My Virtual Sidekick | Management, Marketing & More | Raven Howard

Have you noticed that everyone is doing “it” online? People you pass by on the street and individuals in the media are talking about how they are doing “it”. The “it” they are talking about is online marketing.

As a successful business owner, you may say to yourself, “My staff and I have more things to do and not enough people to do them! How am I ever going to find the time or energy to market me and my business on the internet?” I am here today to answer this question for you.

As a dedicated virtual assistant, I have had the pleasure of assisting wonderful entrepreneurs accomplish more on the internet. My savvy experience with 2.0 technologies has given me the know-how that many business owners need to deliver their products and messages to a broader audience. I am compelled to share three of top services I provide for my clients with you.

Theses tools should be implemented in your overall marketing objectives to attract more people to your website, increase customers and enhance branding for your company and products.

The Top Three Tasks for Online Marketing:

• Newsletters

Email Newsletters are critical to your marketing campaign. They are customizable and low-cost solutions that allow you to immediately deliver your message. Your customers can receive a monthly or bi-monthly message from you that outlines what you are doing, what promotions you have running, upcoming events and client testimonials. As a bonus you can add affiliates (product recommendations) that enable you to generate revenue simply by suggesting a product to your readers.

• Telecalls

Got more tips, tricks and new products then you can shake a stick at, but don’t have the time or energy to organize a community meeting? Now you don’t have to. You can have a party-line with a purpose! This allows you to actively engage with your buyers and offer success stories and hands-on guidance to your listeners. Telecalls allow you to define what makes you the “expert”. To maximize this tool you can have guest speakers and promotions that are only available to your listeners.

• Social Networking

Lately social sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube have been saturating the airwaves. Everyone knows how cool and hip these networking sites are, but can they bring in business? This is the million dollar question. The answer is-not really. These sites deliver on brand awareness and are a vital part of relationship building, reputation management and communicating with your target audience and clients. If social media is used correctly, you will gain referrals and leads that will drive traffic back to your site-where the selling is at.

Are you asking, “This sounds wonderful but how do I get “it” done?” The secret is, you don’t. Successful entrepreneurs are building their online business with minimal distraction to their ‘real-world’ lives. The way this is accomplished is by outsourcing tasks that do not have to be performed in-office. Partnering with a virtual assistant allows you to continue to do the leg-work while you rest assure that the desk-work is being handled by a like-minded professional business owner. VAs understand you, your goals, and your message.

My hopes are that I have sparked your interest and you want to hear directly from me!

Sincerely,

Raven Howard
Virtual Raven Business Solutions

I added my first video to Twitter Friday evening. Check it out: Raven on Twitter. Tip for next time: Bubble Tweet only allows a 30 second playback. So I must redo…for now, “it is, what it is!” I hope you enjoy, let me know what you think, Thanks..have a great Memorial weekend.

~ @Raven_Howard

If you paid attention to any social media news last week, you are aware that all programmers are focused on one thing: creating a real-time search engine to combat (or play-along-with) the every growing popularity of Twitter.

But wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that we as a Tweeple had to defend our right to Tweet?

I had to piece it all together. I wanted to understand why-on one single day- three applications were unveiled and claimed that they were the answer to our real-time search engine desires. My hopes were to determine who was the true “go-to” source.

The following is how it was, how it is and most importantly how it will be:

March 3rd: Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt was asked what he thought of Twitter he responded: “Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man’s email systems.” However, Schmidt took time to also encourage people to follow Google on Twitter.

In late March talks swirled that Google wanted to acquire Twitter. However, Twitter took a sideways glance at the notion and Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, claimed:

“It should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussions with other companies regularly and on a variety of subjects,” Stone said. “Our goal is to build a profitable, independent company and we’re just getting started.” The 30-employee company is hiring, he added.

A short and sweet message that clearly stated “we will do this alone boys, now please run along while we plot OUR takeover”.

I think this statement should be dissected into each sentence Biz uttered:

• It should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussion with other companies: A.K.A. keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
• Our goal is to build a profitable, independent company and we are just getting started: he is saying WARNING: we are not just going to be fun and games for ever , our plans are to take over the world alone…and soon you will see what we mean.
• We are hiring: you can not beat us, so come join us!

It didn’t take long for Biz to get his ball rolling…

April 30th: Twitter Search unveiled. Reviews claimed that Twitters’ search was good only for searching conversations. However, Twitter promised that it would become more precise and that it would start indexing the tweeted links, as well. Biz explains on his blog:

“Every public update sent to Twitter from anywhere in the world 24/7 can be instantly indexed and made discoverable via our newly launched real-time search. What was that loud noise outside your apartment? Did you just feel an earthquake? What do people think about your company, your product, or your city? With this newly launched feature, Twitter has become something unexpectedly important—a discovery engine for finding out what is happening right now.”

May 12th: OneRiot, Tweetmeme and Google all rush the scene with their versions of a real-time search.

• OneRiot: crawls the links people share on Twitter, Digg and other social sharing services, then indexes the content on those pages in seconds. The end result is a search experience that allows users to find the freshest, most socially-relevant content from across the realtime web.
• Tweetmeme: monitors Twitter tweets for links and determines which ones are becoming popular, and then posts them on a constantly updated page.
• Google Search Options: collection of tools that lets you slice and dice your results and generate different views to find what you need faster and easier. Pretty much it seems that you will have to do some tweaking on your own to get the best results.

May 13th: Biz blogs there is still more to come:

“We’ve started designing a new feature which will give folks far more control over what they see from the accounts they follow. This will be a per-user setting and it will take a bit longer to put together but not too long and we’re already working on it.”

I believe what Biz is hinting at is a ranking system of the person who tweets, as well as, the message they have tweeted. They will let you see a free for all on a topic if you use Twitter Search and then you can break it down by popularity of the tweet or by tweeter or a combination of all.

We now have an answer to our question: who will make a real-time search that was not only the fastest but also the most relevant? We will. With Twitter we will have the power to choose. It is our democracy. Not spiders, nor links, nor obnoxious marketing.

Now is the time to make every tweet count, to become relevant and reliable. We, as your fellow tweeps, are “listening”. Much like the many voices Mel heard on What Women Want, you will be either narrowed down to or narrowed out.