Its also one of the best (and least expensive!) forms of marketing you can do. There’s no trick to it, it doesn’t cost anything, you don’t have to worry about niches and target markets. All you have to do is a good job and clients or colleagues will gladly pass your name on to others.

Now with all of this talk of recession, the economy, and stimulus packages, many people are taking control of their careers and launching their own businesses. And they’re discovering that advertising and marketing can be time consuming and expensive.

Here’s a way we can all help each other out:

Make a Referral Week

From their website:

Make a Referral Week is an entrepreneurial approach to stimulating the small business economy one referred business at a time. The goal for the week is to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses in an effort to highlight the impact of a simple action that could blossom into millions of dollars in new business. Small business is the lifeblood and job-creating engine of the economy and merits the positive attention so often saved for corporate bailout stories.

And here’s how you can help…visit the Make a Referral Week website and sign the pledge to make at least one referral between March 9th and March 13th and then return to the site and tell them about the referral you made.

Its as simple as that. Of course, you don’t have to limit yourself to just one referral nor do you have to limit it to just this one week. But its a good start.

Feel free to go read the post in its entirety but I wanted to highlight the major points:

How to get the designer you want:

1. Be clear, concise, professional and friendly in your initial contact.

2. Explain your project in enough detail to pique the designer’s interest.

3. Give them adequate time to respond (at least 5 days). You can then follow up with an e-mail that quotes your original and reiterates your desire to work with them.

4. Understand if they aren’t able to begin your project right away. Someone in high demand obviously has other clients already in queue.

How to be a great client to work with:

1. Clearly define for the designer what you’re trying to accomplish with your site, what impression you’d like to give your visitors and what “brand image” you’d like to project.

2. Use lots of descriptive adjectives to help the designer understand what styles appeal to you. You can even provide some examples of sites that appeal to you to give further guidance.

3. Don’t say “I’m not sure what I want, so I leave the design completely up to your expertise” unless you really will be happy with whatever they create for you.

4. Don’t be afraid to provide constructive feedback about the design concept(s) presented to you. Designers know they’re not always going to hit on the perfect look for everyone on the first try, and expect feedback to help them ensure you’re perfectly satisfied with the outcome.

5. Expect to pay at least part of the design fee up front.

How to be a client they’ll want to work with again:

1. Be responsive and respectful of their time. A good designer will return the favor.

2. Recommend them to others. Write a post on your blog about your new design and link to the designer’s site.

3. Pay promptly.

With the exception of the 5 day email response - I think 2 days, at the most 3, is more reasonable - I do agree with what the author of this post has to say. I also have a few other suggestions to make:

Remember that when a blog designer or any freelancer gives you a turnaround time estimate, that estimate will be based upon their workload at the time. In the freelancing world, things can change quickly. If a freelancer tells you, on February 1st, that they can have your project complete by March 1st but you wait until February 17th to get the information (and payment) to them, chances are high that the March 1st date is going to change.

Give your designer the same respect and space that you expect from them. We’re all busy people and our time is valuable. We understand that things happen and it may take you a week or so to provide information or respond to emails. And we understand because it happens to us too.

Honor your designer/freelancer’s policies. Most freelancers have set hours which may or may not include weekends or evenings. On the other hand, if they have full-time jobs, they may prefer to work evenings and weekends. Many freelancers also prefer to work without interruptions which means that phones get shut off and emails don’t get checked. If you’re not sure what their policies are, please ask. They’ll appreciate your desire to be considerate of them.

Remember, most freelancers are invested in doing a good job. Their business depends upon it. While there are a few bad apples out there, most of us want to make sure that you are completely satisfied with our work and hope to develop a good working relationship with repeat customers.

If you’ve experienced firsthand the benefits of outsourcing, you may have found yourself in a position where you don’t just have a virtual assistant, you have a virtual TEAM. You may have a VA to take care of your administrative tasks, a ghostwriter to help create your newsletters and blog posts, a tech person who keeps your website and business software up to date, and a graphic artist to create covers for your info products.

Congratulations! Doesn’t it feel good to have a great team put together to keep things running smoothly AND to know that you are successful enough that you can afford to have such a team? You’ve worked hard to get to this point so reward yourself for it!

But now its time to ask yourself another question: How much time is spent on delegating projects and tasks to your team, coordinating due dates to make sure no one is sitting around waiting on something from someone else, and then following up to make sure its all getting done on time?

Rather than finding yourself bogged down with the management side of your business, hand it over. Find someone you can trust, someone with experience managing others who isn’t afraid to crack the proverbial whip, someone who can keep your business running like a well-oiled machine even if you decide to take a week off to take the family to Disneyland.

Contact Advantage Online Solutions for a consultation. Let us know more about your business and about your virtual team. If you don’t have a reliable team, we can help you put one together. In addition to our own services - everything from setting up new blogs or sales pages to writing powerful press releases - we have access to talented people in various fields.

We’re here to help. We want to put your mind at ease and give you that extra time you need to develop new products or schedule more coaching sessions.

Anyone with an online business knows that their website is a reflection of their business and part of their professional image. Even though the type of job you may need done isn’t the type of service this person provides, you can still get a feel for the quality of their work and their attention to detail.

Here’s an example for you. I ran across this site after seeing their link in the footer of another blog. Even though this company primarily does web design work, they also indicate that they provide editing and copywriting services. Now the errors on this site are particularly important when considering them to do your writing, but even if you were hiring them to design your website or blog its still something to keep in mind.

Obviously I’ve blocked out the names for their own privacy because I have no intention of trying to embarrass anyone but I just wanted to show that these issues indeed really exist. Let’s take a look:

The blue underlined areas indicate just some of the misspellings, grammar mistakes and incorrect punctuation. Now these are minor details that most people may not detect when skimming through this site, but to someone who has an eye for detail, they are glaring errors. These are definitely not the kind of errors you want on your own site because, as I’ve said, your site is a reflection of your business. Potential clients or customers may have that same eye for detail and may be turned off by such mistakes.

When you’re making any investment into your business, be sure to do your homework. Check their website, their portfolio, and ask for samples. Then spend some time reviewing them carefully to ensure that you’re getting your money’s worth.

“I can’t find the words to express how proud I am of you for the great job you did on my blog. You are a godsend! And you’re stuck with me now!”

Wouldn’t you like to be able to say that about the person you hire to manage your online business? That’s an actual, unsolicited quote from a client of Advantage Online Solutions.

You’re a busy person, right? You probably don’t have the time or even the desire to mess with setting up and updating a blog, writing press releases, using social media and everything else involved in managing your online presence. So what do you do? Hire April at Advantage Online Solutions to do it for you!

Working with April will not only save you the frustration of all the technical and design stuff and finding ways to promote your business online, but you will also have more free time to spend developing your business and even enjoying time with your family.

Why Outsource?

Think about the reasons you decided to start your own business. You probably wanted more freedom and flexibility in your career, right? Now think about how much freedom and flexibility you actually have. Are you still working just as hard, if not harder, than you did in the corporate 9-to-5 world?

By delegating some of those management duties, you can free yourself from being a slave to your business and enjoy the life you envisioned when you made that decision to become self-employed.

Why hire Advantage Online Solutions?

By bringing Advantage Online Solutions on to your business team, you’ll feel both relaxed and confident that your business is in good hands. We keep up on the latest trends of working on the Inernet including social media and technology. By providing services ranging from setting up a customize Word Press site to contacting the media to build your online presence, we treat your business as if its our own.

Here are just a few things we can do for you:

• Install and customize your WordPress site or blog
• Create blog posts and add them to your blog
• Write and submit articles to promote your services or products
• Set up networking and social media profiles for you and keep them updated
• Create an attention-getting press release to announce new developments
• Teach you how to use WordPress and various plugins to get the most from your blog
• Provide administrative services to keep your email and your schedule under control

So why put it off any longer? Contact Advantage Online Solutions today and let’s get started!

With only one week left in 2008, many business owners are contemplating their goals for 2009. If you’re planning on doing the same but aren’t quite sure where to start or how to organize it all, check out my post from earlier this year about planning ahead for some tools to help you out.

My personal favorite is Alice Seba’s Free Planning Calendar which you can download from her “Spring Cleaning for Maximum Profits” site. I just printed mine out and will spend the next week using it to set my goals and plans for achieving those goals.

She calls it a “Planning Calendar”, but what she’s giving away really is a full planner system that you can print out and adapt to your own unique business. There are no obligations, no strings attached for downloading the calendar but I would like to recommend her “Spring Cleaning” coaching series which is the basis for her planning system.

What are your goals for 2009? Are you going to be introducing new products or services? How about plans for improving and building upon your existing services?

If you need some help, whether its updating your blog or creating and managing a newsletter, email me at april@advantagevirtualassistant.com or give me a call at 402-403-3530 and we can set up some time for a consultation to discuss how you can outsource some of those tasks and get you on your way towards reaching your new goals.

Whatever your blog may need, whether its SEO, advertising, or some technical tweaks, there’s probably a WP plugin out there somewhere that can do it. When I install a new WP blog for a client, I include 3 plugins as part of the installation because without plugins, your WP site isn’t going to function at the level to which it has the potential.

At the very minimum, the 3 plugins I recommend for every blog are these:

Akismet - Without spam protection, you’ll find yourself wasting a lot of time moderating and deleting comments. As a little experiment, I set up one of my WP sites without activating Akismet to see how bad the spam issue really is. I was getting slammed with like 40 comments at a time with nothing but junk and gibberish in them and I was getting them on multiple posts. Total pain in the rear and a waste of my time.

All in One SEO Pack - You don’t need to be an SEO expert and you probably have no desire to even mess with all of that technical algorithm stuff and spending hours reading reports and guides about how to climb up the search engine ladder. Using the All in One SEO Pack makes it a little bit easier. It’s not going to do it all for you but it will at least cover the basics.

cforms II - Every blog should have a contact form. You want your readers to be able to reach you, right? Well I prefer using contact forms over just posting your email address on the sidebar somewhere. And for your readers, its more private than leaving a comment. I know there are a lot of contact form plugins or templates out there but I’ve been using this one for a while without any issues.

So there you have it. Not as comprehensive as Andy Beal’s list but its a good start. And if you need any help finding or installing WP plugins, just let me know.

Enjoy!

Feedly vs. Google Reader from April Jones on Vimeo.

When you’re working with people online, whether its a coach or consultant, a blog designer, a virtual assistant, or a JV (joint venture) partnership, you don’t always have the benefit of meeting them in person. Without that opportunity to talk face to face, you’ll need to rely on other methods of deciding if this person is someone with whom you want to work.

Referrals

If you’re searching for a virtual assistant, blog designer or a freelance writer, ask your friends or members of a forum or network - maybe even Twitter - for a recommendation. When someone you trust has experience working with someone and the experience was a positive one, it may put your mind at ease to know that the quality of their work can be verified by a reputable source.

References

The next best thing to getting a referral from a friend or colleague is asking the potential contractor or consultant for references. Any experienced virtual worker will have at least one - preferably three - current or former clients for you to contact.  In addition to my portfolio, I have several clients who would be willing to vouch for me and I try to match the reference to the type of service being requested. For example, if someone is asking about my blog design services, I will put them in touch with someone for whom I’ve done a blog design. If its an inquiry about my press release writing, I’ll give them contact information to someone for whom I’ve written a press release. I also like to give my clients a little “heads up” if I’m using them for a reference. I do this for two reasons: 1) so that they will be expecting an email rather than deleting it because they don’t recognize the name and 2) if they’re going to be unavailable I can find someone else so that I’m not disrupting their busy schedule nor making the potential client wait.

Resumés

Asking an independent contractor such as a virtual assistant or blog designer for a resumé is a bit of a controversial topic. While some virtual workers, especially those who are new to working online and may not have an established client base, won’t mind giving you a copy of their resumé, many will scoff at the idea and will politely refuse to provide you with one. The reasoning behind this is that some virtual assistants see providing a resumé as something a potential employee would do. When hiring someone who is self-employed and works as an independent contractor, its more appropriate to ask for references.

Keep in mind that when you are hiring someone to be a part of your team or part of the process of developing your online business, they will have access to many aspects of your business. Because of this, trust is essential. I have experienced firsthand, in my own business and those of some of my clients, situations where ideas were stolen, websites were held “hostage”, and complete strangers with very little experience have solicited unnecessary services. Also, don’t rely on certifications or badges as verification, particularly in the Virtual Assistant industry. The VA industry does not have legalized standards, does not require any kind of license and is not regulated by any agency. This means that there are some excellent VAs who may not have pursued any kind of certification and there are some unprofessional, unreliable VAs who have spent the money on obtaining several different badges for their website.

The bottom line is to be cautious when you’re making the decision to work with someone online. Take some time to verify the information they have given you and pay close attention to any red flags or gut feelings you may have.

Throughout the month of December, any purchases of a Blog Design Package or Blog Makeover Package will include a free Custom Graphics Package consisting of three matching graphics to promote your website, blog or services. You can choose from any combination of a 125 x 125 button, 468 x 60 banner, or any other specific size you may need.