It is apparent that no matter what your business, no matter what product, service or expertise you are selling, you need the right words to sell. Of course, in this “Web 2.0” world, there are so many places and platforms that need relevant and persuasive words – blogs, press releases, Squidoo lenses, articles, newsletters and bios/profiles for Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, to name a few.

Many successful marketers will tell you that copywriting – the ability to put what you are selling into words that actually sell – is the #1 most important skill to have in marketing. And this is true now more than ever.

Given the importance of copywriting in this new Social Media world, I have teamed up with Copywriting Expert, Allison Nazarian of Get It In Writing have teamed up to present an amazing webinar event on this very topic. In the world of social media, and social marketing in particular, your credibility, your visibility and your reputation are the measures of your success. And the key to being able to shine in social media lies in the words businesses use to have the conversations they are having.

Allison and I invite you to take advantage of this session: Discover The Key Copywriting Techniques For Unleashing Your Social Media Marketing Success in 2009 & Beyond. This is an event you don’t want to miss – the “secret weapon” so many successful marketers have and use can (and should) be yours too.

What: Free Webinar Event

When: Thursday March 5, 5pm Eastern (2pm Pacific)

Who: Perfect for Solopreneurs, Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, Coaches, Consultants, Freelancers, Copywriters, Virtual Assistants and Online Professionals.

Bonus: And when you sign up for this no-charge event, you will also receive Craig & Allison’s Special Report: Five Copywriting Strategies Guaranteed To Successfully Bring You, Your Brand & Your Business Into The New Kingdom.

Sign up at CopywritingKingdom Today!

 

 

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One of the hottest outsourcing trends taking shape in 2008 is hiring Virtual Assistants to perform crucial and time-intensive Internet Marketing Services. Small Businesses are swamped trying to keep up with all these activities such as updating their various Social Networking profiles, managing affiliate programs, tracking website stats, perform ongoing keyword research, setting up shopping carts and managing their email campaigns and autoresponders - phew!!! This is just a snapshot of the many Internet Marketing services that are fast being delegated to  web savvy Professional Virtual Assistants.

So where can you find these types of Virtual Assistants who have current, up-to-date Internet Marketing know-how? There are many freelancer sites like Elance, Guru, Ifreelance as well as Virtual Assistant related networks like VAnetworking.com - those are all great resources. But a new marketplace at VAClassroom is quickly becoming the one-stop center for recruiting Internet Marketing Virtual Assistants. Their marketplace showcases the profiles of their graduates who have completed their popular Internet Marketing VA Training Program. In this program, VAClassroom members are being trained in Affiliate Marketing Research and Management, Keyword Research, Social Media Marketing, Blog Management, Web Content Submission, Email Marketing and many other "in-demand" areas. The Marketplace is solely focussed on Internet Marketing related projects and is broken down into a number of skill-specific categories including:

- Affiliate Marketing

- Search Engine Marketing

- Web Analytics and Testing

- Blogging

- Social Media Marketing

- Email Marketing

- Web Content Editing and Submission

VAClassroom also offers a handy Search Tool to look for VAs with particular expertise.  For example; let’s say you are seeking a Virtual Assistant to manage your Word Press Blog, you could type in "Word Press" and will receive the listings for those Virtual Assistants with that respective skill.

If you are serious need of delegating some Internet Marketing support services for your business, then the VAClassroom Marketplace will give you the ideal Virtual Assistant community you are seeking!

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Our sister site, VAClassroom.com just opened their doors tonight  (May 19th) at 10pm (EST)! Since I worked on both this project as well as ESalesGuru.com, I can honestly say that over 1000 hours were spent developing this niche Virtual Training Center including  50+ VA training videos, 10 comprehensive training guides, work search resources and so much more.

VAClassroom is essentially a skill-based training center designed to equip Virtual Assistants with the exact "in-demand" skills that businesses are seeking right now in 2008. For example, I recently finished a teleseminar with Marty Fawnkey (Conference Call University) titled: "How Virtual Assistants can profit from the Social Media Explosion in 2008."  We discussed some key strategies on how Virtual Assistants can effectively tap into the hot Social Media VA niche. This teleseminar was essentially a "mini-course’ taken from one of the many comprehensive training courses offered at VAClassroom.

So, the niche opportunities for Virtual Assistants right now are endless! If you are interested in developing your niche skills and expanding your income opportunities, then VAClassroom is worth checking out!

Here is the link to the special offer that VAClassroom is running until 11:59pm (PST) on May 21st.

VAClassroom Special Offer

 

 

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For those of you that regularly follow my blog, you will certainly know that I am passionate about Social Media and the huge marketing potential it has for any Internet business today. I have written tons of posts on the topic and have been the feature author on Social Media topics in some major publications such as SiteProNews.

Over the last year, we have seen a shift in thinking among Internet Businesses pertaining to Social Media. In 2007, business were asking the question (with skepticism): "Can Social Media Marketing really be profitable for my business? Is there really any value in hanging out in Facebook Groups, commenting on blogs, networking in Linkedin and sharing videos through YouTube?"

I think these questions have been effectively answered by many of the industry experts who have openly endorsed Social Media Marketing as a powerful business building channel.The real question Internet Businesses are asking in 2008 is: "Okay, we see that Social Media Marketing is a good thing, but how do we actually find the hours in the day to carry out these time-intensive Social Media Marketing activities?

The answer is: You won’t, but a Virtual Assistant can!

Presently, there are endless opportunities for Virtual Assistants to carve out an "in-demand niche in the Social Media realm.  With the right Social Media "know-how", Virtual Assistants can win more clients and grow their income opportunities as a Social Media Marketing VA!

Our sister site, VAClassroom is offering a FREE 1 hour Live tele-seminar on Monday May 19th, to discuss how Virtual Assistants can truly profit from the Social Media Movement in 2008. For more details and to sign-up, go to: 

http://www.vaclassroom.com/special/teleseminar.aspx

Apparently, the spots are filling up quickly, so be sure to sign-up to claim one of the 250 spots for the call -  it should be a good one! 

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Some Exciting News to report….. Our Parent Company, ESalesGuru Ventures Ltd is gearing up to launch  VAClassroom, an innovative Virtual Assistant Training Center designed to equip Virtual Assistants with the exact skills Internet Businesses are seeking here in 2008 and beyond!

Since many of you are Internet Business owners, I am sure you have already experienced the buzz happening in the Virtual Assistant industry these days. It is certainly one of the fastest growing sectors of the Internet right now, with no slowing down in sight. More and more companies are quickly seeing the immense value in building virtual teams to help them take their businesses to new heights.

VAClassroom seeks to fill a key training gap by providing Virtual Assistants with practical and relevant  training courses on some of the important tasks businesses are currently outsourcing. The Virtual Training Center will be offering a membership-based site completed with new training courses and certifications, a VA Marketplace, Job Search Support, Live Coaching and many other valuable resources.

VAClassroom is currently running a pre-launch contest with a chance to win a "VA Business PowerPack" including a full website or blog makeover,  a 1 year membership to the popular business tools, Freshbooks and BaseCamp. The contest winners will be announced the day prior to the official launch of VAClassroom in early May.

For business owners such as yourself, this Virtual Assistant training portal will include a marketplace in which you can connect with skilled and trained VAs across many different niches and specializations. We will pass along more details once the marketplace is ready to go!

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Hello Strangers! Or the same might be said for me as I have taken a month hiatus from blogging to focus on some other priority projects! These projects involved a truck load of copywriting, so I simply couldn’t stomach the thought of writing more content (Ie. Blog Posts) during that time. The ebook project is coming to a close and I am starting to tie up other loose ends, so I can get back to a more regular blogging schedule again.

Given the crazyness of my schedule over the last while, I was again confronted with challenges of maintaining a healthy work/life balance. While some of you may do this very well, as an Internet Entrepreneur, I find that some extra heavy bricks tend to surface constantly on the work side! I personally find that I constantly need to plaster my MAIN priorities in life on whiteboards, reminder notes, screensavers etc.. in order to keep focussed on that which is most important.

Caroline Middlebrook, one of the better blogger I have come across also shared recently about her own struggles in keeping focussed on her priorities. Based on her own experience, she outlines six steps to achieving the optimal worklife balance. I appreciated her one step "Procrastinate the Unnecessary"! I am as guilty as any in getting consumed by semi-important tasks that take away from those high priority tasks. Her post was a good "wake-up call" for sure!

Look forward to connecting with you all more regularly now!

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Happy Valentine’s Day everyone. I am actually been taking a short hiatus from my blog (as you probably noticed) to complete some other priority projects, but will be back in the swing of things next week!

Take some time to slow down to spend some time with the ones you love this day! I am hitting the romantic comedy, "27 Dresses" with my wife tonight. No, she is not dragging me to this "Chick flick" as I happen to be a sucker for romantic comedies. So, I would be curious know what your favorite Romantic comedy of all time is? I was thinking about mine and I have to say "Notting Hill" (Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant) would top my list - Killer funny and rather touching - two thumbs up!

Have a great day!

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I have to recant my last post and remove Scribd.com from my top 5 list of content creation and syndication sites - Ugh! Scribd just recently publicly affirmed their policy of not allowing you to have any links within your published documents. It appears in their fine print that they have never allowed any sort of deep-linking within their documents and affirmed this in a letter I came across in this blog post.  Good Lesson - always important to read the fine print to ensure you are adhering to the Terms of Service - Live and Learn! Nonethless, Scribd is still a great channel for connecting with your target audience and sharing and colloborating on industry specific topics.

 

 

 

 

 

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In my post on the "The SImple Truth of SEO", I had mentioned that producing highly targeted content on your site and through other powerful content sharing and distribution channels was the cornerstone for SEO Success. I had also said that I would run a short series on the best channels on the Internet for sharing and syndicating your content. Well, here it is! Over the next few days, I will feature 4-5 of the best websites that you NEED to be sharing and syndicating your content through. Although, content creation and syndication can be a time consuming task, it will have a profound impact on your link-building efforts and Search Engine Listings and rankings..

The first one on my list is Scribd.com

Scribd.com  is a collaborative document (and file) sharing  and syndication site that has huge potential to drive serious targeted traffic while significantly improving your Search listings and rankings. Scribd currently sees about 10 million unique users per month visting, posting and sharing documents. Scribd is a social community with some key distinguishing features from that of popular article directories like ezinearticles.com:

• Allows you to upload pretty much any type of document or file including PDFs, Excel Spreadsheets, Word Documents, Power Point Presentations and even image files like JPG and GIF files. This flexibility allows users to syndicate their content in ALL shapes, sizes and formats!
• Enables you to embed your uploaded documents in a blog, Facebook Profile and another external website.
• Unlimited storage space - can upload as many documents as you want.
• Quickly indexed by Google and the major SEs thus further increasing your search traffic and rankings
• Able to share documents with a private group of friends or make it completely public
• Collaborate and share feedback on each other’s documents

Scribd is a great channel for connecting with targeted groups that are relevant to your products and services. By providing awesome targeted content to your groups and across applicable categories in Scribd, this will build your reputation and ultimately increase the traffic to your respective site. Like other social media sites, Scribd allows you to tag your documents with your keywords in order to be found by the right audience.

Scribd definitely makes my top 5 list for the best content sharing and syndication channels on the net at this point. As mentioned, over the next few days,  I will feature my other top 4 content-sharing sites that you must include to your link-building strategies!

 

 

 

 

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I recently read a great post at ZenHabits.net on some productivity tips for those that work in a virtual or home office environment. You might be employing some of these strategies already, but I certainly learned a few new pointers. I actually really like ZenHabits as he talks a lot of organization and productivity, which I always need a regular dose of!

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