1. Have a plan and write down your goals Recommended Tool: I love my TadaList.com
2. Create systems to automate as much work as possible
3. Get help. Ffind yourself a reliable, intelligent, talented and proactive virtual assistant. Ask yourself, “What do I suck at or hate doing (accounting and bookkeeping)?” The next step is easy. Outsource that or those tasks.
4. Don’t compete - compliment. Find a network of active participants and find people to partner with in complimentary businesses.
5. Market yourself even while your busy
6. Ask for referrals
Are you a freelancer, too? What was the best advice anyone ever gave you that helped you build your business Leave a comment.
If you’re like me, you work hard strategizing what quality content will educate and inform your target audience on certain topics while promoting your expertise. You might have written an article yourself or paid a professional copywriter to write something fantastic, right? It’s time consuming and costly to create quality content. I feel your frustration. It’s high maintenance to track down these people who need content to make some cash on the side with advertising.
Who are these Copy Thieves?
You can try Yahoo, MSN, or Google and conduct a search using your article title. Then visit each site to make sure you are properly credited for your content.
Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts) – Type in the title of your article with quotes for an exact match, then enter your email address to be alerted with relevant Google search results based on your search terms.
Copyscape (www.copyscape.com) – Insert your URL and their service scans the web for similar copy.
How to Fight Back Online Plagiarists
I would like to point to two great resources on this topic:
WOULD YOU LIKE TO START A BLOG FOR YOUR BUSINESS? Learn more about how Design Insomnia can create a Wordpress Blog to benefit your business. Call 1(619)872-0971 today! Leave a comment.
Some of Instant Domain Search features:
• Suggestions - click and takes you to GoDaddy.com where you’ll see ‘More Options’ of alternative domains you may like.
• Acquire Domain - links to Sedo.com, a Domain Acquisition Service
• WhoIs - select this option takes you to http://whois.domaintools.com to learn more about the ownership of the domain
• Hacks - goes to Xona.com which will give you unconventional domain combinations (i.e. delicious.com to del.icio.us)
• Alexa - which will talk about the site’s web traffic rank
• Visit Site
I’ve been using InstantDomainSearch.com for years.
Some of AjaxWhoIs features:
• Ability to preselect your preferred extensions (.com, .net, etc.) for your domain search
• Also partners with GoDaddy.com and even includes GoDaddy coupons
• Whois - without leaving the site will display the domain’s ownership information with a bit of added security to make sure you’re human wanting the information (thanks AjaxWhoIs) for not promoting spambots!
• Domain hacks will appear on right-hand column if a combination exists
• Statsaholic - which uses Compete and Quantcast traffic data
• Go to website link
TELL US: Which domain name search site did you like better and why? Leave a comment.
Virtual workers, freelancers and web designers alike: How do you keep your projects organized?
Reminders:
Myself, I use my handy Palm T|X which I usually carry around with me everywhere I go.
Lists:
When brainstorming, having an Ah-ha! moment, need to add/remove things to my to-do or could it be that I’m simply obsessed with writing lists (am I alone here?)… I visit my TaDaList. I highly recommend creating a web-based to-do list using TaDaList.
Digital Filing Cabinet:
Wish you were more thorough about how you organize your projects? Here’s a tip from ActionMethod.com’s Tip Exchange on Creating a Useful Desktop.
“Instead of having an escapist travelogue photo as the desktop pattern, I’ve found it useful over the years to create background images that show discreet “hot” to “cold” areas. This way, before getting involved in any one task, you can arrange files of active projects according to priority and urgency, and move items along the line towards completion and archiving.” Read the rest of the tip at ActionMethod.com
HOW DO YOU KEEP YOUR WEB / CREATIVE PROJECTS ORGANIZED? Leave a comment.
Read the full post: “Are You Like Me?” by Bob Bly. Start with a powerful question supported by a list of what “you believe you have in common” is very effective with your readers “because people like, feel comfortable with, and respond to people who are like them.”
Do you already use questions, like the one above, in your consulting practices? When you’re consulting, you’re anticipating your potential client’s questions. Simply apply your Question and Answers (Q&A) or Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to your copywriting and continue the dialogue. Don’t forget to honestly empathize with your customers. It’s an effective way to bond with your readers.
So let’s brainstorm some examples using empathy in your copy with this simple exercise:
1. Write down the FAQs potential clients ask you.
2. Craft your answers carefully.
3. Now edit your answers to show empathy.
How Do You Show Empathy?
• How about telling a story?
Did you experience something similar to what your audience has experienced? Did you take action on something that your audience also would have experienced? Start with, “Has this ever happened to you?” Phrases like, “We’ve all been there.”
• Use facts, credible sources and statistics.
Show your similarities to strike a chord of familiarity (local news, for example).
• Use the “I’ve been in your shoes” approach
We live in s skeptical society, so be careful of saying “I know how you’re feeling” without truly having any idea of your client’s situation. Your audience is smart and can read your copy and feel patronizing tone.
• Start by quoting your previous clients’ problems
• Was there any research you did that helps empathize with your audience?
Above all, start to listen, listen, listen to your customers by giving them a way to respond and contact you.
TELL US: Have you ever had success in marketing doing anything but empathizing with the prospect? Leave a comment.
Step 1: Gather up your testimonials
Step 2: Convert them to graphic image billboards
Step 3: Go to Slide.com, upload your graphic testimonials, pick a theme that compliments your website and convert to a slideshow.
Step 4: Copy and paste the slideshow code to your website
TELL US: If you used Slide.com for your marketing, how did you use their slideshow tool? Leave a comment.
In-house administrative assistant, secretary, virtual assistant… So, what’s the difference?
What things can a Virtual Assistant do to make life easier for small businesses?
Can anyone benefit from a Virtual Assistant?
What are the key interview questions to ask your potential Virtual Assistant?
To continue the brainstorming on what Interview Questions to ask you potential Virtual Assistant, here are some of the questions I use when conducting interviews:
Skills
Their office hours
Per hour rates
My initial meet and greet with potential virtual assistant candidates involved an instant messenger (i.e. skype, msn, or aol’s aim) meeting. What did I learn from a text chat? Potentially, how fast they type and if they use correct spelling and grammar… plus, how comfortable they felt with holding quick meetings by text chat which I prefer. Even without any auditory queues, you can still read someone’s personality through a text chat. The next step was to qualify the skills of the virtual assistant. I created exercises with set instructions and asked candidates to participate in the exercise (with pay)! You learn how well they follow instructions. An important quality in a virtual assistant is someone who loves to learn and isn’t afraid to ask questions. Did they ask more questions about your business in relationship to the task? Did they come up with a more productive way to accomplish the exercise?
TELL US: What quality in your potential virtual assistant are you looking for? Leave a comment.
Worried about being penalized by search engines for “content mirroring” when it comes to syndicating your articles online?
Reader Asks Maya: “Finally, I have several articles written but haven’t posted them to any article directories to gain some exposure for my expertise. Is it true that your website could be labeled for content mirroring by search engines and penalized for duplicate content?”
GoogleWebmasterCentral.Blogspot.com says, “Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, make sure they include a link back to the original article on each syndicated article.”
According to Stephan Spencer over at PracticalEcommerce.com, “Google’s supposed ‘duplicate content penalty’ seems to be on everybody’s minds these days.” Of course, Stephan’s post is focused on duplicate content found in many ecommerce websites but I believe his point-of-view very much relates to writers of articles.
Stephan isn’t the only one that recommends edits the copy (in his case, for products on ecommerce sites), but experts like Jeff Herring, TheArticleGuy.com says “The solution is to just tweak the article on your site a bit. Change the intro or conclusion, mix around the order of the tips, add/subtract some words, etc. You want the two versions of the article to be about 20% different from each other. At the same time, don’t freak out about this, because it is only a very small portion of what google looks for. So just make sure the two articles are about 20% different and forget about it, so you can concentrate on writing, posting and marketing more articles.”
I asked IdeaMarketers.com their take on this issue. Marnie Pehrson had the following response on the subject, “It’s my understanding from what I’ve read on the subject that the issue of duplicate content mainly comes into play when you have the same article on 10+ sites. The extras get dumped into Google’s supplemental index and it only looks at the ones on the most reputable sites that have had the article for the longest time. The duplicates are in essence ignored so you’re wasting your time submitting the exact same article to more than 10-12 sites (from a search engine perspective). This isn’t to say that if you have your article prominently placed on several high traffic sites that you won’t benefit from the sheer number of visitors who visit those sites and read your article. In other words, search engines aren’t the only game in town for producing traffic to one’s site. But bottom line… when we’re talking about search engines, the advice given above about making it somewhat different is good if you intend to submit the article to several article directories and have it on your site.”
TELL US: What has your results been with article marketing? Do you post your articles both on your website and article directories? Leave a comment.
Worried about being penalized by search engines for “content mirroring” when it comes to syndicating your articles online?
