For most people, the answer might be both.

As a small business owner, you probably read about the importance of social media networking in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. You might even have a Facebook Fan Page for your business.

All these networks are wonderful to generate more contacts, to gain more visibility for your business and expand your contacts. However, many small business owners also realize that once they have all their profiles set up, participating becomes an incredible time-draining activity with no specific or direct or measurable benefit for their business.

Here are 3 key points to help you make the most out of this important social marketing activity. Make sure you:

1. Plan it!
   As with any marketing activity you perform for your business, make a plan that includes not only objectives but also an action plan. Set specific goals to ensure your social networking happens for a reason and will help you get more leads and/or clients.
2. Schedule it!
   Allocate time for your social networking activity. You don’t need to be available all the time. If you participate you must realize social media implies a two-way communications channel. You will have to respond and be active, but organizing this will ensure you make the most out of your time on these social networking sites.
3. Automatize it!
   There are many great online tools to systematize several parts of your social networking communications. Familiarize yourself with the tools available and implement the necessary ones to make your time on these networks a productive one. Better yet–hand this task over to your Virtual Assistant!

Remember the saying: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

RESOURCE: One of my favorite social media guides: Mashable.

Promoting your website can take some effort and money, you don’t want to just anyone to visit your site. Instead, you want a specific audience that is interested in what you have to offer.

It is important to generate high volumes of traffic to a website. However, if it is not your targeted market, what’s the sense of getting people who won’t find what they are looking for to visit your site?

You can build a steady stream of traffic to your website that are targeted and likely to bring you sales. ¿Are you performing these activities to achieve your goals?

1. Know your target customers and make sure that all your advertising campaigns are targeted at these customers. This means that you must use all the necessary keywords which define your potential customers in all your advertising campaigns. If you are using Google Adwords, your advert must specify the targeted customers. If you are writing articles as a way of promoting your website, your articles must contain the keywords for your niche.
2. List your website with top search engines and directories in categories that suit your niche. If your website is about selling products or services that relate to making money online for example, get your website listed under this category on relevant websites. This means that people who are looking for this specific information that relate to your website will easily find your website.
3. Advertise your website in relevant forums and online groups. The more you know about your potential customers, the better you will know where to find them. This means you can go to the relevant forums or online groups where your customers are and you can advertise your website there through having your website URL in your signature when you make posts in these forums. People in forums that related to your niche are targeted customers who have high potential to buy from your website.
4. Write articles that are rich with your keywords. Your articles get picked up and published by many websites, e-zines and directories. You can therefore quickly have thousands of back links pointing to your website. It is therefore important that all your articles have several of your keywords so that when people type these keywords on search engines while looking for information, your website comes up and ranks high on these search engines. This drives targeted traffic to your website.
5. Use your own e-zine and other related e-zines to advertise your website. By publishing your own e-zine, you already have many prospects who are interested in what you have to offer. Make sure that your e-zine has new content and gives away some free report or e-books to your subscribers. Make sure that your website URL is added in all your e-zine publications. Identify other e-zines with a readership that matches your target niche market and advertise your website in these e-zines.
6. Research and look for other web sites where your target customers visit and inquire about advertising your website on these websites.

The six tools outlined above can help you generate targeted traffic to your website. If you want to increase your conversion rate and boost your sales, you need to have targeted visitors on your website.

If you don’t have time to do all these activities, a virtual assistant will be able to help!

Small business owners are always looking for ways to market their business. However, many struggle with the issue of being on a tight budget without realizing that there are several no-cost marketing avenues available.

Identifying those resources will help you focus and develop an action plan to make the most out of your marketing efforts.

1. Referrals: Just ask!
   Even though this source is often neglected, word-of-mouth is probably one of the most productive ways to get new clients. A satisfied client will be happy to recommend you… if you just ask them to do so. (Be sure and let them know who makes a great referral for you–they’ll be more likely to send referrals your way, more often, when they have a specific idea of who you’re looking for.)
2. Articles: Just write!
   Never before has article marketing been an easier way to promote your business. There are tons of article directories in which you can publish your articles. Writing articles will not only increase your exposure, but also present you as an expert in your field.
3. Press Releases: Just submit!
   Gaining brand recognition and communicating your products Read the rest of this entry »

I know you’ve heard this before: “To get your business to the next level, you must delegate some things.” Yes, you do need to get rid of at least one or two hats. But how? Even though you know in your heart how right this advice is, you’ve grown accustomed to going it alone.

Even delegating basic clerical tasks makes you realize there are many aspects involved in each tiny part of your puzzle. And you are right! Each and every part of your business is important. You don’t want to delegate tasks to a person who doesn’t care the same way you do about your business, do you?

Of course not. You don’t just need clerical or secretarial assistance. You need real, professional administrative assistance from someone who has been there and knows what it’s like being a solopreneur and small business owner. That someone is a Virtual Assistant.

Virtual Assistants are in the business of caring about your business and proactively supporting your needs by not only performing tasks, but also adding value to your business — the things they are expert in, they can do better than you!

Letting go — is this a “dealing with change” issue? Read the rest of this entry »

As a solopreneur, unpredicable economic conditions might make you feel uneasy. You are steadily climbing, acting proactively to reach your goals, but you definitely need a shelter or base camp to ensure you’ll reach the summit.

So what would that shelter be for solopreneurs? I strongly believe the answer is organization. There are many methods and tools that will help you reach the summit. As a solopreneur, I regularly stop by my own “Basecamp.”

Basecamp is a project collaboration tool that will make a huge difference in how you organize your projects and communicate with team members or other people working with you. They make it easy to test out the service–just go online and create your no-cost trial account so you can try this great tool out for one project. Basecamp walks you through the entire process step-by-step with video tutorials to show you how to get the most out of the service. You’ll also be able to create to-do lists within the project, define milestones, assign tasks, send email reminders and a host of other capabilities.

I use this tool with several clients. Some just Read the rest of this entry »

All Small Business Owners are invited to attend the FREE Monthly VACOC Teleseminars! Grab this wonderful opportunity!

How to Write Articles to Market Your Business, Even if You Are Not a Writer

Presented by Jan King, The Publishing Store

DATE: Thursday, July 16, 2009
TIME: 5pm PST / 6pm MST / 7pm CST / 8pm EST
DURATION: 60 minutes (call in 10 min. early to secure your seat)
COST: FREE!

WHO SHOULD ATTEND? This class is open to all Virtual Assistants, small/boutique business owners, solo professionals, solopreneurs and independent professionals. Invite your business buddies! If you know some folks who would like to attend, feel free to copy and paste the contents on this page, and post invitations on the forums, listservs and groups you participate in.

Jan King, The Publishing StoreEvery marketing book and seminar tells you that you should be writing articles to promote your expertise and your business. But if you have never written before, where do you start, and how do you know you have anything to say?

Writing articles is a great way to enhance your reputation as the go-to person who has deep expertise in the work you do every day. You may choose to write several articles at once or simply write them when new ideas come to you. Another great time to write is when a client asks you a question you can’t fully answer. If you need to research a topic, chances are others are asking the same questions and needing answers.

Jan B. King is a book publishing expert and author of numerous articles herself (just Google “Jan B. King” to see them). She says, “When I started to promote my first book, I had to find an interesting and short way of letting people know who I was and what I could do for them. Writing articles was definitely the right answer. Every week I still see that people have used articles I wrote five years ago in their new ezines. If you do it right, you have a way to market yourself for years to come.”

Jan has helped hundreds of people get their expertise out on paper as books and articles and she can help you, too. You don’t have to be a writer to write articles and in this session, Jan will share with us:

• Where to find article ideas in what you do every day.
• How to make your articles stand out and work for years.
• Where to market your articles.
• How to write and format articles, including the all-important title and resource box.
• How to make articles interesting, fun and attractive to potential clients.
• How to find the time and the motivation to write.
• How to maintain ownership of your work.

REGISTER TODAY!

As a small business owner, you are almost certainly enthusiastic, constantly learning new things, and always seeking to improve both your business and personal skills. One challenge you may face is how to convert your weaknesses into strengths. You may have even gone through your business and/or personal SWOT Analysis (strategic planning method used to evaluate a business’ Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). But are you taking the next step that will allow you to convert those weaknesses into strengths?

Small business owners are multi-tasking kings and queens who divide their time, energy and mental space between activities they:

1. enjoy, know how to do and do well (strength, energizing, profitable);
2. enjoy, but don’t do well and just muddle through (weakness, time-wasting, inefficient);
3. do well, but don’t enjoy (weakness, energy-drain);
4. hate doing, don’t do well, don’t have the skills, knowledge or tools to do and don’t have the time or interest in learning (huge weakness, demoralizing energy-zapper, creates procrastination).

When you spend time on business activities or tasks that you don’t enjoy, that you don’t do well, or that you don’t have the knowledge or tools to do properly, you are focusing on weakness. This creates unprofitability and inefficiency in your business and will have you putting in an enormous number of hours and effort desperately trying to keep up.

Is this a wise or productive thing to do? Wouldn’t it be smarter to stop engaging in those activities that are time and energy-draining to you? The easiest and most cost-effective way to convert those weak spots into strengths is by delegating that work. Dedicate your precious time and efforts to what you enjoy, do best and which are the best use of your time.

Your best alternative is to find someone who will work with you on an ongoing basis. This will allow you to really count on literally forgetting about your weaknesses. A professional Virtual Assistant is an effective collaborative partner who will work with you on a continuous basis so that you can focus on your strengths, grow your business and increase revenue. You’ll be increasing the hours you have to focus on your core strengths and be able to leverage the skills, knowledge and tools a professional Virtual Assistant brings to the relationship into a strength for your business. You’ll be happier–and so will your business!

RESOURCE: For help on getting started delegating, read these past articles in the Gritty Business Buzz: “5 Steps to Start Delegating” and “Getting the Delegation Process Going.“

As a small business owner, you might (as I am) be sometimes challenged by the transition from employee to entrepreneur.

If so, you might find this month’s VACOC Monthly Guest Expert Teleseminar interesting: Breaking Out of the Employee Mindset

Presented by Author Suzanne Mulvehill

DATE: Thursday, November 15, 2007
TIME: 5pm PST / 6pm MST / 7pm CST / 8pm EST
LENGTH: 60 minutes (please call in 10 min. early)
COST: FREE!

REGISTER NOW

This class is open to all Virtual Assistants and business owners.

“The mindset is everything; if an entrepreneur thinks wrong, the business won’t succeed,” says Suzanne Mulvehill, founder of the Emotional Endurance® Institute and author of “Employee to Entrepreneur: A Mind, Body and Spirit Transition.”

If you find yourself still thinking and acting like an employee, even though you are running your own business, you don’t want to miss this event. “Thoughts like ‘Am I going to make it?’ and ‘I don’t think I can do this anymore,’ have to go,” says Mulvehill.
New thoughts like “I’m giving it my all, no matter what,” and “If I’m making mistakes, I’m making progress” need to become automatic and be programmed into the entrepreneurial mind so success can flow.

Break out of your employee mindset, and increase your business success rate immediately! This will teleseminar will help you:

• Learn the secrets to change your employee thoughts into entrepreneurial thoughts; 
• Learn strategies for having your thoughts work for you vs. against you; 
• Understand the 7 employee mindset shifts that must take place in order to embrace entrepreneurial success.

And much more!