Top Three Tips for Handling High-Maintenance Clients

Last week in our VAClassroom event, a question arose on how to deal with “Draining Clients”. I am sure we can all relate at one time or another to those clients who

•    Relentlessly invade our time and space
•    Assume they are our only client and should demand our immediate attention
•    Skype us late at night for an urgent demand the next morning
•    Are highly disorganized and “fly by the seat of their pants” all the time
•    Want us to be available full-time but are only willing to pay us part-time.

I could build a much bigger list, but I will stop there. Have you experienced those types of clients recently? Are they causing you great anxiety and sleepless nights? If so, what can we do to effectively and tactfully manage these high-maintenance clients?

Here are a couple helpful tips to consider…

1. Be honest with the client. Sometimes, clients are not actually aware of how they are behaving with you until you have a candid conversation with them. In talking with them, I would lead with the positive. Let them know the things that you enjoy about the work, but then be honest about those areas that need to be improved. These conversations are not always easy, but what is the alternative – more stress and sleepless nights?

2. Set clear communication boundaries with the client. This should be done from Day 1 (ideally), but let the client know the best ways that they can communicate with you and also clearly outline the times you are NOT available. If you hate the relentless Skyping, then present a more attractive communication alternative to them. It is important to let them know that you have other clients and that quick turnarounds on urgent projects will not always happen. You might consider setting a standard communication turnaround time that they can expect. For example, let them know you will always respond to their emails within a 24-hour period unless it is on the weekend. Setting healthy boundaries with your clients will liberate you. Yes, you run the risk of losing those “ultra-demanding” clients, but that might not be a bad thing.

3. If you have been honest with the client and reset new boundaries and the client continues their “old ways”, then it might be time to have that difficult conversation and “disinvite” them from your client list.

Important Note: In this challenging economy, it might not be financially viable to simply “fire” your client, so my suggestion would be to ramp up your marketing efforts and seek to find a client (sooner than later) that will fill the spot of this difficult client. Once you have that in place, then you can fire him or her!

Of course, the best way to deal with difficult clients is to avoid getting involved with them in the first place. This can be tricky, but the blog post “How to Spot Difficult Clients before Signing a Contract” first of all recommends listening to your gut:

Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his book, Blink, that “your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions” about people or situations.

So, don’t discount that ‘iffy’ feeling you get when you first start discussing a project with a client. That ‘feeling’ is your gut telling you to pay attention. If you get that uneasy feeling, jot down why you feel that way and see if they add up to a strong reason NOT to take the project.

This post also goes on to list a few easy-to-spot red flags you can look for during initial discussions with a client that can help determine his or her “potential for difficulty”.

In our upcoming Project Management Skills clinic, we will continue to address the issue of client relationships head on and discuss some communication strategies for managing projects if you do find yourself working with a difficult client.

In the meantime, though, we hope the above tips have been helpful in giving you some tools for handling high-maintenance clients. If you have any questions or advice from your experience as a Virtual Assistant or online business owner, please share your thoughts in the comment box below or on our VAClassroom Facebook Page.

25 Top Marketing Strategies for Reaching New Clients (Part 1: Offline Activities)

In this current economic climate, many Virtual Assistants and online business owners have experienced the highs and lows in their businesses over the past couple years. In fact, you yourself may have cycled from a time of abundance with great “high-value” clients to a drought where you have struggled to fill retainer clients that you may have lost for one reason or another. The ebbs and flows of a virtual business can cause a lot of stress.

During these times, it’s important to evaluate your virtual business activities and ask yourself some key questions:

•    What marketing strategies are you currently using to connect with new clients?
•    What strategies or activities have been successful for you? What has not gone well?

As we’re focusing on virtual business marketing this week, we’d like to take some time to share some top marketing strategies for reaching new clients. In our free event on March 17, “Virtual Business Marketing Makeover in One Hour,” one of the things we’ll be talking about is the fact that you must market every single day even if you have enough clients now. So, to start off our list, here are the first seven tips for how you can consistently market your business and connect with new and potential clients through offline activities.

Offline Activities:

1. Join or start a business networking group in your local area – This activity can actually happen both online and offline. Through Meetups, Tweetups, Chamber of Commerce or Local Business Associations, you can connect with like-minded individuals for collaboration purposes or to get connected with your target client audience.

2. Do a presentation for a local business group or association (i.e. local hospitality association, real estate association, small business owners) – For example, you could do a social media presentation that demonstrates how restaurants can use social media to draw in more customers. In a previous blog post, “Social Media Goes Local in 2010,” we talked about how restaurant owner Joe Sorge uses Twitter to engage with customers.

3. Attend a business fair/conference in your local region – These conferences and fairs are a great way to have face-to-face encounters with people who might potentially hire VAs.
4. Host a local event in your area (e.g. Social Media for Hospitality Businesses) – This activity requires some planning and maybe a bit of a budget, but it can be very effective as a form of networking.
5. Research and target local business clients with a one-on-one presentation – You could visit certain restaurants or spas you want to target to see how they could use social media to grow their businesses.

6. Publish an article in a local newspaper or trade magazine – This activity requires a certain level of writing skills, but can be very effective in giving your business more visibility.

7. Send targeted mail-outs to business lists through an association like the Chamber of Commerce – This is not the number one strategy we’d recommend because it isn’t very measurable, but it could definitely lead to multiple client opportunities in the local business community.

Stay tuned for our next post, where we will talk about tips for marketing your business through online activities (our favorite kind of strategies here at VAClassroom :).

And in the meantime, let us know if you have any questions or comments about these offline marketing strategies. Have you used any in the past and found them successful? Please drop us a comment in the box below!

How to Get Started with Google Places for Business

If you attended our VAClassroom event last week, you’ll know that there’s a ton of buzz going on around Google Places for Business. This tool is positioned to be a Game Changer when it comes to location-based social networks and directories. Why thumb through the Yellow Pages when with the click of a mouse you can uncover even more detailed information about local brick and mortar businesses?

Now, an interesting question popped up during our event—whether or not an Internet-based business with no fixed address or a Virtual Assistant’s business with a private home address could use Google Places. It appears they can too, and here’s a video that explains how Service Areas can be used to refine a listing:

But as a Virtual Assistant or online business owner, the best way to leverage Google Places is to partner with local brick and mortar business owners because they’re the ones who will most benefit from this service. But before you get started with Google Places, you’ll want to ask the following questions:
•    How do I create a well-optimized Google Places page for my local clients?

•    What strategies do I utilize to ensure the best chance of getting top listings in Google Places (1st page of Google)?

•    What are the best types of clients to target initially?

•    How can I build up online reviews for a client?

•    How do I structure the service and set my rates?

•    What other specific services (social media) can be bundled here?

Google Places and Local Search have the potential of being a very profitable service niche in 2011 for Virtual Assistant businesses, as it will have mass appeal across all types of industries and has excellent potential to boost income that is not based on billable hourly work (flat rates and maintenance packages). That’s why we are also going to be offering a Google Places Mastery clinic that will take place on January 26th to unpack the important strategies needed to effectively leverage Google Places for local brick and mortar business owners. For more information on this exciting new training opportunity, check it out at the link below:

http://www.vaclassroom.com/local-search-clinic/

One final thought—Google recently announced the unveiling of a Google Places with Hotpot iPhone app, adding to their growing arsenal of Google Places apps for mobile users. Here’s what the official Google Mobile Blog says about it:

It can be pretty rewarding to discover a new place you love, but we also realize that there are some experiences you just can’t wait to share. So Places makes it super simple to rate a place with your iPhone while you’re there. Just fire up the app and hit “Rate now.” It will use your location to guess your current place and let you post a Hotpot review right from your phone. But it’s not just about getting to say what you think—the more you rate places, the more you’re sharing about your tastes and the more we can give you personally tailored recommendations.

So imagine the possibilities when Google Places and other local directories are paired up with not only a location-based recommendation engine like Hotpot, but also other social platforms like a Facebook Page, Facebook Places, YouTube channel and other location-based social networks—you have the makings of a local marketing masterpiece!

Do you know any brick and mortar businesses in your area that could benefit from a Google Places listing? Do you have any ideas for how you could integrate Google Places into your current Virtual Assistant service offerings? Please share your comments below!

Google Places + Local Business = A Match Made in Marketing Heaven

Have you done a local search lately in Google? If you haven’t, you should give it a try because it yields some fantastic results! For example, I was recently in Spokane, Washington, over the holidays, and the family was craving a good “Chinese Buffet”. So, I decided to go to the Yellow Pages – NOT! I googled it, naturally, and at the top of the first page was the Google Places listing for a couple of the local buffets, complete with menu and customer reviews. Plus, to the right of the search listings, there was a nice big map featuring these two locations.

Google’s new layout (just a couple months old) is providing the most amazing opportunity for local businesses to grab the much-coveted top listings on page 1 through a fully optimized Google Places account. For another real-life example, check out this video case study showing how Google Places helped one business increase its traffic by 25%:

Not only is this a phenomenal opportunity for the local business, but also for Virtual Assistants seeking to branch out into a new niche and serve the needs of their local brick and mortar businesses! That is why we will be holding a FREE VAClassroom event on Thursday, January 13, titled “Leveraging New Google Places for Your Local Business Clients”!

Do you think Google Places will impact how and where local businesses advertise? As a Virtual Assistant or online business owner, are you interested in branching out into this new niche and partnering with local businesses? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please share your comments below!

5 Awesome Technology Tools You Wish Santa would put in Your Stocking This Year

It’s the holiday season, and many children around the world are looking forward to Santa coming down the chimney and filling their stockings on Christmas Eve. If you have kids, you might have already hung their stockings up in anticipation as they write letters to Santa.

Well, in the spirit of the season, we thought it might be fun to hear from a Santa that Virtual Assistants and online business owners can relate to. Check out this video:

So if this Santa were visiting your house, what would he put in your stocking? Here are five technology tools you might want him to bring for your virtual business:

1. Apple iPad – What can we say? The iPad is one of the hottest gifts around this year… and it’s pretty cool too. In a recent blog post, “The iPad and The Marketing Professional”, Mitch Joel quotes Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder and CEO, as saying that the iPad is “the device that lies in between your computer and your mobile device.”

So why would you want it in your stocking? Well, iPad apps can also make this a powerful tool for business professionals. Some examples that Mitch Joel recommends are Dropbox, iA Writer, FlightTrack Pro and Flipboard.

2. Google Apps for Business – Speaking of apps, if you aren’t already using Google Apps, you should really consider asking Santa for it. For only $50 per year, you can subscribe to a suite of secure web-based office tools, including Google Docs, Google Calendar, and many more.

The benefit of subscribing to this solution is that you don’t have to purchase any additional hardware or software, and you receive 25GB of email storage per person, so no matter how large your team is, you will save money and facilitate better collaboration between team members. It will also save you the time and headache of having to host and maintain your own communication and collaboration tools.

3. iPhone with TimeScroller widget – This is a handy technology tool that can help you find an appropriate time for an overseas phone call or conference, especially handy if you serve clients who live worldwide.

TimeScroller for iPhone and iPod touch is available at the App Store. Here are some features listed on the TimeScroller website:

•    Simple, compact display shows up to 9 cities without needing to scroll.
•    Takes into account daylight savings time for all cities.
•    Configurable to show different colors for different times of day – for example, “green” for normal office hours, “amber” for the evening, etc.
•    Unique suggest time feature.
•    Draft email listing times.
•    TimeScroller does not require an Internet connection.

4. Skype – This is another tool that we highly recommend at VAClassroom, especially for those accessing our live teleseminars outside of the U.S.  Skype is a software application that enables users to make voice calls over the Internet. Calls are free of charge to other users within the Skype service, while calls to landline telephones and mobile phones are paid for using a debit-based user account system.

Other features include:

•    Free video calling
•    Send files
•    Screen sharing
•    Conference calling
•    Voicemail

5. Virtual Gifts – For the Virtual Assistant who has everything, another great stocking stuffer is a virtual charity gift. For example, World Vision, an international relief and development organization, has launched a Facebook Page called “The True Spirit of Christmas”. Here you can send your Facebook friends a free virtual gift from the World Vision gift catalogue to “help spread the word about a great way to change children’s lives.”

In addition, there are many sites worldwide where the proceeds of purchasing a virtual gift benefits a certain charity, like the WWF Adopt an Animal charity gift.

We hope you are having a wonderful holiday season! We’d love to hear what’s on your wish list this year! If you have any suggestions, please comment below so that Santa knows what to put in YOUR stocking!

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!

The Worst Product Launches in History

William Shakespeare said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” meaning that it doesn’t matter what something is called, only what something is. In marketing, this often holds true, as history shows us time and time again.

In our own lifetime we have seen some amazingly popular brands attach their names to some really bad product launches that provide us Virtual Assistants and online business owners with some pretty powerful lessons on what not to do.

For starters, you may have noticed the clothing retailer Gap’s recent attempt to update their image. On October 6, 2010, they debuted a new logo on their website and did away with the blue box that had become synonymous with their brand. Throughout the Social Media community, there was a huge public outcry against the new logo, prompting Gap to return to its original blue box logo only a week later on October 12.

The below video creatively summarizes how Gap responded to the Social Media community and finally reached their decision to pull the new logo:

A blog post entitled “The Gap: Defensive vs. Proactive Social Media Strategy” gives an insightful opinion of what the company may have done wrong here:

Its logo-creation process and the subsequent reaction reflects the transition from the previous era to the new one we’re in now. The logo was developed “internally” and “top-down.” It would have been better for the Gap to solicit input on a new logo proactively before rolling one out. But use of the “old” process put the company on the defensive, though it has been very good about communicating around the new design — after the fact.

In another blog post, the same author, Greg Sterling, goes so far as to call this incident “Gap’s New Coke Moment.”

Remember New Coke? What a mistake! This hugely unpopular reformulation of Coca-Cola was introduced in April 1985 and then discontinued only three months later after a major outpouring of negative feedback from consumers. It was the first time in recent history that a company rolled back a big product in response to public outcry.

By now you’ve probably thought of a few more marketing failures, but here are some we’ve retrieved from the annals of history:

•    Heinz EZ Squirt Ketchup – colored ketchup products that eventually included green, purple, pink, orange, teal and blue, introduced in October 2000 and discontinued in January 2006.

•    Windows Vista – Microsoft operating system released on January 30, 2007, that became the target of much criticism and negative press, making many PC users turn to Macs for solace.

•    Crystal Pepsi – a colorless caffeine-free soft drink made by PepsiCo from 1992 to 1993 and marketed as a “clear alternative to normal colas.”

We could call these some of the worst product launches in history for many reasons, but for Virtual Assistants and online business owners, one of the MAJOR stumbling blocks for Online Product launches is no strategy or proper system in place! This is why so many new businesses are in desperate need of someone to support them in building the right strategy and system for their product launches.

For this reason we have launched our fourth major certification at VAClassroom: “The Product Launch Support Specialist Program“. This cutting-edge training program will equip Virtual Assistants with the skills, tools and resources to effectively set up and launch all types of products on the web for themselves and their clients! The Certification Program starts on November 15th!

For more details or to register for this innovative training, check it out at:

http://www.vaclassroom.com/product-launch-specialist

And as food for thought, we’ll leave you with a quote from Yum! Brands Chairman David C. Novak, the creator of the Crystal Pepsi concept:

It was a tremendous learning experience. I still think it’s the best idea I ever had, and the worst executed. A lot of times as a leader you think, “They don’t get it; they don’t see my vision.” People were saying we should stop and address some issues along the way, and they were right. It would have been nice if I’d made sure the product tasted good. Once you have a great idea and you blow it, you don’t get a chance to resurrect it.

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!

It’s Here – VAClassroom’s Facebook Technology Readiness Clinic!

We’d like to share a few exciting details about our upcoming VAClassroom Facebook Tech Skills and Tactics Clinic. In today’s web world, Facebook has quickly become one of the most prolific brand building and marketing channels for virtually any type of business online today. As Facebook membership continues to grow and reach well beyond the 600 million mark, business owners are enthusiastic about the potential this social network has for growing the visibility and presence of their company online.

However, keeping up with Facebook’s continuously evolving changes and advancements in technology proves to be a challenge for a lot of Virtual Assistants and online business owners seeking to leverage this powerful social network. As we discussed in a previous blog post, there have been a few key changes and announcements from Facebook that have had a huge effect on Facebook Pages. Well, we here at VAClassroom have a reputation for being “Trend Spotters”, and so we made sure we created a course that will equip you with the technical knowledge, skills and tools to successfully navigate these changes and build a compelling Facebook presence for you and your clients.

Check out the below video, where we introduce our groundbreaking Facebook Tech Skills and Tactics Clinic:

Again, here are the topics we will cover in this highly relevant one-time training opportunity:

Skill #1: Strategies for selecting and implementing the right Facebook Social Plugins for your blog or website

Skill #2: Preparation tactics for the NEW Facebook Changes

Skill #3: Integrating Facebook Connect to a blog or website

Skill #4: Understanding IFrames

Skill #5: Setting up Facebook Insights for your website

Join us for this live, interactive half-day clinic coming up on Wednesday, October 13 from 12pm – 3pm PDT (3pm – 6pm EDT). The technological shifts and advancements at Facebook have created a unique and profitable opportunity for you to be your clients’ Facebook Technology Advisor. They will need you to help them properly address the new changes that will be coming at the beginning of 2011, and we will make sure you have all the skills you need to do that!

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!

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?