The Business Building Potential of Facebook Fan Pages

I recently followed a comment in Facebook from another Virtual Assistant that was questioning the value of having a Facebook Fan Page to promote their business. Will it actually lead to new client and income opportunities? Well, my answer and thoughts on this are included in the video below. Take a look and please send your comments on Facebook Fan Pages and the impact (if any) they have had on your Virtual Assistant business.

TwitWall: When 140 Characters isn't Enough

For businesses who are utilizing Twitter’s staggering marketing potential as part of a Social Media Marketing campaign, Twitter provides a lot of room for creativity and innovative solutions for reaching target audiences.

Now that celebrities (such as Ashton Kutcher and CNN) , presidential campaigns and millions of users worldwide are accustomed to micro-blogging, Twitter is providing an enhancement to the micro-space of Tweeting.

For everyone already on Twitter, how many don’t realize they have a TwitWall? This easy to use feature is a blog companion for Twitter, allowing a space for Tweeters as an alternative, or addition to their micro-blog of maximum 140 characters. This page within Twitter allows users to embed their favorite videos and widgets, upload photos, mp3 music, podcasts, and source-images originating from existing http:// locations.

The little set-up time and effort involved is very appealing for those wanting more of a presence on Twitter, outside the context of the micro-blog. Additionally, TwitWall utilizes your existing Twitter followers that you’ve already established, with everything posted on your TwitWall updating your status on your Twitter timeline. It also carries over the personal branding design preferences of your Twitter page, such as background image, colours etc.

So why use TwitWall as a blog page rather than just your traditional blog post?

This question was posed to TwitWall founder Michael E. Carluen, who stated, “For users who currently have existing blogs, TwitWall can be a repository of content they would like to share with their Twitter network, but does not fit the general content of their main blog.”¹

As an additional blogging platform that’s unique to your followers, TwitWall provides a dynamic new communication tool, ready to be discovered!

7 Traffic-Building Avenues for Repurposing Your Web Content

Recently, I decided to simplify my life! For the last couple years, I have been blogging, doing podcasts, shooting videos, writing ebooks and ecourses, but did not give a lot of thought to the time-saving concept of "RE-PURPOSING". I would typically write all original content and never considered how I might transfer my blog posts into an ebook, podcast, video or Squidoo Lens. I am glad to say I have been officially liberated of my former less than productive ways and have started to repurpose my web content through 7 different avenues!

Now, you may have caught onto this a lot earlier than myself and may already be a "Re-purposing Guru", but here are 7 ways or avenues to consider....

1. 7 Twitter Tips: You might select a particular topic that you know would peak the interest of your fellow "peeps" and create 7 value-added tips. The beauty of Twitter is that hopefully your twitter pals will reply to your tips or even pass them to others creating a nice viral effect. It is important to build your tips with keyword-rich content for SEO purposes.

2. 7 Part Blog Series - A blog post series is a great way to provide a fresh influx of content built around the specific keywords you are targeting. Let's say you decide to write a blog post series on Virtual Assistant Training and Certifications - this essentially could equate to 7 opportunities to get listed by Google for such keywords as Virtual Assistant Training.

3. 7 Articles for EzineArticles.com - While I know there are many other article directories, EzineArticles.com is the "grand-daddy" of them all. It is important to reformat and mix up your blog post content in order to not be flagged as having "duplicate content" by Google. The other cool thing about EzineArticles is that you can now sign up to have your articles automatically posted through their Twitter account - another ideal way to mass distribute your content.

4.  Free 7-Part Ecourse - You might create a freebie 7-Part ecourse that you can giveaway on your blog or website as an incentive for your audience to join your list. This is a common practice, but super effective! I would recommend getting a nice book image or graphic to promote the free ecourse on your blog.

5. 7 Part Podcast (audio) Series - It is always effective to re-purpose written content into an audio or video format. In a podcast, you can expand on the 7 points, provide more practical illustrations and really personalize it more which gives it a life of it's own. You could certainly offer this as an incentive to build your list. I would recommend syndicating this podcast through such channels as Itunes.

6.  7 Short You-Tube Video - I would highly recommend taking your web content and converting it into a video series. You might choose to set-up "screencast" information surrounding the 7 tips or you could present it in person. YouTube videos are great for traffic building! Personally, I find that YouTube videos are listed much faster over other forms of content. For example; during our pre-launch campaign for VAClassroom, we created 4-5 videos based around particular keywords. Within a month, two of our videos were listed in the top 20 listings for two top keywords in Google.

7. 7 Tips via Squidoo or Hubpages - Social content sharing sites like Squidoo and Hubpages are just perfect for your repurposed content as they are known to be quickly listed in the Search Engines and can generate some nice traffic for you!

So there you have it, 7 fabulous ways for repurposing your web content and saving you a TON of time!

Help Your Clients Reach the Top of the Search Engines with Google Local Search

I took at little blogging hiatus over the past week to bang off a few key projects - phew - close to finished. Anyways I am back! A few days ago, in our VAClassroom Members Forum, one of our members posted this question: My new client has a question that I know one of you can answer. He is an independent insurance agent in Dallas. When you google "Dallas Insurance" the top listing is a map of Dallas and above it it says "Local Business Results for Insurance Near Dallas, TX" along with ten insurance agents and their locations on the map. I've seen similar maps when googling other things in Houston. How can he be listed in those top ten? Is it simply a search engine ranking thing, or do those ten people pay big bucks to be on that map? I'd like to help him do it. Great Question! To be honest, this one initially stumped me - How do those businesses get listed over others for local business search like "Insurance companies in Dallas, Texas"? Well, after some research and a chat with one of my SEO buddies, I found the answer. For those of you Virtual Assistants who are working with Brick and Mortar clients, this is a great tip to help them increase their Search Engine Exposure as well as online and offline traffic to their business. I found a great blog post that explained the whole process much better than I could so take a read of the post and wow your clients by getting them top placement in Google for local business searches: How to Get to the Top of Google Listings