MotiVAting Virtual Assistants To Success!

Tawnya — Wed, 02 May 2012 22:29:07 +0000

May has always been a marketing month for me to get ready for the slower times often found as a service provider during the summers when our clients tend to go on holidays. I usually push up from 20% of my time to 35% marketing during this month and it has always done well with me adding this bit of marketing manic time into my schedule during May. It almost guarantees that my client base will still be full throughout the summer.

Like stated in our Group Coaching Strategy Session on Tuesday, Marketing is crucial to the success of you finding new clients. I challenged you to add one new marketing strategy into your marketing plan this week that you have heard about but not yet tried and shared the results with our members.

You can share your results here at our VAinsider Club forum thread:

Put a step forward this month with me and market your service business in a hard way for 30 days. I guarantee you’ll see the results from it in June/July.

Our motiVAtor this month is on marketing strategies to get your fuels burning…

That’s all the news I have so without further adieu, here’s your MotiVAtor for April…

Marketing Strategies to Attract More Clients Online

The more hours you can bill as a virtual assistant, the more money you make. Ideally, the goal will be to fill your schedule on a regular basis with clients you enjoy working with and who have ongoing work for you to do. Here are a few excellent marketing strategies to attract more clients online.

1. Offer Retainer Packages. Retainer Packages are a great way to motivate clients because they hold the promise of having a virtual assistant on call and they give you an ongoing commitment. For example, you could offer a 5 hour a month, 14 hour a month, or 25 hour a month membership level. People can sign up for whatever meets their needs, pay each month and then send you their work as they have it. The enticer to get them to move over to a Retainer Package is to take a discount off each package ie) 5 hour (10%), 15 hour (15%) or 25 hour (25%). Clients also need to pay these retainers upfront to get the discount which means no bookkeeping collections services end of the month which gives you more time to market your business.

2. Offer referral bonuses. Ask your current clients for referrals and give them a bonus, say an hour of free work, in exchange for every client they refer to you. Or maybe even a gift like a Starbucks card if they refer 1 client to an iPod if they referr you 10 new clients. You can easily offer a structured affiliate program on your website with commissions, affiliate links and marketing materials to promote your services.

Standard affiliate programs I use and recommend:
One Shopping Cart
iDevDirect
WordPress Plugin

3. Consider advertising special promotions. One great way to attract new clients is to give them a break on rates. For example, a $25 coupon for first time customers helps new customers feel like they’re not taking as big a risk. And it also takes advantage of the law of reciprocity which states that we tend to want to give back to people who give things to us. We want to reciprocate. You can offer these promotions on social networking sites, as PPC ads, and on your website to attract online attention.

4. Specialize in an industry or with a particular task. Specialization is a spectacular way to differentiate yourself from other virtual assistants and it gives you an extra edge when seeking more online customers and attention. You can optimize your website for your specialization, making it easy for new customers to find you.

5. Partner with other service professionals, like a ghost writer or a web designer. Partnering with other service providers is a great way to broaden awareness of you and your services. And it doubles your opportunity to attract online customers. You can swap advertisements with partners, each posting an ad on the other’s site, you can guest blog on each other’s blogs and you can refer each other when talking to clients which increases your service list À la carte!

6. Social networking, article marketing and other traditional marketing tactics will also help increase your awareness online and attract new customers. Offer free reports, and position yourself as an expert.

Even as your business grows, never stop marketing. One day you’ll be turning away work and won’t that be great?

Share your thoughts, other tips AND other marketing ideas you have here:

Join in and share your thoughts on the this Mastermind discussion

VAinsiders are Virtual Assistants (VAs) that strategically seek ways to help their client’s business grow because of an invested interest in their business.

~ Tawnya Sutherland, VAnetworking.com ~

VAinsider Tips

Did you know we have a Virtual Assistant Directory (Over 1300 listing) that gets high traffic from clients looking to hire a VA? And if you are a Supercharge VAinsider club member, you get a free upgraded banner ad too included with your membership which upgrades you to the top of the directory!

Add your website to it today RIGHT HERE

Network With New VAinsider Club Members

Connect with new members to learn from, utilize for business support services, network with like-minded business entrepreneurs or to do joint ventures with.

If you are NEW to the VAinsider Club, please introduce yourself. By downloading our online questionnaire in our forum area, filling it out and posting it to the group so we can all get to know you on a more personal basis. Learning about one another is how we instill trust. And you never know who will become your next BFVA (Best Friend VA) and want to outsource to you, become your accountability partner or do a joint venture with you.

Visit our Introduction Forum area to welcome all our new VAinsider Club Members:

Accountability – Something to do for your VA Business this month

In our VA Strategy Group Coaching Session this week we talked about new marketing strategies we could incorporate into our business to gain new clients. We then went deeper to define how will you track this marketing campaign to see your ROI?

My challenge this month is for you to find and try a new marketing tactic you could add to your marketing plan and track your ROI (return on investment).

Stay accountable and share your thoughts and ideas in our VAinsider Club forum area

Mastermind Discussions – What you Missed at the Forum

Common Pitfalls of Being a Virtual Assistant

Upcoming Webinars

ALL MEMBERS:
Date: 1st Tuesday of every month at 3PM PST
Topic: VA Strategy Group Coaching Session
Get engaged with other VAs who are part of our VAinsider Club. This is our monthly VA Strategy Group Coaching Session held the 1st Tuesday of every month for our VAinsider Club members. Be held accountable and motiVAted to think at a deeper level with your business strategies to find solid results for the success of your service business. It’s also a social networking evening to JOT down everything on our minds, from introducing new VAinsider Club members to discussing positive flows within our businesses. We guarantee it will be a fun and informative social night for all to hang with their peers in the VA industry!

GETTING CLIENTS & SUPER CHARGE MEMBERS ONLY:
Date: Tuesday May 15th, 2012 at 3PM PDT <<< NOTE DATE CHANGE
Topic: Referral Building
Referrals can be a great way to build your business, but many make the mistake of waiting for the referrals without working on getting referrals for others. We will talk about why you should concentrate more of giving referrals then getting referrals and how to become an effective referrer. In this class we will also provide you with some effective tips for not only building your referral database, but just what you need to know about a person in order to effectively refer to them. When participants leave this class they will have the tools needed to effectively interview and seek out leads for others and how to effectively ask others to do the same for your business.

SUPER CHARGE MEMBERS ONLY:
Date: Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012, 3PM PDT <<< NOTE DATE CHANGE
Topic: Describing Your Clients and Your Niche
When others walk into our business, it is important that they understand who our ideal client is and exactly what we are able/willing to provide for those clients. We will discuss how to describe your clients in detail including demographic, psychographic, geographic and behavioral factors so that others know exactly who your primary and secondary clients are. We will also determine how to use a features, advantages and benefits analysis to allow our business to be noticed by our target market.

SUPER CHARGE MEMBERS ONLY:
Date: Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 at 3PM PDT <<< NOTE DATE CHANGE
Topic: Internet Marketing Q & A – LIVE Website Critiques
Bring your mic and internet marketing questions to our LIVE open-air webinar Q & A with Tawnya Sutherland, a Certified Internet Marketing Business Strategist. She will help, guide, advise and find you the resources you’ll need for success with your online marketing plan. Each week Tawnya will bring to light your most darkest issues surrounding how to be seen online by your market and how to strategically entice your market to easily buy from your website. Who would have known making money online was this easy? Topics will be on the fly brought up by the attendees so bring your questions with you! Tawnya is an Internet Marketing Business Strategist with a long-term goal of helping Virtual Assistants worldwide turn their website clicks into cash for their business. She will also be available to give LIVE Website Critiques as time permits (submit your website at our
VAinsider forum area ahead of time if possible).

Go here for login area & to retrieve password

Please use your full name [first and last name] as username and the password which you can find by clicking on the links on the website link above.

Upgrade your membership level here to attend all webinars
Once you upgrade, let us know and we’ll get you all set up with 24 hours.

RFPs Submitted this past week

Please visit our forum area to view all the new requests for virtual assistance at:

http://www.vanetworking.com/forum/rfp

Be sure to follow us on Twitter #VAinsiders as we tweet these RFPs immediately after they are posted. Hashtag #VAinsiders

Make sure that you are putting your best foot forward when responding to RFPs. A quick email with “I am interested in your RFP” just won’t cut it in today’s competitive market. Make sure your response lets the potential client know exactly what you can do for them and why you are the best person for the contract!!

Here are some great references from our own VAnetworking forum on answering RFPs:

How to get email from RFP

How to respond to RFPs

Also, remember that we have a resource book on responding to RFPs available for free in the NEW VAinsider area.

Finally, for a daily listing, be sure to subscribe to this link.

To your success,

Tawnya Sutherland

VAinsider President

MotiVAting Virtual Assistants To Success!

Tawnya — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 03:13:14 +0000

Can you believe it is April already? Time flies when you are having FUN! And for me, fun is working in my home based office being able to do whatever I want, whenever I want

We had a fairly good turnout for our first VA Group Strategizing Coaching Session today and it was a pleasure to connect with you there today. The recording is below if you missed it. I highly recommend club members get headsets so they can interact easier at these sessions. Text chat works okay but voice works even better and is so much more memorable!

This month is a travel month for me as I’m attending the IVAA Live Summit in Memphis, Tennessee then going to visit my Internet Marketing Accountability Partner and friend Lynn Terry. If you are attending the Summit too, please make sure you look me up while there. Maybe all of us VAinsiders can go out for dinner one night.

My travel this month also means a few schedule changes to our webinars this month. The last two of the month will be held on Fridays at 3pm PST instead of Tuesdays so please take note of date changes below in our schedule.

That’s all the news I have so without further adieu, here’s your MotiVAtor for April…

Common Pitfalls of Being a Virtual Assistant

A Virtual Assistant (VA) has many benefits working from a home-based office but seldom do we talk about the pitfalls we can run into. Some common pitfalls include:

1) Infrequent communication and socializing. The Virtual Assistant misses out on the camaraderie fostered by daily interactions with colleagues. The resulting isolation can impede motivation and team commitment. More reason for VAinsiders Club members to attend our VA Strategy Group Coaching Session the first Tuesday of every month. If you missed our one this week, catch up here.

2) Finding a place for physical meetings with clients and business colleagues. Some situations require a physical meeting, and it isn’t easy to find occasional meeting space on short notice or for short periods. Virtual Assistants seldom have adequate or appropriate meeting space in their home office.

3) Letting home and office overlap. Virtual Assistants are often in the home, and separating those two spaces can be difficult. Spouses, children, and household chores are just some of the many distractions that can interrupt their concentration and pull them away from work.

4) Working too much. Virtual Assistants who work from home are “always at work,” because they never truly leave the office. When they fail to set firm boundaries, VAs can spend all of their evening hours, weekends, and/or vacation time at their desk or on the phone.

5) Failing to keep a schedule. When working remotely, it’s easy to start work late, run errands, or find other distractions from work. These distractions can be especially alluring when they offer a chance to interact with the outside world.

6) Failing to get help or direction. When help is needed, a Virtual Assistant cannot simply walk down the hall to consult a colleague or superior. It takes precious time to get information, especially when the source is not immediately available, and so VAs may too often try to go it alone. (Never feel alone ever again by hanging out at VAnetworking’s Forum.

7) Inadequate technology. Virtual Assistants need to have up-to-date and even state-of-the-art technology available to work and communicate effectively from afar. Investing in, installing and supporting these tools can be daunting.

To avoid falling victim to these pitfalls, the Virtual Assistant needs to be sure to stay connected with outside communities and to schedule regular, virtual or physical meetings with clients and business colleagues.

Give regular status updates to fellow clients and your VA colleagues, and check in with their progress as well. Don’t be afraid to ask for help; doing so not only fosters success but also builds camaraderie and teamwork. Set firm boundaries between home and office, work and life by establishing a work schedule and sticking to it.

“Just say no” to distractions, even when they come in the form of spouse or children.

And finally, invest in a good Internet connection, a webcam, a robust handheld device, and other relatively cheap web-enabled tools (like GoToMyPC) to keep your mobile technology effective and up to date.

A Virtual Assistant’s office can be just as productive – and even more so – as a traditional office if you treat it like the latter. Maintain boundaries, balance life and work, and make an effort to keep in contact with the “real world,” and you’ll enjoy the best that mobile employment has to offer.

Share your thoughts and other tips you have here:

Join in and share your thoughts on the this Mastermind discussion

VAinsiders are Virtual Assistants (VAs) that strategically seek ways to help their client’s business grow because of an invested interest in their business.

~ Tawnya Sutherland, VAnetworking.com ~

VAinsider Tip

Make use of our Mastermind Discussion Forum area by participating and sharing your knowledge with other VAinsider Club members. You never know what the opportunity may bring you from a new client referral from another VAinsider Club member to a joint venture or working friendship with a fellow VA. The only way to get seen is to make yourself be seen and you won’t get seen by lurking.

Feel free to start your own Mastermind Discussion here as well noting that this is a private forum area, not seen in the search engines like our General Forum area so everything you say is private among members.

Network With New VAinsider Club Members

Connect with new members to learn from, utilize for business support services, network with like-minded business entrepreneurs or to do joint ventures with.

Visit our Introduction Forum area to welcome all our new VAinsider Club Members:

Accountability – Something to do for your VA Business this mont

In our VA Strategy Group Coaching Session this week we talked about what it’s like to be a Virtual Assistant. We then went deeper to define what success looks like to each of us.

My challenge this month is for you to remember the passion and drive that led you into the VA industry in the first place. Its important to think about this now and then to keep you motivated to get through each day, week and month of your VA business no matter what obstacles stand in your way.

Please write down 3 reasons why you became a VA.

Stay accountable and share your thoughts and ideas in ourVAinsider Club forum area

Mastermind Discussions – What you Missed at the Forum

Attracting and Retaining Clients in Your Service Business

Upcoming Webinars

ALL MEMBERS:
Date: 1st Tuesday of every month at 4PM PST
Topic: VA Strategy Group Coaching Session
Get engaged with other VAs who are part of our VAinsider Club. This is our monthly VA Strategy Group Coaching Session held the 1st Tuesday of every month for our VAinsider Club members. Be held accountable and motiVAted to think at a deeper level with your business strategies to find solid results for the success of your service business. It’s also a social networking evening to JOT down everything on our minds, from introducing new VAinsider Club members to discussing positive flows within our businesses. We guarantee it will be a fun and informative social night for all to hang with their peers in the VA industry!

Watch last VA Strategy Group Coaching Session

GETTING CLIENTS & SUPER CHARGE MEMBERS ONLY:
Date: Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 at 4PM PST
Time: 4PM PDT
Topic: Networking – The Elevator Speech
Networking in person can be a great way to educate people about the benefits of working with a Virtual Assistant, but without a dynamic elevator speech unfortunately you may not be getting the attention your business deserves. In this class we will discuss how you can create a dynamic elevator speech and will be working with people to create a powerful message that gets both you and your business noticed.

SUPER CHARGE MEMBERS ONLY:
Date: Friday, April 13th, 2012 at 3PM PST
Topic: Goal Setting
This class will discuss successful strategies for goal setting and why goal setting is an important section in your business manual. Once this section is completed others will know what goals are the driving force behind your successes to date and where you hope to take your business in the future.

SUPER CHARGE MEMBERS ONLY:
Date: Friday, April 27th, 2012 at 3PM PST
Topic: Internet Marketing Q & A – LIVE Website Critiques
Bring your mic and internet marketing questions to our LIVE open-air webinar Q & A with Tawnya Sutherland, a Certified Internet Marketing Business Strategist. She will help, guide, advise and find you the resources you’ll need for success with your online marketing plan. Each week Tawnya will bring to light your most darkest issues surrounding how to be seen online by your market and how to strategically entice your market to easily buy from your website. Who would have known making money online was this easy? Topics will be on the fly brought up by the attendees so bring your questions with you! Tawnya is an Internet Marketing Business Strategist with a long-term goal of helping Virtual Assistants worldwide turn their website clicks into cash for their business. She will also be available to give LIVE Website Critiques as time permits (submit your website at our
VAinsider forum area ahead of time if possible).

Go here for login area & to retrieve password

Please use your full name [first and last name] as username and the password which you can find by clicking on the links on the website link above.

Upgrade your membership level here to attend all webinars
Once you upgrade, let us know and we’ll get you all set up with 24 hours.

RFPs Submitted this past week

Please visit our forum area to view all the new requests for virtual assistance at:

http://www.vanetworking.com/forum/rfp

Be sure to follow us on Twitter #VAinsiders as we tweet these RFPs immediately after they are posted. Hashtag #VAinsiders

Here are some great references from our own VAnetworking forum on answering RFPs:

How to get email from RFP

How to respond to RFPs

Also, remember that we have a resource book on responding to RFPs available for free in the NEW VAinsider area.

Finally, for a daily listing, be sure to subscribe to this link.

To your success,

Tawnya Sutherland

VAinsider President

Motivating Virtual Assistants to Success!

Tawnya — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:09:14 +0000

Motivating Virtual Assistants to Success!

After much feedback from our members that I’ve been pushing you too hard I am taking on a new format for our MotiVAtor. I will now send it out monthly to give you more time to be held accountable for all VAinsiders to achieve their MotiVAtor goals during their course of monthly business plan. We will all come back the first Tuesday of each month to discuss in a group coaching environment what we have achieved the past month and what we plan to achieve the following month. All VAinsider levels are welcome to attend. (A bonus to you Booster level members, YAY!).

So let’s get started!

In order to attract and retain clients in your service business, the first two things you need to identify are your ideal client and your specialty niche. As a service provider, it can be tempting to believe that you should do everything for anyone, but the truth is, the more you niche down your offerings, the more attractive you’ll become to your ideal client. Once you know who your target audience is, and what you want to do for them, you can better focus on efforts to attract and maintain clients.

Network Strategically — The trick to networking isn’t to network with your virtual assistant counterparts who are also in a service business, but rather you want to network with those who need your services. For instance, if your target audience is authors for whom you want to handle all aspects of sending out newsletters, posting blog posts, formatting eBooks, editing, and so on, then you should be networking with authors. Find out where they are, and be there!

Market Continuously — Even if you have a full roster of clients today, it is important that you keep marketing. Even if you have to turn down new clients due to being full, offer to contact them when you have an opening. Create a special mailing list for potential clients to keep them informed of your status. Additionally, keeping your foot in the marketing door will keep you knowledgeable about the industry and super focused on your niche market. If you also know other service providers within your niche, this is an opportunity to cross refer when you are unable to take on a client.

Offer Premiums — You have clients now, great! Keep them! Offer your current clients specials and premiums over and above their current contract with you. By giving current clients special deals and upgrades, you will make yourself stand out from other service providers and keep the clients that you have. Often your best source of clients is simply keeping clients that you already have on contract by under promising and over delivering.

Encourage Referrals — Once you’ve established yourself with a client, after a reasonable time ask for and encourage referrals from the client. Offer a coupon to use off additional services, or take a percentage off their next invoice. At the very least, send a thank you note for each referral that is sent your way. Ensure that you let your clients know that you want and appreciate referrals.

Get Testimonials — For some service providers, it is difficult to ask a client for a testimonial, but it is something you must do. Make it part of your normal process and it will get easier as time goes on. It helps with your ongoing marketing, and will encourage and reassure potential clients on the importance of hiring you. When they see how happy someone they respect is with you, you’ll move up on their list of potential resources.

Keep in Touch — Clients with whom you’ve worked in the past are often some of your best sources of new business. Even if you do not work with someone now because their project ended or for some other reason, it is important to keep in contact. When a project ends with a client always send a thank you note. In addition, send them notices of periodic sales or openings for new clients. You never know what can happen.

Share your thoughts and other tips you have here:

Join in and share your thoughts on the this Mastermind discussion

VAinsiders are Virtual Assistants (VAs) that strategically seek ways to help their client’s business grow because of an invested interest in their business.

~ Tawnya Sutherland, VAnetworking.com ~

VAinsider Tips

Booster and All Members: Continual reeducation is cruicial to the success of your business. Make sure you access our webinar archives and watch one every week to make you smarter and more enticing to your potential clients.
View your club benefit here

Getting Clients and Supercharge Members: Visit your Virtual Toolbar in your member area. VAinsider Club members are serious about their business and ready to invest their time into it. For further education, we’ve put together a collection of eBooks from VAnetworking’s ebook store and other resources on various topics to help you supercharge your virtual business.
View your club benefit here

Network With New VAinsider Club Members

Connect with new members to learn from, utilize for business support services, network with like-minded business entrepreneurs or to do joint ventures with.

Visit our Introduction Forum area to welcome all our new VAinsider Club Members:

Accountability – Something to do for your VA Business this week

In sticking with our motivational topic above, please list what you have done this past month in order to attract and retain clients. Try to do 3 out of 5 ways below and share with us your experience:

Network Strategically
Market Continuously
Offer Premiums
Encourage Referrals
Get Testimonials
Keep in Touch

Stay accountable and share your thoughts and ideas in our VAinsider Club forum area

Mastermind Discussions – What you Missed at the Forum

Is Your Business Brain Foggin’ Up?

Upcoming Webinars

GETTING CLIENTS & SUPER CHARGE MEMBERS ONLY:
Date Tuesday, March 13th, 2012 at 4PM PST
Time: 4PM PDT
Topic: Getting Media Attention
In this class we will discuss creating a press kit for your business and what should be included. We will also provide you with some ideas for how to get the press interested in your business so that you can get the media attention that will result in attracting clients.

SUPER CHARGE MEMBERS ONLY:
Date: Tuesday, March 20th, 2012 at 4PM PST
Topic: Business Support Teams
During this class we will discuss the various people that business owners seek support from. Once this section is complete in your manual others will know who your support system is, how you find that support and why it is important to your success. We will also discuss strategies for obtaining business support through local and on-line networking.

SUPER CHARGE MEMBERS ONLY:
Date: Tuesday, March 27th, 2012 at 4PM PST
Topic: Internet Marketing Q & A – LIVE Website Critiques
Bring your mic and internet marketing questions to our LIVE open-air webinar Q & A with Tawnya Sutherland, a Certified Internet Marketing Business Strategist. She will help, guide, advise and find you the resources you’ll need for success with your online marketing plan. Each week Tawnya will bring to light your most darkest issues surrounding how to be seen online by your market and how to strategically entice your market to easily buy from your website. Who would have known making money online was this easy? Topics will be on the fly brought up by the attendees so bring your questions with you! Tawnya is an Internet Marketing Business Strategist with a long-term goal of helping Virtual Assistants worldwide turn their website clicks into cash for their business. She will also be available to give LIVE Website Critiques as time permits (submit your website at our VAinsider forum area ahead of time if possible).

ALL MEMBERS:
Date: 1st Tuesday of every month at 4PM PST (exceptions are ProactiveVA webinars held 3 times yearly)
Topic: Group Accountability and Strategy Implementation Within Your Service Business
Get engaged with other VAs who are part of our VAinsider Club and be held accountable for the work you have achieved over the course of the past month. This is a business social night held the 1st Tuesday of every month for our VAinsider Club members. It’s a social networking evening to express everything on our virtual minds, from introducing new VAinsider Club members to discussing positive flows within our businesses for the upcoming month. We guarantee it will be a fun and informative social night for all to hang with their business colleagues in a safe and confidential environment at the VAinsiders Club!

Go here for login area & to retrieve password:

http://vainsiders.com/proactive-vas/

Please use your full name [first and last name] as username and the password which you can find by clicking on the links on the website link above.

RFPs Submitted this past week

Please visit our forum area to view all the new requests for virtual assistance at:

http://www.vanetworking.com/forum/rfp

Be sure to follow us on Twitter #VAinsiders as we tweet these RFPs immediately after they are posted. Hashtag #VAinsiders

Here are some great references from our own VAnetworking forum on answering RFPs:

How to get email from RFP

How to respond to RFPs

Also, remember that we have a resource book on responding to RFPs available for free in the NEW VAinsider area.

Finally, for a daily listing, be sure to subscribe to this link.

To your success,

Tawnya Sutherland

VAinsider President

MotiVAtor

Tawnya — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:56:04 +0000

Monday MotiVAtor – Motivating Virtual Assistants to Success!

Are you finding your business brain is foggin’ up? Are you sitting down at your office desk and wondering where do I start today? Do you ever stop to wonder if this brain foggin’ is directly

related to your business office space? Working from your home productively without interruptions is hard for many but its a major part of successfully working from home. Distractions like children, laundry, unexpected visits from friends during the day, twitter beeps or the phone ringing may have you running in circles accomplishing nothing in your business.

If this sounds like you, here are a few tips to get you more focused:

1. Decide on hours you will be working on your business. If it’s 9-5, then post that on your door and shut it.

2. Sit down and talk with your husband/children about your business hours and educate them on how important they are to you and how they need to learn to respect same. If you worked in

a office downtown, your child couldn’t be phoning, texting or knocking on your door every other second. They’d need to learn to deal with their situation at hand and/or find another resource to help them. If you have small children, consider a babysitter, nanny or day-school for them a few days a week.

3. Learn how to screen your phone calls. 50% of my calls are just telemarketers and once you get on the phone with them, you’ve lost another 15 minutes of your day not to mention most times they can put you into an irritated state of mind

4. Set up designated times for your social networking like Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin. And stick to those times! For me I do 45 minutes in the morning and again in the afternoon during my business hours. Decide how much time you need to network and block it into your schedule.

5. Leave housekeeping and laundry to the weekend to deal with. Nothing distracts you more than jumping up to fold that last load and next thing you know you are watching your favourite soap while you fold it and now another hour has gone by. Better yet, hire a housekeeper. They are cheaper than your hourly rate so you could be making money while they are cleaning your house for you.

These are just 5 basic tips to help you focus in on your work in 2012. Try incorporating these into your daily schedule and you’ll find you are more productive and organized.

Share your thoughts and other tips you have here:

Join in and share your thoughts on the this Mastermind discussion

VAinsiders are Virtual Assistants (VAs) that strategically seek ways to help their client’s business grow because of an invested interest in their business.

~ Tawnya Sutherland, VAnetworking.com ~

VAinsider Tips

Make the most of your VAinsider membership by attending your monthly educational workshops to help grow your VA business. Don’t forget that we keep the last two months of training

webinars in the archives incase you can’t make the webinars on Tuesdays which you can watch whenever you like.

http://vainsiders.com/proactive-vas/

Network With New VAinsider Club Members

Connect with new members to learn from, utilize for business support services, network with like-minded business entrepreneurs or to do joint ventures with.

If you are NEW to the VAinsider Club, please introduce yourself.

While you are there, say hi to member Heidi Ross of http://www.heidimross.com who just introduced herself.

Why not pull up your thread and re-introduce yourself and tell us how things are going for you and your business at our VAinsider Club Members intro area

Accountability – Something to do for your VA Business this week

Content marketing is a large part – or even a small part – of your business marketing strategy, it pays to learn to write articles fast. This week I’m going to hold you accountable by having your write an article and write it fast to help further market your VA business.

With this five-step process you can write educational, value driven, and informative content quickly and easily.

Step #1 – Choose your article topic or keywords and form it into a question. So for example, let’s say your keywords are “hiring a Virtual Assistant” and you want to write an article about hiring a virtual assistant to increase business success. These keywords formatted as a question might look like this: “What are the benefits of hiring a Virtual Assistant?” or “What are the top three benefits to a business hiring a Virtual Assistant?”

This is an extremely writer-friendly technique because it’s much easier to answer a question quickly and succinctly. And when you perform your keywords search, you’ll often find the phrases are already formatted as questions.

Step #2 – From that question, add three additional questions that relate to your main topic. For example,

* What are the benefits of hiring a VA?
* Where can you find a Virtual Assistant?
* How do you choose the right Virtual Assistant for your business?

Step #3 – Answer each question with a four or five sentence answer. This is where the true writing begins and you’ll find that writing a paragraph, or two, to answer your question is quite easy. The best online content is easy to understand and written conversationally. This question and answer technique facilitates conversational writing. The question and answer format also helps create articles that are easy to read online. Short paragraphs with subheadings are easy to scan and absorb the value quickly.

Step #4 - Write a quick introduction. Once you’ve answered the three main questions in your article, it’s time to go back and write the introduction. Again, this will be a four to five sentence paragraph, only this time you want to introduce the problem you’re addressing in your article and provide a benefit for reading the article. You want to motivate people to continue reading.

Step #5 – Write your conclusion. Your conclusion is merely a re-emphasis of the benefit in your article and a quick summary of your key points. You’ll also want to include a call to action here, like “Visit my website for more information.” (Be sure to include a link.)

By formulating your article as a series of questions, you’re able to write the answers quickly and provide valuable information to your prospects. It’s a useful technique for just about any article type or subject matter. Give it a try; chances are you can cut your article writing time in half with this simple five-step technique.

Stay accountable and share your article this week in our VAinsider Club forum area

Mastermind Discussions – What you Missed at the Forum

New Business Year Resolutions

Upcoming Seminars – VAinsiders only

Date: Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Time: 4PM PDT

Presented by: Tawnya Sutherland

Membership Level: Getting Clients and Supercharge ONLY

Topic: Dare to be Different/or Even Corny

Description: Sometimes the best marketing strategies can stem from the strangest and most unique ideas. In this class we will provide you with some marketing ideas that will hopefully start your own unique ideas forming. We will also discuss brand, marketing hooks and some other inexpensive ideas for attracting clients.

Go here for login area & to retrieve password:

http://vainsiders.com/proactive-vas/

Please use your full name [first and last name] as username and the password which you can find by clicking on the links on the same page above.

RFPs Submitted this past week

Please visit our forum area to view all the new requests for virtual assistance at:

http://www.vanetworking.com/forum/rfp

Be sure to follow us on Twitter #VAinsiders as we tweet these RFPs immediately after they are posted. Hashtag #VAinsiders

Here are some great references from our own VAnetworking forum on answering RFPs:

How to get email from RFP

How to respond to RFPs

Also, remember that we have a resource book on responding to RFPs available for free in the NEW VAinsider area.

Finally, for a daily listing, be sure to subscribe to this link.

To your success,

Tawnya Sutherland

VAinsider President

MotiVAtor

Tawnya — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:21:11 +0000

Monday MotiVAtor – Motivating Virtual Assistants to Success!

A new business year is upon us and I have heard many on Facebook talking about what their New Year’s resolutions will be this year. Personally, I don’t set business resolutions at the beginning of each year. Instead, I am continuously putting into place resolutions throughout the year for my business and sharing them with my accountability partner to help them come to fruition for me.

Resolutions are more sustainable when shared with someone else, be it a formal post on Facebook to your friends or better yet, to a business accountabity partner. This is a well studied fact.

Today, I challenge all of you to write down at least one resolution to attain within the next 3 month period and share it. Putting your resolution into writing guarantees a higher success rate you’ll achieve it.

If you don’t have an accountability partner yet, why not befriend another VAinsider and see if they would like to do this with you. Or at the very least, post it in our VAinsider accountability area and let the group as a whole cheer you on. Being held accountable will ensure you stick to your resolution.

Join in and share your thoughts on the this Mastermind discussion

VAinsiders are Virtual Assistants (VAs) that strategically seek ways to help their client’s business grow because of an invested interest in their business.

~ Tawnya Sutherland, VAnetworking.com ~

VAinsider Tips

Did you know we have a Virtual Assistant Directory that gets high traffic from clients looking to hire a local VA? And if you are a Supercharge VAinsider club member, you get a free upgraded banner ad too!!

Add your website to it today at http://www.vasearchengine.com

Network With New VAinsider Club Members

Connect with new members to learn from, utilize for business support services, network with like-minded business entrepreneurs or to do joint ventures with.

If you are NEW to the VAinsider Club, please introduce yourself.

While you are there, say hi to new member Sharon McMillian of http://writetotype.com

Why not pull up your thread and re-introduce yourself and tell us how things are going for you and your business at our VAinsider Club Members intro area

Accountability – Something to do for your VA Business this week

Are you building a list to market to in 2012 yet? If not, you are not the first to miss a valuable untapped market via your website. Connecting with your market regularly through your list builds trust and credibility in your brand and services. You’ll be remembered easier by potential clients and spoken about by current clients. Building a list is fairly easy to do and I’m going to give you all a few simple steps here to start this project this week.

1. Sign up to a mailing list provider. I recommend getting a paid mailing list provider and not using the free ones because when your list gets over 10,000 people on it, you’ll be glad you had. Here are a few I suggest:
Aweber – http://www.vanetworking.com/aweber (paid)
1shoppingcart – http://www.vashoppingcart.com (paid)
Constant Contact – http://www.vanetworking.com/constantcontact (paid)
Mailchimp – http://www.mailchimp.com (free)

2. Develop an ebook, special report tipsheet or something that your market would love to download for free. Think about what they’d enjoy, be it 100 ways to utilize the services of a VA, 15 practical tips to decluttering your office, etc.

3. Set up an autoresponder campaign in your mailing list provider with the first email including a link to download their free gift you created in #2 above. Then do a series of 7 more emails spaced out every 3-4 days that gives them valuable content that will make their business life easier and more successful. Maybe you came across a cool tip about Facebook’s new timeline or found a free program online that helps you be more productive like Evernote. At this point, don’t sell to them yet in any of these emails. Right now you are just planting a seed with them, a seed that will grow into a memorable flower by the time they’ve received all 8 emails in total over the course of the next few weeks.

4. Next step is to take the HTML code from your autoresponder campaign in #3 above and place it above the fold in a highly visible area of your website so people can signup and download their free gift.

5. Lastly, tell the world about this free gift you have for them. Post it on all your social networks, put in your email signature, etc.

So take the time this week and start to build a list that you can market to in 2012.

Let us know how you did by leaving your feedback at our forum post

Mastermind Discussions – What you Missed at the Forum

Rid of the Office Clutter!

Upcoming Seminars – VAinsiders only

Date: Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Time: 4PM PDT

Presented by: Tawnya Sutherland

Membership Level: Supercharge ONLY

Topic: Internet Marketing Q & A – LIVE Website Critiques

Description: Bring your mic, your URL and your internet marketing questions to our LIVE open-air webinar Q & A with Tawnya Sutherland, a Certified Internet Marketing Business Strategist. She will help, guide, advise and find you the resources you’ll need for success with your online marketing plan. Each week Tawnya will bring to light your most darkest issues surrounding how to be seen online by your market and how to strategically entice your market to easily buy from your website. Who would have known making money online was this easy? Tawnya is a usability expert with a long-term goal of helping Virtual Assistants worldwide turn their website clicks into cash for their business. She will also be available to give LIVE Website Critiques as time permits (submit your website at our VAinsider forum area ahead of time if possible).

PLEASE NOTE: These Q & A sessions are not recorded nor archived so we highly recommend you do your best to attend these webinars monthly for your company to most benefit.

Go here for login area & to retrieve password:

http://vainsiders.com/proactive-vas/

Please use your full name [first and last name] as username and the password which you can find by clicking on the links on the same page above.

RFPs Submitted this past week

Please visit our forum area to view all the new requests for virtual assistance at:

http://www.vanetworking.com/forum/rfp

Be sure to follow us on Twitter #VAinsiders as we tweet these RFPs immediately after they are posted. Hashtag #VAinsiders

Here are some great references from our own VAnetworking forum on answering RFPs:

How to get email from RFP

How to respond to RFPs

Also, remember that we have a resource book on responding to RFPs available for free in the NEW VAinsider area.

Finally, for a daily listing, be sure to subscribe to this link.

To your success,

Tawnya Sutherland

VAinsider President