Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

It is always exciting to uncover hot and profitable new niches to tap into for your Virtual Business.  Well, Internet Marketing, Ecommerce Support and Social Media Marketing continue to be very in-demand” service niches and will continue to be for quite some time, I am particularly excited about this new niche emerging in the Virtual Event Industry.

I personally believe that the “Virtual Events” field is one of the hottest avenues to building your business right now, especially in this down economy. The statistics are clear: There is currently a significant increase in the number of participants attending virtual events such as webinars, tele-events, live podcasts and web TV shows.

However, there is a corresponding decrease in those attending offline events and conferences partly due to the economy, but for a host of other reasons as wells. The reality is that Virtual Events are more cost-effective to deliver and attend, have the capacity to reach a larger audience and can be re-broadcast for continued exposure.

Businesses are keenly interested in running Virtual Events right now, but many lack the knowledge and time to effectively set-up and implement the Virtual Events successfully. As a result, this has presented a very timely and unique opportunity for Virtual Professionals to position themselves as a “Virtual Event Specialist“!

On September 16th, VAClassroom will be hosting a “must attend” event with Craig Cannings and Virtual Event Expert, Michelle Schoen titled,

“Building a Profitable Niche as a Virtual Event Specialist (Even in a Down Economy)!”

They will be exploring the crucial skills required to effectively deliver Virtual Event Set-up and Management services to your clients.  In addition, they will be sharing some exciting news on our upcoming training program: The Virtual Event Specialist Certification.

So, go ahead and click on the below link to watch a short 5 minute video and then sign-up to receive some special bonus information including more details on the upcoming event on September 16th!

Click Here: Virtual Event Specialist Video

As you know, the business of blogs has grown and evolved significantly over the last 24 months. A quote from the WordPress.com site puts it best…

“Blogging is growing both in the US and especially internationally. Tens of thousands of new WordPress blogs are created every day – by regular bloggers, companies, large media publishers, and many others. In addition, we seeing a trend that’s potentially even bigger than blogging: Publishers are starting to use WordPress as a platform to create all kinds of sites beyond blogs – large and small company sites, online magazines, social networks, travel sites, scrapbooking sites, contact managers, startups, multimedia archives, video sites, sports sites.”

Isn’t this cool? Ten of thousands of blogs being created DAILY! Businesses are using blogging technology to create company websites, social networks, video sites, membership sites and so much more.

The sad reality is that a good portion of these blog sites won’t last more than a year as they are lacking some key success strategies for optimizing and marketing their blogs.

Well now there is a great remedy for that problem….

VAClassroom.com has recently launched a new 2-week mini-course titled, “Blog Marketing Tips, Tools & Tactics”

As I have reviewed the course, I see two valuable reasons for taking this program:

1.  This blog marketing mini-course will give you some advanced and current marketing and optimization skills that you can offer as a high value and “in-demand” service to a fast growing base of blog site owners.

2.  Many of you may currently be using a Wordpress blogsite as your primary online business presence, which is very smart! This two-week training program will essentially provide you with a blog marketing tune-up and blueprint for your site, so that you can increase your targeted traffic, business visibility and new client leads.

This two-fold purpose will have a strong impact on both your business visibility as well as new income opportunities!

The two-week training program is scheduled to begin on August 10, 2009 and will finish up on August 24th. The program includes both self-paced and live components.

The registration doors are officially OPEN NOW and seats are going fast. They have 60 seats available for this training program.

To get all the details on this important new training program, just click on the link below:

Blog Marketing Mini Course

Also, take advantage of this $10 discount off an already very reasonable price. Here is the discount coupon code: VABLOG

As a women business owner, I knew that in order to grow my biz, I had to grow.  About 6 months ago I joined Big Fish Nation.

It is a Women’s Entrepreneurial Development Program, founded by Lorin Beller Blake, that combines teleclasses that I participate in from the comfort of my desk three times per month with two private coaching sessions I do at a time that works for me.  The exponential growth that comes from both educational programs, learning to get out of my own way and having to be accountable is enormous.

There are bonuses that I never considered, now I have ‘big fish friends’ that I know all over the country that I can lean on both personally and professionally.  We know each other well.  We know the tools that we each have in our hip pockets and we can support each other in ways that I never even knew was possible.

My life and business is so different than it was before I started with Big Fish.  I was struggling with what direction I wanted to take my business and where I saw myself in the next few years.  Through the Big Fish Program, I now have clearly defined goals and expectations for myself as well as my business and I know how to achieve Wild Success!

I know that ‘anything is possible’ now that  I have the tools and the support!  I highly recommend becoming a Big Fish.  It will change your life.  There is a new year-long program starting in September. 

Want to Swim with the Big Fish? Email Lorin or visit Big Fish Nation for more information about the program.

One of the most asked questions I get when I’m speaking to groups or training individuals on social networking is, “How do I send a private message to someone? I don’t want to accidentally send something that I intend to be private and have it been seen by everyone.”

So I thought this would be a great topic to add to my “Social Networking Nuggets” videos on YouTube. Find out how to send a private message on Facebook, visit my YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/avirtualbiz.

Are you using Twitter?  Do you think it’s silly or a waste of time?

Take a look at this article about how Twitter saw more hits than “Digg” and how it is quickly moving up in the rankings of social media sites.

Just this week,  people were “tweeting” during the inauguration and it felt like we were all together sharing the moment as one.

If you’re not on Twitter, come on, join us!   You can follow me at @avirtualbiz.  I’ll be sure to follow you back.

Did I read that correctly?  WordPress is so big now that that have their own TV show?

Well, not really, they have developed an online learning center called wordpress.tv

It’s chocked full of tutorials for both self-hosted and WordPress.com sites.  They call it “a visual resource for all things WordPress!”

I LOVE that.  I’m a visual person and I learn much quicker if I can see it done rather that read how to do it.

So grab a snickers and a soda and watch wordpress.tv.

Learning “all things Blog” to be an expert source for my clients.

Just found MyBlogLog. Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

And verifying my site.

The things we do for success!

Today was so much fun.  I had lunch at an incredible place with some of my closest and dearest friends.  We all used to work together for a national non-profit organization and have kept in touch for the last five years as we have all went our separate ways.

Each year we gather at Christmas (and my birthday) to reminisce and just have a good time together.  We have our traditional “onion strawberry shortcake” (that’s another whole blog post) and talk and laugh our heads off.

This year however, the conversation focused on Social Media and Internet Marketing.  We were throwing around words like Facebook and Twitter.  We asked each other if we Jotted or Skyped and as we walked out of the restaurant I told them they would be tagged on Facebook before the end of the day!  Can you imagine what the people at the other tables were thinking?  They probably thought we just landed from outer space!

There were two social media “pros” at the table and as we begin talking about our profiles, pages, posts and other such lingo, one of our friends pulled out a pen and paper and started writing it all down.  Our hope is that we have successfully converted her to our new way of networking.

Of course, we will still get together every Christmas to visit, catch-up and enjoy some delicious food, but our plan is to stay close to each other all year round through Facebook, Twitter, Skype and the next big social media boom that hits.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/avirtualbiz and I’ll follow you back

Join my Facebook Page

Check out my LinkedIn Profile

Don’t you love those long weekends?  Just looking forward to some time off, relaxation with the family or friends, going to the beach, lake or mountains? 

Don’t you just hate coming back to the office to find a foot of mail in your mailbox; 500 emails, 450 of them spam and of course the weekly meeting that takes longer than usual because of the long weekend stories?

I’m with you, except it’s my business to go through the mountains of mail, the never-ending emails and I have several meetings throughout the day with various clients.   I have one client that has re-routed her informational email account to me to monitor and moderate.  This alone had 150 spam emails in it when I came back into the office today.  And I Love it! 

The good thing is that I’m caught-up.  Not only with my personal emails, but with my client’s emails as well.  This is just one more way a Virtual Assistant can help busy people stay caught up.  By giving the task of email and calendar management to an off-site, virtual professional you don’t get bogged down with email messages that really don’t contribute to your bottom line.  Although email is very important in our society now (and I couldn’t personally live without it) it is a time consumer and before you realize it, you have spent 2-3 hours working on responding and sending emails.

Before the next holiday (July 4th, is just around the corner), think about outsourcing this task to a Virtual Professional.  We can help you stay caught-up and make coming back from those long weekends or vacations as pleasurable as the time-off.

Yesterday was great!  I basically didn’t start work in my virtual office until about 8 pm.  Yes, PM!!  One of the most compelling reasons I decided to start my business was to be available when my family needed or wanted me to be around.  Well, yesterday, I went to the Zoo with my granddaughter Alyssa and 20 kindergarteners.  I was responsible for keeping up with Alyssa and her friend Shelby, so we became “Zoo Buddies.”  This is us, Alyssa is the blonde and Sheby is the dark haired one.  And I’m the tall one!! 

While riding on the very noisy bus to the zoo, I was thinking, am I crazy??  But no, I had a blast!  Now I’m not the typical person who enjoys a trip to the zoo.  The smell, the heat, but the Knoxville Zoo was incredible.  There were so many great exhibits and animals that I really had a good time.  After a picnic lunch under a great shade tree, we saw, Zebras, Elephants, Tigers, Monkeys and the highlight of the girls day was the “Naked Mole Rats!”  That’s all they talked about.  So we finally found them and although I wasn’t very impressed, they loved them.

So fast forward to 8 pm, when I go into the office and “begin” my day at work.  I worked on a couple of projects for two separate clients and had a conference call with a client in a different time zone.  Great isn’t it?  

Where else can you work these kind of hours?   Consider utilizing the services of a virtual assistant to free your daytime hours and take a zoo trip.  You’ll be glad you did.