An online entrepreneur will always be busy but more work doesn’t necessarily mean better results.
Sometimes, when trying to do everything yourself, nothing gets done very well. Aside from bad work productivity, the consequences of working too much can lead to anxiety, stress, being alone, and general bad health and fitness.
But your business won’t operate by itself and you can’t afford to hire somebody full-time. Maybe it’s time to outsource some jobs to a virtual assistant.
Can A Virtual Assistant Help You?
A virtual assistant (VA) is similar to a private assistant that you connect with online and outsource work to them to do for you. Some VAs work on their own and some work via various websites as a way to more easily find clients.
They can charge on an hourly basis, by each task, or you can pay a monthly fee for services. Many VAs are happy to work out a fee framework with you that suits you both.
Only Pay For What You Need
You don’t need to provide a VA with any resources to complete the tasks you need done. They should have everything that they need.
Using a VA actually can save you money, as well as time. You only pay for and seek the services of people to do work specifically when you need it. This means you can spend more time completing the tasks for your business that actually make money and take on extra work when it becomes available, as your VA can assist with the parts they can do.
How Can They Help You?
A VA can do a wide range tasks to help you in your online business. This includes administrative jobs, creation of content material, website construction and trouble-shooting or even social networking.
Some administrative duties are financial such as book-keeping, managing affiliate payouts, and keeping track of income sources. They can handle inbound and outbound email, sending certain kinds of email to you when your attention is required. They can also plan meetings, online seminars, or phone calls for you or help you plan your work week. This is particularly useful if you have difficulty with time management.
Your Success Is Their Success
Virtual assistants realize how vital it is to provide good work to you due to the fact your success is dependent upon the work they provide. The more successful you become, the more work that you will need them to complete for you.
The teach themselves to do jobs that are in demand. You simply use the skills you need for your projects, whether it’s a long-term or on a project by project basis.
Knowledge is a powerful asset that can help you grow your business. Effectively capturing and using knowledge that can be shared with others and help you to progress. How can you use this knowledge to competitive advantage? Read on to learn how sharing knowledge helps you to grow your business.
Develop a Deeper Understanding
One of the best ways to become more of an expert at something is to teach it. A cornerstone of knowledge management is to educate others on certain topics, which can help you to develop a deeper understanding of the subject and learn any new or any areas that you’re unsure of. You expand your expertise and answer any questions, which helps you teach yourself while you strengthen your business.
Meet for the Purpose of Knowledge Management
Monthly meetings with the entire staff, either company wide or department wide, with some set questions can uncover marketing ideas and competitive strengths that are unique to your business and can create more success. Effective collaboration and communication that encompasses your entire business will give knowledge the power to really grow your business.
Create New Marketing Channels
Knowledge management will uncover each employee’s strengths and unique abilities. Having more than one person creating and taking on marketing activities can help turn your business into a customer oriented enterprise. Have knowledge sharing meetings recorded by either video or a transcriber so you are sure to capture all the great ideas. And remember that a mediocre idea, once it gets knowledge sharing added to it, can become a great idea.
Increase Productivity
A deeper understanding of knowledge management can help to streamline productivity and make resource use more efficient. Knowledge can be captured and assembled into an online course that employees can access to learn about the most efficient way of doing or using something.
Through knowledge management, an online course can offer open access and directions that provide insights into job roles and duties to streamline work processes and management time.
Establish Your Reputation In Your Industry
Knowledge management helps you to establish an industry wide reputation because it facilitates becoming a thought leader. While the best ideas may be competitive secrets, many ideas will arise in the meetings that can be turned into speaking engagements, seminars, eBooks, blogs, and online courses, that raise your business profile. This will position you as a thought leader which will help your business to grow.
If you need support to build your business to a totally new level online, then contact me.
Are you looking for a speaker? I provide high value talks on Business and Online Strategy.
When holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas roll around, you may be thinking more about what to serve guests for dinner, or how to decorate your home-not how to increase sales with seasonal marketing. (That is, unless you sell Christmas ornaments or turkeys, then I’m sure it’s top of mind.)
Holiday promotions aren’t just limited to important dates, either.
You can go as broad as you like: the seasons, festivals and statutory days, to name a few. You only have to spend some time on social media platforms to see everything from International Coffee Day to World Teachers’ Day; get creative and find the ones that make sense for your business.
No matter what your product or service is, there are some great ways to appeal to your target audience.
5 Seasonal Marketing Ideas to Promote Your Business
Gift cards/certificates
From clothing stores to grocery stores, many businesses offer gift cards-and not just seasonally; you’ll often find them year-round. Even if you don’t have a product or service traditionally associated with a special occasion like Christmas, with a little creativity, you can make it work.
For example, you probably wouldn’t think of Subway sandwiches when you’re brainstorming Christmas presents, but if you saw this gift card you might get an idea to give it to a friend or family member.
Maybe you’re a life coach or a business coach who could design a festive-looking gift certificate for a certain number of sessions.
Or, perhaps you’re an interior designer or feng shui consultant who could sell an introductory session as a housewarming gift.
Birthdays
Have you ever received a freebie email or e-greeting card on your birthday?
While some customers may shy away from entering their birthdays on your website or eNewsletter signup form, you can make it easier by not asking for the year and telling them why you’re requesting it.
Then, send your birthday customer a seasonal discount or freebie with your best wishes.
Here’s a tasty one: The family restaurant chain Red Robin offers a free birthday burger as one of the perks to signing up for their Royalty program.
Free shipping
If you don’t offer free shipping throughout the year, making this a prominent holiday offer on your website during can encourage visitors to buy from you.
If you already offer free shipping over a certain amount, consider lowering it for a special occasion.
You can remind customers that it’s a special offer by having them enter a promo code at checkout or showing them the regular shipping cost crossed out.
A social media photo contest
Ask your followers on Facebook or Instagram to share festive photos with your product and tag you for a chance to win a prize. You could have followers submit summer vacation photos, Easter dinner pics, a favourite first-day-of-school memory… whatever!
Tie it in with your business and it’s a win-win situation: your followers get a chance to win a prize, and you get exposure and user-generated content.
A simple thank you
It’s always a thoughtful gesture to thank the people who make it possible for you to stay in business!
I appreciate our clients so much, and I always want to wish them a happy holiday and let them know if we are going to be closed for a stat or special event.
While this isn’t a tactic to gain more sales, the more gratitude you feel and show to your loyal clients the better. Take the time to send a short holiday newsletter when you feel it’s appropriate.
As a business owner, it’s your main purpose and what you focus the bulk of your energy on. However, it can be a challenge-especially when you’re so close to your brand-to see what’s missing and to make the necessary changes.
Now that you have some ideas around what to do for your customers, I’m going to share how you can pull off a successful holiday marketing campaign.
1. Do your keyword research
It’s important to do keyword research anytime you create content. You want to have a nice balance of targeted short- and long-tail keywords.
Don’t wait until the last minute to create your compelling content, especially for big holidays like Christmas. According to the National Retail Foundation, 40 percent of consumers begin shopping for the 25th before Halloween.
Rather than stuffing your content, you should be writing for your readers and sprinkling these well-researched keywords throughout your content. For special occasions, brainstorm the event + your product/service/timely offer + your location. Here are a few examples:
â Valentine’s Day + gift cards + Vancouver
â New Year’s + women’s dresses + Mississauga
â Father’s Day + spa packages + Edmonton
2. Provide valuable content
Think about what your visitors will find valuable when you’re creating website copy and articles as part of your seasonal marketing.
People are looking for solutions to their problems, whether it’s how to make spring cleaning easier, or how to shop for birthday gifts on a budget.
You could create a “Top 5” list, gather the “Most popular” products or services around an occasion or post some “Easy ways” to do something to catch people’s attention.
Turn your keyword research into well-written and -researched articles and guides that your customers will want to share on social media.
3. Be data-driven and flexible.
It’s essential to capture as much data as possible during your seasonal marketing campaigns. Are people engaging with your social media posts? Is your website content converting visitors into leads and sales? Is a particular page getting more traffic than others?
As you collect data, you can review your campaign’s performance to develop your strategy for other important dates and holiday promotions.
You don’t want to miss out on a profitable Black Friday or New Year’s opportunity because you weren’t sure how your campaign was doing.
As you can see, seasonal campaigns are about more than just putting up store decorations or adding a greeting to your website’s home page. By creating meaningful campaigns that resonate with your target audience and following these three steps, your holidays can be happierâ -and more successfulâ -than ever.
Susan Friesen, founder of the award-winning web development and digital marketing firm eVision Media, is a Web Specialist, Business & Marketing Consultant, and Social Media Advisor. She works with entrepreneurs who struggle with having the lack of knowledge, skill and support needed to create their online business presence.
There are several techniques and tricks to improve your business visibility on the internet but opencart extensions are doing a great job these days. Opencart systems allow users to manage their databases and customize the website properly. Moreover, this technique is also helpful to gather targeted audience on your website rather than unwanted and unserious people. So, open cart online database system has the ability to outshine your business performance without any trouble and delays. I will strictly recommend you guys to adopt open cart extensions for better and smooth growth of your online business.
What Is an Opencart Extension?
A lot of people will be unfamiliar with this term so I am going to give a brief overview of this web-based tool. While running an online business, it is very important to manage your database online. This can be done easily with the help of open cart extensions. An open cart extension is quite important for the betterment of your online business including customizing your web content and features.
No doubt, E-commerce is a major tool for online business development but it is incomplete without opencart extensions. You might be wondering that what exactly an Opencart system is? If that’s your query then you are on the right platform. Opencart Extensions are PHP based tools that help individuals and masses to customize their business details and online database. By these extensions, you can easily add business logos, themes and several categories to organize your website sophisticatedly.
So, what are you waiting for? All you need to outshine your E-commerce site is adding opencart extensions. These extensions are totally free and anyone can use this online feature for the betterment of his or her business.
Opencart Extensions also allow users to add testimonials of different clients. For you, it can be new but this technique has the ability to let visitors know about your credibility and worth. So, feel free to utilize free extensions of opencart system because this is the only best way to enhance the abilities of E-commerce.
Importance Of Opencart Extensions:
Even though an opencart system is open-source software that is designed for everyone all around the world but it has huge and immense benefits. So, if you are going to start a business online, I will strongly recommend you guys to get benefits from this web-based feature. You can also follow the links below to get a better idea regarding opencart extensions in E-commerce.
URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) may be made substantially shorter and still direct to the required page.