by Kimberly | Nov 5, 2009 | Blog, Featured, Social Media, Social Media Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistance
You’ve probably heard over and over that social media is about authenticity, sincerity, and transparency. Maybe this has prevented you from getting a little extra help with your social media needs; you aren’t looking for someone to go out and impersonate you online. You want to be sure that you are the one maintaining control over your image, your business or your brand. Unfortunately, you’ve probably also heard that social media can become a colossal time suck. This is where a Social Media Virtual Assistant (SMVA) comes in. Your image and message can remain authentically yours while someone else takes care of the routine tasks and chores of social media. Here are just a few things a SMVA can do for you: Set up your social media profiles. Setting up a new Twitter account or Facebook Fan page is easy, but optimizing them for the greatest marketing value is quite challenging. An SMVA has the expertise and specialized knowledge to efficiently get your account off to a running head start. Already have an established Twitter or Facebook page? Your SMVA can provide you with recommendations on how to use your accounts to build your online visibility and increase your brand awareness. And how many times have you wondered what exactly you’re supposed to do with your LinkedIn account? An SMVA can advise you on how to optimize your profile and how to be seen as an expert in your industry. Save time by having your SMVA research groups for you to join and find questions for you to answer. Research. An SMVA can help research where your target audience...
by Kimberly | Oct 27, 2009 | Blog, Featured, Social Media Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistance
Engaging in online media and maintaining your social presence online is time consuming, and it can quickly become overwhelming as well. This is especially true if you are new to using social media. A Social Media Virtual Assistant (SMVA) is someone who can get you set up on different social networks, streamline systems for maintaining your social media presence, and help save you time in the long run. They understand how different social networks function and can get you up and running so that you make the best use of your time and resources online. Here are few tips to help you make the most of your Social Media Virtual Assistant: 1. Have a good idea what your goals are. Do you want someone to help you create and maintain your profiles? Implement an overall social media strategy? Provide consistent updates and distribute your new content? Do you need someone with experience editing and distributing videos? Does the SMVA need to know how to help maintain the backend of your blog or help with the more technical aspects of blogging? Having an idea of what you want to the SMVA to do will help you to look for an assistant who has the skills to provide the type of assistance you want. You should also be comfortable with delegating tasks and communicating consistently and clearly. It typically takes between 60-90 days for an assistant to fully understand the client and integrate with their business. You need to be especially prepared to provide information and be responsive during the early days of the working relationship. It is also important to...
by Kimberly | Oct 25, 2009 | Blog, Facebook, Social Media
On Friday, Facebook made yet another change to how users see their news feed on their homepage when the log in. Previously, when you logged in you saw all the latest news and posts from your friends and from the fan pages you follow. Additionally, there was the “Highlights” section off to the right hand side of the screen which many people never really understood the usefulness of this feature nor was it ever really clear how a particular story, photo, video or link ended up in your Highlights section. Now when you log in you will first see the “News Feed” on your Home page. According to Facebook’s Blog this is “the most interesting things that happened in the last day in the “News Feed” view. News Feed picks stories that we think you’ll enjoy based on a variety of factors including how many friends have liked and commented on it and how likely you are to interact with that story.” What this means is that Facebook has “picked” some of your friends and fan page’s updates or postings that they think you will be most interested in regardless of when they were posted and is essentially *highlighting* them for you. This does have some benefits in that you might find a posting or update that is interesting to you from several hours to a couple of days ago that you might have missed when you were not logged into Facebook. However, it also means that Facebook is picking these for you so there may also been people or pages showing up in this stream that really are...
by Kimberly | Sep 23, 2009 | Blog, Internet Marketing, Marketing, small business
Analytics Help You Understand Your Effectiveness and Reach It is reported that nearly 20% of email marketers do not know how well their email marketing campaigns are working simply because they do not track them. The importance of reviewing and analyzing the metrics of your email or e-newsletter campaigns is a major component of knowing whether or not what you are doing is effective or is providing you with any return on your investment. Here are the major components of the metrics of any email marketing campaign. Delivery Rate: The delivery rate is simply the total number of email that were actually delivered to the intended inbox. Delivery rate percentages are determined by taking the total number of emails that bounced (undeliverable) by the number of emails sent. Spam filters and other issues can cause an email to be bounced. You can reduce the chances of having your email bounce by asking the recipients to white-list your email. Open rate: This is the number or percentage of total delivered emails that were actually opened by the recipients. There is some debate about how accurate this number is and whether it is reliable. However, it is still an important number to be aware especially as you send out multiple emails and if you are seeing any drastic change in your open rates over time. Industry research estimates the average open rate is 30%. If your rate is lower than this, you may want to research and evaluate how effective your emails are to the target audience. Click-Through Rate: This tracks the number of times a link in your email was...
by Kimberly | Aug 26, 2009 | Blog, social media marketing
If you’ve been thinking at all that maybe, just maybe, you need to figure out if you and your business should be getting involved is this whole “social media” thing, you should watch this video. It really makes the point about how social media is here to stay. What are your thoughts about the necessity of having a strong social media/ social networking...
by Kimberly | Jul 27, 2009 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, social media marketing
A new report out by Wetpaint and the Alitmeter Group showed that companies with the greatest engagement in social media in the past year grew their revenues by 18% while companies that were the least engage showed about a 6% decrease in revenue. The study included the top 100 brands and include such social media channels as blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook and discussion forums. Not surprisingly, the top three brands with the highest levels of engagement included Starbucks, Dell and Google. Where it gets interesting is that the analysis revealed that these companies had dedicated teams of people who were actively engaged in using the variety of social media channels. WebProNews reports that: Basically, it shows that it pays (literally) to have a team working full time on engaging with customers via social media. Even if that team consists of one person, it means they will not be distracted by other tasks and can give the social channel the attention required for it to make a significant impact. What this means for the small business owner who may not be able to afford nor need a “dedicated” staff of employees to help them engage with their customers using social media, but they do have the ability to work with a Social Media Virtual Assistant and make an impact on their overall online visibility and more importantly, their bottom line. Social media becomes an effective marketing channel when it is used as part of a strategy and with continuous and ongoing efforts. The small business owner or entrepreneur who may not have the time or the capacity to get started...
by Kimberly | Jul 16, 2009 | Blog, Featured, Social Media, social media marketing, Social Media Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistance
I was thrilled to be included as one of the people interviewed for this article about working with a Social Media Virtual Assistant for help with social media tasks and managing your online presence. Dawn Pigoni of Be Social Worldwide, another Social Media VA was also interviewed along with social media greats Chris Brogan and Lon Safko. It was an honor to be included and portrays a good representation of how a social media virtual assistant can help with one’s online visibility and their social media tasks. Many thanks to the author, Lydia Dishman for writing up a great article. Here is the article in it’s entirety. Should You Outsource Your Online Presence? You can save time and money by leaving social media marketing to the pros. July 7, 2009 Between blogging, tweeting, Facebooking and updating a LinkedIn profile, it’s a wonder how a business owner has any time to answer e-mails and phone calls, much less run a company. But the time invested in social networking is well spent in this age where maintaining a social media presence can be a necessary piece of a successful marketing strategy. Trouble is, as the number of platforms grows, so does the time it takes to feed and groom each account. Not to mention the front-end investment of setting everything up. For those caught up in a social media blitz–and those contemplating taking the plunge–why not consider outsourcing? A virtual assistant can tackle those time-consuming tasks. What Can a Social Media Virtual Assistant Do? Many administrative professionals who provided support services such as correspondence, search engine optimization and event planning via...
by Kimberly | Jul 15, 2009 | Blog, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media
Facebook has gone yet one step further in providing you with the ability to embed a widget on your web site or blog which includes posts from your Facebook Fan page along with the option to show your current fans. Best of all, it provides a quick and seamless way for a reader of your website or blog to become a fan of your site from right there. (Assuming they have a Facebook account.) This is awesome new feature which allows you to create yet another way to engage with your target audience and to bring them in to part of your online social network. It’s also a great move on Facebook’s part to push Facebook out even further into the Internet stratosphere. To get the code for the widget for a fan page, you must first be an Admin for the fan page. This means you can’t just go and add a widget for any fan page that might grab your attention. As with anything that you post on your site, it should be something that you have explicit permission to post. As an Admin to a Fan Page, when you go to the page, you will see the option just below the picture or your logo which says, “Add Fan Box to Your Site.” There you will actually see two options, one for getting the code for adding a fan box and the other option provides you with code to get a Live Stream box which shows all the updates from your friends and where you can also post your status. Grab the copy and paste it...
by Kimberly | Jun 14, 2009 | Blog, Facebook, Social Media
Last night Facebook opened the gates to allow users to claim a specific username, which is something people have been requesting for a long time. LinkedIn allows you do that and so does Twitter so it seems that it was about time for Facebook to provide users the ability to create a personalized URL as well. For people who are using Facebook primarily as a business networking and social marketing platform, then there are additional benefits to having a specific vanity URL related to marketing and branding. For many of us who already use either our name, our business name or another specific username, there was some added pressure to be the first to stake a claim- especially if you have a fairly common name. I chose to go with my proper name instead of my business name. I did this for a couple of reasons. First, as a Virtual Assistant, there is just as much likelihood that someone will search for me by name as they will for my business name. My URL for LinkedIn is also under my proper name. Secondly, Facebook made it very clear that users would not be allowed to change their username and were advised to choose wisely. I figured that if I ever wanted to re-brand myself or decided to change my name or my industry, then I would want to still have a relevant username/URL for my Facebook account regardless of what I was doing or the name of my business. Besides, in a few weeks, I’ll be able to choose a username for my business Fan Page that can specific...
by Kimberly | May 16, 2009 | Blog, small business, Social Media, social networking, Virtual Assistant
I saw this video posted today in my Facebook newstream and I really liked the message. As a Social Media Virtual Assistant, I also see myself as an entrepreneur and I do think entrepreneurs are changing the world. We are not only contributing to how the world works but we are doing it to make better lives for ourselves and for those who follow us. With the recent economic hard times upon us, I think it especially important to keep telling yourself that anything is still possible, even when it seems like it’s not....
