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Whoever said that social networking wasn’t any good for online business development, never tried it before. By allowing your readers to see you in another light, you are solidifying any relationships that you may have with them.

Be very careful before you engage in social networking, however. It is very addictive. You will find that there are many potential advantages for both you and your readers, if you make sure that you are consistent with this.

Social Networks

Have you heard of Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter? Your readers will have, as well. They probably use them for social interaction with friends and family, but you can show them how to use it for business.

Start off by setting up both a business and a personal presence on these sites. Do this thoroughly and provide a lot of information. You may well have a personal presence on a number of these sites, but this will be new for your business.

Facebook

Facebook is extremely versatile and will allow you to inform your readers about what’s going on. Use a business page to list new conferences you will be attending, podcasts you are hosting, and the names of blogs where you will be guest posting. Readers will be able to find out about all these activities, listen to your podcasts live, read your posts on the guest blogs and can then invite you to events that they are hosting.

If there is a question they want to ask, let’s say about how to start a business or how to troubleshoot a problem, they can talk with you wall-to-wall in private to get advice. Via Facebook you can advertise e-courses, free classes and other solutions, when people opt in for services contained on your site. Also, let your readers be part of virtual focus groups to help you test new ideas.

YouTube

Sometimes you will have a product that needs feedback and you can load a video to YouTube. Readers and others can post their comments on your work. This can be a place to demonstrate what you do or sell and show how people can benefit from doing business with you.

Twitter

Do you tweet? If you do, use them to communicate with readers about new things you are doing. They can get timely information about your business and also about your personal life, should you choose.

You will need a personal account and a different business account for you to manage. If you come across readers who might engage with you in business terms, then you can give them access to your personal sites as well, if you want.

Any online business consulting firm will tell you that social networking sites are just another way for readers to see you in action away from the office. You can build a relationship with them as well by showing them new services and products here.

You can develop your online business through Social Networking and if you are diligent, you could take it to greater heights than you ever thought possible. There is no time like the present, so get moving and set up your profiles to start making contacts with people from all over the world.

When you initially started your online business development, you were aware that traffic was very important to make it all work. With your marketing plan, ideas were already recorded to help that become a reality. Here’s one you may not have thought about: newsletters. They bring the reader into the “know” and that could mean dollars and cents to you in the long run.

Your business website is good for giving visitors basic information about you. You want to use your resources to tell them about what you do and why they need to get involved with you. Sometimes, you don’t have enough space to put all the information that you believe would be important to your visitors, information that isn’t necessarily part of your main online business marketing push.

Newsletters are designed not only to inform, but also to let readers get to know you. You could have a column, which you write that really thanks them for being loyal to you and hopefully prompts them to buy, if they haven’t already done this. Here, you can share honest appreciation for what they do for you.

The Magic of Newsletters

Fun items such as free offers or contests may take up a lot of room and more in-depth items such as information about your product or affiliate programs may be important to your readers, so you should put them in a well constructed newsletter. You can choose from a number of different formats:

• One page layout that you email to subscribers.
• Send a link via e-mail to them, so they can access the PDF format document with multiple pages.
• Incorporate animated links on your site.

Normally, newsletters are sent out to your subscribers. Subscribers are people who visited your site and decided to receive your information by giving you their contact details. On a regular basis, maybe every month, they will receive an e-mail including your newsletter or a link to get it.

If you are composing a longer newsletter with some valuable detail, create a PDF file, so they can access this to download, print out and distribute to their friends. This way, your newsletter goes viral to people who know your readers.

You might create a section that is available to subscribers only on your website, where they can go to access the newsletters, if you are incorporating some style of animation or video that they cannot access through a PDF. This creates a feeling of exclusivity, as they are accessing a place that is especially reserved for them.

The format you choose to use is up to you – but remember to take your time, and make it really nice. Whatever information you feel will interest your readers should go here. In the beginning they may not want a lot of flash, since it could occasionally be viewed as trickery by some people. Keep it simple until they ask for more. As always, keep in mind that if you’d like this done for you, in a snap, consider checking with an expert virtual assistant for support.

Customer Spotlight

If you want to publicise certain readers, newsletters are a great way to highlight them. Maybe you have visitors who have joined your affiliate program or have opted in the previous month for the newsletter. You can make them feel important to your business, by listing their names here.

What will you place in your newsletter? Creating one, to catch all the “tidbit” information that readers really love, helps them feel like a vital part of your enterprise.

Unfortunately, we’ve all bought a product or two that didn’t stand up to the advertising hype. That’s what we get for watching late night infomercials. Remember that any online business consulting firm would recommend that you have to build your relationships through integrity if you want to be around for several years.

Integrity

This is a strange word to some online business owners. They would promote any product or service to get a quick buck. Often times, what happens after the customer pays their money is immaterial to them. We have all seen those websites that are there one week and gone the next when things start to heat up, but then come back under another name in the future.

There is a reason for that. They know exactly what people are looking for, but instead of trying to provide it, they exploit it for the money instead. A shining example of this would be those “selling the dream” of how to make millions, quickly and easily, online.

Integrity in business means keeping your promise. Believe it or not, readers really scrutinise businesses online. We tend to look a little closer, as there’s no physical embodiment to associate with this company. The end result would have been the same: those that do not come through will end up losing both readers and sales.

Readers are very concerned about the misuse of their personal information. If they opt-in for an email newsletter, don’t sell their names to mailing lists and by all means, don’t spam them. This is not the way to get what you want from your readers.

Testing, Testing, Testing

Are you selling products on your website? There are a lot of variables with that, especially if it is a physical product. Before you offer a new product, always test market to see if it is going to garner a demand. If there’s no market, you won’t make anything. Never forget this crucial detail.

When you sell a digital product, your testing process requires you to be sure that the advice you are including will work for anyone who buys it. If you sell an eBook about how to set up your own affiliate program in one day (example only) then every customer should be able to duplicate your process.

Consider this also for affiliate marketing. Be sure about the affiliate products or services that you are promoting, make sure you know that they are on the “up and up” and deliver what they say. The money that you make will not help if your reputation is in tatters. If you’d like some help to get things moving fast, hire a virtual assistant now!

Truthful Content

Before readers become customers, they will visit your site over and over again. They are reading your content. Everything needs to be true and unique to your site. There is enough bad information floating around and you can’t build a relationship of trust on false information.

Don’t suggest anything that you cannot follow through on, but do make good on what you offer. This builds a relationship of trust that can benefit you and your readers for years to come.

Do you know how to go about building trust with other people? The first thing you have to do is find out all about them and really get to know them. It is easier to do that face to face, of course, but it can also be accomplished in cyberspace if you are willing to really work at it. Is it really necessary to go through that procedure, though?

Yes, it is, as you have to build solid relationships with your readers, for online business development purposes. Your first priority is to make lots of money and you will need to ensure that lots of people visit your site on a regular basis. But, visiting is not enough in and of itself.

Look at it this way. Imagine that you had launched a great new product. You advertise everywhere that you can think of. During the first few months the number of unique visitors to your site goes up by 100%, which is feasible, but better than that, your sales go off the charts.

Don’t get too carried away though, as if you have too many one-time sales, your euphoria can be short-lived. It’s not much good if you make six figures for the early months, as the next eight months of very poor results, due to none of those customers returning, won’t compensate. That’s no way to run and grow a successful online business enterprise.

It’s important to get repeat visitors during every month of the year. So, how do you go about doing this? This is why it’s important to build a relationship with them all. It doesn’t mean that you have to know them all on first name terms, but you do need to pay a lot of attention to them and make sure that you are providing them with what they want, so they will return.

Readers are more than just people who come to hear what you have to say, they are looking for something, often times something very specific. They could very well be looking for your product, but if they don’t feel appreciated, they are not likely to hang around.

Consider some of these reasons why relationships with your readers are vital:

1. They have friends. You never know who is visiting and reading your site content. You are, however, aware that they will have an influence over someone, somewhere. That sphere can be yours if they are truly satisfied with their relationship with you.

2. They have money. So long as they trust you, you may well be able to convert them from a visitor to a customer who uses your services or products. Now you have the potential for repeat business.

3. They represent a segment of the population. Whatever their connections, they can be useful to you in building a better business. Most online business owners can provide organic backlinks for you; bloggers can ask you to guest post for them; avid social bookmarkers can help lift you to expert status by linking to your content.

Readers are not just numbers; they are people who are important in their own right and to your business. Connect with them.

If you’ve noticed, everybody seems to have a blog these days including moms, churches and students and even your favourite virtual assistant. So where is yours? Don’t ever underestimate how much businesses can really benefit from a blog that goes along with their website development efforts.

Basically, business websites are where you go to do business. You use the pages to tell potential customers about what you do, generally in quite a bit of detail. They can find out all they want to know about hiring a gardener, choosing flowers, buying seeds and landscaping their dream garden if that is where your business is at. What they don’t usually find out about is your personal life.

When you read online, you can connect with a website through the words of its content. Depending on the type of “voice,” you’ll want to read more under the right conditions. Readers may even want to know what is behind your passion for the sort of business that you have created. These details are not normally included in the website.

Sometimes words can be deceiving, as well. It’s quite common for people to promise a lot, but rather rare for them to deliver in real terms. It can be difficult to trust what you are reading on a screen, without being able to see somebody, a face to back it up if you like, or get any other information.

Blogs

Blogs came into creation as online journals. They still are in a way. A blog is less business-like and more personal. Personal is what your readers will want from you. Within a blog, they can get to know you at a completely different level, which should help them to appreciate what you do in business.

This doesn’t mean that you have to spill all your dirty secrets for them to get to know you. It is about building relationships that will last. So, in the interest of that, you can be the first to extend the olive branch.

Blogs are so successful, because readers and potential customers can interact with you all the time. By signing in, they can give you feedback every single day.

Your posts don’t have to be very formal. You can begin by introducing yourself and talking about how you started your online business. It is an opener that could be just enough to draw your readers in.

Communication

When readers leave feedback they are responding to posts. Will you leave it at that? Communication is a two-way street. You must answer their comments regularly and make a habit of doing so. Carry on a conversation with the people who are willing to give you a chance.

An online business consulting firm worth its salt will tell you that blogging for business is invaluable when it comes to building those solid relationships with your visitors. Essentially, you are showing that you are a human being like they are and not just interested in just taking their money. So make the change, and start building real and meaningful relationships, right away, and take your business to the next level! If you’d like some help, keep your virtual assistant in mind!

If you like certain websites, they will benefit if you link to them from your site. Organic links rank higher in search engine eyes than simply doing each other a favour and exchanging links. On your blog, you can post reviews of their blogs or just write posts that highlight each one. This is essentially a review without calling it that.

Interacting with your readers and getting to know them in this way is mutually beneficial. Those organic links work both ways. The beauty of all of this is that you never know who will become aware of your existence, due to your relationship building efforts and commenting work.

When you check the stats you are always looking to see how many unique visitors you have to your website development. You need to be sure that these numbers are increasing each month and will need a way to attract new readers. This same method will also keep current readers coming back for more. So, how do you do this?

Readers will come to your website on each day. They are looking for information to begin with. They may keep coming back because of your charm and wit or to get to know you before they try your product or service offerings. Let them know that you are real person by returning the favour and visiting them too.

Essentially, we are all REAL, but sometimes we don’t come across as if we are. Business owners who appear to be “above” their readers are likely to get a hostile response and negative comments. They appear as if they live in ivory towers, or are some kind of royal presence, out of sight and out of touch.

Remember that you are only one side of the online business development equation. Your readers (potential customers) are the other part. If you don’t have traffic, how can you make a sale? You need to build a solid relationship with your visitors, or why should they be loyal to you, at all?

Who are you?

Every person wants to know that they matter to others. They can matter to their families, friends and even the people they do business with. Why do you think barber shops and hair salons are so popular? These places have to provide a good product, but also build a great relationship.

As an online business owner, your readers want to know that their presence matters. They have come to you looking for something. Again, what is it?

It would be naïve to think that each person that visits your website or blog is there because of you. They may not have known your name before they clicked on your link in the search results. Will they remember your name when they leave your site if you don’t do anything about it?

What is it that you want?

Think of your interests. The reason you started your online business is because you had a passion for something. Your readers have these passions, as well. The informative content that you supply could be the final link to someone realising the dream of entrepreneurship, home ownership or even buying a new car. You’re more likely to find out about your readers and what they want, if you take an interest in their needs and desires. If you need some support to get it all done fast, consider hiring expert virtual assistants!

Now, your website is about the business that you are building, but knowing something about the people who are getting you there can help your business to evolve. As an example, the information you provide may be about how to organise your life and your business, but most of the people who visit your site are looking for information on personal coaching. If you started a line of products or services around the concept of personal coaching, you could meet their needs in a much more targeted way, just because you took the time to find out about them.

How may I help you?

These are some of the ways that you can find out about your readers interests:

• Surveys
• By offering contests through guest blogs
• Think about a “customer spotlight” or “reader spotlight” on your site
• When people buy from you, send feedback e-mails

Readers have interests too and they are important for you to know. Now that you know who your readers are and how you can help them, use those tools to find out what they want. All you need to do then is to give this to them! You’ll see an increase in readers, customers and sales because you took the time to find out what they needed and provided it to them.

We all want to be viewed as experts in our particular niche. It can mean more traffic, more sales, more credibility and greater visibility. The readers that you already have and your activity with social bookmarking services and sites can really help you out.

When you find something that you love to read, you want to tell everyone. You also want to be able to find it again if you needed to. This is the essence of social bookmarking, after all. When you provide good quality content, your readers are happy. If they are particularly happy, they will make sure to bookmark what you have written within one of their favourite social bookmarking locations.

You can come across social bookmarking services and sites for everything under the sun. Readers can tag content, videos, pictures and more. You can create your own account with these sites and add icons to your blog or website content pages. The sites don’t copy your content but index a link to it when someone bookmarks it. The bookmarked content or media is voted on by other members of the site. You could even be featured on the front page. That could bring you more readers.

There is one crucial point: Readers won’t bookmark your stuff if you don’t try to build relationships with them. By listening to what is returned to you in surveys, you should make appropriate changes to your product lineup or website. If people know they are being listened to, they will respect you.

But, don’t stop there. Your readers may be writers in their own right. Endeavour to find to what your readers are interested in. If they have blogs, read and comment on them. When you come across some of their posts that you like, bookmark them. You might find some of their content already bookmarked and you should leave comments and vote on this.

Reply when readers post on your blog. This is a way of starting a new conversation. It can be as much a fact-gathering mission as curiosity about those who read what you write or buy your products.

Your material may end up being bookmarked on certain sites, such as StumbleUpon or Digg, where people may vote for you. Social bookmarking drives visitors to your web presence and helps to establish you as a trusted expert. You should select social networks that are appropriate to your niche.

After time, readers will begin to like and trust you and will start to recommend that others visit your work, by social bookmarking. Reciprocate by visiting their blogs or websites and tagging their work. Again, the reader/business relationship has proven to be mutually beneficial. If you’re looking for an expert to take care of the details for you, to get the ball rolling, consider hiring professional virtual assistants to get it all done, fast.

Blogging

Chances are, at least one third of your readers have some sort of presence in cyberspace. More than likely it will be a blog. They could be fully fledged businessmen like you, blog in their spare time or be classified as a “professional” blogger.

One way to get to know them is to visit their sites. If you have your own blog for your business, have a category devoted to reader news. Offer free products or discount coupons when they volunteer to give their blog or website address to you.

Now, go to their blogs. Read what they have to say and the kind of topics they talk about. When you leave comments, remember to be creative and not just tell them that you are “pleased to visit their site,” or some other intangible. Really get involved.

If you have an RSS reader, you can include all of their sites in it so that you will be notified when there are new updates. Act like a participant, just like their other followers. They will certainly take notice.

The conventional office set up may soon become a thing of the past as virtual assistant services begin to make more and more sense for organisations of all sizes. Simply from an efficiency perspective, it just doesn’t make much sense to dedicate your operations to “back office” employees, resources and equipment, along with all the additional expenses and overhead that a back office requires. Employing staff is generally the most significant expense for a business owner, and it invariably comes with an extra set of restrictions, liabilities, commitments and problems.

Over recent years, virtual assistant services have emerged to provide the business owner with by far the most efficient way of administering his or her operation. Now it is no longer necessary to hire a personal assistant or back office staff when you engage the services of a competent virtual assistant company.

Can you afford to not investigate at least a few virtual assistant services? Invest some time during a quiet moment and make a list of all the administrative functions that your business typically calls for and you will be surprised at how long the list is. Pencil in the job description and calculate how much time is involved with each task. Highlight the specific skills required and make notes on how you currently handle all these elements. Most businesses have to rely on a fairly extensive list of administrative tasks simply to operate. Also, in our present economy, internet-based activities are essential if you’re looking to effectively communicate with your clients or customers, engage in social media promotions or market your business to the world.

When you make a note of your total administrative and back office costs, make sure that you include all the “hidden” costs, including all those employee benefits you are responsible for, the true cost of your office space rental, insurances and the depreciation costs and maintenance schedules of all that equipment.

Virtual assistant services can take care of all your administration and Internet needs, very cost effectively. You can engage these services on a piecemeal basis or as a comprehensive approach to your overall commitments. Most virtual assistant services, even those that may be somewhat geographically remote from your location, will ensure that they are readily available according to your typical office hours. Due to the speed of Internet connections and a variety of communication methods available through the Web, the virtual assistant can be as close as that personal assistant in your next-door office.

When selecting virtual assistant services, it pays to do your due diligence and to look for testimonials and reviews. You are not necessarily limited to using a VA in your area, of course. To make sure that the match is right for you, you could ask the VA to consider a trial, including only specific elements of their service at the beginning, so that you can see if it all works out to your expectations.

Some may consider website development services to be somewhat revolutionary, but they are sure to become an essential part of the business environment in the years ahead!

Bookkeeping is a constant struggle and an ongoing battle for most smaller businesses these days. Sure, the business receives money from clients and pays for equipment, but as far as the bookkeeping goes, it may be a drawer in the office with literally stacks of uncategorised paper receipts. The virtual assistant bookkeeper sorts through these papers to sort out the books.

It comes down to the simple fact that someone has to do the record keeping. In a small online business, that person is generally the owner. If they don’t have time during the day, then after they have dealt with other issues, it’s time to record some numbers. This makes for a very long day, often.

Everyone knows that more than one business has ended up completely bankrupt because of bad bookkeeping. It often happens that one day, the owner looks up and sees that they have sucked their resources dry. If you don’t keep accurate records, you can also run into a serious situation with the tax collector and nobody wants to face this!

If the business owner does not have a certain expertise, they should hire somebody to do this for them. For small businesses, hiring a bookkeeper is not just about interviewing a multitude of individuals and then choosing one from the masses. If an employer has to pay for health insurance as is often the case these days, as well as other employee related costs, then a lot of additional money can be spent, which the company may not have.

Another solution – a better one, is hiring a virtual assistant. When a virtual assistant is hired, the business doesn’t have to worry about space, sick time or insurance. All they need to do is pay for services rendered and don’t worry about anything else. In today’s economy, this is most definitely a very smart business move.

Without putting too fine a point on it, a virtual assistant bookkeeper is a very hot commodity in today’s economy. They provide a much needed service for small and large businesses. If they have the right amount of knowledge and experience they can easily keep on top of business account maintenance for someone else.

These are some of the services such a VA could offer:

• Payroll
• The reconciliation of accounts
• Recordkeeping on a daily basis
• The recording of transactions in their ledgers
• Month-end statements
• Software and bookkeeping management

Just imagine all of the time and energy they can save each business owner. After such a VA has recorded all the receipts that the client gives them, they could let the client know how much cash is available ongoing. Bookkeepers can also invoice account holders for work to be done and finished jobs.

This sort of business can be conducted in a number of different ways, some even through website development. As an example, with local clients, they can mail their receipts in regularly for help, or they can scan them using office equipment and forward them via the Internet. A VA can then work on all this information using bookkeeping software and send it back to the client as an e-mail attachment. With online clients, a VA can reconcile the information that the client provides with the account records.

Such an individual can feel good, as a virtual assistant bookkeeper, about the service that is provided for business owners. Staying ahead in financial matters is at the crux of business success. As a good manager, a VA’s work can give business owners additional peace of mind.

By now, you have heard of search engine optimisation and seo services. It’s the process of using keywords to draw targeted traffic to your online business. But what about keyword phrases? They can bring in even more lucrative traffic.

Keywords are used in content, web page headlines and the like to gain interest from the major search engines. Once you register your website development with them, their little soldiers (bots/spiders) go to work checking out what you have to offer. If you select very specific words that your customers will likely specify when they look for your site, then your content will probably appear within the all-important primary page of results. This means that you will be the first link anyone sees for those words.

Remember that website content should not just be readable. It is also a way to attract the “right” visitors in the first place. It is very important that you use the right keywords across your site, so that you gain the acceptance of the search engines and become visible.

Doing your Homework.

You didn’t leave your homework behind when you finished school. If you are in business then you will always be learning, so long as you want to go as far as you possibly can. To that end, it is time to do a little homework for your content – keyword research.

Now, you don’t have to be stellar at research in order to get this done and get it done right. Keyword research is finding the words that will rank your content and your website head and shoulders above the rest. Are you ready? Let’s start.

Engaging in Keyword Research.

There are a few things that you can do:

1. Create a list of words. You must put yourself in the shoes of your customer. If you were them, what word would you use to help find your site? Write down as many as you can. Better yet, record them in an electronic spreadsheet for easier editing later. Choose single words and multiple word phrases.

2. Ask your customers. You have existing customers. Survey them to find out how they found you. If it was through an Internet search ask what words they used. Many business owners will look past this solution as it seems too easy, or they don’t ask the correct questions.

3. Use keyword software tools. These tools can be very helpful once you have your list of possible keywords. By entering the keywords, the software will tell you if they are likely to be good enough to reach your prospects.

4. Analyse the data. From your list, whittle down to just the keywords that are likely to get you what you want. Now rank these keywords, first to last.

5. Try them out. Use them one at a time and always keep records of what you used and when. Using website management tools you can find out how much traffic and conversion (how many people used your keyword content as a means to do something – click, sign up, or buy) rates changed.

So, are you ready? You obviously already use content, but maybe it isn’t working well enough. Make your content work by using keywords well.

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, an accomplished Executive Virtual Assistant Service which helps companies of all sizes reach their commercial targets. Want to get more information about online business building success strategies that really work? Contact VMF today!