Virtual Assistance

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!

Taking a Vacation? Try these tips to make a tiptop trip!

Don’t you beam with happiness while narrating the tales of your exotic trips to your friends? You may be a globetrotter who doesn’t want to leave any corner of the world unseen or you may be a busy sales person who drives business outside from office or out of the city you live in. Be it for leisure or work, trips, no matter how small or big, are an inevitable part our lives. By now you would have gotten accustomed to the pros and cons of travelling and your trip diaries are a rich reservoir of your memories. It’s a fact that vacationing, though glamorous on the outside, can be quite tricky. Before reaping the sweet pleasures of a trip, you need to run a long list of dull errands like doing online research for flights, booking cheap flight tickets, reserving rooms in a hotel of your choice and within your budget, arranging commutation in the destination and the like. If you are a busy professional, these odd jobs can be stressful. For instance, you need to meet your clients in Tokyo tomorrow and you have simply not found the time to make the necessary travel arrangements. Making travel arrangements can take a huge chunk of your precious time if you want to get the best of your travel itinerary By focusing on these errands, you may forget to focus on other activities that are important i.e. working on that important presentation, making the necessary arrangements to have your inboxes filtered and checked, getting all the pre-travel shopping done for your spouse and kids or making sure that all your work has been duly handed over to a back-up employee. In simple words, making the arrangements for a trip should not soil the excitement of actually going on the trip and getting to the destination. Here’s what you can do to get all your pre-trip planning sorted. 1. Define and understand the purpose of your trip: Every trip has a strong purpose behind it. If you are a business-owner and you are travelling for business, make sure you are prepped and focused on nailing that important business pitch with your clients and business partners. Focus on the core tasks i.e. making a convincing presentation, charting out new business ideas, etc. If you are planning a family trip, focus on selecting the perfect family-friendly destinations and channel your energies towards doing some research for sightseeing, leisure, shopping, travel etc. 2. Make A List Of What You Want To Do During Your Trip: Once you have understood the purpose of your trip, take the next step and list out the activities you would like to do to make the trip a memorable one. For example if you seek adventure list out the activities that you will love to partake in. Start preparing for the trip accordingly. Get your suitcases packed with the clothes or gear that you will require for a leisure or business trip. Gather as much information as you can about the local adventure sports, the best guides, places to eat, shop and much more! The same applies for a business trip too. You need to jot down what you want to get done during the trip and plan accordingly. 3. Make The Arrangements: Now that you have decided what you want to do on the trip, where you want to go and the purpose behind it, get down to actually booking your travel and sorting out the itinerary. Out of all the steps, arranging for flight/train tickets, accommodation and booking tours will take the longest time. 4. Or.. HIRE A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT TO DO IT FOR YOU! If you don’t have the time and expertise to do this, you have a choice to take help from an expert who can get all of it done for you in half the time. A Virtual Assistant, perhaps? There are Virtual Assistant service providers like GetFriday who can help you offload mundane travel arrangement tasks such as these and give you more time to focus on all the other aspects that actually matter. Why break your head planning for the trip, when you should be enjoying it? Remember, going on a trip doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make all the arrangements on your own. As mentioned above, stick to focusing on the purpose of your trip and what you need to do when you get there. . Don’t take the stress of planning or preparing arrangements for a trip.There are Virtual Assistant experts to serve you at every step of your trip, be it booking tickets or picking a romantic restaurant for a candle light dinner during your honeymoon. With reliable Virtual Assistants, you should outsource all trip planning and arrangement tasks. Free up your time, focus just on business in the meanwhile, or just get into the holiday mode before boarding that flight. What use is it if you are going to burden yourself with all the pre-trip hassle? Outsource, sit back and enjoy a fruitful trip!

Taking a Vacation? Try these tips to make a tiptop trip! Read More »

Don’t you beam with happiness while narrating the tales of your exotic trips to your friends? You may be a globetrotter who doesn’t want to leave any corner of the world unseen or you may be a busy sales person who drives business outside from office or out of the city you live in. Be it for leisure or work, trips, no matter how small or big, are an inevitable part our lives. By now you would have gotten accustomed to the pros and cons of travelling and your trip diaries are a rich reservoir of your memories. It’s a fact that vacationing, though glamorous on the outside, can be quite tricky. Before reaping the sweet pleasures of a trip, you need to run a long list of dull errands like doing online research for flights, booking cheap flight tickets, reserving rooms in a hotel of your choice and within your budget, arranging commutation in the destination and the like. If you are a busy professional, these odd jobs can be stressful. For instance, you need to meet your clients in Tokyo tomorrow and you have simply not found the time to make the necessary travel arrangements. Making travel arrangements can take a huge chunk of your precious time if you want to get the best of your travel itinerary By focusing on these errands, you may forget to focus on other activities that are important i.e. working on that important presentation, making the necessary arrangements to have your inboxes filtered and checked, getting all the pre-travel shopping done for your spouse and kids or making sure that all your work has been duly handed over to a back-up employee. In simple words, making the arrangements for a trip should not soil the excitement of actually going on the trip and getting to the destination. Here’s what you can do to get all your pre-trip planning sorted. 1. Define and understand the purpose of your trip: Every trip has a strong purpose behind it. If you are a business-owner and you are travelling for business, make sure you are prepped and focused on nailing that important business pitch with your clients and business partners. Focus on the core tasks i.e. making a convincing presentation, charting out new business ideas, etc. If you are planning a family trip, focus on selecting the perfect family-friendly destinations and channel your energies towards doing some research for sightseeing, leisure, shopping, travel etc. 2. Make A List Of What You Want To Do During Your Trip: Once you have understood the purpose of your trip, take the next step and list out the activities you would like to do to make the trip a memorable one. For example if you seek adventure list out the activities that you will love to partake in. Start preparing for the trip accordingly. Get your suitcases packed with the clothes or gear that you will require for a leisure or business trip. Gather as much information as you can about the local adventure sports, the best guides, places to eat, shop and much more! The same applies for a business trip too. You need to jot down what you want to get done during the trip and plan accordingly. 3. Make The Arrangements: Now that you have decided what you want to do on the trip, where you want to go and the purpose behind it, get down to actually booking your travel and sorting out the itinerary. Out of all the steps, arranging for flight/train tickets, accommodation and booking tours will take the longest time. 4. Or.. HIRE A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT TO DO IT FOR YOU! If you don’t have the time and expertise to do this, you have a choice to take help from an expert who can get all of it done for you in half the time. A Virtual Assistant, perhaps? There are Virtual Assistant service providers like GetFriday who can help you offload mundane travel arrangement tasks such as these and give you more time to focus on all the other aspects that actually matter. Why break your head planning for the trip, when you should be enjoying it? Remember, going on a trip doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make all the arrangements on your own. As mentioned above, stick to focusing on the purpose of your trip and what you need to do when you get there. . Don’t take the stress of planning or preparing arrangements for a trip.There are Virtual Assistant experts to serve you at every step of your trip, be it booking tickets or picking a romantic restaurant for a candle light dinner during your honeymoon. With reliable Virtual Assistants, you should outsource all trip planning and arrangement tasks. Free up your time, focus just on business in the meanwhile, or just get into the holiday mode before boarding that flight. What use is it if you are going to burden yourself with all the pre-trip hassle? Outsource, sit back and enjoy a fruitful trip!

How You Can Leverage Social Listening To Boost Business Growth- What It Is & What You Can Do

So, you are familiar with blogging and make sporadic appearances on message boards, commenting forums and your blog page. You are active on all social media accounts and as a result have an enviable digital presence. Does this make you feel like you have an advantage and can outdo your competitors? Don’t be too sure just yet. While forums, social media and blogging are essential for survival in a competitive business landscape, social listening is a crucial tool and can help you scale your business. Social listening is the act of monitoring or tracking various social media accounts, blogs, wiki pages, message boards and the like, to gauge the level of sentiments that people have towards a business and what they are saying about it. For instance, if you are following industry influencers, other well-known personalities who operate in the industry you work for and have a strong following by potential clients, there’s a very good chance that you will be followed or at least noticed too. Imagine what earning a blog link or a mention from an established personality can do for your following, brand and business growth. Social Listening Tips For Business Effective social listening can help boost sales for your business and more specifically, give you a competitive edge over your competitors. The question you need to be asking yourself is, how to leverage social media monitoring for better business. 1.By Tracking Your Competitors’ Activities If you are active on social media accounts, you should ideally be tracking what your competitors are doing too. Check for their success stories and make a note of their slipups. By monitoring your competitors across social media platforms, you will also be able to keep a close eye on any new, development from their side be it improved product/services offerings, policies or other prominent changes that could positively impact their businesses. 2.By Monitoring Your Online Reputation It is imperative to learn what the world thinks about your business. Monitor all the social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, online review sites, blogs, forums and other platform for mentions of your company or brand. If you want to boost credibility (and also visibility!) ensure that you always respond to your clients on time, with thoughtful replies, apologies or other appropriate comments for every mention you get on the World Wide Web. Fail to do this and you might risk your reputation. 3.By Discovering New Ideas & Trends Set up social alerts to identify the emerging trends and fresh ideas that may be relevant to your industry. In doing so, you will be able to update your products or services and keep them up-to-the-minute. What You Should Do Now, that you know why it is important, it is crucial to understand ‘what’ you should ideally be doing to get started with social listening. Social listening is a fairly simple practice and can be done easily with the use of platforms such as Google Alerts, Social Mention, Topsy, Hootsuite and Icerocket. Platforms like these can help collect aggregate data, track keywords and mentions across important social media channels. All you have to do is set up your alerts and monitor your social conversations on a day-to-day basis. Remember that social listening is not a quick process. It requires a thorough understanding and dedicated commitment of at least half an hour everyday, apart from working on other activities. You will additionally need to schedule alerts, manage your inbox and maintain commitment with the other work you do on a daily basis for your business. If you are just starting out with social listening and you have a lot on your platter, you might end up making mistakes, losing out on time and patience. If you want to save on time and still get your social listening right, why not outsource and hand over this responsibility to a reliable, social media virtual assistant from a virtual assistance provider like GetFriday? Talk to your social media virtual assistant about what you are expecting, what is relevant to the industry you operate in, map out your competitors, etc. You can also monitor your virtual assistant’s work along the way and ask for regular reports, alerts or other notifications for the social listening activities. Why should you compromise on your productivity and do complex, specialist work when you can have a professional do it for you in half the time? Think about it. Wouldn’t it be better for you if someone else could take care of your social media accounts while you focused on growing your business or doing other activities that interested you? In order to stay competitive, it is essential to learn about your clients, competitors and what the Internet has to say about your brand at large. If you partake in social listening activities, you will be able to take online conversations from being a one-way street to interactive and thus, boost business growth.

How You Can Leverage Social Listening To Boost Business Growth- What It Is & What You Can Do Read More »

So, you are familiar with blogging and make sporadic appearances on message boards, commenting forums and your blog page. You are active on all social media accounts and as a result have an enviable digital presence. Does this make you feel like you have an advantage and can outdo your competitors? Don’t be too sure just yet. While forums, social media and blogging are essential for survival in a competitive business landscape, social listening is a crucial tool and can help you scale your business. Social listening is the act of monitoring or tracking various social media accounts, blogs, wiki pages, message boards and the like, to gauge the level of sentiments that people have towards a business and what they are saying about it. For instance, if you are following industry influencers, other well-known personalities who operate in the industry you work for and have a strong following by potential clients, there’s a very good chance that you will be followed or at least noticed too. Imagine what earning a blog link or a mention from an established personality can do for your following, brand and business growth. Social Listening Tips For Business Effective social listening can help boost sales for your business and more specifically, give you a competitive edge over your competitors. The question you need to be asking yourself is, how to leverage social media monitoring for better business. 1.By Tracking Your Competitors’ Activities If you are active on social media accounts, you should ideally be tracking what your competitors are doing too. Check for their success stories and make a note of their slipups. By monitoring your competitors across social media platforms, you will also be able to keep a close eye on any new, development from their side be it improved product/services offerings, policies or other prominent changes that could positively impact their businesses. 2.By Monitoring Your Online Reputation It is imperative to learn what the world thinks about your business. Monitor all the social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, online review sites, blogs, forums and other platform for mentions of your company or brand. If you want to boost credibility (and also visibility!) ensure that you always respond to your clients on time, with thoughtful replies, apologies or other appropriate comments for every mention you get on the World Wide Web. Fail to do this and you might risk your reputation. 3.By Discovering New Ideas & Trends Set up social alerts to identify the emerging trends and fresh ideas that may be relevant to your industry. In doing so, you will be able to update your products or services and keep them up-to-the-minute. What You Should Do Now, that you know why it is important, it is crucial to understand ‘what’ you should ideally be doing to get started with social listening. Social listening is a fairly simple practice and can be done easily with the use of platforms such as Google Alerts, Social Mention, Topsy, Hootsuite and Icerocket. Platforms like these can help collect aggregate data, track keywords and mentions across important social media channels. All you have to do is set up your alerts and monitor your social conversations on a day-to-day basis. Remember that social listening is not a quick process. It requires a thorough understanding and dedicated commitment of at least half an hour everyday, apart from working on other activities. You will additionally need to schedule alerts, manage your inbox and maintain commitment with the other work you do on a daily basis for your business. If you are just starting out with social listening and you have a lot on your platter, you might end up making mistakes, losing out on time and patience. If you want to save on time and still get your social listening right, why not outsource and hand over this responsibility to a reliable, social media virtual assistant from a virtual assistance provider like GetFriday? Talk to your social media virtual assistant about what you are expecting, what is relevant to the industry you operate in, map out your competitors, etc. You can also monitor your virtual assistant’s work along the way and ask for regular reports, alerts or other notifications for the social listening activities. Why should you compromise on your productivity and do complex, specialist work when you can have a professional do it for you in half the time? Think about it. Wouldn’t it be better for you if someone else could take care of your social media accounts while you focused on growing your business or doing other activities that interested you? In order to stay competitive, it is essential to learn about your clients, competitors and what the Internet has to say about your brand at large. If you partake in social listening activities, you will be able to take online conversations from being a one-way street to interactive and thus, boost business growth.

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

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

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

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

Six Things You MUST outsource to a Virtual Assistant

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

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

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

Things You Should NEVER Outsource As a Small Business

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ten Reasons For Small Businesses To Outsource

The year 2009, for entrepreneur Chris Ducker, was fraught with commitments above and beyond necessary. He had a doting family to go back home to, but being an entrepreneur meant that he had to forego his personal time and suffer many sleepless nights because it was more about being ‘in’ the business rather than being ‘on top of things’. Luckily for him, he made some smart choices and was well on his way to gain that much-needed respite through outsourcing. Now, he works an average of 6 hours a day, can look into personal commitments, focus on building new business goals and advocates Virtual Assistance services, all the time! If you’re managing a start-up and you’ve blown that amazing business opportunity because you missed a follow-up deadline or were too tied up with routine administrative operations for your business, then hiring a Virtual Assistant is something you might want to consider. However, the thought of hiring a Virtual Assistant for a first-time outsourcer can immediately trigger a feeling like the world is about to zap all the cash from your bank account. But it is not always so. In one of the earlier blogs in the series, we stressed on how to decide ‘when the right time is to outsource. In this blog post, we’ll give you plenty reasons as to ‘why’ you should outsource- especially if you are a small business owner or an entrepreneur. Read on! 1. Reduced Costs As much as small businessmen would like to believe, hiring a virtual assistant can in fact save you money instead of stretching your budget. Since a virtual assistant is not a full time employee, you won’t need to worry about payroll taxes, sick leave, vacation pay, health insurance etc. In the case of virtual assistants, they only get paid for the hours they work and in turn, add more value to your investment. For example: You might end up paying an in-house employee for 40 hours of work per week, despite the employee taking coffee breaks, going out to use the restroom and making ceaseless phone calls. However, if you hire a Virtual Assistant and you have purchased only 20 hours worth of work per month, you will end up paying the Virtual Assistant for only 5 hours of work per week! That’s a difference of almost 8 times! Ergo, it is safe to say that the costs of hiring a VA are a lot lesser as compared to hiring a full-time employee. 2. You Don’t Need To Provide Office Space The best part about outsourcing is that you don’t need to worry about providing an office space for your Virtual Assistant. Global Virtual Assistants use their personal computers and their own internet connections to execute the tasks you send them. If you are a small business and you think that hiring a group of in-house employees and providing for large offices right away could cost your business, outsourcing could come across as a boon for you. 3. Training For VA’s Is Not Required Every year, businesses spend thousands of dollars on training employees to update their knowledge on new software, tools and the latest technology. By outsourcing your work to a Virtual Assistant, you can easily save on all this money because Virtual Assistants are already trained and are quite well-versed with the latest online tools and software because their jobs demand it. Depending on the nature of tasks you want to outsource, you can either choose general Virtual Assistants, who are jacks-of-all and are all-rounders, or you could choose to hire specialist Virtual Assistants who are proficient at one particular job. 4. A Pool of Resources To Choose From If you choose to partner with an outsourcing company, you’ll be working with a melting pot of specialists and gain access to a large pool of online resources. You won’t have to go looking to hire specialists, sifting through countless applications and interviewing hundreds of people. If you are a small business and you don’t want to waste your company’s resources and time searching for the right specialists for your job, partnering with an outsourcing company is easily be one of your best bets. Once you SignUp, you will be able to outsource tasks of multiple natures to your Personal Virtual Assistant and then relax, knowing that your tasks are in safe and experienced hands. 5. You Can Quit Anytime Firing an in-house employee can be a long and tedious process and there may even be instances, wherein you will need to abide by employee agreements if you want to avoid lawsuits. With a Global Virtual Assistant however, you don’t need to worry about any of it. You have the flexibility to fire your virtual assistant instantly and easily if deadlines are missed or the assistant repeatedly makes mistakes despite feedback. 6. Get Your Tasks Completed On Time & Efficiently As a small business owner, you’ll realize that you have a ton of work to complete, no matter how important, tedious or repetitive. Who said that being an entrepreneur was easy? The trick to finding the right balance, is to work on tasks that have greater value (monetary or otherwise) and outsource the rest to your personal virtual assistant. This way you’ll find that your other tasks (which you don’t like to do or find too boring or time-consuming to complete) are being handled a lot more efficiently and are completed within the stipulated deadlines. 7. Boost Productivity If you are a hard working entrepreneur or a small business owner and want to get more done in less time, you can boost your productivity with outsourcing. Having virtual assistants take care of all the tasks that you don’t like to do yourself means that you will gain that extra hour or two to focus on other important jobs and tasks at hand, thereby maximizing productivity and making more time for yourself in the day. 8. Re-Location & Travel Becomes A Lot Easier If you are traveling, have

Ten Reasons For Small Businesses To Outsource Read More »

The year 2009, for entrepreneur Chris Ducker, was fraught with commitments above and beyond necessary. He had a doting family to go back home to, but being an entrepreneur meant that he had to forego his personal time and suffer many sleepless nights because it was more about being ‘in’ the business rather than being ‘on top of things’. Luckily for him, he made some smart choices and was well on his way to gain that much-needed respite through outsourcing. Now, he works an average of 6 hours a day, can look into personal commitments, focus on building new business goals and advocates Virtual Assistance services, all the time! If you’re managing a start-up and you’ve blown that amazing business opportunity because you missed a follow-up deadline or were too tied up with routine administrative operations for your business, then hiring a Virtual Assistant is something you might want to consider. However, the thought of hiring a Virtual Assistant for a first-time outsourcer can immediately trigger a feeling like the world is about to zap all the cash from your bank account. But it is not always so. In one of the earlier blogs in the series, we stressed on how to decide ‘when the right time is to outsource. In this blog post, we’ll give you plenty reasons as to ‘why’ you should outsource- especially if you are a small business owner or an entrepreneur. Read on! 1. Reduced Costs As much as small businessmen would like to believe, hiring a virtual assistant can in fact save you money instead of stretching your budget. Since a virtual assistant is not a full time employee, you won’t need to worry about payroll taxes, sick leave, vacation pay, health insurance etc. In the case of virtual assistants, they only get paid for the hours they work and in turn, add more value to your investment. For example: You might end up paying an in-house employee for 40 hours of work per week, despite the employee taking coffee breaks, going out to use the restroom and making ceaseless phone calls. However, if you hire a Virtual Assistant and you have purchased only 20 hours worth of work per month, you will end up paying the Virtual Assistant for only 5 hours of work per week! That’s a difference of almost 8 times! Ergo, it is safe to say that the costs of hiring a VA are a lot lesser as compared to hiring a full-time employee. 2. You Don’t Need To Provide Office Space The best part about outsourcing is that you don’t need to worry about providing an office space for your Virtual Assistant. Global Virtual Assistants use their personal computers and their own internet connections to execute the tasks you send them. If you are a small business and you think that hiring a group of in-house employees and providing for large offices right away could cost your business, outsourcing could come across as a boon for you. 3. Training For VA’s Is Not Required Every year, businesses spend thousands of dollars on training employees to update their knowledge on new software, tools and the latest technology. By outsourcing your work to a Virtual Assistant, you can easily save on all this money because Virtual Assistants are already trained and are quite well-versed with the latest online tools and software because their jobs demand it. Depending on the nature of tasks you want to outsource, you can either choose general Virtual Assistants, who are jacks-of-all and are all-rounders, or you could choose to hire specialist Virtual Assistants who are proficient at one particular job. 4. A Pool of Resources To Choose From If you choose to partner with an outsourcing company, you’ll be working with a melting pot of specialists and gain access to a large pool of online resources. You won’t have to go looking to hire specialists, sifting through countless applications and interviewing hundreds of people. If you are a small business and you don’t want to waste your company’s resources and time searching for the right specialists for your job, partnering with an outsourcing company is easily be one of your best bets. Once you SignUp, you will be able to outsource tasks of multiple natures to your Personal Virtual Assistant and then relax, knowing that your tasks are in safe and experienced hands. 5. You Can Quit Anytime Firing an in-house employee can be a long and tedious process and there may even be instances, wherein you will need to abide by employee agreements if you want to avoid lawsuits. With a Global Virtual Assistant however, you don’t need to worry about any of it. You have the flexibility to fire your virtual assistant instantly and easily if deadlines are missed or the assistant repeatedly makes mistakes despite feedback. 6. Get Your Tasks Completed On Time & Efficiently As a small business owner, you’ll realize that you have a ton of work to complete, no matter how important, tedious or repetitive. Who said that being an entrepreneur was easy? The trick to finding the right balance, is to work on tasks that have greater value (monetary or otherwise) and outsource the rest to your personal virtual assistant. This way you’ll find that your other tasks (which you don’t like to do or find too boring or time-consuming to complete) are being handled a lot more efficiently and are completed within the stipulated deadlines. 7. Boost Productivity If you are a hard working entrepreneur or a small business owner and want to get more done in less time, you can boost your productivity with outsourcing. Having virtual assistants take care of all the tasks that you don’t like to do yourself means that you will gain that extra hour or two to focus on other important jobs and tasks at hand, thereby maximizing productivity and making more time for yourself in the day. 8. Re-Location & Travel Becomes A Lot Easier If you are traveling, have

Nine Step Guide For Creating Effective Landing Pages

You create landing pages either for products that are tangible such as electronic items, tyres or cars OR a service, that is intangible in nature such as home maintenance, a teaching course OR a combination of both products and services. But few things remain the same when it comes to creating an excellent and effective landing page. We,at GetFriday, have years of experience in creating landing pages through personal experimentation, creativity and, data-based analysis. We have put together important pointers for you to work with and follow whenever you are creating a landing page. Given below is the step-by-step guide to create an effective landing page. Step 1: Optimize Your Landing Page For The Keywords There are 3 main ways through which a company can try to reach out to their target audience – Search Ads (on Google or any other search media) Display Ads (on Google, social media sites or print media), and Mailers (direct mails to list of prospect clients) Keyword optimization on a landing page is particularly important when you are spending on search ads. Every search ad is targeted toward a particular set of keywords that are relevant to the product or service you are offering. Search ad descriptions should contain that particular keyword for high quality score of the ads (so that you would pay less per click). Also, the keywords targeted for the ads must be present on the landing page to increase the relevancy and churn out a high quality score. Descriptions of the product or services should contain the keywords targeted for the search ads. This will help decrease the cost of running such search ads and also, increase the rank of your ads when compared to the ads of competitors. You should always keep searching for new keywords and eliminate those keywords (that are not necessary) on a regular basis for better results. The new, targeted keywords should also be mentioned in the landing page for better relevancy. Suppose you are running an e-store for footwear and you want to target the keyword “Puma running shoes”. The landing page created for the this particular keyword, where the visitor is directed to after clicking on the ad should ideally have ‘Puma running shoes’ listings and should include the keyword, “running shoes” in the description as well. Step 2: Invest Time In Design Of Your Landing Page Display ads and mailers that are used to reach out to your target audience include visuals and graphics. You can select a theme with different color combinations, images, and dabble with the appearance of your landing page, depending on the concept. Just make sure that your landing page has a similar theme to the ones used in you display ads and mailers. This will help visitors in connecting with the brand as they would have already seen the display of your landing page on the ad or the mailer. If the visuals on the landing page are not appropriate or don’t go with the theme, visitors could get confused and might find website navigation cumbersome. Step 3: Educate Your Audience About Your Offering Don’t just start selling your product or service from the first sentence on your landing page. On the first slider or home screen, educate your audience about your product or service. Use images and visuals to illustrate your offerings. Explain in detail about how your offerings can help the visitors in their businesses or personal lives. If you are selling a product, reserve a section on the page to explain how your product works and what it entails. Provide a description with clear images and videos. Let the visitors understand your product before investing in it. Keep the language simple, so that your content can be understood even by a layman. If you are a service provider, explain to your visitors what they are going to get out of this relationship. Let them get a feel of your services on the landing page itself. If there is a video tutorial about how your product or service works, include the video or the display description in the “How It Works”section. Step 4: Give Importance To Testimonials You can try convincing just about everyone who visits your e-store to buy your product or try out your services, but in the end, word of mouth promotions always play the final and the most important role in a consumer’s decision making process. The stronger the word of mouth, the higher the chances of getting more customers. Therefore, it is important that you give client testimonials the attention that they truly deserve. If you don’t have good testimonials to show to your prospects on the landing page, you are losing out on credibility. Invest some time on collecting good and convincing testimonials from your happy and loyal customers. Display your testimonials in a manner that is both, readable and understandable. Step 5: Attract With Call Of Action Buttons Your ‘call of action’ buttons will differ according to your offerings. If you are an e-commerce website, your call of action button would be “Buy Now” or “Move to Cart”. If you are a service provider like SAS or Cloud services that needs to be subscribed to every month, your call of action button would be “Apply Now” or “Sign Up“. These ‘call of action’ buttons should be placed prominently on your page to attract your target audience. Taking these steps will only ensure that you close the deal faster by converting your prospects into ‘clients’. Pay special attention to this. You are spending huge sums of money to draw prospects onto your landing page. Treat your landing page like a store wherein you have to convince every visitor to buy your product and wield your power to convince the visitor to press the ‘call of action’ button. This concept was very appropriately explained by Alec Baldwin in his famous speech “Always Be Closing”, in the movie, “Glengarry Glen Ross”. Of course, the speech was focused on product sales

Nine Step Guide For Creating Effective Landing Pages Read More »

You create landing pages either for products that are tangible such as electronic items, tyres or cars OR a service, that is intangible in nature such as home maintenance, a teaching course OR a combination of both products and services. But few things remain the same when it comes to creating an excellent and effective landing page. We,at GetFriday, have years of experience in creating landing pages through personal experimentation, creativity and, data-based analysis. We have put together important pointers for you to work with and follow whenever you are creating a landing page. Given below is the step-by-step guide to create an effective landing page. Step 1: Optimize Your Landing Page For The Keywords There are 3 main ways through which a company can try to reach out to their target audience – Search Ads (on Google or any other search media) Display Ads (on Google, social media sites or print media), and Mailers (direct mails to list of prospect clients) Keyword optimization on a landing page is particularly important when you are spending on search ads. Every search ad is targeted toward a particular set of keywords that are relevant to the product or service you are offering. Search ad descriptions should contain that particular keyword for high quality score of the ads (so that you would pay less per click). Also, the keywords targeted for the ads must be present on the landing page to increase the relevancy and churn out a high quality score. Descriptions of the product or services should contain the keywords targeted for the search ads. This will help decrease the cost of running such search ads and also, increase the rank of your ads when compared to the ads of competitors. You should always keep searching for new keywords and eliminate those keywords (that are not necessary) on a regular basis for better results. The new, targeted keywords should also be mentioned in the landing page for better relevancy. Suppose you are running an e-store for footwear and you want to target the keyword “Puma running shoes”. The landing page created for the this particular keyword, where the visitor is directed to after clicking on the ad should ideally have ‘Puma running shoes’ listings and should include the keyword, “running shoes” in the description as well. Step 2: Invest Time In Design Of Your Landing Page Display ads and mailers that are used to reach out to your target audience include visuals and graphics. You can select a theme with different color combinations, images, and dabble with the appearance of your landing page, depending on the concept. Just make sure that your landing page has a similar theme to the ones used in you display ads and mailers. This will help visitors in connecting with the brand as they would have already seen the display of your landing page on the ad or the mailer. If the visuals on the landing page are not appropriate or don’t go with the theme, visitors could get confused and might find website navigation cumbersome. Step 3: Educate Your Audience About Your Offering Don’t just start selling your product or service from the first sentence on your landing page. On the first slider or home screen, educate your audience about your product or service. Use images and visuals to illustrate your offerings. Explain in detail about how your offerings can help the visitors in their businesses or personal lives. If you are selling a product, reserve a section on the page to explain how your product works and what it entails. Provide a description with clear images and videos. Let the visitors understand your product before investing in it. Keep the language simple, so that your content can be understood even by a layman. If you are a service provider, explain to your visitors what they are going to get out of this relationship. Let them get a feel of your services on the landing page itself. If there is a video tutorial about how your product or service works, include the video or the display description in the “How It Works”section. Step 4: Give Importance To Testimonials You can try convincing just about everyone who visits your e-store to buy your product or try out your services, but in the end, word of mouth promotions always play the final and the most important role in a consumer’s decision making process. The stronger the word of mouth, the higher the chances of getting more customers. Therefore, it is important that you give client testimonials the attention that they truly deserve. If you don’t have good testimonials to show to your prospects on the landing page, you are losing out on credibility. Invest some time on collecting good and convincing testimonials from your happy and loyal customers. Display your testimonials in a manner that is both, readable and understandable. Step 5: Attract With Call Of Action Buttons Your ‘call of action’ buttons will differ according to your offerings. If you are an e-commerce website, your call of action button would be “Buy Now” or “Move to Cart”. If you are a service provider like SAS or Cloud services that needs to be subscribed to every month, your call of action button would be “Apply Now” or “Sign Up“. These ‘call of action’ buttons should be placed prominently on your page to attract your target audience. Taking these steps will only ensure that you close the deal faster by converting your prospects into ‘clients’. Pay special attention to this. You are spending huge sums of money to draw prospects onto your landing page. Treat your landing page like a store wherein you have to convince every visitor to buy your product and wield your power to convince the visitor to press the ‘call of action’ button. This concept was very appropriately explained by Alec Baldwin in his famous speech “Always Be Closing”, in the movie, “Glengarry Glen Ross”. Of course, the speech was focused on product sales

Categories