When tea first arrived in England it was expensive. Not, a little bit pricey expensive, but prohibitive, only for the rich expensive. But it caught on quickly, because, well, it’s great.

One woman in the south took a full pound of her expensive cache and sent it to her sister in the north, telling her how marvelous it was. Her sister boiled it, dumped the black liquid off and served it like a vegetable. She wrote back about how terrible it was.

She’d prepared it like a vegetable, which she understood, instead of seeing it for what it was: something entirely new.

Some business folks hear about the ‘new marketing’ and assume it’s just more of the old marketing, except online. They still want instant results, measured in dollars return on dollars invested. They want ways to convince people to buy, no matter what they’re selling. They spend time and money bolting a website and blog and email autoresponders onto their old-school advertising.

They’re dumping the tea and eating the leaves, and then they wonder why it doesn’t work.

If you help your clients with their marketing efforts, you may, like the first woman in the story, assume that they’ll know how to brew a pot of social media marketing. Erm, tea. Whatever.

But, like the second woman, they don’t. They can’t. Because it’s so foreign to them, they have nothing to connect it to. Give information away, with no firm plan for monetising it? That don’t make no sense!

Had the first woman included some simple instructions along with her glowing praise, the story may have had a happier ending. Don’t leave anything to chance. Clients who are new to the new marketing will need a lot of hand-holding, a lot of encouragement and explanation and nudging.

Don’t assume they get it, unless you actually see them drinking the tea.

Find out where your target audience goes – both in person and online. Then go there. Your target audience may attend local meetups or networking events. Attend those events. Perhaps they have their own social networking groups online. Join those groups. When attending the events or participating in these online groups, remember to connect with people and develop relationships before trying to sell your services.

There’s no doubt that businesses need to have an online presence and use social media to connect with their prospects and clients. It’s a constantly evolving arena and many businesses just don’t have time to learn the skills. As a result, the virtual assistant industry is now booming with social media experts.

However, does that mean that every virtual assistant needs to be a social media expert? No. It certainly would be a good idea to know enough about social media to use in your own virtual assistant business. Yet there are other areas in which you can be an expert and have a successful virtual assistant business.

There are virtual assistants that are experts in the following areas:

• Real Estate
• Bankruptcy
• Bookkeeping
• Genealogy Research
• Transcription
• Document creation
• and the list goes on…

Each of these expert virtual assistants use social media. Yet they do not consider themselves social media experts. They are experts in different niches.

My point is to encourage you to be an expert in the field you love. Don’t feel you have to conform to what everyone else is doing in order to be successful.

What are your thoughts on this subject?

That means that instead of constantly sending out advertising, you need to provide value to your network. Posts tips and advice that your network can use in their business. This will earn you credibility and the respect of your network.

There are many social media tools you can use in your marketing strategy, including a blog, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. These can be used in conjunction with your website and ezine newsletter.

Blogs are very search engine friendly and fairly easy to setup and maintain. Again, the information you post should be mainly educational. Your blog should direct prospects to your website. Short blog entries make great ezine content. Include a paragraph from your blog in your newsletter with a ‘read more’ link that takes your readers to your blog.

Your social networking profile on Facebook, LinkedIn, Meetup.com and any other sites you use should be as complete as possible. Schedule some time to connect personally with a new contact. Arrange to meet for coffee if they are in your area and learn more about what they do so you can know best who to refer to them.

Twitter Tips

Twitter can be used effectively to connect with prospects, educate and inform them and generate leads.

• Post quick tips, quotes or a catchy sentence or phrase from your book or speech. Include a link back to your website.
• The majority of your Tweets should be aimed at educating and providing valuable information to your prospects and clients so that they turn to you as the expert in your business.
• If you have a newsletter or blog, post links to specific blog posts or to your newsletter sign up page.
• Use the tool TweetLater.com to schedule Tweets in advance and to automatically follow anyone who follows you to increase your audience.
• If you have a Facebook account, make sure your Twitter posts automatically feed to it and widen your exposure even more.
• Watch the Direct Messages you receive and any @ messages. Try to connect with these people and start building relationships.

Use Twitter as a starting point to connect with prospects and then graduate the connection to Facebook or email. Focus on providing value and benefit to your prospects so they will want to connect with you.

How do yo use social media responsibly?

The virtual assistant industry continues to grow as more solo professionals have a need for quality assistance to help them grow their businesses.

Some of the online marketing strategies we use to assist solo professionals are:

1. Blogs

2. Websites

3. Ezines

4. Email marketing

5. Social networking

6. Article submissions

7. Virtual event promotion

What would you like a virtual assistant to do for you?

Why haven’t you decided to ride the wave of social networking? Some small business owners I’ve talked to give these reasons for not jumping into social networking: 

1. It’s too complicated.
2. It takes too much time.
3. There’s no way to track the return on investment
4. You can’t get new clients from social networking 

Social networking does not need to be complicated or take hours and hours each day. So how can you use social networking responsibly and effectively? Remember – no one wants to be inundated with offers of your costly services all day long. When I start getting a dozen messages everyday from the same people over and over again offering their expensive services, I quickly tire of that and don’t want to hear from them anymore. 

However, I do appreciate receiving valuable and interesting information, tips, quotes, etc. So start small. I suggest taking these steps in this order: 

1. Post tips your prospects can use
2. Offer a free report or gift to those who sign up for your newsletter
3. Put together a free or low-cost teleseminar to build your list and promote it 

Remember, social networking needs to be about building relationships – not primarily about self-promotion. So balance is needed when using social networking as a marketing strategy.

A virtual assistant can help you get started in social networking and assist in maintaining your profile. Save time by having your virtual assistant update your social sites on a regular basis. There are tools, such as TweetLater.com, that can be used to schedule Tweets in advance so you’re not spending every minute of the day on Twitter. 

If you’re not using social networking to market your business, you’re missing out on a big piece of the puzzle. Remember that it may take seeing your information 8-20 times before a prospect picks up the phone to call you or contacts you through your website. So let’s get busy and start networking! 

Sue Canfield

For over 25 years Sue Canfield, Virtual Office Administrator and Owner of Awesome Assistant, has helped small business owners with administrative tasks. Since 2005 she has worked with over 30 clients to help them grow their businesses, specifically by using online marketing strategies such as email newsletters, blogs, articles, and social networking. Her mission is to partner with her clients to work together to create and implement strategies to promote their businesses. For more information about how she can help your business, visit http://www.AwesomeAssistant.info.

Social networks allow you to post useful tips and information that can help your target market. You can also read and listen to what others are saying so you know what things are of interest to them. You can answer questions on LinkedIn, share your blog posts on Facebook, post a tip on Twitter. Doing these things helps build your credibility so people are more likely to want to participate in your teleseminar. Of course you want to use social networking responsibly and not overdo your promotion. Balance your promotion with valuable information you share.

What do you do to promote your teleseminars?

1. What blogging platform should be used – WordPress, Blogger, Typepad or something else?

2. How will I find time to post entries?

3. What will I write about?

4. How do I get people to find my blog?

I’ve helped several clients create and maintain their blogs. We create strategies to find time to write the entries and create ideas for entries. Our strategies to promote their blogs include links on their websites, social networking sites, and on Twitter.

Here are recent blogs I helped create:

Stacey Martino’s blog

Springboard Connections

Andrew Rogerson’s blog

Would you like help in starting a blog? Then drop me a line.

What is your opinion of social networking?