Are you Killing your Website and Driving Away Business Leads?

Is your website driving away business leads by poor design and bad implementation of social media? 

We may think that we all have fabulous websites but, in fact, if you try and look at your own as objectively as you can, you may find that you need to make some tweaks here and there.

Optimise your Website

I thought I'd share this presentation with you this morning as it's incredibly informative (unsurprisingly as it's from HubSpot!)

It's also a great example of just how you can use VISUAL social media to engage more with your followers and how effective images can be in getting a message across.

So I hope you enjoy the Slideshare presentation.  If so, please feel free to share with your friends and, if possible, please leave a little +1 in the box below.

Thanks!


10 Lethal Reasons Most Websites Fail from HubSpot All-in-one Marketing Software

3 Super-Deals for December!

At Virtuoso Assistant we're celebrating the start of December (which also coincides with Cyber Monday and the run-up to Small Business Saturday UK on 7th December) with the launch of 3 discounted retainer packages

Retainer packages give you the chance to hire one of our virtual assistants at discounted prices; your assistant will be available to support you at the drop of a hat.  Buying a retainer also allows you to budget in advance and plan exactly what you want to outsource.

Choose from the table below and simply click on the link at the end of this article to submit your details and the choice of package.

To kick off the New Year on a positive footing we're also extending our discounted retainers through until 31st January 2014.

Each retainer is valid for one month and are as follows:-

BUCKS FIZZ £200.00	CHARDONNAY £300.00	CHAMPAGNE £400.00
10 hours’ virtual assistance	15 hours’ virtual assistance	20 hours’ virtual assistance
1 update | posts on a social media platform of your choice	3 updates | posts on social media platforms	5 updates | posts on social media platforms
	Email management	Email & diary management
		FREE scheduled Christmas email to your clients with Mail Chimp (using your business logo/design)
		10% off a bundle of 10-hours’ work with Virtuoso Assistant for 2014

So all you need to do is click on the link which will take you to our booking form! 

Get to the top of Google!

How do you get your page to rank high on Google?  That's the $million | £million question!

Yesterday I visited the Business Show at Olympia in London.  It was the first time I'd been and it was absolutely buzzing.  I'd booked myself into a workshop run by a bunch of young entrepreneurs called Go Up Ltd in order to learn how to better optimise my website; time extremely well spent.  These guys know their stuff!

We only had an hour in which to cover an awful lot of topics but some of the key points they wanted to impress upon us were the importance of backlinks to your website, good use of keywords and most importantly of all GOOD CONTENT!

Community.Dynamics.com

You've probably heard "Content is King" being said over and over again.  For good reason, because it cannot be stressed enough.  It's vitally important that the content on your website is well-written, that it's unique and that you DO NOT SPAM! 

Backlinks

These are seen by Google as endorsements or recommendations.  Do not buy them; Google will penalise you.  Quantity does not mean quality.  Do ensure that your banklinks are also relevant to your business; there's no point in having a recommendation from a used car salesman if you're in the business of making chocolate goodies. 

Keywords

Do your research well; search on as many keywords as you can think of that are relevant to your website.  Use the Google Keyword planner to see which words rank highly per month.  DO NOT cram your content with keywords; Google has changed the way they rank websites in order to crack down on people who cram keywords into their content at every available opportunity.  You should aim to write naturally and don't use your keywords more than twice in one page.

Content

Make sure that what you write is relevant, it reads well and it's kept up-to-date.  If possible have a blog page on your website as Google loves fresh content! 

If you want to know more or if you need some help with your content optimisation, please do get in touch with me here at Virtuoso Assistant.  You can email me, hello@virtuosoassistant.co.uk, or use our Contact form to send me a message.  

Thanks!

Brush up your Business Blog!

Do you spend hours and hours writing on your blog without seeing any positive results?

If you have your own business a good rule of thumb is to write on your blog ideally three if not four times a week.  That can be quite demanding, particularly if  (like me) you have writer's block every other day and the ideas don't seem to flow!  It can also be frustrating to see that, despite your best efforts, people aren't reading your articles or sharing your content. 

I don't know how I got to read about Shama Kabani, it was one of those occasions when I'd clicked on so many links that I'd lost track of where I'd originally come from. 

In a nutshell Shama was born in Goa, India, in 1985; her family moved to Texas in 1994 where Shama went to school and eventually graduated from the University of Texas at Austin.  Okay, so lots of people go to school and graduate from University, so what?  The thing that I found quite amazing was the fact that, when studying for her Masters, Shama wrote her thesis on Twitter which, back in 2008, was still in its infancy.  Shama had such an understanding of social media that she could already see how Twitter was going to become a major player. 

Sharma is now CEO of her own company, Zen Marketing Group, which has grown annually by 400% since 2009! 

Great Content Advice for your Blog 

So, if you're struggling with your blog, here's an article which you might find useful.  It was written for Zen Marketing's own blog by Angela von Weber-Hahnsberg called, "Using Earned Media to Promote your Content".

The steps Angela suggests you take are really simple and easily done.  It's just a question of sitting down and thinking who you're writing your articles for and creating content which is useful and interesting enough to be shared. 

I hope you enjoy it.  You never know, you might be the next Sharma Kabani in 2014!

As always, please feel free to share with your friends or leave any comments you may have.  If you'd like me to write on your business blog, please do click over to my website, Virtuoso Assistant, and get in touch using my contact form.  

Thanks!

Hot Tips for a Twitter Tuesday!

Do you want to know why some people are so successful on Twitter? 

It's really simple.

There are two fundamental ways in which you can become top of the tree on Twitter; they're incredibly simple but are often forgotten.  The result?  You end up feeling deflated and frustrated as you feel you've put a lot of hard work into tweeting but people don't seem to engage in what you're saying.

There was a great discussion on Google+ last night which was started by a lady called Donna Beckett from Beckett & Co solicitors.  We were debating the pros and cons of having a  Google+ profile here in the UK and almost everybody came to the conclusion that it was a great social media platform but it was one where you had to make an effort to get to know people, to share posts, to interact with one another. 

Putting the Sociable into Social Media

You really have to embrace the 'social' or 'sociable' part of social media, get to know people, understand what your audience wants to read, what might interest them before you can really start to see significant results from posting on Twitter, or any social media platform for that matter.

These are the points which Rebekah Radice makes in her article, "Two Simple Twitter Tips to Virtually Dominate your Niche".  Not only does Rebekah give some great advice, she also shares a couple of free apps you can use to filter tweets according to your niche market and to find out what's currently trending on Twitter. 

I hope you enjoy it and find it useful going forward. 

As always, if you like this post please feel free to share it and add your comments below.

Thanks!

Content Marketing Predictions for 2014

Christmas is approaching and soon after that the New Year.  So what will be new and exciting in respect of social media and marketing in 2014?

I think it's quite exciting to read various predictions from the experts about what is going to be breaking new ground in 2014 and what is going to be taking a bit more of a back seat (Facebook perhaps?)

I hope you find the following article by Andrew Jessop informative and interesting. It's called "Online Content Marketing Trends to look out for in 2014".  

I'm pretty excited myself with regards to Andrew's top two predictions about Google+ and visual social media. in general  Remember the short blog post I wrote about those little "Vine" videos you can use to make your Twitter feeds more visual?  You'll be seeing a lot more of those next year, together with other visual apps. 

 

Happy reading everyone and, as always, if you've enjoyed this article please feel free to share it and perhaps put a little +1 in the box below.

Thanks!

"The Power of the Pin"

Today it's all about Pinterest and how you can boost your business profile with some VISUAL social media.

 

Here are a few statistics to whet your appetites and get you onto your Pinterest boards:

• Conversion rates for Pinterest traffic are 50% higher than conversion rates from other traffic

• 80% of Pinterest pins get re-pinned, which means you stand a very good chance of having your own information re-pinned.  Imagine the business potential in that! 

•  Pinterest drives more traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn COMBINED!

So far I admit I've really neglected Pinterest as a social media platform.  I thought that, because I fell into the B2B category, my time was better spent with LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+.  Mistake #1.  That's fine, they're incredibly important, but what I didn't appreciate until fairly recently was the 'power of Pinterest'!

I want to introduce you all to a lady, Cheryl Stinchcome, who really knows what she's talking about with regards to marketing your business on Pinterest.  I actually 'met' up with her virtually via Google+ and today I'm going to be reading some of her articles and blog posts. 

I won't say anything about Pinterest myself but I'm attaching a link to one of her blog posts, which I hope you all find informative (I'm sure you will).

"Top 10 Biggest Pinterest Mistakes to Make"

Check out our boards at Virtuoso Assistant; we have an interesting selection to choose from, including "Pretty  Stuff", "Crafty Creations" and "Christmas", as well as our own business board, "Virtuoso Assistant".  

If you've liked any of my blog posts please take a moment let me know and always feel free to share my articles.  

Thanks!