Social Media is local too!
When bricks and mortar businesses think of social media, they don’t see the value in it to them. If you have a restaurant, store or hair salon, social media is low cost way for you to engage current or prospective customers.
Local social networking sites such as www.foursquare.com provide a way for people to interact with you and review your product or service. Twitter users number over 75 million people. Facebook has recently outstripped Google as the place people go to find information. Facebook is growing by 500,000 users per day.
Why not engage customers before they patronize your business. It’s a great couponing opportunity without having to spend the money to print and mail out coupons. It’s a way to engage people before they come to your business, let them see your personality and if you have something in common, people will want to do business with you. For example, I’m a dog lover. Everyone who knows me knows that I absolutely adore my dogs. I am much more likely to do business with someone who is also into dogs. I did a website for a realtor (www.duncanmcleod.ca) who has a passion for golf. We designed his theme around golf – every realtor sells houses, many realtors have the typical pictures of houses on their websites, his website will hopefully engage people who love golf. We did the same thing when we set up his Twitter account (www.twitter.com/DuncMcleod).
Search engines are picking up interaction on social media sites. A good comment about your product or service will be picked up in Twitter searches (so will bad ones). What people tweet is out of your control, but being connected in social media will help you handle any bad reviews or issues and take control of the situation. If someone tweets negatively about your service, you can do something to try and make the situation right and turn the situation around.
A really good example of someone using social media to build her brand and business is Kerri Lee of Lee Middleton Gourmet Tea (http://www.completelytea.com). She and I connected on Twitter. She had some really good information on tea and she is now our tea supplier. Just this morning I left for a networking meeting and left a cheque in the mailbox and when got home, the tea was here, as promised. If we were not using social media, she would not have found me as a customer and I wouldn’t have found her as a supplier!
A pizza restaurant in Milwaukee, AJ Bomber’s used Twitter to build their business. The following video is an example of how social media can help build your business.
If you need help establishing a social media presence for your business, contact me today. I’d love to help you get connected!
Are you promoting your use of social media?
I have two questions for you.
- Are you using social media sites such as Facebook, Linked In and Twitter?
- Are you letting customers and prospects know that you are using social media?
If you answered yes to question one and no to question 2, my next question is, why not?
I recently received a directmail piece in the mail from the store, Winners. On the back of the flyer was a little Facebook logo inviting consumers to follow them. This is a great idea – it’s a perfect way for Winners to keep people up to date on what is happening in their stores.
So if you are connected with Social Media, shout it out to the world, let everyone know. If you have a Facebook fan/business page, invite your customers to become fans. If you are on Twitter, ask your customers to follow you and follow them back. Keeping conversations going is a great way to keep you top of mind to your customers.
You can find me on:
See you in the Twitterverse!
5 Ways a Virtual Assistant Can Help Consultants
Whether you are a marketing consultant, a manager consultant, business consultant or market research consultant, a virtual assistant should be an integral part of your business. My accountant has a saying, “stick to the knitting”; in other words, do the parts of the job that you make the most money at and delegate the other stuff.
Here are some ways that a virtual assistant can help you:
1. Document formatting
If you work on a hourly billable basis, drafting a document and having your virtual assistant format it for you allows you to move on to other financially lucrative work.
2. Contact Management
Give your business cards to your Virtual Assistant to enter into your contact management database. Consider using an online service such as Zoho CRM, Sugar CRM or SalesForce.
3. Meeting Prep
Your Virtual Assistant can help with reservations, room bookings, catering orders as well as meeting materials. Your VA can coordinate back pre-work (if necessary), preparing name tags, agendas, tent cards, evaluation forms and other documentation.
4. Après Meeting
Your VA can take the flip charts from your meeting and transcribe them into a Word, Excel or Mind Manager document. Do you have meeting participants fill out evaluation sheets? Give them to your Virtual Assistant to compile and prepare a quantitative and qualitative report. Was the meeting recorded on tape or digitally? Again, your Virtual Assistant can transcribe this for you into a form you and your clients can work with. Take a FedEx, UPS or Purolator waybill addressed to your VA along with packaging material to your meeting. After the meeting package everything up and drop the package off at a courier drop off location (for example, Staples) on your way home and have it shipped to your virtual assistant.
5. Invoicing
Your VA can prepare your invoices and send them to your clients on your behalf as well as following up on unpaid invoices.
A tool every entrepreneur needs
Neat Receipts is a great little tool that no business should be without. What is it? It’s a business card scanner, a receipt scanner and a portable scanner. How can Neat Receipts help you?
- Receipts:
- It’s not just a scanner. Neat Receipts can take your scanned receipt and break it down into a spreadsheet by place of purchase, type of product, cost, taxes. It also keeps a scan of the receipt for your records.
- Business Cards:
- Scan your business cards using Neat Receipts into a format that you can use to upload to your contract management system (such as Outlook, SalesForce, Zoho, etc.). Saves typing. Yes, you’ll have to review to ensure the right items are put in the correct fields, but it saves on errors.
- Portable Scanner:
- Are you frequently on the road and need a quick scan of a document to email to someone? Neat Receipts can scan quickly to a PDF and it fits in your suit case.
This is a product I highly recommend. Of course, if you are extremely busy and don’t have the time to do this yourself and you have a pile of business cards and/or receipts you would like scanned, Prime Admin Solutions can help you with that.
For more information on this really cool product, check out: The Neat Company’s website.
Cool gift idea
I received a really neat Christmas gift from a client (not that I expect gifts from clients and this one was a really nice surprise). The client sent me a Christmas card and included a gift certificate from www.wayspa.com.
I had never heard of this company before so I checked out their website and thought, “what a really great idea!” Way Spa sells gift certificates online and on their site you type in your city and it provides you with a a list of spas in your area that accept their gift certificates. I found several in Oakville and I’m looking forward to visiting one of them soon.
So if you’re looking for a gift for someone who is in another city, give wayspa.com a look. You might make someone very happy.
Does Direct Mail Work? Yes!
Many times we send out marketing material and wonder if it ever gets kept or if it is tossed in the recycling bin with the flyers for pizza, window cleaning, duct cleaning, etc. I had an experience last week made me aware that marketing is not done in vain.
I had a call from a lady who had a flyer I sent about 1-1/2 years ago. She needed to have her receipts entered into a spreadsheet for her accountant. I met with her this morning and after looking at what she had, we determined that a bookkeeper would be a much better service for her than hiring me. We discussed her business and we saw a fit for working together in other ways, but bookkeeping wasn’t one of them.
It’s funny because I was starting to wonder if direct mail is a waste of time and money. The call from that very nice potential client affirmed that direct addressed mail is not a waste of time.
If you need help with putting together a mailing list and getting a mail merge completed and mailed, give me a call. I’d love to help!
Why a consultant and not an assistant?
Many in my industry call themselves Virtual Assistants. So why do I call myself a Consultant you may ask? People have said, “but don’t you just type and file and stuff?”
Well, the short answer is “yes and no”. Yes, I type, transcribe tape, prepare spreadsheets and all that kind of work, BUT I can also act as a consultant. A brain storming partner if you will. I take the time to get to know my clients’ businesses so I can help them much more efficiently.I advise on social media strategies and in the admin area, sometimes come up with ideas for projects that the client may not have thought of.
For example:
Chris Greaves (chrisgreaves.com) contacted me several months ago. He responded to a letter I had recently sent to him. He was kind of skeptical – he wasn’t sure I could help him. He had several Microsoft Word macros / add ins he needed help with testing to ensure they would work. He took a chance and sent me a cheque for five hours of my time. I was able to test his programs and give some input on how they worked, made suggestions to add to documentation and he was sold.
One program in particular, a one-click index program is able to save the user HOURS of time creating an index in Microsoft Word. I spread the word amongst the virtual assistant industry and several were interested. I also took the liberty of sending an e-mail to the Board of Directors of Microsoft in Seattle as well as a Canadian ex-senior Microsoft Executive (and yes, we got replies). I also drafted a press release for him and provided him with sources to submit the press release to.
So, as you can see, some Virtual Assistants do more than just type. When I was in the corporate world, I had one manager in particular who would occasionally call me in to chat to ask my opinion on some issues. If you are a consultant and you had a really outstanding assistant when you were in the corporate world and miss having that person to bounce ideas off of, consider Prime Admin Solutions.
Let Prime Admin Solutions be your extra set of eyes, extra pair of hands and most importantly, another set of ears.
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