virtual assistant services

Ebooks to increase value of your business

E-books are a digital version of a normal book and are meant to be an easy-to-carry alternative to a book. If you happen to have a website, there is a good chance that visitors who come to the site happen to search for an E-book. Depending on the type of website you own, it is always a good idea to have an e-book on the site, which can be downloaded freely by the site visitors. Apart from creating a good landing page, it is always a good idea that a free e-book will make the visitor come back for more the next time around. Staring off, e-books are books in electronic format which can be downloaded on PC, Mac, laptop, tablet or on any reading device and can be read on the screen. An Ebook can also be purchased online, just like any other item – the only difference being that you would be directed to a download page or a link where you would be able to read the book. After downloading the book, you need not stay online, the book remains available for reading. Now there is huge debate around normal books and e-books. This article seeks to provide certain insights into the type of arguments that generally surround e-books: Ebooks are delivered almost immediately to the readable device. There is no need to wait for it in the mail. Many Ebooks today come along with bonuses, which is not available with normal books. Ebooks take up less space, they can be easily stored in a readable device. It is not necessary to build a library to keep the books. They can be taken and read anywhere, without really worrying about the weight. Ebooks are searchable. You can easily search for information on an Ebook. They can be interactive and can incorporate audio, video and animation, which can enhance the message, the author is trying to convey. Fonts in the Ebooks can be resized, helpful for people with disabilities. With additional software e-books can be converted into audio books.   With these advantages in mind, a website owner should be eager to put-up free Ebooks on his website. However, it is equally important for owner to understand the arguments in favor of giving away Ebooks for free on the website. These are some of the points of view that will help a website owner to make up his mind regarding free Ebooks. Publicity It is a known fact that an average person will not spend his hard earned cash on a new author. But there is a good chance that people who visit the site will download a free Ebook when given a chance. This will ensure the author of the book will get enough publicity and limits the risk to the reader of buying an EBook from an unknown author. Feedback There is a good enough chance that a new author might not be easily accepted by the readers. There can be several rejections for a new author from the publishing houses. Meanwhile, it is equally possible that a new author would find it easy to publish a free Ebook and gather review and feedback from interested readers. These can be used by the author to tweak his writing and subject to garner enough loyal audience to help publish his/ her full fledged book. This equally applies to writers, who lack confidence in their writing to take the same path. Networking After having written a successful Ebook, it is certain that people will know you through the success of your book. You could be known in industrial circles as a go-to person regarding a specific domain. This, in the long run, will help you gather a network of like-minded persons and to be known as an expert in the domain is an added advantage. This will go a long way in creating robust personal network, which would definitely help your business in the long term. Leads A successful free Ebook will help you reap links from other website to yours. Even reviews and embedded social media buttons will help spread the word on the internet about your free Ebook. These are the means to generate positive leads for your business. Who said generosity is not good for business? After having made the case for giving away free Ebooks, most authors/ business owners are not professional writers, they own a business & workloads and writing remains a hobby on the sidelines. This calls for making life easy as a business owner and outsource the work of writing the Ebook to professionals. At GetFriday, you could hire a virtual assistant to write an Ebook for your website or do the basic research to get started on the Ebook. This will not only help you with all the advantages mentioned above, you could also free up time for other things that you enjoy.

Ebooks to increase value of your business Read More »

E-books are a digital version of a normal book and are meant to be an easy-to-carry alternative to a book. If you happen to have a website, there is a good chance that visitors who come to the site happen to search for an E-book. Depending on the type of website you own, it is always a good idea to have an e-book on the site, which can be downloaded freely by the site visitors. Apart from creating a good landing page, it is always a good idea that a free e-book will make the visitor come back for more the next time around. Staring off, e-books are books in electronic format which can be downloaded on PC, Mac, laptop, tablet or on any reading device and can be read on the screen. An Ebook can also be purchased online, just like any other item – the only difference being that you would be directed to a download page or a link where you would be able to read the book. After downloading the book, you need not stay online, the book remains available for reading. Now there is huge debate around normal books and e-books. This article seeks to provide certain insights into the type of arguments that generally surround e-books: Ebooks are delivered almost immediately to the readable device. There is no need to wait for it in the mail. Many Ebooks today come along with bonuses, which is not available with normal books. Ebooks take up less space, they can be easily stored in a readable device. It is not necessary to build a library to keep the books. They can be taken and read anywhere, without really worrying about the weight. Ebooks are searchable. You can easily search for information on an Ebook. They can be interactive and can incorporate audio, video and animation, which can enhance the message, the author is trying to convey. Fonts in the Ebooks can be resized, helpful for people with disabilities. With additional software e-books can be converted into audio books.   With these advantages in mind, a website owner should be eager to put-up free Ebooks on his website. However, it is equally important for owner to understand the arguments in favor of giving away Ebooks for free on the website. These are some of the points of view that will help a website owner to make up his mind regarding free Ebooks. Publicity It is a known fact that an average person will not spend his hard earned cash on a new author. But there is a good chance that people who visit the site will download a free Ebook when given a chance. This will ensure the author of the book will get enough publicity and limits the risk to the reader of buying an EBook from an unknown author. Feedback There is a good enough chance that a new author might not be easily accepted by the readers. There can be several rejections for a new author from the publishing houses. Meanwhile, it is equally possible that a new author would find it easy to publish a free Ebook and gather review and feedback from interested readers. These can be used by the author to tweak his writing and subject to garner enough loyal audience to help publish his/ her full fledged book. This equally applies to writers, who lack confidence in their writing to take the same path. Networking After having written a successful Ebook, it is certain that people will know you through the success of your book. You could be known in industrial circles as a go-to person regarding a specific domain. This, in the long run, will help you gather a network of like-minded persons and to be known as an expert in the domain is an added advantage. This will go a long way in creating robust personal network, which would definitely help your business in the long term. Leads A successful free Ebook will help you reap links from other website to yours. Even reviews and embedded social media buttons will help spread the word on the internet about your free Ebook. These are the means to generate positive leads for your business. Who said generosity is not good for business? After having made the case for giving away free Ebooks, most authors/ business owners are not professional writers, they own a business & workloads and writing remains a hobby on the sidelines. This calls for making life easy as a business owner and outsource the work of writing the Ebook to professionals. At GetFriday, you could hire a virtual assistant to write an Ebook for your website or do the basic research to get started on the Ebook. This will not only help you with all the advantages mentioned above, you could also free up time for other things that you enjoy.

Six Virtual Assistant services you must opt for a merrier Christmas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join hands with Virtual Assistants for designing a perfect landing page

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

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

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

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.

Give your business a winning edge with effective content marketing strategy

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

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

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

Tips for Successful E-mail Marketing

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

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.

Social Media: A nifty way for your business

Social media is a significant facet of this digital era. Its influence is reflected by the striking metrics like over a billion audiences in popular social media sites, the annual user increment of around 11%, the remarkable engagement rate and the like. With its evolution over the last decade, social media has eventually become a reliable medium of commercial information. 65% of social media users consider information which is shared on social media while making their purchase decision. No wonder, social media has come to be an effective weapon for business professionals, especially savvy marketers. Some specifics about social media which will encourage you to use social media for your business are sorted out as follows:   Social media offers you low – cost platform for advertising: Developing a social media strategy is the best way to decrease the marketing expenses in a business. While a 30 seconds TV ad pricing $350000 reaches a national audience a Facebook ad at a lesser cost reaches the global audience. So, social media gives you a better harvest for your marketing investments. Social media offers you a wide audience reach: If your aim is a wide reach then social media is your best bet. Facebook has over 1 billion active users across different demographics, geography and cultural parameters. Twitter which is logged in by over 100 million users daily is mostly used by the age ran. The twitter users aging above 60 are also increasing. Social media enables your faster reach to audience: There is hardly anyone who does not have a social media account. More than 60% of the social media account holders use their social media accounts daily. This justifies the fact and assures you that social media has a faster and ascertained reach to your target audience. Social media offers you an intense user engagement: User generated content in social media earns sincere attention of users. Apart from this, most of the content comes off in appealing forms like engaging games, queries, video ads and the like. Social media hikes brand loyalty of your fans: Most of the content in social media is user generated and it flows in from reliable sources. Moreover social media exposes your brand to a wide audience and it enables you to interact with the audience. It’s a three tier effect: it introduces your brand to your young prospective fans, invokes curiosity about your brand and emboldens the faith of your already existing fans. All these help you to earn brand loyalty from your fans. Social media offers you the scope of better customer service: Social media helps you in understanding the sentiment of your audience for your brand. By following the social buzz and analysing social sentiment of your target audience you understand the exact needs of your customers and follow them up with the required service. While the above stated advantages of social media gives you good returns, using social media for your brand is not free from risks. One of the risks arises from the fast reach of social media. So, if it’s a positive buzz your brand may become the king of the market while if it’s a negative buzz, you brand may get affected. So, using social media requires your vigilance all the time. You have to keep an eye on the reactions of your audiences to your marketing activities and keep the buzz about your brand under control. Giving prompt responses to your audience queries, regulating negative posts with an appeasing reply and pivoting audience attention to positive posts help you to regulate the reactions of your audience. If you are infusing social media in your business strategies you must not miss out on these tips:   Learn about the behaviour of your audience: Learning audience behaviour is a mixture of quantitative and qualitative process. It requires your intent observation, social sentiment analysis, search analysis etc. Learning about audience behaviour will help you to tune in your brand with your target audience. Do not beat the drum about your brand: Over promoting your brand will hamper your brand reputation. So, social media strategies must be objectified to win the heart of your audience rather than promoting your business. It should be customer oriented. Respond to messages and queries on time: Apt response to messages and queries from your audience helps you to earn new fans and maintain the relationship with already existing fans. Do not abuse the use of hash tags: The hash tags you use must be relevant to your business and must be popular at the time you make your post. Post at optimal frequencies: Posting at optimal frequencies increases the visibility of your brand in a social site. So, learn about the optimal frequency of posting in a particular site with real time posting as well as secondary research and post accordingly. Use the right parameters to measure the success of your brand: The ROI parameters tell you how effective have been your social media strategies and how you should proceed in the future. Choose the right parameters to evaluate your social media activities and earn rich returns. GetFriday (earlier YMII or YourManInIndia) is a service that was featured and used in the NYTimes best-selling productivity and lifestyle design book ‘The 4-Hour-Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris. Sign up now!

Social Media: A nifty way for your business Read More »

Social media is a significant facet of this digital era. Its influence is reflected by the striking metrics like over a billion audiences in popular social media sites, the annual user increment of around 11%, the remarkable engagement rate and the like. With its evolution over the last decade, social media has eventually become a reliable medium of commercial information. 65% of social media users consider information which is shared on social media while making their purchase decision. No wonder, social media has come to be an effective weapon for business professionals, especially savvy marketers. Some specifics about social media which will encourage you to use social media for your business are sorted out as follows:   Social media offers you low – cost platform for advertising: Developing a social media strategy is the best way to decrease the marketing expenses in a business. While a 30 seconds TV ad pricing $350000 reaches a national audience a Facebook ad at a lesser cost reaches the global audience. So, social media gives you a better harvest for your marketing investments. Social media offers you a wide audience reach: If your aim is a wide reach then social media is your best bet. Facebook has over 1 billion active users across different demographics, geography and cultural parameters. Twitter which is logged in by over 100 million users daily is mostly used by the age ran. The twitter users aging above 60 are also increasing. Social media enables your faster reach to audience: There is hardly anyone who does not have a social media account. More than 60% of the social media account holders use their social media accounts daily. This justifies the fact and assures you that social media has a faster and ascertained reach to your target audience. Social media offers you an intense user engagement: User generated content in social media earns sincere attention of users. Apart from this, most of the content comes off in appealing forms like engaging games, queries, video ads and the like. Social media hikes brand loyalty of your fans: Most of the content in social media is user generated and it flows in from reliable sources. Moreover social media exposes your brand to a wide audience and it enables you to interact with the audience. It’s a three tier effect: it introduces your brand to your young prospective fans, invokes curiosity about your brand and emboldens the faith of your already existing fans. All these help you to earn brand loyalty from your fans. Social media offers you the scope of better customer service: Social media helps you in understanding the sentiment of your audience for your brand. By following the social buzz and analysing social sentiment of your target audience you understand the exact needs of your customers and follow them up with the required service. While the above stated advantages of social media gives you good returns, using social media for your brand is not free from risks. One of the risks arises from the fast reach of social media. So, if it’s a positive buzz your brand may become the king of the market while if it’s a negative buzz, you brand may get affected. So, using social media requires your vigilance all the time. You have to keep an eye on the reactions of your audiences to your marketing activities and keep the buzz about your brand under control. Giving prompt responses to your audience queries, regulating negative posts with an appeasing reply and pivoting audience attention to positive posts help you to regulate the reactions of your audience. If you are infusing social media in your business strategies you must not miss out on these tips:   Learn about the behaviour of your audience: Learning audience behaviour is a mixture of quantitative and qualitative process. It requires your intent observation, social sentiment analysis, search analysis etc. Learning about audience behaviour will help you to tune in your brand with your target audience. Do not beat the drum about your brand: Over promoting your brand will hamper your brand reputation. So, social media strategies must be objectified to win the heart of your audience rather than promoting your business. It should be customer oriented. Respond to messages and queries on time: Apt response to messages and queries from your audience helps you to earn new fans and maintain the relationship with already existing fans. Do not abuse the use of hash tags: The hash tags you use must be relevant to your business and must be popular at the time you make your post. Post at optimal frequencies: Posting at optimal frequencies increases the visibility of your brand in a social site. So, learn about the optimal frequency of posting in a particular site with real time posting as well as secondary research and post accordingly. Use the right parameters to measure the success of your brand: The ROI parameters tell you how effective have been your social media strategies and how you should proceed in the future. Choose the right parameters to evaluate your social media activities and earn rich returns. GetFriday (earlier YMII or YourManInIndia) is a service that was featured and used in the NYTimes best-selling productivity and lifestyle design book ‘The 4-Hour-Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris. Sign up now!