convinces your prospects that your service/product is the best out of all the options they can choose from. Though building a strong brand fetches you brownies, it’s not an easy process. You, as a small business owner or an entrepreneur are tied in the limit of resources, whether it is money, people or time. In addition, you are overwhelmed with too many responsibilities to handle. You need to manage somehow everything on your own. Hiring full time experts to help you with branding is too expensive. Despite of all these limitations you need expert inputs to fetch expected returns on your marketing investments. So the best solution is to hire an expert virtual assistant and involve him or her in the brand building process. There are Virtual Assistant service providers that have the knack of marketing and drive your marketing efforts with rich inputs. They will help you to reap the expected returns on your marketing investments. Before hiring a Virtual Assistant to help you in your marketing efforts, you should have some nifty tips to avail the best results of hiring a Virtual assistant. Here are some tips to avail the best out of Virtual Assistance for your brand building. Let your Virtual Assistant be a part of your business: Your Virtual Assistant is your remote assistant, who will serve you without his/ her physical presence in your organization. Your brand is the reflection of your business, its culture and objectives. So your Virtual Assistant should be familiar to these very important elements. Make him a part your business, instead of treating him like a third party agency or part-time worker. Let your Virtual assistant have the full knowledge about your business. Let him have a deep insight about your objective, the purpose of your brand, the culture of the organization. Content Creation: Your brand is closely related to the value offered by you with your products and services. It creates an identity of your business to increase the reputation in the market. Content chosen by you for your brand communication is going to create that identity for your brand. People like to invest in less risky products and services. Your brand identity is going to offset the risks for your prospects. Avail your Virtual Assistant’s help in creating communication message and content for your brand. Content helps you in growing fans for your business and shapes the identity of your brand. Hiring a content expert team in the form of Virtual Assistants is very critical step towards your brand building exercise. Educate the customers through your blogs and other online content: You have to prove the differentiated value your business offers to your customers. Your prospect have lots of other known brands to choose from; to win amongst all, you need to prove that your brand is better and stronger than the rest. Get your Virtual Assistant to create blogs and other informational content for your target audience, where you highlight your unique value proposition. Make your brand relatable: Build social value for your customers. Get the help of your Virtual Assistant to do a proper study of your target segment and understand their self image and social identity that they seek. You may hire a Virtual Assistant with market research skills and build your brand persona to diligently match the social need of your customers. Make an active presence in social media: An active presence in social media requires a lot of time and persistence. A Virtual Assistant offers you the best help in this field. Giving prompt responses to consumer queries, creating engaging content, posts and activities to increase the involvement of your consumers, and increasing the frequency of posts in social media will strengthen the identity of your brand and improve your Social Media Engagement. It’s time to come out of your worries of ‘Brand Building’. Build your online business brand through Internet marketing experts of GetFriday and Relax!

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

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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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