by Oludami | Nov 19, 2013 | BLOG, Guest, VA |
One very good thing about the world we live in right now is that the more we grow, the easier our lives get. And this is only made possible by the various advancements we experience, especially in technology and every other aspect of life.
New innovations spring up regularly, previously untapped knowledge forts get unlocked, and revolutions surface at different facets; business, health, education, etc. even governance.
Over the past years, there has been a revolution online, especially in the way and how we get things done. Every business person wants to cut costs – and time – at different levels of their businesses, where possible. This has led to the positive surge of some particular set of people that tend to make work – and ultimately, life – easier.
I’m talking about the ‘Virtual workers’. They’ve come – and keep coming – in different forms. We know some as Virtual Assistants (V.As), and some are simply called Freelancers, among other names.
Some of us are probably already familiar with these guys. But a lot of people do not even know how to use these guys and the benefits attached therein. Some other people are just skeptical about entrusting these guys with their ‘lives’.
It’s normal to feel this way, but I’ll tell you these guys are the best thing that can happen to any business.
How?
Entrepreneurs are already busy enough with doing what they do best; that which their businesses originally require. Yet, there are a lot of ‘other’ activities and tasks incidental to your business’ success, which are sometimes boring, take a lot of quality time doing or require a lot of time learning.
These ‘other tasks’ are the major jobs of some people, and they are out there to help you do them, so that you can spend more time on what you do best and become more creative and productive. These people are, of course, the Virtual Assistants.
Those who use VAs often talk about how good the experience always is. One common thing among these beneficiaries’ testimonials, is that they ultimately experience an increase in income in the long run, which eventually justifies their hiring of a V.A. And most of them say outsourcing to a V.A is something they’d love to do over and over again.
Chris Ducker of @VStaffFinder recommends business owners make a list of the things they hate to do. Then everything they can’t do. Then the things they should not be doing. That grocery list is the to-do-list for outsourcing.
Now all you need is a virtual assistant to do it.
I sometimes feel V.As are omnificent and omniscient, because it seems like there’s no limit to what V.As are capable of.
A V.A can do everything that could possibly be done without his/her physical presence required.
Nina Feldman lists 101 ways to use a Virtual Assistant. Even though I’ve not used a V.A that much –because of the financial side of the story 😉 – I have a list of my best tasks to outsource to a V.A, many of which I’ve done and enjoyed doing. Some I still do.
My best 10 (in no particular order) are:
- Reminder: appointments, meetings, calls, emails, tasks, anniversaries, events, ANY other thing you need to remember!
- E-mail Services: email screening, sorting, reply, sending, scheduling, autoresponders and newsletters, every other thing related to emails and emailing.
- Events planning: meetings, conferences, webinars, teleconferences,
- Internet marketing: SEO, marketing strategy, content marketing, guest posting, social media,
- Social media: profiles creation and writing, marketing, management and engagement, SEO,
- Research: market, competition, information, article content, keywords, data & statistics,
- Secretarial & personal assistant services: appointments, making calls, bookings & reservations, payments, accounting and book-keeping, auditing, human resources, public relations, this is really unlimited!
- Transcription and translation: audio to written, recording – and later transcription – of calls, interviews, webinars, inter-languages translation,
- Writing and Editing: articles writing, eBooks writing, design, editing, proofreading, eBook formatting, keywords research, articles spinning, submission, blogging, PRs, copywriting & SEO copywriting, guest blogging, newsletters and autoresponders,
- Websites: design, development, maintenance, marketing, critiquing & auditing, SEO,
These are simply the top 10 tasks I’d always love to outsource, out of the seemingly countless outsource-able tasks.
Talk about keeping the best for the last. Websites (design and maintenance) is something I cannot stop outsourcing. I’ve not had time for my blog in the past and would just be taking it seriously soon, now that I’m through with school. However, it’s not without commendable beauty and smooth functionality.
I only have Jo to thank for this. She has been my omniscient life-saver. And through her, I enjoy the benefits that come along with outsourcing to a Virtual Assistant. I’ve been able to present myself as a professional freelance writer to my clients and earn more as a result.
You can check out her handiwork on my blog Lucrative Pen.
P.S: Which tasks do you outsource most? And which would you love to outsource more in the future? Kindly share with us in the comments section.
Author Bio:
Yomi-Alliyu Oludami is a professional freelance writer and the founder of www.lucrativepen.com, a blog that teaches how to write for money and traffic. You can visit his website to learn more or hire him for your writing projects.
You can also follow him on twitter @oludami_LP.
by Oludami | Jan 23, 2013 | #blogboost, BLOG, Guest |
Writing is still the most powerful marketing tool you can think of when promoting your business. You can keep reaping the benefits of your writing, in terms of traffic and sales – over and over again – for years, as long as it remains relevant to your market over time. It can also be used in maintaining your relationship with your clients or customers, and most importantly, it can be used to boost your reputation as an expert.
Writing online can be very easy, even though one can also easily get it all wrong. As an online marketer or business person, one should learn how to best utilize and seriously take advantage of this skill.
You can use writing as an effective tool for marketing your business by running a blog –and I really recommend that every business should have a blog, at least – or a website, on your social media and micro-blogging sites, on other sites – maybe in form of guest posts or comments, in your auto responder campaign, and also by writing promotional contents like web copies or sales letters – and email newsletters too. A lot can be done with this skill.
I will hereby do a quick review of the best ways you can use writing to boost your traffic and income, or leads and sales. I will be classifying them into ‘within your blog’ and ‘outside your blog’, and at the end, we’ll see how you can get the writing done.
Within Your Blog
– Useful and informative posts: You should regularly update your blog with fresh and informative posts. Always make in-depth research when writing your posts and give out only the best. Make sure you provide real solutions often.
Let your blog earn the reputation of always giving quality, and it will never be ditched by your audience. Your readers will become your evangelists, and with time your blog will become the best option for search engines for your keywords.
– Great copy/sales letter on website: Writing copy entails using the power of words to persuade readers to become buyers. A sales letter has the same purpose, but it is always more advanced and lengthier than a web copy. Your home page and/or ‘about me’ page(s) should practically be great copies or sales letters for your business. You can hire a copywriter to review these pages and edit or tweak to perfection.
You can easily learn copy writing freely with good research, or with little payment online and practice till you can produce compelling-enough copies. It will pay off in the end.
– Freebies or paid products: This can be in form of eBooks and/or eCourses. Write an eBook you know everyone in your niche would love to have and let it be of high quality, or create an eCourse that would actually add quality to the life of anyone that subscribes to the course.
You do not need to be an expert to write an eBook or create an eCourse. Simple research skills are enough to make your products great. Writing in your area of expertise is a great plus though.
Market your freebies so much, as if you will make money on them, and support your marketing with a great copy too. Market your paid products more.
– Encourage guest posts: You should encourage people to submit fresh and quality content to your blog. It helps to build relationships with other bloggers and marketers in your niche. On your own side, you gain more traffic as the writers share their contents posted on your site with their audience and social networks.
You should be careful of the posts you accept though; read through them and confirm they are 100% fresh and original. Articles must pass CopyScape. Write out your terms and conditions and make it obvious to anyone interested in submitting guest posts.
Outside your blog
– Article marketing; this is the act of creating well-written quality articles that talk about your niche in a way that subtly promotes your company or brand, or products and services, and disseminating them throughout the web.
These articles serve to draw the attention of the readers to the company or brand, and make them want to know more, thereby, leading them to visiting your website.
The essence of these articles, though, is to create credibility and good image for the brand, and not to serve as advertisement or invoke sales directly.
Articles of this sort should be between 300 and 600 words (standard) – with smaller paragraphs, and should be posted majorly to as many article directories as possible. You should focus greatly on your headline and resource box, while still giving great content.
This is the most viral form of marketing ever and the best way to reach a target audience. One advantage of article marketing is that the same article can be used or published on several platforms as long as the authorship doesn’t change.
– Guest blogging: this involves writing for other blogs with the aim of getting more exposure, traffic, and getting quality back links too.
This entails finding blogs in your niche that allow guests to submit articles and take full credit for it. This way, you take advantage of the host blog’s established online presence and you convert audience and subscribers to yours. You should therefore target big blogs in your niche – or other niches in some cases.
You can find the top blogs in any niche to post your articles to by using search engines, or by checking blog directories like Technoratti and AllTop. Just make sure your content is of great quality and highly informative, to enable acceptance and publishing of your post. It is reasonable to write 1,000 words and above, without sacrificing quality, when submitting to top blogs.
Finally before sending any blog a guest post, make sure you read through the blog. Read the terms and conditions to know what is expected, and read few posts to know the kind of writing accepted, and the way they are written. These will serve as a guide for formatting your post.
– Press release: “A press release is pseudo-news story, written in third person, that seeks to demonstrate to an editor or reporter the newsworthiness of a particular person, event, service or product.” – @PublicityGuru on Twitter
“A press release is really just another term for (hopefully intriguing) content, and as a small business communicator, it’s your job to make every word count.” – PR News
I got the above definitions from PRWeb(.com), and I believe they are explanatory enough.
I’ll just add that writing and publishing a press release about your business is a proven traffic generator.
No matter how technical it might sound, writing and publishing a PR is actually easy to do but I can’t start a lesson on that here. Here are the fundamentals though;
– Focus on good and clean writing
– Headlines and subheads matter most
– A well optimized release will hyperlink keywords.
Apart from all these, when writing a PR, you just have to stick to the facts, economize your words and make sure every word counts. Limit jargon too.
Then the big deal; distribute to Press release sites – preferably the top and paid ones. PRWeb is great. You can simply get other PR sites through search.
BIG TIP: You can get all the press release training you want for free on PRWeb.com…or you can hire an expert instead.
Getting the job done!
1. Personally: A lot of experts believe that content is king, and I think I support that notion too.
When you are writing your own posts or guest posts, it must be of the highest quality possible. Always give your writings your best shot; you cannot tell how far they would go. You should be concerned about your research, your headline – which must be very catchy, the body – considering your grammar, paragraphing, points, etc – and your ‘call to action’ where necessary.
Then you must be careful when distributing your writing to directories or PR sites. While trying to meet their terms and conditions is necessary, your copyright must not be compromised too.
2. Use article-posting software/freelancers: For your article marketing, or distribution to article directories or e-zines, you can easily find software to do the job, or articles directories freelancers through search. You can also visit freelance or micro-gigs sites to find these freelancers and get article-posting software on WarriorForum. You must only be cautious when using software, and be aware that most of the top article repositories block software from posting.
3. PR writers and distributors: You can easily find Press Release writers and distributors on freelancing sites like fiverr.com, guru.com, freelancers.com, etc, or through search engines. Just look for those freelancers with good reputation and maybe high ranks.
Your Press Release will be written and sent to you for preview, then distributed to PR sites on your approval. The links to your press releases would then be sent to you for confirmation. Most of the sites used by professional PR freelancers are paid sites.
4. PLR (Private Label Rights): This involves obtaining full rights on articles written by someone else and using it in anyway you like. These rights may include rights to publish, copy, edit, re-brand and claim authorship.
Personally, I am not a fan of Private Label Rights articles, but the truth remains that resorting to PLR has a good and right way of going about it.
The reservation I have on PLR is that most PLR providers make available rehashed content to numerous users at the same time. This leads to many others using the same content you are giving out to your audience, while branding it with their different names as ‘original author’ – just as you.
The best use of PLR, I believe, comes from buying PLR articles from the best PLR sites. You should avoid free PLR articles by all means. If you have to use PLR, then pay for quality.
5. Hire a freelance writer: whenever you feel you cannot do your writing yourself, or when you are too busy to write, you can outsource your writing to freelancers. But you must be careful when employing freelance writers for your writing projects as quality must always be maintained. Your freelancer must have the ability to do quality research and produce fresh, quality content. Rehashed or stolen content must never find its way into your business.
You can always go to freelance sites like freelancer.com, Odesk, Guru, etc, to get your job done. But when making use of sites like these, you have to be very careful as it might be very hard to find quality where services are so cheap.
You can preferably list your writing needs and requirements on freelance writing job boards such as ProBlogger Job Boards, etc. You can try LinkedIn’s job listing too or simply search for ‘freelance writing job boards’ on any search engine.
More preferably, to cut your long search short, you can hire me for your writing projects.
I believe planning and channeling your writing towards the methods outlined above will ensure a successful marketing campaign for your business online, as far as writing is concerned. Other minor writings, like blog comments, social media interaction, forum posting, etc, that are not covered here should not be neglected or underestimated though.
Improving your writing skills and applying it for, and to, the right marketing strategy will definitely boost your leads and sales.
P.S: Kindly tell us how you use writing to boost your traffic and income, and kindly show your support or disagreements with what I’ve written, in the comments section. And don’t forget to share with your networks.
Author Bio:
Yomi-Alliyu Oludami is a professional freelance writer and the founder of www.lucrativepen.com, a blog that teaches how to write for money and traffic. You can visit his website to learn more or hire him for your writing projects.
You can also follow him on twitter @oludami_LP.
by Oludami | Oct 30, 2012 | BLOG, Guest, Social Media |
GUEST BLOG
I wrote a post on my blog about things a blogger must be, and my first point is that a blogger must be an ‘imperfect info conduit’. That is, a blogger is not required to know everything about his niche. He’s only expected to be able to make in-depth research and deliver quality information to his/her audience.
Google plus is one social networking site I really had problems with. I had been on Google plus just as any normal person would. Not until I learned that a business person has to always tweak his/her G+ profile until it is perfectly ‘marketing-optimized’.
I challenged myself and decided I was going to study Google+ hard, and thus become an expert!
I’ve therefore decided to share my experience with others like my former self, who are not really utilizing the networking and marketing potentials of Google plus to the fullest, and also to G+ pros who might still learn one or two things.
Everything about Google plus/+1 cannot be fully exhausted in just one post – I can write a 30-page eBook on it. So I’ve decided to pick on the aspects of Google+ that are salient, and vital to a business person’s marketing and networking success.
Profile
Your Google Plus profile page is the one place you can easily and conveniently manage your entire internet networking and marketing. It’s a big time-saver; give it your best shot.
In your profile page, you’ll be able to include detailed information about yourself.
We have sub-categories under the ‘Profile’ tab such as ‘Posts’, ‘About’, ‘Photos’, ‘Videos’ and ‘+1’.
I believe the ‘About’ page should be concentrated on mostly.
Here you can add everything you want to be known about yourself, but when it comes to business, details should be kept professional and not too personal.
- Tagline: include your tagline. A headline that describes who you exactly are and what your page is all about.
My G+ tagline reads; “I produce fresh content; hire me for any kind of writing. Stick around to learn more.”
- Introduction: this is where you put a little about yourself so people know they’ve found the correct you.
You can also add links here. I put two links here; one linking to my home page, and another to my ‘about me’ page.
- Occupation: this is where you include what you do in your profile. Visitors should easily and readily know what you do.
- Education: include your formal education. It’s also very important even for a business person.
- Employment: just as it sounds, fill in your employment details.
- Bragging rights: may include feats achieved; awards won, certificates earned, etc. You should include things that portray you as a professional.
- Links: include your links here. Add more than one link – probably your home page and any other page you would like to showcase.
You should also add other ways people can recognize and find you and your business online; links to your twitter acct, your Facebook page, LinkedIn ID, etc. This can be done in the ‘Other Profiles’ tab.
- Add other personal information as you deem fit, and as much as is allowed on G+. Stuffs like marital status and phone number.
In the ‘Photos’ tab, you should upload photos of yourself and your business – your products and services. As many as you can.
Few adjustments can be made here to suit your needs. For example, you can allow your circles to tag you in a picture.
Tip: Upload very detailed photos about your business; your business team and other behind the scene photos. It gives your customers a sense of familiarity with your business, and in turn, earns you their trusts.
Plus only few people have the patience to read a whole post, but everyone can see a photo – needs just a single view by the way. No wonder Pinterest grows at such rapid rate.
You should also employ a professional cover photo for your G+ profile; one that is so detailed and explanatory of your business.
The ‘Videos’ section allows you to upload as many videos as you can. You should include information videos about your products and services; saves non-readers much trouble.
Tip: uploading photos and videos keeps people engaged and will result in more time on your profile and more visitors on your website. Make sure the tab is visible on your profile.
The ‘+1’s’ tab shows posts that have been +1’d (or recommended) by you.
You can allow this tab to be visible on your profile too.
The +1 button is the most important internet marketing tool on the G+ profile page. Proper usage will drive traffic to your website.
Google +1 Button
This is one button you must have and utilize very well on your website. It’s a no brainer!
I won’t be going into the details of how to configure the +1 button, or how to install it on your website. Let’s leave that to the web designers.
I’ll only be highlighting few uses and benefits;
- It is used for public recommendation and sharing, and it is not confined to G+ alone.
- Users who +1 your content are indirectly recommending them to their followers, who might in turn +1 it, and so on. A great networking potential and more traffic there!
- Can be tracked and managed. Your +1’d posts can always be tracked and managed; edited or even deleted.
- Can be used to monitor how your reputation builds up, as you can use it to get metrics from Google Analytics and Google webmaster tools.
This will also help you understand your audience better; as you’ll be able to see which of your posts are +1’d the most. You’ll also b able to compare the +1’s you get on your page with that of other websites – or other pages on your website.
As you can now see, if you never knew; a site without the ‘+1’ button these days is like a marathon race participant taking a three times longer route than usual – that might even lead to a dead end.
Google Plus Page
Apart from having a Google+ profile, if you have a business you really want to promote online, then you should consider having a G+ page. A page dedicated to your business or your brand, just as on Facebook.
Pages interact in the Google+ world much as regular Google+ profile owners do—they can add people to circles (once those people have added them), edit their profile, share things in Google+, +1 stuffs on the web, and create and join Hangouts.
Your page can be marketing-optimized in the same way as described above for the personal Google+ profile, with only few differences.
The most important aspects here are the ‘tagline’, ‘profile photo’ and ‘links’ – and other tabs you feel are important to you.
The steps to getting a Google+ business page will be described below, and really, it’s very easy to set up.
- Go to http://www.google.com/+/business/ to sign up.
- Click on ‘Create your Google+ page’.
- Login with your personal Google account if you haven’t already.
- Pick out of the four categories in the next page.
- Enter all information asked for.
- Make a tagline and a profile photo, and go ahead with adding all other necessary info.
Google plus has so many advantages for users, especially marketers and other business persons – benefits that surpass that of any other social media and networking sites.
It is naturally SEO-endowed and it easily gets all your online networking and marketing covered.
It also gives a ready-made format for a great online resume, and allows one to be easily found too.
Its recommendation and sharing button can be easily used around the web without necessarily logging in. And +1’d posts are better picked up by search engines.
Kindly share other Google plus optimization tips you know with us in the comments box, or your experience with Google plus so far.
Author Bio:
Yomi-Alliyu Oludami is a freelance writer and a blogger in the writing niche. He is the founder of www.lucrativepen.com. You can hire him for fresh and quality contents via the ‘Hire Me’ page on his blog, or via his email: oludami@lucrativepen.com.
You can also follow him on twitter @oludami_LP.
