by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 10, 2013 | Delegation, Entrepreneur, Virtual Assistant
Now I know you are not living in the dark ages and have read all of the recent articles regarding the prominence of content marketing. as an essential component of your marketing mix. It helps to build awareness, visibility, trust, branding, lead conversion, digital bandwidth and your reputation as a thought leader. Content marketing is delivering relevant and valuable content to your customers and prospects without selling.
In Social Media Examiner’s article, 8 Content Marketing Trends for B2B, they reviewed a recent study of 1,416 B2B marketers to learn how they leveraged content marketing in 2012, as well as the future prospects for 2013. “In 2012, 64% of marketers said that producing enough content was their number one challenge. More than half of the B2B marketers said that they plan to increase their budgets for 2013.”
This is ALL important data! Your customers and prospects are searching for relevant data to help them in their buying decisions. You want to be that driver. You want to stay one step ahead of your competition, even industry colleagues, but to do this, you must be distributing value. Meeting pain points. Making sure your content conveys the information your audience is chasing.
John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing created a “Total Content System™” approach which allows you to “plan, delegate, curate, create, collaborate, repurpose and generally get far more out of every piece of content you produce.” If you would like to listen to his instructional podcast click here. His system revolves around creating a monthly list of content themes, choosing your delivery platforms, and then, integrating it with your business goals.
Picture this, you must
- Duct Tape Marketing Content Calendar
1. Create a content calendar (this is John’s example ) The Experience Farm offers you a FREE 2013 Editorial Calendar
2. Choose your delivery platforms. This could be social media, podcasts, webinars, e-newsletters, hardcopy, guest blog posts, ebooks, online newspapers, chat forums or any venues where your audience lives. John lists at least 10 platforms where he will deliver his content to reach his target market.
3. The last step is to integrate your monthly themes and delivery platforms with your company goals
“When you know what your theme is this month and next month all of a sudden books, tools, articles and conversations take on new meaning and seem to somehow organize themselves for the benefit of your ongoing, long-term approach.” John Jantsch
At this point, let’s review your already busy day, full of appointments, business development, revenue generation, client appreciation, troubleshooting, maybe speaking engagements and all the rest of your core competencies. How many other tasks and projects do you manage that represent other low payoff activities that would be better outsourced?
My direction here? You are well aware of the significance of content marketing for your 2013 business growth and exceeding last year’s goals. Correct? So what is next?
The drumroll please!! As an entrepreneur, I certainly understand your excessive use of company hats and believe me, it gets heavy. I wear too many myself, but I will share with you that I too have been outsourcing to my team of Virtual Assistants. I cannot and do not want to do it all myself. If I want to continually expand my business, then I must delegate and so must you.
“The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try and do everything yourself because you can’t.” Anthea Turner
Maximize your potential. Focus on your core genius and let Ace Concierge manage the rest. We are not just here for your “one off” tasks and projects. Consider us your vested partner.
Let’s get your content marketing plan in place and kick off this year with a plan and a bang.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 6, 2013 | Entrepreneur, Small Business, Virtual Assistant
You don’t generate revenue by posting on your blog, scheduling social media updates, searching for relevant content or images for your e-newsletter, creating Google keyword alerts, content curation, editing/proofing your website or sending appointment reminders. While these sample tasks are vital to your daily business operation, they are all low payoff activities that do not directly produce income. They inhibit your “real” productivity. Sustainable growth is derived from doing more of what creates growth and less of what seizes your time in the name of growth. You must determine the most profitable use of your working hours.
“Simplify, delegate, or eliminate other low payoff routines and activities that absorb too much of your time. This common-sense approach frees you for productive work on high priority items.” Strategic Essentials
Your valuable time is best spent focusing on your core genius, doing what only YOU can do to produce revenue for your business. Essentially, your income is limited by your time. If you are hindered with all of the backend details and daily minutia, you are not able to concentrate on business development, customer experience, creating relationships, engaging with your tribe, creating new products, planning your goals and action steps or networking with other industry thought leaders.
Case Study
Social Media Woes:
You are set up with some basic social media platforms, but realize that to create engagement, increase visibility, generate a sense of trust and build your tribe, you need some assistance.
Enter the Virtual Assistant:
- Discuss key market initiates, where do your clients commune, who is the competition
- Important industry keywords
- Create keyword alerts across multiple services
- Enhance social visual image of social media pages
- Set up news aggregators to deliver targeted content
- Create RSS feeds for industry blogs for post commenting or content generation
- Design content calendar
- Find/follow pertinent groups or lists
- Research, write and deliver relevant posts
- Edit/proof your blog content
- Regularly monitor and update your social media
- Other VA industry secrets employed! 🙂
In reviewing this list of a few of the social media management processes we administer, how much time do YOU have to spend to successfully handle your online reputation and brand?
These are low payoff activities but in the digital world, they are crucial essentials to building your positive online presence.
If you want to operate at your maximum efficiency level, focusing on only your high payoff activities, please contact us today!
Let’s create your strategy together.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Aug 28, 2012 | Entrepreneur, Life Thoughts
Timely commitments speak volumes about your intentions. If you are consistently missing time limits or deadlines, delaying outcomes or otherwise just holding off on completing promised projects, what message are you giving to the recipient?
“When you find someone who you think is an ‘A’ player and effective, you should go back and see if they were an A player and effective previously. And if you can see that he or she was accountable, collaborative and inspiring in his or her previous work, you can expect the same kind of performance going forward.” Jim Schleckser
As business owners, we are inundated with unlimited requests for our time and expertise but when you overcommit or plainly don’t back up your word with actions, you are shortchanging yourself, your clients, partners or colleagues. Consider the nonverbal communication you are sending when you don’t deliver the promised results in the appropriate timeline.
Meeting your demands in timely manner is good service on deliverables. It demonstrates your committed resolve to get the job done; a dedication to responsibility. If you can remember a time of disappointment or frustration when you were waiting for a response, final product, contract or any other form of collateral and you perceived an extensive delay, what thoughts consumed you about the contributor?
“Do unto others as you would have them do to you.”
As said in the Freelance Switch article 14 Essential Tips for Meeting a Deadline, “Your reputation as a freelancer is pretty much the only thing you have to go on — your bread and butter.” As we continue to build and foster relationships, both online and off, your reputation will become a predictor of future business and partnerships.”
While we may hit a few roadblocks in the process: technical issues, data requirements, brain-cramp, logistics, team members faltering, with proper planning, insight and time padding, you should meet or beat every deadline, whether explicitly implied or merely an unspoken exchange of expectations.
When you evaluate your “proficiency” for meeting deadlines, you must also review your level or reasons for procrastination. Putting something off only perpetuates additional anxiety and stress. We all may procrastinate on occasion. It could be a chronic issue for some while for others; it’s only a problem in certain areas of their life. Procrastination is continuously frustrating because it creates a domino effect in wasted time, lost opportunities, disappointing work performance, and generally a bad perceived feeling of self.
Procrastinating allows less important tasks to usurp your time and space when you should be more focused on projects that take a higher precedence. 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.
If procrastination produces negative results, then why do we allow this behavior? Procrastinating actually reinforces itself in two ways. 1. It is difficult for most to institute change or accept that a real change is required. We tend to divert our attention away from a task to do something we want to do, something that is more desirable. 2. Procrastination can help to feed ego when the deadlines are met at the very last minute and you or others pat yourself on the back for getting it done. If the project isn’t as acceptable as you had wanted, you blame it on time restraints. Either way, you are reinforcing the habit of putting things off.
University of Cambridge states: “Often we try to disguise our avoidance by being very busy doing things that may be interesting, and even useful, but don’t contribute towards the main goal – even doing something we normally hate – rather than writing, for example, just before an essay deadline!”
Recognizing your behaviors and tuning into the purposes will guide your future actions and reactions. Learn what drives you and if change is needed, then start with simple steps. Persevere, knowing that change is a positive tool affecting your personal and professional relationships.
- Honor your words, unspoken guarantees and anticipated recipient results
- Plan your time and projects with dated action steps
- If required, seek assistance early on, don’t wait until the last hour
- Over deliver
- Don’t keep someone waiting or wondering
- Correspond and update as needed
Harvey Mckay: “Deadlines aren’t bad. They help you organize your time. They help you set priorities. They make you get going when you might not feel like it. And meeting deadlines successfully is one of the best motivating factors out there.”
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | May 2, 2012 | Delegation, Organization
Decrease desktop clutter.- File or discard papers and folders.
- Purge outdated materials, manuals, scraps of paper in your drawers.
- update customer management database with ALL client/prospect data and discard associated paper.
- Assign a place for everything and keep everything in its place.
- file as you go, don’t wait until “sometime” to put things in their place.
- Organize your workspace for maximum productivity.
- Reserve your inbox for action items.
- Create email folders to organize your inbox and sent emails.
- Break down large projects into smaller tasks, and prioritize them. Block off time each day until the project is completed.
- All projects and tasks should have clear goals, objectives, and deadlines.
- Plan your To Do list for the following day before you leave work.
- Break your To Do list into categories
- Must do with deadlines
- Open-ended tasks (i.e. reorganizing files)
- Enter calls and appointments into your calendar.
- Take a break to refresh and refocus, without interruptions.
- Set aside 1 hour per day for NO technology: you do not answer phones or respond to emails or engage in office communication. You take this time to regroup and work on pressing issues, modifying your To Do list, and working on projects.
