12 Tasks To Get Out Of The Way Ahead Of Christmas

12 Tasks To Get Out Of The Way Ahead Of Christmas 

By CJ Virtual PA

We thought we’d share 12 tasks to tackle which, once complete, will help you to wind down for the festive season so that you can relax, sure in the knowledge you have planned ahead (and don’t need to feel guilty while you party and take some well deserved time off).

10^th December

Produce your Christmas Card list from your Outlook contacts (if you don’t have one, ask your VA to create one – you can build on it year after year)

11^th December

Write those cards!

12^th December

Print your labels and don’t forget to mail your cards!

13^th December

Write a blog and place a link to it on your website. You never know who will be browsing from their shiny new tablet over the holiday period!

16^th December

Get yourself on Google+ if you haven’t already done so. Click on the link for instructions

17^th December

Ask your Virtual PA or business manager to prepare Tweets which can be sent over the holiday period via  Hoot Suite.

18^th December

If you sell products and are launching a January sale, now is the time to get those gorgeous things on Pinterest!

19^th December

Add a message to the home page of your website advising your clients when you’ll be closed for business, reminding them they have a couple of days left to get those orders in!

20^th December

Collate your receipts for the month and enter them onto a spreadsheet for your accountant (and make this a monthly habit - April will be here before you know it)!

21st December

Yes, we know the 21st is a Saturday, but this is probably the last opportunity most of us will get to buy those last minute gifts ... remember, stay calm and carry on - it has to be done!

23^rd December

Prepare your out of office email message and record your voicemail greeting, advising people when you’ll be back at work.

24th December

Call those important people you won't be seeing over the break and as soon as the sun is over the yard arm, treat yourself to a glass of mulled wine, or something stronger. Finally, sit back, relax and wait to see what Santa brings those who have worked hard all year.

Happy Christmas!

Links To CJ Virtual PA Previous Blogs:

The Best Ways To Market Your New Website

Twitter - Trending & Hashtags

How Do I Get My Website Found?

The Best Ways To Market Your New Website

The Best Ways To Market Your New Website

By CJ Virtual PA

How can you ensure your new site rises above the competition to be discovered by potential customers when there are thousands of new sites launched every day?

Content, content, content!

Domain Name

This may sound obvious but your domain name should be easy to remember and be unique to your business. Choosing a name is becoming an increasingly challenging task as most easily remembered names which trip of the tongue seem to be registered already. It may well be worth your while purchasing multiple domains which link to your main site – you could even consider buying names that contain keywords for your website to gain a higher ranking with the search engines.

Page Titles

Page titles are crucial if you want your site to appear near the top of search engine results. Each page of your web site should have a page title under 50 characters whilst still being as informative as possible. The titles should accurately reflect the description of each of the pages on your site and be unique enough to encourage viewers to choose your site over your competitors. You could for example, instead of using an intro page title such as “Sports Shorts”, rename it to “Sports Shorts For Men”.

Meta Tags

Metatags influence the way your site appears in search results.  They should therefore be well-written. The most important two metatags to encourage search engines to index your site are the ‘description’ and ‘keyword’ tags. If your site is called Sportswear and you have a header which states “Mens & Womens Sportswear”,  you can add to your titles by having a meta description tag which says: “A range of mens and womens sportswear including shorts, shirts, tracksuits and swimwear”. The Meta keyword tag may include some of the following words: “shorts, shirts, tracksuits, swimwear”. Meta tags are particularly useful when wanting to attract attention to pages with little text.

Advise Your Customers

Tell your customers about your new website. Send them an email or newsletter where you could include a promotion to encourage them to visit your new site and don’t forget to include your new website address on your business cards, letterheads and all your promotional material.

 

Launch A Press Release

When your new site is ready, mail, email or fax a press release to editors of local papers and magazines who will be interested in your message. If you have a sport related site you could  focus on sports journalists and even target your release to niche sports journals.

List Your Site

There are many business directories online which enable you list your business and allow you to provide a link to your website.  Ensure you choose a relevant directory and beware of free offers to list your site to multiple search engines – they are not always the most discerning and you may end up with a lot of unwanted spam email and phonecalls.

Twitter - Trending & Hashtags

Twitter – Trending & Hashtags

 By Cindy Jalovaara CJVirtualPA

Trending

Trending topics are the top 10 subjects being tweeted about on Twitter.  They are identified by a keyword in the “trending topics” bar at the side of your Twitter home page. These can be useful to discover breaking news stories and reactions to the topics.  Some of the tweets will include hashtags (for example #SocialMediaManagement) which is way of highlighting the most popular conversations on Twitter.
 

Sorting the Topics

You can often narrow down the trending topic data to view only tweets in their specific area. If you  log in to Twitter and click "change" at the top of the “trends list” you can choose to see worldwide trending topics, by country or city.

Top Tip: You can see the top trending topics without having to log in by going to the Twitter homepage. If you want to see all the messages from Twitter users relating to that topic, just click on the topic and the most recent will appear at the top.

Hashtags  #

A hashtag is a word or phrase prefixed with the hashtag symbol ( # )
Not only Tweets, but also short messages posted on Tumblr, Instagram or Google+ to name but a few, can be tagged by including the hashtag and then the word or words. For example #VirtualPAblogs can be used to search for the messages which appear relevant to blogs about Virtual PAs or written by Virtual PAs which may contain more tips to help you enhance your social media management.
 Top Tip:  Create a hashtag for your business: ensure you include your business name or initials but do remember to run a search first to check no-one else has already used it and don't overdo it - remember to keep things relevant if you want the best results.

Bookmark us and come back soon for more ideas on how to improve your online presence.

How Do I Get My Website Found?

1. Register your domain name for more than 3 years 

Not only is it more cost effective to sign up for longer with your domain host but it is also looked upon more favourably by the search engines.  The reason for this is so that Google et al can see you are confident that your business is going to be around for the foreseeable future.

2.   Create a Sign-Up form for your website 

If you have a professional business and a landing page that supports your call to action, you are more likely to be able to secure your visitor contact details.  You can then add them to your direct or email marketing campaign and keep them up to date with new products and services. There are several ways of making contact with people once you have their email address and / or phone number.

3.  Start a blog
Blogging is crucial to the successful business leader. The search engines seek out just a few crucial pieces of information and one of those is indexed pages.  Each time you create a blog post, another page is created.  Blogging  is not only a quick way to increase your volume of indexed pages but also lets your prospects know that you know your subject and can become a valuable resource to them.

Blogging is also an opportunity to create content around your keywords.  If you dedicate each post around a specific keyword or phrase, you will go a long way to ensuring that specific product or service offering is found by prospective clients.

4. Ensure your Content is changed on a regular basis and add images

By refreshing your content, the search engines can see you are providing up to date information which is going to be more valuable to people than out of date pages. Add relevant images to enhance your pages and ensure you complete the “Alt” descriptions for each one so that everyone will know what they are about.

5. Create unique and meaningful page titles that are keyword rich.  

Use your most powerful keywords first. Separate your keywords by pipes {|}.  The pipe is the character which signals to the search engines that it is the end of the thought.

Like most successful campaigns, inbound marketing (i.e., links from other websites to yours) and search engine optimisation are really important if you want your website to be found.  You need to regularly take a fresh look at these tasks to ensure you stay ahead of the game . Please feel free to add any your suggestions which may help others to optimise their websites.