I was recently at a family function and someone asked me about the types of training courses we teach at VAClassroom. I started sharing about our Social Marketing Training Program and quickly realized that what I was speaking “Greek” to this person. Twitter? Huh?

Anyways, since you are involved in Social Media to some extent or have an interest in adding it as a service in your business, I thought I should send you this video that will save you some grief with family and friends when they ask “What exactly do you do?”

This video is called “Social Media in Plain English” and it is one of the best and most practical explanations I have seen on this topic!

Enjoy the video!

Our Social Marketing Training Course started last week and we just completed our 2nd session on Social Media Strategy and Social Networking Set-up and Management. I will keep you posted on the next enrolment in January!

It is amazing to see the demand for this kind of niche! One of our students mentioned that she connected with one of her clients on what she had learned in the first session of the Social Marketing Training Program and the client wants her to get started right away with building a Social Media Strategy - very cool.

Another Virtual Assistant mentioned that one of her clients was waiting to hire her once she completed the course. Also, last week, I got a call from a marketing firm, who asked if three of their Virtual Assistants could attend the program as they really wanted to bolster their Social Marketing efforts in 2009.

All of this is pointing to serious opportunity for those seeking to offer a Social Media service in 2009! Although this course is sold out right now, we will be offering another opportunity in January. Free Free to jump on our alert list at our Social Marketing Training page here.

Until next time!

The social network gurus on his team implemented some innovative strategies, even going as far as creating their own Obama Social Network where people all over the US could connect, share Ideas and dialogue about the issues.

I read a great post today from an Aussie that summed up the social media brilliance displayed by Team Obama over the last few months. Take a read of this post titled: Lessons We Can Learn From Barack Obama’s Online Marketing Strategy. As you read this, reflect on your own Social Media efforts and take stock of how effective your current activities are - is there something to be learned from this Social Media President? I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback!

The timing of this post is great, especially as we get set to launch our new Social Marketing Specialist Training Program here at VAClassroom.com. Obama’s ability to successfully leverage Social Media will no doubt alert to action many of those businesses who may be dabbling with Social Media, but not employing any real concrete strategy.

The opportunities for Social Marketing Specialists will be plentiful in 2009!

I am happy to be involved with Tina Forsyth’s Blog Tour for her timely book release, “Becoming an Online Business Manager”. I have had an opportunity to get to know Tina over the last while and have been super impressed with her experience and knowledge in the Virtual Business field!

Last week, we sat down for a 20 minute interview to discuss her new book launch, her motivation behind this project and the key distinctions between a Virtual Assistant and an Online Business Manager. I have had an opportunity to review the book and it is a very well thought out, relevant and timely read for any Virtual Assistant or Online Professional seeking to shift their skills and services into the Online Business Management space. After talking with Tina, I quickly realized that I need an “Online Business Manager” for my own business:). While I work with 3-4 different Virtual Assistants, I do not currently have someone that is functioning as the point person for my business activities.

Take a listen to the MP3 recording of this 20 minute interview.

Interview with Tina Forsyth, author of “Becoming an Online Business Manager”

I woud highly recommend adding this one to your upcoming holiday break reading list. You can grab your copy here:

Becoming an Online Business Manager

I am not sure if you were able to attend the live webinar we did this week titled: “7 Profitable Social Marketing Services for 2009″, but we had a rather big audience and a great response. We actually have just finished producing the recording of that event and I have included a link to view the 67 minute video webinar below:

Social Marketing Webinar Recording

Please note, the audio is a little quieter then expected, so you may need to crank up your speaker volume:)

With our Social Marketing Course, we offered 40 seats and we are now have about 14 spots remaining as of today. There is such an interest among Virtual Assistants right now to develop their Social Media Marketing skills. I believe this will be one of the most highly sought after services moving into 2009!

Enjoy the webinar!

One of the key first steps to becoming a successful Social Marketing Specialist or Consultant is to understand and adopt a “Social Marketing Mindset”. As many of you know, Social media is really all about building relationships, adding value to the community and being real and authentic.

I had an opportunity to dialogue this week with three team members from one of the fastest rising Web 2.0 companies on the Net, Freshbooks.com. Some of you may use their Invoicing and Time Tracking system, which is ultra cool. But, they are SUPER innovative when it comes to social media and have fully adopted this Social Marketing Mindset. They were recently listed #2 for the Top Web 2.0 companies in Canada (Backbone Magazine).

Check out this out the very insightful 22 minute informal discussion between myself and Saul, Rayanne and Gregg from Freshbooks by signing up at our Social Marketing Page. You will see that they are very passionate as I am about Social Media and share some great prespectives on this fast growing industry.

For our upcoming Social Marketing Specialist Coaching Series, I am fully hoping to recruit Saul Colt and/or Rayanne Langdon (Social Media Gurus at Freshbooks) to join our Expert Panel. More on that later…

It is an undisputable fact that 2008 was the year Social Media dominated the Internet and ultimately changed the way we comunicate and market our businesses in the online world!

But, most experts predict we are just at the tip of the iceberg! Social Network Sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LInkedIn all experienced tremendous growth 2008, but that does not even come to close to what is anticipated for 2009.

So, with the rapid growth of Social Media and the influx of businesses using it to build their brand and exposure, I am going to make a bold, but obvious prediction for 2009…..

Social marketing will become the most “in-demand” skill and service requested by small businesses (possibly with the exception of design and copy) As I listen to Internet experts and connect with my online business pals, Social Media is quickly moving to the top of their marketing priority lists. Many of them took Social Media Training Courses such as StomperNet’s SMARTS program, but here is the fundamental problem: “Most simply don’t have time to maximize the potential of Social Media Marketing for their respective businesses.

So, it probably goes without saying that one of the hottest niches to further develop your skills and services falls in the area of Social Marketing.

Based our our extensive research, I have broken it down into the Top Seven Social Marketing Services that businesses will be desperately seeking in 2009….

On October 28th… we will will be running a live, FREE webinar event,

“Seven Profitable Social Marketing Services To Offer Your Clients in 2009″

If you are interested in Social Media and and see the huge potential in positioning yourself as a Social Marketing Specialist in 2009, then this webinar is for you.

Just visit the below web page to view a short video on this upcoming Social Media event. We are limiting this webinar to 200 seats so be sure to sign-up as soon as possible. I will be in touch soon with some more details!

http://www.vaclassroom.com/socialmarketing

I probably shouldn’t be using the “R” word in my title as it tends to get people a little jumpy, but inevitably that is the obvious direction we are going in light of the current economic crisis.

Typically during recessions or financially difficult times, businesses cut advertising and marketing dollars and wait out the storm until they can resume business as normal. But interestingly enough, it is being forecasted that businesses will be investing more time and money into Internet Marketing during a potential recession as it is more cost-effective and measurable than traditional ad channels. Typically Internet Marketing efforts require more of your time and less of your money over other types of advertising.

I have been loving the blog, HubSpot as of late and just read a great post pertaining to this issue:

Six Reasons to Invest In Internet Marketing During the Recession

In the blog post, they cite a study by emarketer that reveals the shift in spending to Internet Marketing over traditional channels.

Many of you are working with “Brick and Mortar” clients that likely do some offline advertising. This is the perfect opportunity for you to enlighten them as to the power and cost-effectiveness of Internet Marketing activities over offline ad channels. Further to that, this might also be the perfect opportunity for you to look at our Internet Marketing VA Training Course at VAClassroom in order to sharpen your Internet Marketing know-how during a time when Internet Marketing investment is only continuing to grow……Even during a “R_____N” (Didn’t want to say the word again:)

Have you ever had one of those weeks, where you had a full plate of work priorities, tasks and deadlines only to have them to swept by the wayside as a result of an emergency or sickness?

Well, after this week, I realized that I have never really given a lot of thought to “Planning for the Unplanned”. As a Solopreneur, I have built my business around “me” and so when emergencies happen, work tends to not get done as I have not put in place the proper contingency plans!

So, the million dollar question…. How can you truly plan for those “unforseen events” in your life so that your virtual business stays on track?

Well, after processing this one a bit…. here are a few principles or ideas to consider when “Planning for the Unplanned”:

1. Find a “Delegation Buddy”.

For those of you that own a Virtual Assistance practice, it is good to align yourself with another virtual business owner who offers some similar services as yourself so that you can “scratch each other’s back” when those unplanned events surface in your lives. Yes, you might lose some earnings during that time, but the important thing is to continue to maintain a high quality service for your clients.

A “Delegation Buddy” might also come in handy during those fast-growth times in your business when your client base and projects are growing like crazy.

2. Define your Weekly Priorities.

A few weeks ago, we hosted an event with Freshbooks CEO, Mike McDerment titled, “Virtual Nirvana - How To Remain Inspired and Productive When You Work Alone“. In this webinar, Mike talked about the principle of laying out your weekly priorities on Sunday Evening before the week gets going. You want to clearly define what work activities are most important and MUST get done this week. I usually like to break my work tasks up into “Must Do” and “May Do” lists. The May Do would be great to get to, but not imperative that they get done that week.

Let’s say an emergency hits you on Monday (as it did with me last week)…By knowing those priorities that must get done, this helps you to know the minimum that you need to accomplish or possibly delegate to someone else. Of course, there will be times where this is not possible and you need to be honest with your clients that that the project deadlines just have to be pushed back temporarily.

3. Prep your “Emergency Email”.

Now, this might come across a bit “anal-retentive”, but you might want to go as far as prepping a “generic email” that basically says an “Urgent Matter” has arisen and that you will be out of the office for a specified period of time. Believe me, when a crisis or urgent matter hits you, it is hard to think and it is nice to have an email template in place to you can just copy and paste to your clients. Something to think about…

At the end of the day, emergencies and urgent matters will happen in your life, so you want to be prepared and ask yourself: “How would I keep my business moving in the right direction if I suddenly needed to step away for a week or so?”

These are things we just don’t think about until unforseen circumstances surface in our life.

Food for thought….

Have you ever had one of those days where you find yourself a step below “ROCK BOTTOM”? I had one of those days about year ago. I was one week away from launching a brand new web business and had ton of things flowing through my mind in preparation for the big launch (At least, that is my excuse now:))

One fateful Friday night, we were visiting with my in-laws at their house and I had brought my laptop along to give them a tour of our new website. Just as we were about to head home, I remembered we needed to pack a couple boxes into the back of our van. Now, I had my laptop bag over my shoulder as I was carrying a rather heavy box. It was dark and I placed my laptop bag on the ground so I could open the rear door of our Van and load the box. I then went into the house to grab one more box, loaded it and shut the Van door. Now can pick up what I am missing at this point?

I jumped in the van, started in up, kicked it in reverse (to head home) and started to back up………

Then I heard THE NOISE!! It was a gut-wrenching sound - CLUNK! My wife immediately yelled “STOP, I think you hit a cat or something”. As I was opening the door to go to back to see what I hit, a VERY dark and horrifying thought filled my mind……..

I JUST RAN OVER MY LAPTOP  - AHHHHH!

Now, remember, I am one week away from launching a new business and ALL my plans and important docs/ files are on this laptop. The first question you probably have: “Did you back it up?” YES, I had about a week prior, but had loaded some important docs on it in the last couple days.

My wife came around the back of the van to have a look. She kept saying…. “I can’t believe you ran over your laptop”.

After a minor meltdown, I collected myself, put things into perspective and headed home!

Now, here’s the principle…….Don’t run over your laptop - it is not fun!

No, but seriously…. here is the principle….. In your Business, you WILL face adversity and set-backs that temporarily discourage or even crush you! It is OKAY to have a minor meltdown at that moment - totally natural. But after your meltdown, the next response is the one that matters! Are you going to give up? Not a chance! It is not the point of adversity that defines you or determines your future outcome, it is how to choose to respond to the adversity that matters!

Interestingly enough…. I took my “pancake” laptop to my computer guy and surprisingly he was able to recover my hard drive:) Buy Toshiba - they apparently can handle being run over by a 1 ton van!

I remember saying to my wife after I had run over the laptop  - “Let’s keep this between the two of us”! Well, only a VERY small group have ever heard this story, but I was having a vulnerable moment today and thought I broadcast it over the NET:)

Enjoy your weekend and be sure back up your computers!