solve problems – Virtual Assistant Success Strategies

Wil Hart on August 10, 2012

5 Fantastic Tips to Boost Your Tech Skills and Increase Your Profits At The Same Time

Learn & Earn I must admit that I am always on the dull side of technology. Being on the cutting edge has never truly been exciting for me. If there was ever a person who waited till the last minute to make a change with his technology, it was ME. Life changed drastically for me when I got my first iPhone. I am still astounded by the power of this magnificent device.

Just to give you an idea of how powerful it is, I attended an event one time and was able to sell more than $1,000 in products because of my iPhone and the tools that I used along with it. Guess who LOVES technology now. Yep it’s ME! I want to share with you 5 Fantastic Tips on how I went from a techno “dud” to acing everything that I want to know about anything tech-related. Here we go!

Invest Time: It takes time to learn anything new. When it comes to mastering tricks and tips on your new iDevice, time is needed. It will be time well spent when you figure out how to use tools that save you time, simplify the complex or save money. Of course there are many other aspects of your life that you desire to enhance or change. Put in the time and reap the benefits.

What’s Your Contingency Plan For Your Business?

Let’s face it – we live in uncertain times. On any given day you may have a power outage, your Internet connection may be down, your child could wake up sick or you may be faced with some type of natural disaster. Hiccups and disruptions in your work flow COULD be detrimental to your business. However, that doesn’t have to be the case.

Taking a proactive approach to preparing yourself for the unexpected you can minimize the effect on your business. By having a contingency plan, you are establishing yourself as a business professional just like any large corporation. If done correctly, your clients won’t even know you had an issue unless you decide to tell them.

So what exactly is a contingency plan?

A contingency plan is a process you have for your business to protect yourself and your data from being lost during an emergency. Losing data would be detrimental to your business not only for the information that you would have to recreate, but also the violation of your clients’ private affairs.

Wil Hart on June 15, 2010

Showcase Your Expertise: Solve Problems On Your Blog

One of the best ways to showcase your expertise as a Virtual Assistant is to create and maintain a blog. As a VA, you want to show potential clients you hold the key to the solutions they’re looking for.

Now admittedly, one of the first concerns you may have about writing a blog is figuring out what you will write about. One way to create highly useful, relevant content is to answer questions or solve problems in your posts. Prospective clients (and even current clients) come to you for assistance because they are struggling with particular problems. So use those situations as your inspiration! If a client doesn’t mind, you can even use them as an example (with a link back to their website, of course) so that you can demonstrate your expertise and how you add value to their business and their life.

For example, let’s say one of your clients’ websites was hacked and they “lost” their website. This is a scary thing for business owners but that’s why they’ve hired you as the expert, right? So, in your blog post, you can detail how this “problem” was minimized because you create weekly backups. Your blog post can then detail 3 or 5 tips on how and why to run weekly backups and maybe even provide some solutions on what to do if they did not backup their site and how they can fix it.

As you see in this example, you offered a specific solution to a specific problem. Not only did you solve it for your existing client, but you also provided resources for other people to solve the problem on their own, or better yet, gave them concrete examples on why they should hire you to solve the problem for them.

There are 3 main goals of your blog:

1. Maintaining it as a marketing tool to attract prospective clients
2. Showcase your expertise and build your credibility
3. Encourage participation through comments and suggestion to build your community

By using examples from your own experiences, you can provide countless solutions to problems that you are already solving. All you are doing now is taking the time to document the problem, the solution and recommendations for avoiding the problem for someone else. Using this as a method to keep your blog posts fresh will help you avoid the “what do I blog about” mind block.

What other ideas do you have for keeping your blog posts fresh and up to date? I’d love to hear your ideas – please post them below so we can talk about them!