A Review of Google Instant Preview

To click or not to click – that is the question search engine users ask themselves, and Google has just made their decision easier with the recent unveiling of a new feature called “Google Instant Preview,” which essentially gives users a sneak peek of a website before they actually click on the link.

To see it in action, check out this YouTube video tour produced by the e-Strategy Internet Marketing Blog:

Now, unlike Google Instant (which was meant to speed things up but sometimes did the opposite), Google Instant Preview truly does speed up the search process by not only giving you a graphic overview of search results but also highlighting the most relevant sections.

According to The Official Google Blog, you can use Google Instant Previews in the following ways:

•    Quickly compare results – A visual comparison of search results helps you pick the one that’s right for you. Quickly flip through previews to see which page looks best.
•    Pinpoint relevant content - Text call outs, in orange, will sometimes highlight where your search terms appear on the webpage so you can evaluate if it’s what you’re looking for.
•   Interact with the results page – Page previews let you see the layout of a webpage before clicking the search result. Looking for a chart, picture, map or list? See if you can spot one in the preview.

And, yes, it does provide those benefits… unless a website has been designed in a way that doesn’t show up properly in Instant Previews. Then it proves detrimental to both search engine users and online business owners who may be missing out on a powerful way of drawing more traffic to their pages.

The Official Google Webmaster Central Blog provides some valuable tips on how you can optimize your site for Google Instant Preview. Here are some important examples:

•    Keep your pages clearly laid out and structured, with a minimum of distractions or extraneous content. This is always good advice, since it improves the experience for visitors, and the simplicity and clarity of your site will be apparent via Instant Previews.
•    Try to avoid interstitial pages, ad pop-ups, or other elements that interfere with your content. In some cases, these distracting elements may be picked up in the preview of your page, making the screenshots less attractive.
•    Currently, some videos or Flash content in previews appear as a “puzzle piece” icon or a black square. We’re working on rendering these rich content types accurately.

But most important of all, if you are a Virtual Assistant or online business owner wanting to attract search engine users to your site, you need to make sure you have aesthetically pleasing pages with a well-designed layout that shows up great in Instant Previews. First impressions are going to matter, and since the size of each preview is too small to read much content, elements like colors, graphics and large branding are going to play a huge part.

Now the question on a lot of people’s minds is “Will Google Instant Preview affect SEO?” Well, as in the case of Google Instant, the jury is still out on that matter, so it remains to be seen whether we will need to adjust our SEO strategies.

In a blog post entitled “How will Google Instant Preview Affect You?!” the author suggests that the Instant Preview diminishes the importance of the ad copy beneath the search query titles. She also predicts that if your Preview turns off users, your click through rate will drop, your cost per click will go up, and ultimately your business costs will rise. These things could be true, but only time will tell, so we’ll need to be vigilant and monitor how our sites are doing along the way.

So Google is taking all of us online professionals on another adventure, but it’s an exciting challenge and a great opportunity to improve our branding and our websites’ first impressions. How will you respond to the challenge of Google Instant Preview? Please share your thoughts and comments below!

A Day in the Life of a VAClassroom Product Launch

Wow, what a week it’s been! Between improving our Membership Center and preparing for our upcoming Spanish Channel launch, things have been hopping around here at VAClassroom! On top of that, we are gearing up to release our fourth certification program, the Product Launch Support Specialist Certification. Well, last Thursday we experienced first-hand the emotional roller coaster involved in an online product launch when our new VAClassroom Membership Center and updated website went live!

As many Virtual Assistants and online business owners know, launching a new product online can be very stressful.  No matter how much you prepare for complications, unexpected things always pop up. This launch went relatively smoothly for us, with the exception of some minor hiccups that were quickly resolved, including a brief outage that was thankfully much shorter than the Great Facebook Outage of 2010.

For us, though, the important thing was to communicate with people and let them know what’s up. For example, we posted this on our Facebook Page to let everyone know things were back to normal again:

Hey, if you were trying to access our VAClassroom Site this morning and couldn’t, we had an outage, but it is back up again! Hey, our turn-around time was even better than Facebook:-) Of course they do a have few more members than we do!

Groundwork laid before the launch was also very important. As Ali Brown writes in her article, “Follow 5 Steps to a Powerful Product Launch,” a key strategy to a successful product launch is building up demand by communicating with customers through low-cost or no-cost Internet Marketing tools like e-mail newsletters, social media, group calls or teleseminars. Therefore, leading up to the launch, we made sure we outlined some of the upcoming changes in our Monthly Newsletter and Monthly Members Event.

So now that it’s up and running, we’d like to highlight some of the exciting changes you’ll see on our updated VAClassroom.com website:

•    New video on our home page – We are very excited about our new video featuring both VAClassroom co-founders, Craig and Kelly Cannings. You can check it out here:

•    New “My Training” layout – Students logging into their online training center will see a simpler layout in the “My Training” area with new tabs for certifications, courses and clinics.

•    New FAQs on our Support Page – Before submitting a Support Request, you can now take a look at our list of FAQs as most likely we have provided an answer to your question. If your question is not answered, you can simply scroll down and send us a message. We will add your question to our FAQs and get back to you within 24 hours.

•    New Membership Home Page and Additional Features – Our current VAClassroom members will notice a more streamlined home page when they log in to their “My Training” Portal. We have also added some additional features like Success Case Studies, “Take Ten” Demos and Special Reports.

•    The addition of a FREE membership and Paid Annual Premium Version – If you haven’t already signed up for a VAClassroom membership and would like to do so, check out our home page, where we outline the features of both our FREE and Premium Memberships. You can choose which membership best suits your needs and access it right from this page.

We are very excited about these changes and how they can help us better serve the needs of Virtual Assistants and online business owners heading into 2011. If you haven’t already done so, please check out our website and let us know what you think of the new features. We’re here to serve you, so we’d love your feedback!

Five Tips to Building a Strong Client Base in a Down Economy

Won’t it be great when we don’t have to talk about the Recession any longer? In these tough economic times, there are many challenges to face, and in online business, many Virtual Assistants and online service providers complain that their greatest challenge is finding new clients and maintaining a strong client base.

Fortunately, this is not an impossible hurdle to overcome because even in today’s weakened economy, the Virtual Assistance field is growing and thriving. In fact, many companies are now choosing to hire a VA instead of a traditional employee because VAs can be way more cost-effective and flexible.

So how do you attract these clients and keep them coming back for more even during this period of belt-tightening? Well, below are five tips that we hope will help:

1. Create an “irresistible offer” – Even during a recession (and especially during a recession), clients need extra help, and your job is to “become irresistible” so that they will hire you to deliver the Virtual Assistance services they need and to perform the tasks they don’t have time to do. Check out Krishna De’s video below, where she provides some great advice and food for thought:

2. Develop an “Internet Marketing Mindset” – Use Internet Marketing strategies to aid you in your client recruitment. In a recent blog post we talked about “Mastering the Art of Email List Building”. Here are some other things you can do to market your services online:

•    Create keyword-targeted video content to build your visibility and credibility with your audience.
•    Create a Facebook Page designed to support your target client audience’s ongoing questions and needs.
•    Develop visually appealing, brand-building PP presentations and distribute them through the web with SlideShare.net.
•    Use Twellow.com to research and build a highly targeted base of followers in Twitter.

3. Join Meetup groups – Meetup groups in your community can be a great place to network face to face with other virtual professionals and meet potential clients. To find one in your area, check out the Meetup website at http://www.meetup.com/.

4. Visit brick and mortar businesses in your area – As mentioned above, many companies could use a Virtual Assistant to perform some much-needed tasks without having to hire a traditional employee. In this case, a low-cost way of marketing yourself could be to take a walk through your community and visit brick and mortar businesses in person. With your “irresistible offer” and some great ideas for how you can specifically help them in their local business, you could entice them to become your next clients too!

5. Take care of the clients you already have – An interesting article called “Keeping Clients in a Down Economy – Is Giving Or Taking Better For Your Bottom Line” suggests that one of the most effective ways to find new clients is to be generous with the ones you already have. Here’s what the author says:

“Rather than spend more time, energy and money to recruit new clients, I’m showing current clients how much I value them by going above and beyond, thus creating raving fans who are telling others and then those others are coming to me.”

So ultimately, a strong relationship with your existing clients could go a long way towards building a stronger and bigger client base even when times are tough.

We hope these tips help generate your creativity so you can face the challenge of attracting more clients to your Virtual Assistance business in a down economy. If you have more ideas that have worked for you, we’d love to hear them, so please post them in the comment area below!

Google Instant: Friend or Foe of SEO?

What do you think of Google Instant? It’s now been a week since Google unveiled this new feature, and it’s creating a lot of buzz, even more than Google Buzz did.

In fact, the Internet has been flooded with blog posts and articles about it, critiquing it and predicting how it could affect people’s search behavior and Internet Marketing activities like Search Engine Optimization.

But let’s back up for a moment and examine what Google Instant is meant to be. According to the Official Google Blog, “Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.”

Now, the best way to understand this is to see it in action, so check out this creative video that demonstrates Google Instant with some help from singer Billy Joel:

According to Google, we should be seeing the following core features:

•    Dynamic Results – Google dynamically displays relevant search results as you type so you can quickly interact and click through to the web content you need.
•    Predictions – One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that we predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing. See what you need? Stop typing, look down and find what you’re looking for.
•    Scroll to search – Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

Yes, Instant does seem to offer those features, but it also introduces changes that could impact the Internet Marketing business and your tasks as a Virtual Assistant or online business owner.

Google says the primary benefit of Instant is time saved… but is it really? It seems like the primary benefit should be relevant results, and initially it seems to take a little longer to search as we train our eyes to scan the results below to see if we need to refine the search terms we’re typing. Google is not a mind reader yet; however, Instant may train users to be more thoughtful about the keywords they choose so that the correct results pop up.

Now how does Google Instant affect our Internet Marketing activities? Well, we want those “relevant results” and query predictions to point to our businesses and our clients!

So this is where Google Instant could change businesses’ SEO strategies, as users change their behavior and lean towards either long tail or short tail keywords. The blog post “Google Launches New Search Interface: Google Instant” predicts that as people spend more time refining keywords, they will ultimately focus more on long tail keywords, thereby creating a shift towards focusing even more on higher rankings for specific long tail keyword phrases.

On the other hand, the blog post “Google Instant: Personalization, The Paradox of Choice and Altered Behavior” argues that Google Instant will create a “bias against extremely long-tail queries,” predicting that users will decide against typing an extremely long query if they want to find the most relevant result for their search. Here the suggestion is made that smaller sites relying on long tail traffic may have to adjust their strategy to target shorter keywords.

Well, the jury is still out, and only time will tell, but this is definitely an opportune time for Virtual Assistants and online professionals to review their Search Engine Optimization strategies and determine how Google Instant affects them. This is where continual learning and updated Internet Marketing skills will serve you well as you catch Google’s newest wave and see where it leads your business and marketing activities.

So what do you think of Google Instant? Will it have a profound effect on your business and Search Engine Optimization? We’re eager to hear your thoughts, so please post a comment below!

Seven Must-Have Google Tools for Maximizing Your Business Productivity

Do you love Google Tools as much as we do? Google has a talent for coming up with features that often cater to the needs of Virtual Assistants and Online Business owners and can even help brick and mortar businesses take more of their activities online. For example, the blog post “Free Google Tools Changing the Way I Do Business” talks about the way Google’s suite of tools can streamline people’s work in the Real Estate business, providing quick access to email and documents.

If one of your goals for the last part of 2010 is to maximize your business productivity so you can hit the ground running in 2011, Google Tools can help you do that.

So without further ado, here’s a list of the ones we’d highly recommend:

1. Gmail – Google’s web-based email client provides you with 7+ GB of storage, as well as mobile access and a very effective spam filter. With Gmail we’re able to access our messages on any computer and on mobile devices when we’re on the go. Some other features we like about Gmail are:

•    Google Search within Gmail
•    Labels, Filters and Stars to help organize messages
•    Always-on HTTPS encryption

2. Google Docs – We’ve discovered Google Docs are a great way to create documents (also spreadsheets, presentations, forms, and drawings) to share online with colleagues or clients. Here’s how you can use them:

•    Upload any files from your desktop.
•    Edit and view them from any computer or smartphone.
•    Invite real-time collaboration on documents.

3. Google Calendar – Our VAClassroom team has just started using this free online calendar to enhance our productivity, and so far it’s working really well. Here are some of the things it’s allowing us to do:

•    Share our schedules with each other so we can synchronize our activities.
•    Access a mobile version of the calendar.
•    Customize reminders so that we’re notified by email or text when an upcoming event or task is approaching.

4. Google Reader – It’s very important to stay on top of what’s happening in your industry, but trying to monitor all your favorite blogs and websites for new content can be frustrating and time-consuming. Google Reader allows you to input the names of your favorite sites, and then it will check them regularly for new content and display it all on one screen. Here’s what else you can do with this tool:

•    Recommend articles to friends, colleagues or clients by sending them relevant links.
•    Add a customizable clip to your website or blog sidebar to display your latest shared articles.
•    Access your Google Reader on your mobile phone browser or from any computer.

5. Google Blog Search – This is an invaluable tool to use when writing blog posts for your business. It allows you to research blog posts on particular topics to see what other people are saying and what’s been written about before. With the advanced blog search, you can search using several criteria:

•    Words or phrases in post or title
•    URLs
•    Dates (useful when you’re looking for the most recent blog posts on a topic)
•    Author

6. Google Chrome – The Google Chrome web browser has proven to be faster and more stable for us, especially when viewing our VAClassroom training videos. Often if students are having difficulties viewing videos on other browsers, we recommend Google Chrome. So far it’s also offering these benefits:

•    Greater speed
•    Sophisticated security to allow safe browsing
•    Auto-updates

7. Google Alerts – As mentioned before, keeping apprised of certain topics related to your industry can be tricky and time-consuming. In addition to Google Reader, you can also use Google Alerts to keep on top of what people are saying about you, your business, your competitors or your industry in general. When you set up Google Alerts, you receive email updates of the latest relevant Google results according to the topic you chose. You can preview and then customize your alerts based on the following criteria:

•    Type of alert (News, Blogs, Updates, Video, Discussions)
•    How often you’d like to receive alerts
•    How many email results you’d like to receive

So there you have it – seven must-have business tools for maximizing your business productivity heading into the latter half of 2010. As the Internet landscape changes and evolves, most likely Google will come out with some more cool tools, and all of us involved in the Virtual Assistance business can benefit from anything that helps streamline our work with clients and all our Internet Marketing or Social Marketing activities.

So now we’d like to hear your thoughts! What Google Tool has had the biggest impact on your business productivity? Please add any other favorites to our list!

Five Common Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Online Newsletters

Do you subscribe to any Online Newsletters? As Virtual Assistants and online business owners, we often talk about Email Marketing from our perspective, but often it’s helpful to turn the tables and look at it from a subscriber’s perspective.

In an earlier blog post, “Mastering the Art of Email List Building,” we discussed the new Email Marketing 2.0 system and how it’s about adding value and building relationships, loyalty and trust with a niche group of subscribers rather than direct selling and building a huge generalized list of subscribers.

Infusionsoft CEO and Co-founder, Clate Mask, gives a terrific definition of this innovative marketing system:

This way of approaching Email Marketing has implications for the communications we send out to our email list and certain expectations that can turn people away or attract them to our business. So, given that definition, what would make you unsubscribe from an Online Newsletter?

The blog posts “5 Reasons Why No One Is Reading Your Email Newsletter” and “Email Newsletter Do’s and Don’t” have some great advice.

We did some thinking too, and here are the five common mistakes that might make us unsubscribe from an Online Newsletter:

1.    Boring, irrelevant content – There’s nothing worse than wasting time reading a newsletter that has no value or practical application to your business. Life is too busy for that, so be sure to provide your subscribers with valuable high-quality content that means something to them.

2.    Too many graphics – If there are too many large graphics, the images may be blocked by an email server or may be too difficult to load for people with slower Internet connections. Next stop – the Unsubscribe link!

3.   Inconsistent communication – Be sure to set a consistent schedule for your newsletter. If you call it a “monthly newsletter” but miss a few months here or there, people will begin to wonder if you’re serious or may even just forget about you.

4.    Too many ads or promotions – Even if you have a great product that you’re eager to sell, don’t be too heavy-handed with your promotions. Also, be sure to promote products that are appropriate for your target audience and that will be useful to them and their business.

5.    No options to provide feedback – As a way of building trust, it’s important to always encourage feedback and interaction somewhere in your newsletter. It’s frustrating to receive an old-style Email 1.0 newsletter that sounds like it was sent by a used car salesman who has no interest in anyone’s opinions or concerns.

So the next time you’re writing an Online Newsletter, step out of the Virtual Assistant shoes for a moment and take a look at your Email Marketing from the subscribers’ perspective. If you wouldn’t subscribe to your newsletter, chances are they wouldn’t either.

Now tell us your opinion! What mistakes do you notice in some Online Newsletters, and how do you think they affect a business’s relationship with its subscribers?

The Power of Article Writing in a Web 2.0 World

Does article writing still have a place in this new interactive Web 2.0 world? It’s a question many Virtual Professionals and online business owners may be asking themselves as Social Media Marketing and Video Marketing gain prominence.

Well, we would argue that article writing does have a place and that it is still a prolific marketing channel in this Social Media Arena. Here are some of the key reasons why:

• Increases brand visibility and interest.

• Establishes authority and thought leadership.

• Ignites SEO potency (Tons of backlinks).

• Creates opportunity for your content to go viral.

• Generates targeted website traffic and sales.

As an illustration, check out this case study described in “Article Marketing – An Hour A Week To Web 2.0 Success!”

Here the author reports how spending 45 minutes writing three articles (targeted to his sites and online products) yielded the following results one week after being uploaded to a professional online article submission service:

• 55 pages indexed and live in Google showing his resell rights article

• 43 pages indexed and live in Google showing his Article Marketing article

• 51 pages indexed and live in Google showing his Affiliate Marketing article
He summarizes the results this way:

“That’s 149 more places for people to run into my name and solid info from me online, 149 more links back to my sites, each capable of attracting tightly-targeted traffic to my salespages and affiliate marketing pre-sell pages. For one hour’s work, total. That’s the immediate benefit to article marketing – almost instant spidering by the search engines, and a number of new profit conduits set up aimed at your payment button or affiliate links.”

In addition to uploading your articles to online submission sites like EzineArticles.com, you can use Social Media channels to further maximize the exposure of your content. Here are some common ways of doing that:

• Use the EzineArticles.com Bookmarking feature.

• Schedule article tweets in HootSuite. (Send it out 2-3 times.)

• Share your article in targeted social network groups and forums. (Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning)

• Include the article link in a relevant blog post.

• Submit your article to other general and niche social bookmarking sites. (Digg, Delicious)
We cover this in more detail in our Internet Marketing Specialist 2010 course since it is such a crucial step in harnessing the power of Social Media to mass-distribute your articles.

And when you’re writing, always remember the Golden Rule of Article Marketing: CONTENT IS KING! The credibility and influence of your Virtual Business will grow if you consistently provide valuable content that is directed towards your target audience.

Now we’d like to hear your thoughts! Have you used articles to promote your Virtual Business? Do you feel Article Marketing is still an effective marketing channel in the Web 2.0 world?

Mastering the Art of Email List Building.

In keeping with this week’s theme of “Continual Learning,” we wanted to touch on Email List Building, an important Internet Marketing skill that requires Virtual Assistants and Online Professionals to keep up to date and informed of the latest trends and skills.

Despite the fact that other marketing channels like Social Marketing and Video Marketing have gained prominence, Email Marketing is here to stay for the foreseeable future and will continue to thrive because it is still the top converting marketing activity and is very easy to deliver and test.

However, it’s important to take note of how this type of marketing has changed and evolved in 2010 so that you can form an appropriate strategy. It’s now a very different animal from the traditional brand of Email Marketing that was used in the past. Most importantly, the new Email Marketing 2.0 is about adding value and building relationships, loyalty and trust with a niche group of subscribers rather than direct selling and building a huge generalized list of subscribers.

In the blog post “Email Marketing 2.0 Explained,” Tyler Garns from Infusionsoft compares traditional Email Marketing 1.0 with the new Email Marketing 2.0 and says that Email Marketing 1.0 is like a bad sales rep:

“A bad sales rep will typically memorize the spiel and “data dump” on the prospect regardless of what the prospect says, regardless of the person’s body language and regardless of any buying signals. They are robotic and sell much less because of their rigidness and inability to adapt the message for different people.”

On the other hand, he says the new Email Marketing 2.0 is like a good sales rep:

“A good sales rep, on the other hand, will listen (a lot) and adapt the message to the prospect’s needs. Good sales reps sell significantly more because they are always able to share something relevant to the prospect. They listen, adapt, and share the right message for every individual prospect every time.”

So, given those differences, how do you master the art of Email List Building so that you can create a targeted list and start to build relationships and trust? Here are some simple tips to get you started:

•    Brainstorm the type of audience you want on your list.

•    Develop a free offer that would entice that audience to subscribe and make sure your landing page is optimized with the right keywords that are relevant to the offer.

•    Develop valuable follow-up content that would benefit the audience and help build relationships with them (i.e. emails with lists, tips or strategies they can use in their business).

•    Figure out where to promote or display your free offer and opt-in box (i.e. post in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blog posts, Squidoo Lenses, Hubpages, targeted forums and industry websites).

•    Promote a free web event using event tools in LinkedIn, Facebook or other Social Networks.

•   Publish relevant articles with a call to action and a link to your free offer in the author resource box.

•    Identify the right email program for your campaign, one that will allow you to adapt autoresponders to suit your subscribers’ needs and responses.

We cover this topic in more detail in our Internet Marketing Specialist 2010 training program because it is such an important skill for Virtual Assistants to know. Remember that the important thing is to speak to the needs of your target audience and share high-quality content so that they benefit from your email communications and become part of a valued community of subscribers.

Developing that trust and relationship will help you build a niche audience that will stay tuned in to your communications and remain loyal customers as time goes by – a mutually beneficial relationship for you both!! In the new Email Marketing 2.0 world, you can even say that Email List Building becomes social too!!

Is Your Website or Blog Perfectly Optimized?

Do you ever watch those home renovation shows on TV, the ones where someone is having trouble selling their home and needs some help? Often there’s nothing wrong with the house itself, just an important design element missing. A team of experts is called in and, voila, the house gets noticed and sells! The home owners are amazed and anxious to learn the skills those experts used to make such a difference.

In your work, do you wish you could optimize your website or blog so that it attracts more attention? Are your clients anxious to optimize theirs too? The initial SEO work begins in the HTML, and consequently clients are now, more than ever, requiring their Virtual Assistants to have some level of HTML knowledge and skills. For some, that’s exciting… for others, worrisome. ;-)

SEOmoz has put together an excellent blog post that summarizes best practices for “Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization.” They provide a diagram of the “perfectly” optimized page and list all the elements that contribute to its ranking. Many of these elements are quite technical and require a good knowledge of HTML.

Below is a list of the important elements to optimize in on your webpage:

•    Keyword Targeted URL
•    Page Title
•    Meta Description
•    H1 Headline
•   Image File Name
•    Webpage Body Content
•    Internal links

Now, if you’re starting to break into a cold sweat at the thought of tackling such technical aspects, you’re not alone. HTML is a very important task and one that requires specialized training in order to do it well. For that reason, we recently offered a special 3-hour HTML Training for Internet Marketing Success Clinic. The Clinic was taught by our very own VAClassroom Faculty Member, Christina Greenway, who helped demystify HTML and unpacked the important skills you need for your business and your clients.

So there’s no need to call in a team of experts to optimize your website or blog! With some HTML training, you can make Google stand up and take notice, and that’s as good as a “Sold “ sign on the front lawn!

6 Attributes of a Great Affiliate Manager

Have you included Affiliate Marketing in the overall strategy for your business or your clients’? If so, you are leveraging one powerful channel for widening your exposure and generating sales. However, this strategy is destined to fail without a great Affiliate Manager at the helm. If your Affiliate program isn’t being managed effectively, it’ll sink like the Titanic!

But what attributes should you be looking for in an Affiliate Manager? Below are some of the important skills and qualities this key team member should possess:

1.    Good Interpersonal Skills – An Affiliate Manager should be a “people person,” willing and able to provide assistance when needed and to interact with affiliates to keep them informed and encouraged. According to the blog post Characteristics of the Proper Affiliate Marketing Manager, “affiliate managers are the face of any company when they go to different conferences and anywhere else where there is contact with their potential affiliates.”

2.    Knowledge of the Business – A great Affiliate Manager has a good grasp of the product being sold and the ultimate goals of the company. This is essential when networking with potential affiliates and also in targeting affiliates who are the right fit for the company.

3.    Knowledge of HTML – It is essential that an Affiliate Manager know HTML so that they can assist affiliates with links and code. The blog post Common mistakes with hiring an in house Affiliate Manager puts it this way: “If your Manager cannot guide them through placing html or altering it, even basic html, then guess what, they are useless to that Affiliate and that Affiliate will move on to your competitor who can create and place their links with and for them.”

4.    Consistent Communication – It is essential to keep affiliates motivated and engaged, and a great Affiliate Manager will have the creativity and consistency to produce monthly newsletters, special incentives and contests, special product discounts, new banners, updated marketing materials and periodic web events to teach affiliates how to improve their sales.

5.    Ability to create Affiliate Broadcasts that are simple and that include tweets, Facebook updates, blog posts, etc. for communication – Your Affiliate marketing campaign will be much more successful if your affiliates are provided with a good variety of targeted content to promote your brand and products. A great Affiliate Manager will be able to create Affiliate Broadcasts that are concise and include all the important elements needed for the affiliate’s communications.

6.    Ability to teach Affiliates how to use Social Media to promote their Affiliate link – There’s no doubt that Social Media has become one of the most effective advertising channels around, so it’s imperative that an Affiliate Manager is well-versed and active in Social Media and can guide affiliates through this complicated landscape so that they can promote their Affiliate link. Recruiting an Affiliate Manager with Social Media Marketing skills is a wise move for any business!

These are just a few of the attributes that make a great Affiliate Manager, and the list could go on and on. Because building a thriving Affiliate Program is key to the success of any online business, we devote more time to this topic in our newly updated Internet Marketing 2010 course.

What attributes do you look for in an Affiliate Manager? Please share your comments below.

Six Keys to Building a Thriving Virtual Assistant Practice in 2009

Happy New Year! I definitely took a long hiatus from my blog, but have re-charged my creative batteries and am officially ready to go!

I have had the privilege of working with a whole variety of Virtual Assistants over a number of years and have been able to assess the particular traits or characteristics that make some of them  very successful. As we head into a New Year full of much promise here are six keys to building a thriving Virtual Assistant Practice in 2009:

KEY #1 – Be Active in Social Networking – I continue to hear great testimonies of some of our VAClassroom students finding new ideal clients through such popular Social Networks as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. They are building their network with a target audience and are finding opportunities emerge through these connections! So, one of the keys to sustaining a Thriving Virtual Assistance practice in 2009 is to become a “Master Networker” in the key social networks, forums, groups and online communities!

KEY #2 – Build a Compelling Web Presence - I have also had the opportunity to review many different VA websites and I noticed that some of them still do not market themselves super well. The page sometimes is super text heavy, with no multimedia or compelling images. As an Internet Business Owner (who currently works with 4 VAs), I love coming to site that has a YouTube Video, compelling graphics, an optin box to a free PDF guide, Twitter & Facebook Badges and possibly a blog. This shows me that this business is cutting edge and savvy! So, here’s a test….

Go to your website right now and ask yourself: “If I was a prospective client, would I be drawn to my website?” Now is the best time of year to make changes!

KEY #3 – Participate in Blogging and Social Media Content Sharing - Many of you who are blogging right now know the value of being of thought leader in the VA industry and building credibility with your prospective client base – not to mention the great SEO value of regularly updating your blog! The key with your blog is to create content that would be relevant to your target client audience. For example; I saw a PDF guide that a VA was offering called “101 Reasons to Use a Virtual Assistant in 2009″ – this was great and relevant content for small busineses, which certainly could pave the way to new client opportunities!

It is imperative to build your traffic and web presence through sharing content in such sites as HubPages, Squidoo and EzineArticles. This again positions you as a thought leader and drives traffic and Search Engine results back to your website!

KEY #4 – Establish a Clear Business Niche - As you know, the Virtual Assistant role is constantly in flux and means many different things to different people. Many VAs are bloggers, web-designers, social media marketers, bookkeepers, event planners, PR specialists and so much more! The most successful VAs have been able to establish the right niche at the right time to create the best opportunities for their business. For example; businesses are screaming for VAs with Social Media Marketing expertise, which is why we recently launched our Social Media Marketing Specialist Training Program.

Also, it is important to identify the niche audience you are targeting. Is your ideal client audience, Real-Estate Agents, Business Coaches, Women Entrepreneurs, Internet Marketer, Ecommerce Sites etc..?

KEY #5 – Proactive Marketing Strategies – I always love the saying “The squeaky wheel gets the grease”! Translation: A Pro-active Virtual Assistant will create the best opportunities for their business! As you know, the clients may find you on Social Networks or via your website, which is great, but for the most part, you will need to go out there and connect with your ideal client audience in creative ways. For example; One of our VAClassroom Students mentioned that she was putting on workshops for small business associations in her local area on “The Power of Social Media Marketing”. Well, this served as an excellent avenue for her to position herself as an authority and build some new client opportunities.

KEY #6 – Highly Committed to Continual Learning – Of all the industries I have be apart of in my career, none has moved faster than the Internet Business. New technology and web trends are evolving at a rapid pace and 6 months is like 5-10 years in another industry! It is paramount that you are actively pursuing learning and training opportunities in your niche to ensure that you remain on the cutting edge and at the top of your game in 2009.

So, there you have it…. Six keys to building a thriving Virtual Assistant business in the New Year!

I am sure there are other “Keys” and would love to hear yours!

6 Reasons Your Clients Should Invest More In Internet Marketing During a Recession

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:)