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....
by Kimberly | Apr 2, 2009 | Blog, Internet Marketing, Social Media, social media marketing, Twitter
The Brooklyn Art Museum has a Twitter account and at last check, they had over 21,000 people following them. The Museum uses the account to tweet about happenings at the Museum such as events, announcements, new blog posts from the Museum blog and to interact with patrons. They also tweet links to their other social media accounts such as Facebook where they have they have a Group with almost 800 members. According to recent Facebook statistics, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, with over 2,500 fans, is one of the fastest growing Facebook fan pages with a weekly growth rate of over 600%. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is also on Twitter with almost 12,000 people following them. They are tweeting about events such as an Art Hunt, the announcing of their website redesign, to answer questions from people and to tweet about Art in the news. Both museum twitter sites indicate the name of the staff who are doing the tweeting. This is important because even though the accounts represent an entity, people prefer to interact on Twitter with a person. A quick search on Twitter for other arts organizations include the Atlanta Symphony, The Chicago Symphony, the New World Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Houston Ballet, the Pennsylvania Ballet, and the San Francisco ballet, while not actively tweeting, has gone in and “reserved” their twitter name for future use. The Smithsonian has also joined the Twitter world. A blog post of an interview with Marc van Bree, the PR coordinator with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra about their social media and online efforts. In referring...
by Kimberly | Mar 28, 2009 | Blog, Social Media, social media marketing, Social Media Virtual Assistant
Social Media is now being used by small business, entrepreneurs, big business, non-profits and a multitude of other organizations. Using Social Media to market and network online is quickly becoming the norm as the number of people using and participating in Social Media grows exponentially. Consider these numbers: • In 2005, 8% of all adults online had a profile on a social networking site. Today, this has increased to 35%. • In December 2008, 76 million people visited MySpace which was a 10% increase over the previous year. • In December 2008, 54.5 million people visited Facebook which was a 57% increase from the previous year and it’s estimated that 22% of all adults online have a profile on Facebook. • Facebook’s fastest growing demographic is among users ages 35-49 in 2008. • In August 2008, 23.7 million people visited YouTube and 1 out of every 3 videos viewed online is on YouTube. • Globally, in 2008, more internet users accessed a social networking community than used email, (67% to 65%). • In December 2008, 4.5 million people visited Twitter which was an astounding 753% increase from the previous year. Five to ten thousand new Twitter accounts are created daily. • The number of active people on Twitter in the past week is over 550,000. • 73% of active online users have read a blog. How Can a Social Media Virtual Assistant Help? Clearly, Social Media is here to stay and it’s obviously become a marketing force to be reckoned with. As small business owners or solo entrepreneurs, many of us have limited time to be focusing on how...
