by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 28, 2014 | Entrepreneur, Virtual Assistant
Entrepreneurs and small business owners alike are extremely busy building, generating, troubleshooting and growing their organizations to scale and own a piece in their market share. It can take an army to build a business; a team to orchestrate your success and manage each facet of your internal systems and processes.
Entrepreneurship requires 150% dedication, focus and effort. It is not a part time endeavor to embark upon while meandering through life. If you are choosing to operate a business, then you must live and breathe your corporation, from top to bottom, every day. A strong interrelated component to your company is your online world and reputation as a solid and reputable organization. Your customers are online every single day and you need to be where they are, serving them and providing solutions.
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” Calvin Coolidge
Social Media Marketing is essential platform as part of your marketing mix. Consumer buyer behavior reflects their consistent quest for up to the minute information about your company’s products and services. People buy from people and customers prefer the immediacy of the web, the data they can search, the recommendations they find and a community for their voice. You need to not only have an online presence but to be actively listening to your prospects, colleagues, partners, competition and clients.
“Companies need to realize how important it is to integrate social into every part of their marketing and communications plans of 2014.” Lindsay Bell & Laura Petrolino – Arment Dietrich, Inc.
Keeping a tidy and productive digital office necessitates a visible online presence with consistency and frequency or your voice will get lost within the noise and fundamental chatter. Building and maintaining your networks takes a lot of time, energy and focus. There are literally hundreds of social channels to choose from, which can be overwhelming. You need to evaluate and understand your audience, where they hang out, what they want and what they consume.
Managing your online presence, social channels AND daily business operations requires an extensive amount of time, energy and triaging of tasks and projects. Some days go much smoother than others, averting the challenges and roadblocks.
When you are hit with a few time bombs, take a step back or six, and ask yourself, what is the competition doing that I’m not? Why do they seem to effectively manage their day to day operations and business systems with such ease and simplicity?
They may just have a secret weapon that you don’t. A vested and dedicated partner.
A Virtual Assistant
“If you want to grow your business past a certain level, you’ve got to add more people. You’ve got 24 hours in the day, and you’re never going to get more. So if you need to take care of more stuff. . .because that’s what you need to do to grow a business—do more stuff—you’ve got to add other people’s 24 hours. You’ve GOT to delegate!” Laura Roeder
What does your competitor know that you don’t?
- Too many hats reduce their focus on their core mission. It isn’t about the fashion statement but getting things done.
- There is another entrepreneurial expert who can support their business, brainstorm ideas and share in the passion of building their business.
- They want to work ON their business rather than IN it.
- They understand the virtual assistant offers different strengths and brings a different skill set to the digital world.
- The Virtual Assistant uses a variety of tools and platforms to help enhance and expedite daily tasks and systems.
- They don’t need to stay updated on every single new tool or platform.
- They are better able to prioritize and accomplish their goals.
- Work life balance isn’t just a phrase but an important lifestyle decision.
- Social media is time suck and they need support to gain greater visibility and notoriety.
- An extra pair of eyes and “brain matter” benefits the editing and proofing process.
- Valuable and rich content curation takes hours of time and they want to focus on building relationships instead.
- They would rather be in the field networking and meeting clients than managing their appointment scheduling and reminders.
- They are able to be more organized and have increased time management to focus on what is important, rather than on what needs to be done.
- They save money by delegating because they only pay for project time, not benefits, insurances, training, office supplies or taxes.
- In order to make money and experience the ROI from their online activity, they value and understand the opportunity to partner with an executive Virtual Assistant.
“You cannot grow your business all on your own so stop trying to. It’s time for you to trust others to help you. Without delegation your business will be limited by your own time and energy.” Matthew Swyers
What will be your secret weapon in 2014 to help you drive your business and meet your goals? If you’re looking to take your business to the next level, you’ve got your Ace right here.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 23, 2014 | Content Marketing, Entrepreneur, Social Media
2014 Buzzword? Not in the least. Just do a search. Google shared about 1,010,000,000 results (1.21 seconds). Organizations are pumping up their online efforts to write compelling content and devour a piece of the market share, the hungry consumer. If you are not part of this bandwidth, churning out and feeding the insatiable, then you miss the train. It is a strong leader in your social media channels. The Content Marketing Institute said:
“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
Content marketing is sharing without selling but eventually, you do experience lead conversion because you have been feeding your audience rich, educational and valuable content. You are the person or company they turn to! Since most have turned away from traditional forms of media, elicit a response from your online audience, similar to Pavlov’s dogs. Don’t focus on what you have to say; understand what your target market wants to read. Convey your passion for their needed solutions and service, don’t just try and push a widget. Everyone has widgets.
What makes you different? Better? Worth the investment?
“The single most significant trend is the continued emergence of content marketing as a standalone discipline. Content, in all its shapes and forms, is core to everything we do as marketers.” Econsultancy.
Content marketing is NOT just for your website! It is daily curation and sharing of content within your social media network. Quality content. A little cotton candy fluff only starves the bears.
“Spending energy to understand the audience and carefully crafting a message that resonates with them means making a commitment of time and discipline to the process.” – Nancy Duarte
- Make your content newsworthy and enriching
- Attract and retain attention!
- Curate from a variety of sources
- Follow industry leaders
- Sign up for the RSS feeds
- READ everything before you curate
- Engage with your favorite bloggers
- Ask questions
- Monitor trending CM hashtags
- Use social media tools to follow and find conversations
- Save and digest the content
- WRITE!!
Content Marketing Considerations:
- Goals
- Strategy
- Editorial calendar
- Content
- An understanding of your buyer personas
- Where does your audience hang out
- What are their greatest pain points?
- What drives them to purchase?
- What are they searching for?
- Appeal to their logical mind as well as their emotions
- Write for them. To them….. not the search engines.
- Find the best distribution channels
- Cross promote or vary content
- Track and measure engagement, conversation and results
In a recent study by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute their results demonstrated that 93% B2B organizations now use content-based tactics for their marketing promotions and 73% specified they now produce more content than the previous year.
Custom content is 92% more effective than traditional TV advertising at increasing awareness and 168% more powerful at driving purchase preference.
If you need a little more convincing about the value and necessity of content marketing, take a bite from the menu and these are just the appetizers.
Top 6 Content Marketing Trends To Watch Out This 2014 (Infographic)
12 Most Innovative Ways to Create Content That Gets Shared
Top 10 Ways a Content Calendar will Improve Your Inbound Marketing Strategy
30 Steps for Getting Started with Content Marketing – Smarter Shift
25 Top Content Marketing Tools Every Marketer Should Use
The 3 Ways to Succeed at Content Marketing When Everybody in the World is Doing Content Marketing
Content Curation Tools: 21 Criteria To Select And Evaluate Your Ideal One
2014 Content Marketing Trends and Tactics
7 Metrics To Accurately Measure Your Content Marketing
What will be your first step in implementing your content marketing plan?
Send us an email from our contact page if you would like a little help organizing and facilitating your plan for CM success.
“Content marketing is a commitment, not a campaign.” – Jon Buscall
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 21, 2014 | Delegation, Entrepreneur, Small Business, Virtual Assistant
I learned to delegate!
Many grew up with the mentality, “If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” Well, this is just is one big bowl of misunderstanding and attitude adjustment. There comes a time when you must cut the apron strings and fly.
As an entrepreneur, the CEO of your company, you have a limited number of hours to work both IN and ON your business. Constantly flipping your hats not only takes time, but a shift in focus, a reorganization of your priorities and it disrupts your workflow. You may end up overlooking important business details or even client needs because you are buried in the trenches instead of running the front line. Focus on the high payoff activities that model your organization’s vision, foundation and core competencies.
“Exponential growth is possible when we give up trying to do everything ourselves and allow others to leverage THEIR genius to help us grow.” Melanie Benson Strick
Consider what and who suffers while you try to feebly grasp on to every responsibility, system and process.
At what cost do you realize that it isn’t prudent nor an effective solution to retain every job function in your company? If your goal is to scale, then delegating is one simple tool to enable you to commit and dedicate to your company; your passion!
Building a company requires a team and as one person, while as incredible as you are, you are still not a “team.” We can successfully build your online team to take you to the next level. Solo-preneur doesn’t mean lonely or alone. You have an option, a teammate: enter the executive virtual assistant.
“Almost all of my business transactions are conducted via e-mail and occasionally phone. It really doesn’t matter where my assistant is located. No one knows the difference. I’m convinced that virtual assistants are the future. Honestly, it’s one of the best decisions I ever made.” Michael Hyatt
Outsourcing is not a new age concept. It is a dose of reality especially within the digital community. You might be surprised at just how many people and companies outsource components of their daily business operations and social media. They get it. They want to grow and flourish and to do this, it means giving up some control and trusting in another entrepreneur (Virtual Assistant).
“Do what you do best and outsource the rest.” Robert G. Allen
Delegating Exercise:
(No heavy lifting required) whether you use your computer or paper and pen, the choice is yours, just do it. Design it how it will best flow for you but just track the data. Use sticky notes if you want.
Column one: items that represent working ON your business. (all of the things it takes to manage and propel your business forward……)
Sub-columns: every day, every week, monthly and yearly
Track the time spent on each
Column two: items that represent working IN your business (social media management, administrative, calendaring, writing, curating content…..)
Sub-columns: every day, every week, monthly and yearly
Track the time spent on each
In a week’s time, what does your tally look like? In your honest review, did you spend more time working IN your business rather than ON it?
- What was accomplished?
- Did you meet your goals?
- How many projects were completed?
- Did you engage with clients?
- Were you able to close any sales?
- Did you initiate consults?
- Write new strategies or brainstorm ideas?
- Revise your business plan?
- Create or consider other revenue streams?
- Design new products or services?
- Innovate?
- Think outside the box toward your long term growth potential?
- Read white papers?
- Review the competition?
- Collaborate with colleagues?
- How must time did you allocate to social media? Or get sucked in to the black hole?
- Is social media management the best use of your time (excluding engagement)?
- Did you forget anything or miss an appointment?
- Procrastinate yet another day/time?
- How many tasks were interrupted?
- Did you miss any opportunities?
This simple, yet effective exercise should leave you with a list of tasks and projects you should delegate. They do NOT represent your core genius, but are actually a hindrance to your growth.
I am sure you have your goals written down somewhere. Compare your long and short term goals to everything you worked on this week. Does your work support your vision and aspirations?
You know you need to start delegating if:
- You spend 7-10+ hours online, curating, scheduling and managing your social media and it takes away from time with clients, colleagues, partners etc.
- You need to implement some systems to streamline your business processes
- You have wished for a like-minded brainstorming partner
- You are ready to scale, but don’t have enough hours in the day.
- You find it hard to concentrate and stay focused because there is too much for one person to do.
- You have some projects or platforms that are barely started or only half finished.
- You lay awake at night wondering how you will manage everything.
I don’t think you started your company to stagnate but instead, it is time to actualize your dream and go for it. There is too much at stake for you to stay here, doing what you have always done, day in and day out. If you want different results, then you need to change the experiment.
Give up a few things on your list and experience the benefits of delegation. Partnering with a virtual assistant is a results oriented approach for you and your business. Our intellectual property from years of experience, research and education is invaluable and can be right at your fingertips when you choose to incorporate our expertise into your business operations.
“The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try and do everything yourself because you can’t.” Anthea Turner
- Consider the sacrifices of holding on to EVERYTHING you do.
- What would you focus on if you have had 5-10 more hours per week?
- How would you change your daily processes and systems?
- Do your daily business operations scream for your undivided attention?
Can you afford NOT to delegate?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 15, 2014 | Organization, Small Business, Social Media
You know the intrinsic value and sheer magnitude of having an online presence and creating a community but what do you do with it?
How do you do it?
Do you have a method to your madness or are you the willy nilly type posting, commenting and further acting like a crazed JuMpInG bEaN?
Slow down a bit and take stock of your social platforms, goals and each individual audience.
And don’t just go over it in your head. WRITE it down.
Whether you engage on one social channel or 10, you should have an idea of what you are doing and why.
Know where YOUR audience is.
“Social media is a smart selling tool only if your clients and prospects are using social media.” Colleen Francis
Don’t spread yourself too thin or your quality of content and engagement will suffer. THIS will hurt your brand image and reputation. You are here to build. To construct your digital universe and connections not to destroy them with a wrecking ball.
Time and patience is an absolute must. Don’t expect to have people clamoring all over you because you pushed out a few posts. Sure, you may feel pride and accomplishment but, your online networking is about developing relationships and brand awareness.
Real, honest relationships with a foundation of engagement, not self-promotion. Your consistency and frequency of remarkable content will cultivate you as an authority; a thought leader in your field.
To put it simply, be the person you would like to meet and do business with. What attracts you to others? What entices you to listen and pay attention? Emulate that.
If you’re not sure where to begin, check out this infographic from TopDog Social Media in 25+ Tasks For Your Social Media Strategy There are some very basic tasks that you should be working on every day in each of your social networks. This image displays the bare minimum.
While these three platforms represent just a small nibble of your full dining experience, never stop reading and educating yourself. The climate, dynamics, algorithms and “rules” are always changing.
Research the staggering statistics on social media growth, the B2B and B2C environment, the money spent on social media teams to ensure companies are involved, listening, engaged and troubleshooting, be amazed with the tremendous increase in content marketing and curation. This is where it is at and if you are not disseminating and curating, you may get lost in the vast amount of digital noise. You could become just another fly on the wall. Don’t get swatted. Get educated.
Here’s a little food for thought to motivate and inspire your online activity.
What You Absolutely Need To Know About Content Marketing
10 Awesome Infographics to Guide your Marketing Plan for 2014
Get better social media results in 2014: 3 strategies that will up your game
Social Media Audit: How to use tools to audit social media
The 3 Essential Elements of Any Successful Social Media Marketing Strategy
Is Solution Selling Dead? The 2014 Content Marketing Imperative
Understand your social media goals and carefully plan your strategy, writing for your audience and their needs to create a tight and authentic community of brand ambassadors, colleagues, friends and customers.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 13, 2014 | Productivity, Small Business, Time Management
Nope, you won’t find them in this post but you can read more in: Don’t Die by the Deadline. The title promised you help on how to lasso your hankering for procrastination.
There are no real tips in this post, except: GET IT DONE.
You have a choice in every aspect of your life and with every choice there is a consequence. Whether the outcome is positive or negative, it is something you essentially choose. If you choose to put off what needs to be done, then you will pay the price. Can you afford it? When you invest in your time, you invest in yourself and your company. You are highly valued. Make sure you realize this.
You may procrastinate for a host of reasons, but ultimately it comes down to you doing or not doing something and when. If it is all that important and has a deadline, I would imagine you would attend to it with a little more immediacy than letting it hang on until the last moment. Usually, the final product of the rushed job leaves a great deal to be desired. It isn’t worth it to do something with only a fraction of your attention and interest.
Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Lord Chesterfield
Consider the outcomes and “penalties” when you need to tackle a project or task. Your driving motivators should come from within because it is important to you not because you are making someone else check in on you to ensure you completed your alleged mission impossible.
Most people don’t have a problem finding time for the things they want to do, but once a task is presumed challenging, time consuming, or boring, procrastination takes over.
You have priorities. You have goals. Accomplish them. Light that internal fire and be accountable to yourself. Own your lists and To Dos. Yes, there are some things that present more of a struggle or personal challenge for you, but that is not an invitation to walk away or leave it on the back burner.
Things people say:
- I can’t get started.
- I don’t know where to begin.
- It is too hard.
- I need more help.
- I don’t want to do it.
- I don’t want to do it alone.
- It is frustrating.
- It isn’t fun.
- I just don’t feel like it.
- I have more time.
- What are your tips?
- It isn’t due yet.
The whining list is infinite. You have said some of these and honestly, I have too. The drama of I can’t, won’t, I don’t feel like it gets as old as the “stuff” I found in a lunch baggie inside my beach bag from this summer. It isn’t pleasant and accomplishes nothing but increased frustration and dissatisfaction.
If you have something to do, deadlines or not “Just Do it.” You don’t need help or special tips. You need to set your goals and priorities.
Important things get done.
- You can do them now.
- Prioritize your list.
- Create actions steps.
- Delegate.
- File.
- Discard.
Just take action! Real action!
