Facebook is a great tool for marketing products and reaching out to new
markets.

It may be a very good tool but it still needs help to market your pages and spread the word, don’t just expect the folk to come flocking to your pages.

Plan and build your marketing strategy so that you don’t waste your energy supplying all the trimmings only to discover that you have no fans.

If you have a blog, network them so that when they are published, it shows up on your Facebook page.
Cross promote across your various social media networks to grow your fan base.
Increase conversations with your fans, capture the interest of people who want to spend money on your products or services.

If the people behind the branding are passionate and committed to making customers happy you can bring this excitement to your brand. It’s down to you to spread the word and enthuse your fans who will then pass the message on and attract new followers. Don’t waste time on those that are not interested, be sure you know your market, making it possible to target them and fine tune your Facebook ads for your audience.

Branding your Facebook page, so that it resembles your website or blog, lets your followers know that they are dealing with the same company. It’s possible to now do as much on your Facebook page as you can on your website. You can let people know of any events you are hosting or special offers you have.

Engage with your followers by keeping your pages up to date with interesting snippits for your audience to read. Use video and photos to entertain and educate your fans about your products.

Next week, getting started and some useful tools for using Facebook. Need any help or advice, email us, or speak to Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

Following on from last weeks blog about using Twitter for job searching, this week here are a few more ideas.

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.

As a social media tool that is still lagging behind LinkedIn, Facebook and My Space, Twitter may not be the most popular but it does have some advantages when it comes to job search. Knowing how Twitter works may help you understand why it’s so useful searching for work and with an insight in to it’s working it may offer more appeal to you than it  does at the moment.

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.

Writing articles can be assisted by your virtual assistant in several ways. By providing you with ideas for topics to write about and helping to draft articles, to researching and suggesting keywords to be used within the body of your article. They can help to create a byline that includes a call to action for your readers. Virtual support can proofread and then distribute online to the many websites that specialise in article submissions.

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 re-purpose 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 hard work 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.

Can your business benefit from an affiliate programme? A virtual assistant can help with all aspects of the procedure. With an affiliate programme the chance to make extra money from your business, by having others advertise and promote can be dealt with by your virtual support. From the initial set up of your account and details to maintaining the programme. Choosing banners and links and embedding on your site can all be handled by virtual support. By liaising with your graphic designers promotional links and banners can be created to complement your business brand.

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.