Virtual Assistants (or VA’s) can manage a variety of tasks for you, however one of the most popular roles a Virtual Assistant is hired for is managing an online diary. This leads to one of the top questions asked by business owners – “HOW can a Virtual Assistant actually manage my diary for me?” Continue reading “How can a Virtual Assistant manage my diary remotely?”
Tag: business
Setting Boundaries for Business Success
January is traditionally the month for New Year resolutions and fresh starts. Whether you’re looking to improve your personal life or business environment, resolutions are a great way to set goals for the year ahead… but setting boundaries can be just as, if not more, important to the success of your business. Continue reading “Setting Boundaries for Business Success”
Why Your Business NEEDS a LinkedIn Company Page
LinkedIn is the fastest growing social media platform – that’s a fact. It’s growing faster than Twitter, Facebook and even YouTube, with two new profiles being created every second. So, are you making the most of this opportunity… or are you thinking it’s just for those businesses that are larger than yours, or those who sell business to business products and services?
Brand awareness
The fact is LinkedIn is a social media platform but, with it’s old reputation for being seen predominantly as a recruiting site, it is often overlooked and underutilised. That reputation is gradually being changed to one of a business networking site – and you’ll want to be on there to ride that growing wave. As is the case with other social media sites, it’s well worth your time being on there, due to the huge potential for exposure and visibility that you and your company can gain as a result.
The LinkedIn Company Page
Once a contact visits your personal profile, they have the opportunity to read more about you as an individual – but they also have the chance to click through and investigate your company details too – and this will take them to your company page, if you have one. This page can be a dedicated space to, not only raise your brand awareness through your colour schemes and logos, but to also display videos, blog posts, ebooks, white papers and to share the latest company news with your followers.
You can also showcase specific products and services via the “showcase pages”. This gives you to opportunity to highlight those initiatives and products that would benefit from distinct messaging and segmentation, whilst showing how they fit into your business model as a whole.
Interaction
Interaction with your clients, potential clients and future strategic partners is what must be at the heart of all social media – and LinkedIn is no exception. By posting regular updates and informative content, you will be encouraging your contacts to interact with your company, as well as the opportunity to “follow” you… ensuring they receive all further updates and news too.
Finally, whether you’re already at the stage where you can recruit staff, or are just building up to it, you can list your job opportunities on the site, as it is still one of the top (and most trusted) recruitment sites for job seekers!
Do you use LinkedIn and have you set up a company page… or do you avoid it, in favour of the other social media sites? I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on Linked In, both generally and about their company pages – so why not share them in the comments box below?
Images courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
What we can learn from National Blog Posting Month
Whether you’re a VA or small business owner, you can’t have failed to notice an increase in both blog post links and novel word counts being shared on social media this month.
Thanks to the start of National Blog Posting Month (otherwise known as NaBloPoMo) and the slightly older National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), November is fast becoming the busiest month of the year for bloggers and writers.
As bloggers work on creating a blog post a day and writers work on their minimum of 50,000 words during November, those of us that aren’t in a writing-related business may look on in amusement, but National Blog Posting Month and National Novel Writing Month can also teach small business owners, VAs and other businesses some really valuable lessons too… lessons that can help you improve and grow your business.
Discipline
The success of both of these challenges depends on how disciplined participants to are. A huge amount of them will fall at this first hurdle and drop out over the first few weeks. Now take a look at how many businesses start up, and fail, in their first year of trading.
Discipline is about being self-motivated; ensuring your behaviour and actions are moving you forward and in the right direction – regardless of what’s going on around you. It really is the cornerstone of any successful business… so how can you improve yours and ensure you get over this first hurdle?
Organisation and focus
Whether you’re taking part in NaBloPoMo or running your own business, discipline will get you started, but you need to know what direction to go in and where you’re exactly you’re headed.
As both blogger and writer need to be organised to compete in their respective challenges, creating a plan and being able to focus on that end goal is crucial to your business success too. You need to be able to organise your business and home life, as well as your time and workload.
Interaction
On the surface, both challenges appear to be about creating written content. But in reality, Interaction is truly at the heart of both NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo… and it should be with your business too. You can be the most disciplined and focused person in the world but, if you don’t know how to successfully interact with your potential clients, you won’t stay a business for long.
So, why not set yourself a personal challenge for the rest of November by focusing on improving your business in the three areas mentioned above? If you want to increase your motivation, why not share your intention to commit to this, by leaving a note in the comments section below?
Images courtesy of adamr & Stuart Miles /FreeDigitalPhotos.net
