Tell Twitter you need a job. Using Twitter to announce that you are looking for work gets the message out quickly and to an audience that you could never hope to reach with just an email. The information is not reliant on an email being read, it’s there for all to see in 140 letters or less. In the same way that you are looking for work with keyword searches , likewise companies are looking to recruit. Select your ‘follows’ by researching them, checking that they are the right people to follow, this will build a good network for you to read and learn from. Follow your industry and recruiters within your area of expertise helps improve the possibility of someone noticing when you tweet that you need a job or that someone that you follow will know of an opening. Choose your ‘follows’ wisely, focus on people who can help with your job search and don’t just add for the numbers.

Make your Twitter presence a balanced one. Try to involve all aspects of yourself in the Twitter feed. It’s nice to see the person behind the words, with some personal ’140s’, but don’t concentrate on this entirely. It’s good to add some words of value, whether it is links to your blog, things you have found valuable and think others might benefit from or retweeting other people’s words of wisdom. Don’t let your content fall into the ‘spam’ category, there is nothing more likely to lose your following or get you ignored. Aim to impress your prospective hirers and add value in your tweets.

At this point, if you feel you need to keep your work life and private life separate, set up two individual accounts and organise settings of the account to make sure that people need to be authorised to view your private account. Better still, don’t put it on the internet if you have any doubts, the web has an awful habit of coming back and biting you.

In your bio, briefly describe yourself and include a link to your site, ensure the information that people will be directed to is professional and honest. If I find that the information I’m sent to is in anyway unprofessional, I don’t feel the need to follow them. Your bio on Twitter can be linked to your blog, website, LinkedIn profile or a visual CV. Don’t miss this opportunity to impress people, letting them know all about you and your abilities.

Twitter has the ability to reach an audience that you would be hard put to match in any other way and on a personal level too. But remember if you don’t want the word spreading don’t put it on the internet.

Do you have any experience of Twitter either for job search or employment? Can we help with your Social Media experience? Email us or telephone Tamara on 02034688594.

Tweeting on Twitter,sometimes known as micro-blogging, allows you no more than 140 characters to get your message across. With millions of people tweeting billions of tweets, all available to everyone on the site, your selection of who to follow and read reduces the mass of information available to you personally. Your ability to have short and pertinent snippets to read from your chosen areas can be a refining tool, and reduce the mountain of information available to a manageable amount. Using the site in the same way as other social networking sites, it allows you to connect with recruiters. Unlike other social network sites there is no requirement to ask to connect and wait to be accepted, you can simply ‘follow’, you are then able to see all of their writings.

By following recruiters and hiring agents, you are able to listen and learn from their words. You can reply to anything you read that they have written, hopefully drawing attraction to yourself from the recruiters.

To begin making connections Twitter search and Twellow will find the people you want to follow. Some may well follow you back but don’t worry if they don’t, your ‘follow’ will enable you to communicate with them. You can follow conversations and reply if you have anything to say. If you have found a post informative a ‘thank you’ is very welcome.

Twitter search allows you to search any keywords you choose, identifying your niche, and searching for jobs and vacancies within the tweets. Many hiring managers/recruiters will tweet about vacancies they have. Keyword search for your job you are looking for, and Twitter will provide a stream of tweets containing theses words. The search term can then be saved and reviewed several times throughout the day. When using a Tweet reader, e.g. Hootsuite, Tweetdeck keyword searches can be entered and when these words appear in any conversation the tweet will appear in your feedreader.

As many businesses track social media sites to check when they are being talked about, good or bad, responses to tweets can be rapidly executed. Likewise if you are tracking companies for job vacancies you can be first to respond and have your application in before the crowd.

Next week, other helpful ideas for using Twitter when job searching.

If you are having problems using Twitter, email us here, or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

A good image to distribute with your article can be researched by virtual support. They can track whether submissions have been successful by using Google alerts and research other places which may accept articles.

A VA can use and repurpose the articles into blog posts and extract links for social media updates. Using excerpts/clips from the article for Twitter updates and link back to the complete article, together with ensuring they are posted to all social media channels.

When assisting with press releases the same work can be done by your virtual assistant as that done for articles, ensuring the press release is sent to the right people and the most beneficial outlets, and in the mode that they are best received. Make sure that the articles or press release are easily read and reproduced. It’s of no use to you if all the hardwork put into the work falls down because it is inaccessible for whatever reason. If the media require hard copy it’s not worth sending it by email as it may well be binned and not reach an audience at all.

Virtual support can contact and submit press releases to television, newspapers and radio. They can be responsible for submitting items of information to the same channels.

Using Google Alerts to monitor keywords and competition a virtual assistant can analyse the success of the press releases and help you to make the necessary changes.

Do you need help with articles, press releases or do you want to know more about Google alerts? If so, email us here, or telephone Tamara, on 0203 468 8594.

Copy can be written, for your approval, that regularly connects you with your affiliates and can supply them with banners and links to use for promoting your business. For Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, virtual support can write social media updates that affiliates can use to advertise and promote. They can write examples of blog posts that can also be used to spread the word about your product.

By implementing a timetable, promotions can be scheduled and materials organised that will be required to run the proposed campaign.

A VA can manage your programme by supporting your affiliates, answering any questions and help them with any difficulties they may have. By keeping in touch with them by email they can provide tips to help promote your product. Contacting affiliates by phone, providing a personal touch, can help your team, knowing that there are real people within the business, there to assist them, in what can be a rather ‘lonely’ internet world.

A virtual assistant can run regular reports to check on affiliate sales and follow up with contact to them to help with promotion or congratulate on their performance!

Are you thinking of starting an affiliate programme for your business? You can email us here, or telephone and speak to Tamara, on 0208 468 8594.

A VA can build into your website the option ‘to tell a friend’ , making it easy for people to spread the word about you and your services or products.

Together you can decide your strategy and what you intend to achieve. What you will provide for your list and how you will thank them for signing up and later, for their loyalty.

By creating an email signature that links to your sign up page, each communication that you send via the internet advertises and promotes you and your product.

A virtual assistant can network on your behalf and when you have been networking, they can ensure exchanged business cards from meetings are added to your list.

Virtual support can develop a timetable to remind you of dates when you have decided to broadcast, blogs, newsletters and reminders for your list.

A VA can help in many ways to build your list on the various Social Media platforms. By setting up accounts on LinkedIn, Ecademy, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and designing a strategy, they can ensure that all profiles are completed so others can find you and learn about you and what you do.

All Social Media accounts can be bought together in one programme e.g. Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and Marketme Suite where updates can be scheduled for posting to the different channels.

Virtual support can assist with the servicing of the accounts by being responsible for responding to enquiries,messages and reviewing ‘mentions’ where necessary. By researching and joining relevant groups in your niche they can keep your profile uppermost in people’s minds. A VA can analyse posts and links to see which achieve clicks and further action, so that posts can be tweaked for performance.

A virtual assistant can create videos for you to place on YouTube, Vimeo, etc and ensure that they are uploaded and relevant information added so that the videos are easily searched for and found by the search engines. They can provide links for adding to other social media platforms giving you a highly visible video which advertises and promotes you and your products or services, which lead to sign ups and build your list.

If you need help with any aspect of list building, contact us here, or telephone Tamara on 0208 468 8594.

They can create any number of membership levels you choose and connect the software to a product, shopping cart or auto-responder.

Virtual support can send ‘thank you’ notes, acknowledgements and website addresses via the membership management programme.

A VA can provide customer support to existing members while helping new members access the membership area.

They can place regular content updates to the area, providing members with a calendar of scheduled events, new information and products.

Virtual help can assist you with ideas on how to acquire and increase the membership.

A VA can ask present members for testimonials to use in future marketing events that you intend to produce.

Virtual support can record audio for you, for teleclasses, webinars and marketing audio messages and then edit the audio files to eliminate unnecessary background noise. They can add music to your audio files, providing intro/outro for your final broadcast.

When the file is finished a virtual assistant can post your audio in forums and other relevant places online.

In the same way, virtual support can help you to create videos, edit and add intro/outro for the final take. This can then be placed on the appropriate channels (e.g.YouTube, Vimeo). They can than edit your profile, description and keywords to help make the video easily found by the search engines.
Are you thinking of setting up a membership site? If so, we can help, email us or speak to Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

How a VA can help - Shopping Cart Maintenance

If you have decided that you would like a shopping cart on your site to earn a passive income a virtual assistant can do all the jobs from the initial installation through all the integral parts needed to run an efficient system. Creation of autoresponders in your shopping cart for all your products, and various types of sign ups, webinar or teleclass a va can integrate into the system.

A virtual assistant can customise your cart with your logo, address and contact details and link your merchant account too.

By categorising product types, setting up shipping tables and creating coupon offers, your virtual assistant can run regular reports which will identify the products that have generated the most revenue for your business. This will allow you to tweak coupons or offers and offer other deals to expand their appeal to your customers.

Order forms can be customised for various products, making it easy for your customers to find related products. Your virtual support can review recurring orders and check everything is running smoothly (cancelling orders or refunding when necessary).

For your shopping cart,your virtual assistant can draft and create autoresponders, whether it is for products or webinar, and then help to decide on the timing of autoresponders.

Your support can create and place sign up forms on your website and ensure tracking links are set up within them, so that reports, when reviewed regularly, will show the parts that are working, enabling changes to be made to pages and content, if needs be.

Need to run a webinar?

Virtual support can help create a master plan for your webinar, drafting correspondence for the broadcast, announcements , reminders and follow up emails. Information will include date/time, time zones, topic to be covered and webinar protocol to be used.

A VA can set up a webinar recording so that after the event recordings can be sent to attendees (and others that had signed up but couldn’t attend, either because of the webinar being full or other commitments.)

They can answer enquiries from your audience and advertise the webinar on various social media platform. If the broadcast is a joint venture, your support can contact them to promote, together with ensuring that all communications advertise your webinar.

Before the webinar begins your va can provide you with details of numbers attending, summary of topics, questions that attendees have emailed that can be addressed during the webinar and recording details. After the event your assistant can post the webinar recording to your website, follow up with attendees, send audio recordings to people who were unable to attend, completing the cycle and build a database from the event for your newsletter,ezine or next event.

For more help or advise, email us here, or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594

How to stay ahead of the game

Google’s aim is that an initial search by a user will provide the information they are looking for. To improve SEO and search engine rankings, look at you site from a users perspective and check that you are providing the best and most relevant information for a given search term. If not then change things so that it works for your user.

Content -it’s about quality not quantity. Using blogs to increase the number of pages indexed by Google achieves a higher ranking but ensure high quality content on all pages. Don’t keyword stuff, publishing text that is optimised for keywords. A blog is still a great way to rise in the search engine rankings and an efficient way to add high-quality information to a website. If you have a low ranking, check your pages and if some appear to be lacking in good content, remove them from your site and check your ranking after removal.

Again its quality over quantity but this time it’s in relation to links. Google have always liked links and by generating a high number of incoming links, which point to a specific web page, it is a way of moving a site up the ranking list. As Google aim for higher quality content in websites, links are not effective and if overdone it can be detrimental to ranking. Good news for the small website designer is the lack of a need to generate a multitude of links to sometimes substandard content they can now concentrate on providing quality instead of quantity.
Guest posts will generate high-quality links and links supported by strong keywords will benefit websites. One downside of the new Google update is that previously press releases generated good back-links but these links are not as valuable now. However, a well-written press release can be very effective if picked up by a major publication or journalist.

Social media, social, social!
Google have introduced a +1 button to join the social media,sharing and search world. It’s there for you to share with friends sites you have found interesting or useful, places you like and provides users with the ability to block sites. All the more reason to keep you content high-quality.

Let people know you are there Tell Google about yourself so that users can find you easily. With good content in place make sure that meta titles and descriptions are in line with your content . Making these parts differ widely, will hurt your rankings likewise keyword stuffing has negative results. Use the SERP (the short paragraph that shows in search results) wisely and write a clear description so people are curious to learn more.
Google’s intentions are to provide the most original and relevant results and duplicate content is not shown. Users can view omitted results but in most cases they are ignored. If your content quality is high and original this shouldn’t be of concern. Duplication of content occurs when RSS feeds are directly published from other websites and content is copied, resulting in lower rankings and removal from search results.

Advertising – Google looks at sites with too much advertising and rates them as low-quality or spammers and lowers their ranking accordingly. Too many adverts and any content you do have may appear lower on you page (where people can’t be bothered to scroll to if their attention isn’t gripped in the beginning) or the view obstructed.
Google continue to change things so that the user has the best possible experience and if your content is of quality rather than quantity and you use the tips above, you should rank well in the search engines.

Can we help? Email us or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

They can handle voicemail messages and respond to enquiries where they are able and provide you with details when necessary. When handling phone calls a VA can take notes of important items raised and pass this information on to you.

Customer support in the form of setting up billing, and scheduling appointments are easily dealt with, together with assisting with your group membership.

Support can be set up an online calendar so appointments can be scheduled with you, informing you of time, date, place and who the meeting is with. You can then be fully prepared for an appointment.

With an online calendar in place birthday cards (and any other card) can be sent out for you. Never miss that birthday or anniversary again! You can then be reminded of important dates and deadlines.

Reports of monthly sales and expenses can be correalated for you, so at a glance, you can see how the business is running.

Virtual support can put in place all manner of online systems, an online calendar, membership software and shopping cart are all within their remit, building your online presence without the need for you to learn all manner of programmes which are required to manage them.

They can offer help on how to organise document folders and your email, screen email to reduce time wasted on things that your assistant can handle, sending you only the email that you need to see and action.

A VA can set up recurring payments and pay your bills online. They can manage projects and tasks offering an all round support for your business.

Just recently I had cause to use an online plant company and thought what a grand opportunity it would have been for them to have introduced a virtual support team into the business to have helped handle customer enquiries during what is obviously a frantic time of the year for them. They only need the extra assistance for a small period of time during the year and a virtual assistant could have helped without the need to employ extra staff, and the time would have been billed accordingly. Customers need to have a response within 24 hours to any enquiry they make and not be told that the answer will take four days! One of the advantages of using virtual support, you only pay for the hours worked, reducing your wage bill considerably and keeping your customers happy with a timely response.

To find out more of how we can help in your business, email us or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

The various social media platforms will require updating and notifying of your latest ‘publication’. Postings to Digg,  StumbleUpon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ecademy and others or on a system like Onlywire, will broadcast your newsletter to a wider audience.

We can help you get published. Do you need to know more? Please email us or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594.