Tracey D’Aviero, Virtual Assistant

So the other night I was watching television and I turned to my cable company’s ‘on demand’ channel to watch a movie. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they have made another upgrade to their service (which they do fairly often, actually). They have reinstated a service that they removed with the last upgrade … the timeline of the movie. For several months now we have not been able to see how much time was left in a movie when we rented it. A small thing, but really frustrating. When you are used to something being there and it gets taken away, it can be irritating. So now we have it back! High fives all around in my house.

This reminded me of working with my clients, and how it’s important to continue to offer them the little things they grow accustomed to through working with you. It made me think about the little things that I could be doing for them, to let them know that they are still very important to me.

When you start working with a client and your relationship is in the honeymoon phase, you may go that little extra mile and do something special for them – whether it’s providing an extra report or staying five more minutes on the phone with them. As time moves on, and the relationship is not so new, sometimes it’s possible to take them for granted more often, and maybe you let those little extras slip. Maybe you are now only giving those little extras to your new clients.

It’s a great reminder of how nice it feels to get those little things back if they have gone by the wayside. And I plan to implement my own advice too – the little extras are what make me a proactive Virtual Assistant for my clients, and a great mentor for my students.

Think about what you can do for your clients to make them feel just a bit more special – send them a card, schedule a phone call with them as a strategy session, put together a new report for them – there are all kinds of things you can do to make them feel special and to let them know that you value them.

Sometimes the little things can even count more than the big ones! Try it, I guarantee you’ll get a good reaction and you will make your client’s day too!

For many small business owners and solopreneurs, working with a Virtual Assistant (VA) is becoming more common. Do you have a VA yet? If you do, congratulations on making a great business move! If not, what are you waiting for?

When you run your own business, it can be easy to fall into the trap of ‘doing it all’ yourself. But remember that by outsourcing those tasks that you don’t do well, or that you don’t want to do, you will be freeing up your time to do the things that you are an expert at doing.

Actually there are only 2 things you should be doing in your business : you should be working with clients (the thing you are an expert at!), or you should be doing specific marketing tasks to grow or manage your business (meeting and getting to know prospective clients!). All the rest should be outsourced to appropriate people.

In my networking circles, I am always talking about the merits of finding a VA who is a good fit for you … but up until last month I didn’t follow my own advice! I just hired my own VA last month and am already realizing how much more organized I am … how much more time I actually have to ‘be’ in my business.

It is amazing when you get those little things off your plate that you really shouldn’t be doing anyway, how much more organized you can be and how you can actually save money by spending money – by freeing up your time to do client work, networking or marketing.

So if you haven’t started working with a VA yet, what are you waiting for? I can honestly say I wish I did this a long time ago (and you will too!)

Building your mailing list is one of the most important things that you need to do in order to have a successful online business.

Your list is the key to selling your services or products, because it is a list of people who has already expressed an interest in what you have to offer.

It is easy to set up a mailing list, but then you have to promote it in order to grow it. It is not enough to just put an opt in box on your website and wait. There are so many ways that you can promote it, but here are three that are sure to get you some success:

1. Provide them with an incentive. If you have an opt in box on your website and you are not getting very many new leads signed up for your newsletter, it’s probably because people (in general) want free stuff in exchange for giving you their email address. If you write a report about something you know about that is interesting or important to them, that is an incentive for them to sign up for your list. At the same time, they are opting in for your newsletter, so once you have them on board, you will be able to market to them. A free offering has to be valuable to them, but it doesn’t have to be so detailed that they don’t need your services anymore. For instance: 3 Easy Ways to Build Your Mailing List could easily be turned into a free report! I could format it nicely, call it a report or an ebook, and then ask people to opt in for it. Be sure to use your social networks to direct people to your free report and you will see your mailing list start to grow.

2. Put your opt in box everywhere! If you only have your opt in box on one page of your website, then you are not giving it enough real estate. Your opt in should be on every page of your site, in a conspicuous spot – like the top right or the top left, so no one can miss it. You never know which page of your website someone is going to land on in a Google search, so it is important to put the opportunity in front of them on all of your pages. You should also have your opt in box on your social network profiles. If you have a profile on Facebook or one of the other countless social networking sites, be sure to add your opt in code to your profile page. You never know where your ideal client is going to find you! By giving your opt in box the real estate it deserves, it will work harder for you every day!

3. Take part in a joint venture. A joint venture (JV) is a project two or more people undertake for the success of their own goals. One JV idea is an Amazon book launch, which uses a marketing strategy to have a lot of people buy a new book from Amazon on the same day, pushing the book up the bestseller list. To do this, people ‘JV’ with as many people as they can, so that the joint venture partners (JVPs) will promote the book launch to their lists and encourage them to buy the book that day. In exchange, the JVPs provide a bonus gift for the launch that anyone who buys the book will receive. This means that by providing a bonus gift, I can potentially grow my list because of the amount of traffic going to the book launch – if they pick up my bonus gift, I now have them on my list (without even looking for them!) It’s a joint venture because everyone benefits: the book launch person gets their bestseller status, the JVPs get more prospects on their lists, and the people who purchase the book get all kinds of amazing bonus gifts without spending an extra dime. It’s win-win-win, and a great strategy to build your list (give away that free product you made in #2 above and get involved in a JV!)

There are many more ways you can build your list quickly, but these three ways are guaranteed winners! See what they can do for you!