Number Five is to have a professional and usable website to promote your VA business. It makes sense that potential clients find a Virtual Assistant on the Internet because our industry is virtual, and as such we need to make sure we have a  website that not only promotes our own Virtual Assistance practice but the VA industry as a whole. VA’s are still a relatively new concept in some sectors of the market and the onus is on us to establish the difference between an offshore VA and a professional partnering VA, and demonstrate value for money. Most importantly, learn all you can about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and use it to full advantage on your website and blog. SEO is a continual process of tweaking keywords and keeping your web and blog content current and fresh. There are many fantastic books on SEO out there but my favourite is The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Growing Your Business with Google by Dave Taylor. Don’t let the title put you off – it is a great, easy to understand book and Dave Taylor really knows his stuff. I also subscribe to his newsletter which is full of geek-friendly tips and discussion on the latest technologies.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

At number six of the Top 10 Most Valuable Things I’ve Learned Being a VA is knowing what forms of marketing and advertising work.

I think over the years I have tried every form of advertising for Net Secretary  – newspapers, Yellow Pages, directories etc – and I know now what works best for me. Word of mouth and search engine optimisation of my website are THE best ways to attract new customers. Being a Virtual Assistant, it naturally follows that the majority of my enquiries are virtual.

This also gets back to choosing who I want to work with, not just being all things to all people. I still do the one-off jobs but I prefer to work with longer term clients so that I can learn about their business and their needs.
These days I also have the confidence to say ‘no’ to pushy Yellow Pages sales staff as I know what works best for me and my business and where my clients have found me.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I wanted to share a really worthwhile tip for achieving extra exposure for your virtual assistant business and setting yourself up as an ‘expert’ in your field. I write a regular monthly column for my local community newspaper called ‘Know How by Net Secretary’. In it I share computer tips, tricks, interesting websites or a shortcut to doing something on your computer. This has helped to increase my customer mailing list as I always put a link to my website at the end of each of my articles. It also has increased Net Secretary’s visibility in the local community as many people enjoy the tips and recognise that Net Secretary brought it to them. I volunteer my time to write this monthly column but the extra exposure and recognition and goodwill it brings to my business is invaluable. So if you’re a Virtual Assistant, this is a great way to bring you back to grassroots in your local community or town and increase awareness of your brand.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The updates to the Net Secretary website are 90% complete with a bit more tweaking here and there needed. I’ve also been pleased with how my site has been performing in the Google search engine rankings – number four for the search term “secretary” and top of the second page for the search term “Virtual Assistant”. It got me thinking about search engine optimisation and how simple and invaluable� it can be. I am proud to say that I have done all my own site optimisation for Net Secretary, with just some solid research and self education. I grabbed a couple of books on how it all works and also researched the internet. The tools are really quite simple and in my opinion, there is no reason to pay hundreds of dollars to a so-called “expert” who can ‘guarantee’ you a top five position in the Google search rankings. Anybody can learn the rules, which are based on good keyword rich content, regular updating of your site’s content and a solid understanding of links and backlinks and how they work. One thing I have found to be instrumental is that you can’t fool the Google spiderbots with artificially loading your site with keywords – the spiderbot knows what is “good” content and “manipulated” content and will actually stop crawling your site and therefore not rank it if it has been done incorrectly. I want to encourage the spiderbots to make frequent visits to my site and therefore maintain or even improve its relevance ranking. If anybody would like to know more about SEO, feel free to drop me a line.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I finally found the time and motivation to get Net Secretary News back up and running. The newsletter was one of my passions when I first started my business� and it got put on the� back burner� whilst I got busier. Net Secretary News sat there like a neglected child, silently imploring me to give it some attention, which I finally did this month. As it turned out,� it was good timing as it’s the 3rd anniversary of when� I began the business. In terms of� marketing, there is nothing quite like email marketing� as an effective tool. I like it because:

• It is immediate – I send it, it lands in the recipient’s inbox in seconds. No� time lag of snail mail, no risk of it getting lost in the post or buried among the piles of mail businesses usually receive.
• It is inexpensive – compared to the cost of printing and postage for a hard copy newsletter, email marketing is dirt cheap.
• It is good for the environment – it saves a few trees sending newsletters electronically.
• It is interactive – active links in electronic newsletters means that recipients can click on matters of interest to them at the time, rather than opening a hard copy newsletter, logging on to the internet, typing in a URL address, etc etc.
• It is easy to manage – changes to content, layout etc can be made at the click of a mouse button. Mailing lists are also easier to manage electronically rather than printing out hundreds of costly labels.
• It is technologically savvy – what better way to create a professional image of your business and demonstrate the latest technology by using current technology to produce a newsletter? Beautiful graphics, layouts and links are great advertisements in themselves.
• It is effective – the hit rate is statistically superior to traditional hard copy newsletters, mainly due to the immediacy mentioned above.
• It saves you time – lets face it. Undertaking a traditional hard copy newsletter is time consuming!� All that printing and envelope stuffing, taking them to the post office, not to mention if you find an error after they’ve been printed, you have to live with it or start again!

If your business is thinking about an e-� newsletter, why not have a chat to us? It is more inexpensive than you think and an invaluable marketing tool for your business.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!