Marketing Tips - On a Budget

With all the latest buzz lately on writing articles and how to do it right, I thought you'd find this article helpful.

Are you getting enough publicity for your business? Why not call us today if you need more -- (954) 971-4025

Also, you know it's time to start planning for Christmas. Christmas in July -- Do your marketing now! Anyone with an online business needs to start getting their sites ready and start building their sites and mailing lists.

You need Anita and Kara's book, The Direct Sales Kit . Sell your products, Make More Money!! It's that EASY!!!

Stop by http://www.virtualwordpublishing.com/ today and see our new changes!

Til next time!

Diana

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Marketing Tips - On a Budget

I don’t know about you, but when I started my business and even today with a son in college, I don’t have a lot of money to spend on marketing. I need to make sure that every penny I spend is spent wisely, very wisely. So when I market my business, I need to make sure that I’m creative and use all the tools I have available that don’t cost money. Here are some tips that I have found that worked for me.

Cooperative Marketing - This process creates fellowship, alliances with others who are working hard to achieve the same goals, and exposure to your sites. This entails working with other groups, forums, VAs, etc., and sharing together to build your business.

We do a lot of this already in the virtual assisting business with joining associations and putting their banners/buttons up and becoming active, but you can take it a step further. You can actively become a part of different forums, exchanging banners, buttons, newsletter ads, ideas, and more.

All it takes is an e-mail expressing an interest. For example, a simple, ‘Hi, I’m Diana Ennen of Virtual Word Publishing. I’m an active part of your forum already, but I’d like to take it a step further and would like to do some cooperative marketing with you. Perhaps we could exchange our banners, buttons, newsletter ads, contests, etc.” The goal is to get more and more people talking about you and your services. As Dianne Fratscher of WAHMUnited states, “It’s a win, win for everyone. We both benefit with more exposure.”

Radio/Media - It’s not that hard. It’s important to get out there and get aggressive in marketing your business. Have a plan of action and stick to it. Each week decide to send out so many press releases, contacts to radio stations, local media, etc. Stay in tune with what’s currently happening and see if it’s something that you can write about. I’ve found that having an angle works. Get an e-mail to them and pitch your angle hard, but make sure you can follow-up with something solid. There are so many Internet Radio shows now that offer great opportunities. Here’s a new one I just discovered that’s really awesome -- Kim Komando Radio Show -- www.komando.com . You can sign up for her tips of the day and cool site of the day. It’s great!

Forums / Listserves - Being active in forums and listserves is so beneficial to your business. You establish yourself as an expert and also you gain friendships and alliances with others. Plus, it’s a great way to promote your business. Naturally you never want to blatantly advertise your business, but many forums will have special days set up where you can promote your products and specials. Take advantage of these. Don’t get discouraged if you try it once and it doesn’t work. It takes time for people to get to recognize you and once they do, then you are more likely to get people to contact you.

Market Research Your Webstats - Learn how to read, understand and make use of your web stats to properly market and research who is coming to your site. A good webstat service is often included with most hosting services. This is free information that your site gathers about your visitors and customers. It tells you who your customer is, where they're coming from, which days they do their surfing - even what time of day they do it.

As many people know I recently signed up with a new SEO person who has just made tremendous results in my business. Almost immediately I started seeing more book sales and within a few weeks I landed two GREAT clients. One of the first things she did was to put a tracker on my site. Now, not only was I able to see who was coming to my site, but I was able to determine what Google Adwords people were looking to get to my site. Magic!! That’s what it felt like to me.

Writing Articles - Submitting articles to sites is still a good marketing tool and I still recommend it. However, you want to do it right. Make sure you submit to your targeted market. Write on topics that you are very familiar with and that you will help those on that site with advice. Don’t just write for publicity --Give something back. Making sure that your topic and information is appreciated is important. For example, I write articles frequently on starting a business. I’ve been in business since 1985 and I love helping people start their own business. I want to provide help, support, and encouragement. For me, I send the articles out myself or I have my virtual assistant send them out. That way I know that the articles are going to the right places. This week I got this back from someone and I thought I’d share it. I think it helps to support the fact that article writing not only is beneficial as a marketing tool, but also as a help to those stopping by the sites. Wendy wrote, “I'm currently working on a business plan to get my thoughts straight and my ideas on paper. I read your article at http://www.geocities.com/freehomebasedbusiness/articles-geocities-084.htm that mentioned e-mailing you for a free booklet on getting started. I'm hoping you can e-mail a version to me. I appreciate the fact that you're sharing your knowledge and expertise in this area. Reading your articles is one of the things that actually got me motivated enough to put things into motion.” Makes it all worthwhile!

So whether you have savings to help you get started, or are working with limited funds, just remember YOU CAN DO IT!! Marketing a business doesn’t have to be expensive if you just remember to network and use all the tools available to you. See you next month!

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Diana Ennen, Author: Virtual Assistant the Series, Become a Highly Successful, Sought After VA (http://www.va-theseries.com/) and Words From Home: Start, Profit, and Run a Successful Word Processing Business, http://www.virtualwordpublishing.com/, diana@virtualwordpublishing.com

Diana's Virtual Assistant

Hello everyone! I wanted to take a minute to introduce myself. My name is Melody Spier (pronounced spear) and I’m Diana’s virtual assistant. In an effort to help others learn more about blogging I will be adding as much information and I can to her blog.

As an author of several books on starting a virtual assistant business and also in her business of handling publicity for her clients, Diana encounters many business owners who are in need of help with blogging and RSS feeds.

This is where I come in. I’ll be adding information on the all aspect of blogging such as how using a blog can increase your traffic and sales, how to start a blog, things that I’ve found to be beneficial and things that haven’t worked, links to tutorials, training seminars, coaching and general blog help.

Of course Diana will also be adding loads of information on getting publicity for your business, books, forums and so forth. She will offer marketing tools, resources and article to help you with all your marketing needs. So stay tuned!

Now that you know who I am and what I’m doing. Why not leave Diana a comment telling her what you’d like to see posted or how we could help you?

~ Mel ~

I'm a Mom's Maven!

I'm honored to be a "Mom's Maven" and get the opportunity to preview Disney movies prior to their release. I’ve had the good fortune to preview Mulan, Mickey's Christmas Special, and now Tarzan II.

Disney's latest movie - Tarzan II was an absolute delight and I highly recommend it for all ages. You'll laugh with your kids and learn the true meaning of "friendships." One of those "Gotta add to your collections" for sure!

Go to their site and get some

VANF News!

Hey Hey The Gang’s All Here -- The VANF Gang That Is!

Helping You Achieve Success with Your Virtual Assistant Business

Vancouver, Canada. June 20, 2005. As more and more people are walking away from the drone of the nine to five day and fulfilling their dream of starting a home-based business, the search continues for the right opportunity and the right place to find the information necessary to start that business. Finally, we’ve found that opportunity and the place to find the information necessary to start that business. The business—Virtual Assisting, the Place—The VANF Forum, better known as “The Global Meeting Place for Aspiring and Successful VAs.”

What’s a Virtual Assistant? By definition, a Virtual Assistant or VA, is a highly skilled professional who provides administrative support and other specialized services to businesses, entrepreneurs, executives, authors, real estate or sales professionals and others who have more work to do than time to do it. Many VA's also provide web development and Internet marketing, meeting and event planning, desktop publishing, word processing, book marketing and business start-up consultations. The services are endless, depending upon the VA’s knowledge, skills and creativity. Plus, the VA’s workload continues to increase as businesses fully realize the benefits of having VAs assist in making their offices run smoother. Ask many VAs and they will acknowledge that they can barely keep up with their client demands and often have to subcontract the work out. Also, as the workload increases so does the rate of pay. Most VAs today can expect to earn between $35 to $100/hr.

But wanting to start a business and being successful at it are two different things. How often do you hear, “I tried working at home, but it didn’t work out.” Or, “They are all SCAMS!” Well, stop by the VANF forum on any given day and you’ll discover a totally different scenario. You’ll see thriving businesses and success stories in every corner. You’ll see confident professionals helping others learn the ins and outs of starting a Virtual Assistant business and you’ll see something very unique to the Virtual Assistant Industry, “The willingness to share.” Unlike other competitive businesses, VAs are always eager to help one another knowing that there’s plenty of work to go around. As one of the founding moderators, Naomi Skarzinksi, states, “The wonderful thing about the VA industry is thus far, we are not highly competitive. We want to see each other succeed and are eager to help make it happen for others.”

Tawnya Sutherland, Founder of the VANF forum and Author of the VAS - Virtual Assistant Start-Up System, has successfully inspired all on the forum by her continued success and motivation. Her Internet Marketing VA Business, Mediamage Business Solutions, is thriving and she’s always willing to share her online marketing secrets and VA tips to others. In addition to the support and guidance she offers on the forum, she also authored a new book and business system for VAs entitled - VAS - Virtual Assistant Start-Up System. This System comes complete with an excellent resource guide authored by Sutherland, books by Industry leaders such as Diana Ennen, Kelly Poelker, Michelle Jamison and Jill Whalen, as well as a complete business plan, 125 templates, forms and legalese samples for starting a business and so much more. Plus, it offers the one thing that’s rarely offered in any business kit, but an absolute necessity in operating a business, all the essentials for starting a website including a template, domain name registration, hosting, etc.

If you’re ready to start your VA business and want the tools to do it with and the strength of a global community of VA professionals at your side, then stop by VANF today.

Don’t delay -- The Gang’s Waiting!!

Who Says You're Not a Writer?

The other day, a client told me, “I’ve been talking to a lot of other aspiring writers and I can’t believe how unsupportive they are. I had an editor interested in something I’d written and two other writers were unbelievably negative. One said my writing wasn’t good enough for publication. Another told me that this particular magazine never publishes new writers. I was so depressed after I heard these remarks that I haven’t had the heart to send the editor anything.”

The need for support and affirmation can squeeze the joy and life from writing. It can paralyze us. We agonize over the opinions of others. Caught between the insatiable desire to write and the terror of failure, we require validation the way a hungry child cries for milk. I find this ironic since the act of writing is almost always a solitary passion..

Even if we write for our own pleasure, we cannot escape the feeling that we are doing something slightly illicit or at the very least, unworthy of praise. The paradox for those who want to sell, is that we have little choice. We cannot both keep our work to ourselves and publish it. Yet in deciding to make the attempt, we must face the tiger. Sometimes the tiger is an editor with venom in her veins. Other times, it’s a friend who, in the most loving this-is-for-your-own-good tone, assures us that we are bound to fail. (It is the pleasure we sense in her voice that is most disquieting.) It can be a fellow writer who feels better about his own work when he claims power over ours. The tiger can be anyone who has an agenda that even unintentionally or subconsciously, collides with our own.

Exposing our words to an editor (or to anyone else for that matter), brings us back to childhood when all-powerful teachers brazenly defaced papers with blood red marks, leaving our carefully crafted sentences in ruins (and us in tears). Even now that we are older, our stories remain our children. And if our children are taunted or attacked, we are naturally overwhelmed with rage and defensiveness. But the reality is that our stories are not our children. They are only words. They do not give us value. Neither should our self worth or belief in our abilities be colored so absolutely or our hearts be broken, by others’ response to them.

Admittedly not everyone who aspires to be a published writer can shape words into clear, inviting prose. Personally, I believe that writing is not brain surgery and that most people with the desire can be taught to write passably well. Take a look at the vast majority of articles and books published today and you will see that being a writer on the level of Hemmingway or Dostoyevsky isn’t required. What is required is to learn your craft, to put in hours, perhaps years, soaking up the essentials so that the best in you emerges. Then you might want to armor your heart against the cold reality that faces every aspiring writer: The world is not awaiting your words.

One of the truths that many of us find it difficult to accept is that we create our own reality. Words are only words. We attach meaning to them depending on who we are and how we are in our lives. The words “You can write,” might fire us to great heights as they did Erma Bombeck. The very same words could feel like ridicule to those who can only see the worst in themselves.
If we depend on others’ opinions to fuel our desires, to keep us going through the storms, to believe in dreams, we may find ourselves mired in despair. But if we believe our inner voice, if we are lit by a purpose that springs from somewhere deeper than words, then it does not matter what others say. We simply know that we were meant to write as surely as we were meant to breathe. “You are,” we can safely and confidently say to the pessimistic friend, “entitled to your own opinion.”

So ask yourself, in the deepest part of your soul, are you a writer?

If the answer you hear is, “yes,” then you are. And no one, not an acquaintance, not a teacher, not an editor, can take that away from you.

What happens then when someone stomps on your dream? You simply smile and start writing.

That is all.

Copyright 2004 Lynn Colwell www.bloomngrow.net

Permission to reprint granted by Lynn Colwell

How to Promote Freelance Writing

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How to Promote Freelance Writing
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This week, seven Publicity Hounds have tips for Cheryl Beck of Detroit.She's a freelance writer who wants to know how to drum up localbusiness.

From Linda Barrett:
"Read Peter Bowerman's excellent book "The Well-fed Writer" athttp://www.wellfedwriter.com/ordertwfw.shtml

From Stacy Kean:
"Don't think of yourself as a 'solicitor'--but rather a problem-solver.Several months ago, there was a NY Times article about the horrible writing abilities of some in the business world.

"Also, as a writer or PR person, it's hard to believe it, but some people hate to write. Target a few businesses you would like as clients and offer to solve their problems. Maybe you notice their web content could use some help, or they could use an updated brochure. Let them know you can get it done."

From freelance writer Shel Horowitz:
"Your community doesn't have to be local. I have clients on three continents. The Internet lets you identify communities of interest and easily brand yourself in them."
Read all the responses at http://publicityhound.net/prblog/?p=302

The Publicity Hound says:
Freelance writers, PR people and anybody looking for more business canuse many of the two dozen ideas that Marcia Yudkin and I came up with whenwe did a teleseminar last year called "24 Ways to Attract Clients to YourPR Practice." It includes the two very best strategies that have earnedboth of us thousands of dollars in consulting fees. You'll get ideas for drumming up local or international business, staying on people's radar screens, and promoting yourself as an expert in your field. It's available as a CD or downloadable transcript you can be reading in minutes. Read more about what you'll learn athttp://www.publicityhound.com/publicity-products/marketing-tapes/24_ways.htm

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Reprinted from "The Publicity Hound's Tips of the Week," a free ezine featuring tips, tricks and tools for generating free publicity. Subscribe at http://www.PublicityHound.com and receive free by email the handy list "89 Reasons to Send a News Release."