Get Seen and Be Heard with PR & Social Media Virtual Assistance


When it comes to offering your services online, you’ll notice that education is changing just fast as technology and keeping up with these changes is crucial for staying relevant, especially in the field of virtual assistance. I’ve recently had the exclusive opportunity to work with two of the best in Social Media Strategy and Online Public Relations in a small group setting through the Get Seen Be Heard Certification Program led by Christina Daves, Best Selling Author and DIY-PR Maven and Karen Yankovich, Social Media Evangelist.

This 8-week (no fluff) program was intensive and 100% focused on cutting edge social media and PR strategies for getting our clients more publicity, more opportunities, and expanding their sphere of influence online. Have you ever heard the term “PR on Steroids?” This phrase is exactly how I would describe the program and the results of what we learned in this 8 week intensive. By the time I finished the course, I had already created several new marketing packages as a result of this training and I’m excited to announce my official completion.

If you are already a client or you are interested in working together for the first time to combine the best of social media and publicity to generate massive buzz, please send me an email (Michelle@CTVirtualAssistance.com) or complete our Contact Form and I’ll get in touch with you within one business day to set up a free one-on-one discovery consult.

To Your Success,


To learn more about CT Virtual and the Virtual Project ManagementMarketingPR, and Creative Services we offer – Schedule your free discovery session! Have a specific project management question, ask me on Twitter! Visit our Online Creative Portfolio!

The Importance of Publicity for Small Business Success


Virtual Assistant Intelligence having fun

There’s a lot of buzz around the word “publicity” and unlike marketing or advertising, which often come as sales pitches, good publicity often carries the power of an independent voice. Publicity includes articles in newspapers, radio and TV, on forums, blogs and social media.

Effective publicity leads to positive results and higher sales because your company can expose its products and services to a wider range of customers and ineffective publicity does the exact opposite. Though publicity isn’t something small businesses can control directly, there are traditional and nontraditional strategies that prove to be beneficial. Crafting the right pitch and hook is always essential.

If you are a business owner who is weighing the benefits of public relations and publicity, then here’s what you need to consider.

Why Is Publicity Important for Small Businesses?

It’s Virtually Free: Apart from content and media distribution costs, publicity costs are virtually free. Now business can use the internet as their first source to promote their business by sharing press releases and articles on various news sites to build authority. Read more…

Virtual Assistant or Virtual Project Manager?


Virtual Assistant or Virtual Project Manager

Every business needs assistance large or small, corporate or private, someone has to answer the phones, respond to emails, organize meetings, and create a long term business plan. The list goes on. Accomplishing these daily tasks and long term goals takes work; it can be overwhelming, time consuming and tedious. As an entrepreneur you could apply your time as a jack of all trades, but it’s likely not the best idea for growing your business. Instead, consider enlisting a Virtual Assistant (VA) or a Virtual Project Manager (VPM) to support you. But wait, which one? Are they different or are they the same? Both roles are critical to your success, however, before you can delegate work to someone else – you must understand the difference between them and choose which best suits your requirements and business objectives.

Here are some (but not all) essential tasks of a Virtual Assistant (VA):

  • Marketing Support: It’s important to stay on-deadline with your marketing calendar. These tasks are recurring, are time-consuming and need daily attention. They involve Social Media posting and upkeep, posting new blog articles, setting up newsletters blasts, website administration and maintenance.
  • Sales Support/CRM Administration: In order to keep your business flowing and your sales pipeline moving, answering client inquiries by email in a timely manner are essential to a healthy client base. Updating and accurate client scheduling are also primary necessities to keep your business structured.
  • General Administration/Organization: Being organized about time management helps you complete tasks that have deadlines; and most importantly doing so efficiently and accurately. It’s critical to manage customer contact lists, maintain multiple calendars, plan meetings and keep tasks prioritized.

The tasks listed above are just a few of many that a VA can perform. Virtual assistants work on hourly retainers or have set packages and they charge anywhere in the range of $25 to $55 per hour in the US. As with any service provider, the more experience a Virtual Assistant has or if they cater to a specific niche or specialty – the more they can charge. Succeeding as a VA takes skill, attention to detail, personal organization and continuing education to assist online businesses and the vital programs needed to run a virtual office. There are several types of programs a VA should familiarize themselves with; such as task management programs, CRM’s, help desk applications, email marketing software, social media management tools, and the list goes on. The client delegates the tasks they need done, and the VA is responsible for getting them completed by deadline. VA’s set their own work schedule and a high quality of work is expected of them (without supervision).

Here are some (but not all) requirements of a Virtual Project Manager (VPM):

  • Project Planning: A Virtual Project Manager is the lead on a project and is responsible for overseeing all aspects of a project and maintaining a successful implementation/outcome. VPM’s create project action plans, timelines, manage other virtual team members, and resources.
  • Team Organization: Similar to planning, a VPM understands all aspects of the project action plan they create and will organize the team and resources so that all members are assigned roles (based on their own skills or strengths) and holds everyone accountable in all aspects to successfully execute the final outcome.
  • Leadership: A VPM is comfortable with ironing out complex issues, leading the team, monitoring the tasks, and making sure the project is executed properly and the finished objectives are met. Making sure that all team members stay motivated is fundamental to their client’s success.

A VPM’s niche and experience whether marketing or technical assumes a key part in what they charge their customers. Virtual Project Managers can make an upwards of $55 to $100 per hour in the US. They are generally the go-to person that ensures the client’s goals and expectations are met to create a successful end result with any project.

As a business owner, it is your responsibility to know when to seek help and the type of support you need.

To learn more about CT Virtual and the Virtual Project Management, Marketing, PR, and Creative Services we offer –Schedule your free discovery session! Have specific project management questions, ask me on Twitter! Visit our Online Creative Portfolio!

Read more…

5 Tips to Skyrocket Your Email Conversions with Drip Email Marketing


Engage Your Followers with Drip Mail Marketing

So you’ve chosen an email marketing system to cultivate a list and client base. You’re sending out your latest team announcements, delivering your valuable offers, and you’re getting subscribers. But are you making the most of email marketing? The honest answer is NO. There is a significant problem with this process. New subscribers just get the messages you send after they’ve joined, and they will never see all of the messages you sent before they subscribed.

Drip Email Marketing (DEM) can solve this problem. Here is why.

Often called autoresponders, marketing automation, or drip email campaigns – DEM is a proven method to maximize your email marketing efforts and multiply your conversion rates. In essence, Drip Email Marketing is an example of how the latest software solutions, valuable content, and adding creativity to the mix, can help you boost the effectiveness of any platform (in your sleep). DEM tools can schedule a series of emails, configured according to a multitude of parameters, helping you send the right email to the right person at the right time.

An example of this is sending new subscribers a “Welcome!” email, shortly after their subscription. If you provide content on your site, the next email could lead them to some of the best and highest converting content you created in the last 6 months, to “bring them up to speed”, and offering them something they “missed”.

DEM tools, however, are so much more than this! You can further program these drip emails to certain “actions” or “triggers”. One example is strengthening your remarketing efforts. Maybe someone bought a product from you that usually takes 8-10 weeks to use up. Why not send an email to them with an offer for the next batch, when their supply is getting low? Or maybe there are those who opened your premium service page several times – but they were not ready to take the plunge and buy it. Maybe all they need is a little nudge in the appropriate direction.

In short, you can have several sets of emails going out to customers or subscribers triggered by their actions and behavior.

Creating impactful emails can also be daunting. So here are 5 Tips to Skyrocket Your Email Conversions with Drip Email Marketing.

1. Clear Subject Lines

Successful drip campaigns are bold when it comes to subject lines – you can experiment with a personal tone or high emotions, but first and foremost, you have to avoid clutter. The subject line should read clean, the drip campaign emails should be numbered, and have the same format. The emails will stand out as a nice collection in the subscriber’s inbox.

2. Personal Touch

It depends on the kind of business, but almost every industry leader or influencer benefits from putting it all out there. If you are ready to open up and share personal stories about your life that can relate to your product, you should, because that builds trust.

3. Multimedia

Quality content always helps, it makes your efforts more professional. A good video or soundbite, or a useful pdf – these all make great additions to your emails and form grounds for sharing. If you send out something that you honestly think is worth sharing, make sure you add the necessary social buttons, and offer copy-paste or pre-placed recommendation text!

4. Share your enthusiasm

There is no shame in being happy that someone is interested in you enough to actually subscribe to your stuff. This is news! You can let your customers know that, so they become a part of your story, and draw inspiration from it. Don’t overplay it, but express your gratefulness and make your subscribers trust that their decision will surely bring something positive in their lives or career.

5. Surprise!

Who doesn’t like surprises? A secret trick: make promises, like exactly how many emails your drip campaign contains, but spice it up a little. Send some extra offers or bonus content that you do not mention, but only in the email series you present them.

Did you like this article? Share it with your friends!

For more information about CT Virtual and the Virtual Assistant, Drip Email Marketing (DEM) Content Writing, Copywriting and Programming services we offer to Online Business Coaches, Authors, and Speakers – schedule a free 30-minute discovery session.

Online Book Marketing and Why Research is Crucial


There is no Elevator To Success - You Must Take the Stairs - Why Research is Crucial to Book Marketing

As a writer, you know all too well how much work is required to complete an entire book. Once you have finished your book, you may be tempted to think that the hardest part is behind you. As many authors discover, however, the book marketing process is arduous and requires a skill set very different from the creative energy that produced your book in the first place. In particular, online book marketing demands targeted and thorough research if you want your book to have a fighting chance against the countless other titles flooding the market. Here is your guide to researching and executing your online marketing strategy.

Know Your Audience

The single most important aspect of your marketing research involves getting to know your target audience. You probably already have some idea of who your audience is; the next step is determining where your audience is on the web. As a starting point, you can check sales data from big online vendors such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The key here is to look for similar titles and determine general interest level in a book like yours. You can also do much more targeted research based on the topic of your book. Are your target readers part of an online community like Reddit, YouTube, or Yahoo? Are there any major blogs that your readers are most likely to follow? If you understand how your audience interacts on the web, you will begin to assemble a plan for how and where to market your book.

Learn Your Audience’s Buying Habits Read more…

5 Reasons Why Research is Crucial for Start-ups & Customer Development


 

5 Reasons Why Research is Crucial for Start-ups & Customer Development

There are many businessmen and women who become alarmed when hearing that 80% of small businesses fail within the first five years of being started.

If your business is a start-up, then you know that a successful plan for business marketing has little to do with gut feeling. It is however based on sound market research. If you have already come to terms with this, then you will have a competitive advantage. Despite the fact that market research is crucial for understanding the competition, many startup ideas are focused on the business opportunities and creating successful products. If startup businesses spend more time on understanding competition on all levels: segment competition, product competition, technology competition, future competition – they will be better equipped at devising highly effective competitive action plans.

Below we will outline reasons as to why research is crucial for startups and customer development:

  1. Poor planning: One of the major reasons as to why research is crucial for startups is poor planning. This can compromise the unplanned financial management, unplanned business administration, and unplanned marketing efforts.
  1. Marketing yourself well: Instead of marketing your general profession, you should stay focused on your niche. For example, if you market yourself as a “Research Startup”, you are too general and not specific enough. Try marketing your idea as “On-demand Media Research for Publishers” or “DIY Market Research Platform for Small Businesses”.

Read more…

Build Your Author Platform in 6 Easy Steps


Building Your Author Platform

Sometimes it’s called an author platform, writing platform, branding, social media presence, or what have you, but essentially, all these things are based on the same principle: you need to create a solid foundation for your writing business in order to build awareness, sustain it, and sell more books.

The word “platform’ might seem terrifying, but if you know all the variables involved ahead of time, and break them down into actionable goals, building your author platform is easier than you thought.  In this article, we will set you up with a plan on how to build up and maintain your author platform and connect everything, with small steps, so you can experience a gradual, steady increase in your visibility and reputation. So, let’s get to it!

  1. Author Websites: Yes, you might think that in 2015 a website is not quintessential anymore because of other existing platforms – but it is. In fact, most book marketers believe, next to email marketing, your website is the most important entity of your Author Platform. You need a stable foundation for your online presence, one that you have complete and unlimited control of. Building a solid author website is not necessarily a huge burden on your time if you have great author website designer, but there are other options as well. You can hire professional designers, or create one yourself using Wix or Grid, without having to write a single line of code. Blog engines like WordPress or Blogger also offer beautiful templates, but a blog template site may not have all the features you want. In this case, you can hire a Virtual Assistant Company that specializes in WordPress to enhance your site and make it complete. Alternatively, you can register on a personal branding site network like me. These are not the same as completely functional websites, but it can do the trick until you have a real site up and running. As an Author, it is important that you buy a personal URL or domain under your author or pen name.
  1. Contacts and List Building: Digital media offers a wide selection of tools to boost you author platform. But first, make certain to utilize your your personal and professional contacts, who can help you grow, give you feedback and spread the word, and create an opt-in list for them to join or for you to add contacts manually. This is referred to as your “Core Fan Base”. Next, make a list of people outside your network. This list should include your favorite authors (who write the same genre as your books), experts on the subjects you write about, and other stakeholders and media professionals. Now you can start looking for ways to use the first group to give the second group access to your author platform. Continue to build your lists by continuously sharing your opt-in list signup and by manually adding new contacts you meet.

Read more…

Worried About Plagiarism? You might be surprised.


Palgiarism

Worried About Plagiarism?

I recently stumbled upon another book marketing blog post and I noticed the article appeared stunningly similar to a post I had written a few months back. Out of curiosity, I decided to read on and to check other posts this blogger had written. Thoroughly astonished, I learned she didn’t just copy my exact opinions and phrases from one article and pass them on as her own (changing only the titles), she actually copied several and word-for-word in many places. Enrage would be too strong of a word to describe how I felt at the time about a person I had never met before, but I couldn’t help but take this personal. I was NOT at all happy – to say the least. After further investigation, I additionally learned this blogger (RE-WRITER) had been a subscriber to my blog’s email list. So I guess you can say I’ve been “filling her plagiarism tank” for the past year.

Let’s be honest, it’s quite common to check out the competitors from time to time for gaining valuable insight. But whether or not I follow other experts in the industry and utilize the information I learn through competitive analysis to formulate future articles on my blog – it has always been important for me that I put out genuine and unique content and only write about what I know. On this point alone, I can remember every word and sentence I have ever written. To make a long story short, I am in the process of integrating a new WordPress plugin that will hopefully deter others from doing this in the future. It has disabled the RIGHT CLICK and COPY functionality one has when visiting a site. I will also be issuing a letter to the RE-WRITER kindly requesting she take down the content she did not originate and I’m hoping she will not have a problem with this.

But what can you do avoid this from happening to you?

My Virtual Assistant colleague and friend, Crystal Curran of REVAVille VA Mentoring and RedHotVA.com, has recently crafted a very insightful post on this topic. Read more…

Part 3: Great Tips to Build A Convincing Local Book Marketing Pitch


Costco

Book Marketing Pitches

In the previous articles of this series, we discussed what strategy you should use in getting your book on the shelves of Costco and other specialty stores, and tips for pitching your book or whether a certain store and your book are a good match. This process has a sweet spot – the pitch you give to the store manager. Now we share some simple techniques that will greatly increase your chance to succeed at the pitching, and land a deal!

Tip 1: One Page Layout (Your Book Sell Sheet): No matter how rich you plan your pitch to be, and what tools you want to use to present it, if any, in the end, always have a good-looking, clean, book sell sheet you can hand over, with the most necessary info: reviews, endorsements, key selling points – think of it as a CV for your book! Check out my blog post on creating book sell sheets.

Tip 2: Clarify Your Terms: Simply make sure you figure out all the numbers before a sit-down with the manager. Being open minded does help, but you will need to start somewhere. Decisions made in the heat of the moment do not add up later. It is paramount to set your bottom line beforehand – prepare to give them around 50% of your book sales. The exposure is worth it. Read more…

Part 2: Professional Tips for Pitching Your Book to Store Managers


Costco

Pitching Your Book to Store Managers

In my last installment, I told you how to approach Costco and other local specialty stores to feature your book. A key element of that process is convincing the store manager that your book is exactly what their business needs right now. How to do that? I will show you.

You probably heard the expression, which is popular amongst start-uppers, that your business needs to identify a problem, and offer help, a solution. Thinking along the same lines, you need to think through, how can your book help these dealers. When you pitch your book, you will use these arguments as the cornerstones of your presentation.

First argument: Why is your book a good fit in that given store?

You need to think through the target audience of the store and identify any matches with the target audience of your book. You can start plain and simple, just check out the books on sale there, thoroughly. It is even better if you check what is on offer regularly, so you can see the tendencies. What goes in big quantities or has great turnovers? What titles seem to stick there without anyone touching them? Some innocent questions to the store clerks about ‘popular’ books can’t hurt.

Analyze the situation at hand and come with a good, well-phrased argument: “My book is a great fit into your store because it fits perfectly with the Element X of your target group. I see you sell a lot of Category B themed books, and my book is exactly about that.” Read more…

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