Have you ever wondered how some small business owners do it all? How they manage to consistently post on social media, write new blog posts, wear all the hats in the business, do yoga, be present, drink green juice, etc.?
Well.. they don’t.
The struggle that many small businesses face is that they can’t do everything they’re supposed to do for their business, earn enough to hopefully make a profit, and do all the things the mental health gurus tell them to do. Still, they also can’t afford to hire someone full—time either.
That’s where a virtual assistant comes in. In other words, me (kind of).
A few years ago, I realized that I am actually really good at admin. Not mine, of course, but for other people, I’ll put the Home Edit to shame. The thing was, I am not a 9-5 kind of person. As my teachers loved to say, I have ants in my pants. I’m also the world’s worst waitress. Honestly, horrible. I sometimes left the restaurant in the minus. But I needed a side hustle while I was pursuing my radio career, so I started digging into VA work.
I initially had only one client who lived down the road from me, and I gave up. Years later, I found out about Upwork and set myself up there. Fast forward to 2020 when the pandemic hit, and I suddenly found myself with tons of clients and not enough time in the day to keep up with the admin… because you know how it goes, you always prioritize the income stream over your own stuff.
In my attempt to find a VA, it hit me. I understand why people struggle so much, and why they are so scared of hiring someone. Firstly, I reached a record high of being ghosted. Secondly, it is scary to give someone access to all of your various things. And thirdly, I didn’t actually know what to outsource to them, I just wanted them to look at my to-do list and play fairy godmother.
The truth is, there is so much information out there about hiring a VA, but you’re a busy person and you wouldn’t be thinking about hiring someone if you had days and days to pour over articles about it.
So, let me answer a few of the frequently asked questions about VAs.
The most obvious likely being when you should hire someone. Here’s how I break down the calculation for clients — if you are being paid hourly, then time is money. By freeing up more time, you can make more money. Eventually, ideally, you’d be able to use that free time to live the life you want, but this is a simple way to look at it. I’ll attempt some quick maths here:
Let’s say you earn $30 per hour and scheduling your social media posts takes you 4 hours – it’s costing you $120 to write that post. If you hire a VA for $10/hour, you save yourself $80. Or on the wellness front, you free up four hours to do whatever you like. That’s 12 episodes of a show, or 12 HIIT workouts, or 80 children’s books.
The next question I get often is “what can you do?” It’s really a tricky one to answer because it varies from VA to VA. I am a journalist by trade, so creative writing is easy for me. I can make pretty things on Canva. What I can’t do is the technical side of things. For example, I can give you consistency on social media, but I don’t handle ad spend.
When you are thinking about hiring a VA, look at your to-do list and highlight all the things you think someone else could do. Then look at the things that stress you out the most, and take the most time. Now, when you interview the person you can find the right fit for YOUR list.
Then, I also get asked how you find a virtual assistant.
Many of my clients are referrals, so you could reach out to other small business owners and see if they have someone they trust. Alternatively, you can use a platform like Upwork or Fivver but I’d recommend checking the freelancer’s reviews and knowing beforehand if time zones matter to you. It is completely acceptable to ask for a video call to vet them beforehand, but where possible, keep it on the platform so that if there are any problems, they can step in.
Finally, set boundaries. Communicate your online times, your expectations, your preferred platforms. At the same time, have boundaries surrounding the information you share. You could ask them to sign an NDA, and use something like LastPass for your passwords.
If you have any other questions, feel free to get in touch with either myself or Tiffany and we will be happy to help!
Until next time,
Contact Vicki here, or work with her through Upwork.
Consistent posting on social media can be a full-time job; in fact, searches for social media professionals grew by over 1000% on LinkedIn!
As a small business owner, your content needs to be of high quality to post with purpose, but how do you run a business and take on a full-time job that you aren’t directly being paid for?
Here’s a little secret that the top digital marketers don’t share: you can repurpose your content without your audience noticing.
The keyword here is “repurpose,” not recycle. Repurposing is taking existing content and making it appear fresh and new. It can also be taking content from one particular platform and making it suitable for another.
For example: using a quote from a blog post for an Instagram post.
Step 1: Create a long-form piece of content
A training video is the best piece of long-form content you can do because it opens the door to many other content pieces.
Record a video based on relevant, quality content. When you are scripting the video, highlight parts that could stand alone.
For example:
If you look at the topics in this video, they can be broken up into smaller, bite-size pieces.
If you aren’t sure how to find the topics, read this.
Step 2: Extract the audio to create a podcast
Of course, if the content needs images or video to make sense, this won’t work, but it’s also a good reminder to create some content that can be used as audio-only.
Step 3: Turning the long video into shorter Instagram videos
You will most likely need to do some basic editing on the video you have recorded. When you do this, you can highlight 60-second snippets for Instagram videos.
You can then use Canva to make them look more professional and fresh.
Top Tip:
Frame.io is excellent for dropping notes on specific points in the video for the editing stage, especially useful if you use a freelance video editor.
Step 4: Turn the podcast into an audiogram.
You can create a graphic like this in Canva.
And then use something like Wavve to add audio to it, with a sound wave along the bottom.
For example:
Image created in Canva, audio added in Wavve
Step 5: Turning the video into a blog
Now that you have the training video, you can use the script to rewrite it as a blog. If you don’t have the original script, you can use Otter to transcribe it and then fix the transcription up.
Step 6: Turning the blog into Instagram posts
When you do the blog writing, highlight key quotes that could be useful on their own.
You can then head over to Canva and create beautiful quotes to post on social media. Just remember to use the template for the social media you are posting on to make the size right.
Step 7: Turn the blog into a lead magnet
You can repurpose your blog posts into downloadable lead magnets as well. For example, this blog could become a PDF workbook or cheatsheet that I could post on my website for free in exchange for the user’s email address.
Step 8: Turn the videos into a course
Tuning your video content into a course is much easier than it sounds. You can then either upload it to an e-learning platform like Udemy or post it on your website.
Once you have created a series of videos, you can use each video as a lesson in the course. You can build on the content slightly more in the text of the lesson to add more value and create assignments. Then, you can offer the student a certificate and encourage them to share it on their social media, so it becomes another form of advertising for your website.
The key to repurposing content is planning the content out beforehand to start with something that can be repurposed.
When you make your content plan, consider this diagram:
I hope that you find this saves you some time in your content planning and posting. Let me know if you have any questions or comments about repurposing for social media.
It is a link that could direct traffic from your Instagram bio to your website, or other social media channels. It was used mostly because Instagram didn’t allow more than one link in a user’s bio. There are a few similar options, like linkinbio, which is made by Later.com.
Image from https://linktr.ee/
Why Do You Need an Alternative?
Early last year, Instagram suddenly started marking Link Tree links as spam, which meant that people were back to square one. The good news is that there is a way around it that actually makes more sense – creating your own Instagram landing page on your website.
It is easy to do, with no extra cost and you can maintain your brand guidelines.
Follow These 3 Easy Steps:
1. Create a page on your website
The page must be unlinked so that it doesn’t show up in your menu bar. Depending on what you use, it may vary on how you do this.
Since you can build it yourself instead of using a site like Link Tree, you can customize the fonts, colors, and images to fit your brand guidelines.
Put either your logo or a picture at the top of the page and your Instagram handle underneath. Then create blocks that link through to the pages you would like to direct people to. Instead of having any of my social media channels in those blocks, I chose to use small buttons at the bottom for that.
You can decide which you’d like to do, but remember, if you are directing people on social media to your lead magnets, these should take top priority.
Once the design is done, you can add the link to your bio.
Before you direct people to it, test each button to make sure that it has linked correctly. Although Link Tree is back up and running, this is a great way to create a well-designed Instagram Landing Page that is on brand and high-converting!
Let me know if you try to create one yourself, and how it goes.
Today I’m going to be addressing a question that might have popped into your head when you heard the words ‘lead magnet’. Perhaps you are just starting with funnels, and you’re looking at implementing a lead magnet into your website and your online business. You’ve probably come across the question, how many lead magnets?
You may be thinking of making one, maybe three lead magnets. But, actually, research has shown that 15 lead magnets is the magic number. Now, when you hear that number, you’re probably thinking, “How on earth am I going to create 15 lead magnets? And why do I need so many? I’ll just think of making one.”
You may also be wondering why do you need so many lead magnets, we’ll have a think about this.
Who Are Your Clients?
If I were to ask you who your ideal client is, you’ll likely answer that you don’t just have one type and they all have different needs.
So, if you can create a lead magnet addressing those needs, you are addressing those different potential clients. People are also going to be in different stages of the buying journey.
You may have a person who needs a little nudge and confirmation before they make the purchase, to show what is important and valuable for them. And, you may also have someone who doesn’t know anything about you and needs to know more. They need to know why they should choose you. For these two examples, you would need two entirely different lead magnets. In this case, one size doesn’t fit all.
You can have one or two really big ones, one or two that provide the biggest value. The other ones are more supporting lead magnets, for example, in a blog post.
Let’s say you’re writing a blog about the top 10 things you need to think about when cleaning your car, you could attach a cheat sheet lead magnet. The reader then won’t have to go through the whole article, they can just quickly download it. It could look something like this:
They can print it out and keep them with them in the car if they so wish.
What Does a Lead Magnet Do?
A lead magnet helps a visitor get ready to buy from you. That’s what you need to think about when you’re creating a lead magnet. You can ask yourself:
What do they need in their particular stage?
Do you want them to actually convert to buy something or to sign up for your service?
Once you’ve answered those questions, you need to come up with lead magnet ideas. How do you do this? How do you know what to create?
I use this process:
Write down 10 problems your ideal client faces, and then think about what types of content will solve that problem quick quickly.
Those are your lead magnets. If you feel that’s too much, don’t start with all 10; just take it one by one. You don’t have to do it all in one go, you can focus on one or two.
If you need more help with lead magnets, check out my earlier blogs, or feel free to reach out to me.
Blogs aren’t just an impressive tool for your clients; they’re also a great way to get you up in the rankings in Google. Of course, they need to be relevant topics to have an impact. So how do you come up with blog topics?
It’s a lot simpler than you may think.
Google it
First of all, we will be using Google. It will tell you what to write by using Google populate. Don’t worry; it’s nothing fancy but good old Google.
When you type something related to your topic, it will show you a list of phrases people are searching for.
Here’s an example:
If you have an aesthetic or skin care clinic, you will start by searching for something like “winter skincare.” Already, it will give some suggestions of topics:
Step 1: Search a Relevant Phrase
Step 2: Choose One of The Suggestions
Let’s pick “dry skin” and “winter” since this is one option of what people are searching for. But, this is a vast topic so let’s refine it. If you click in the search bar again, it will show you an even more specific subject.
Step 3: Look at What People Are Asking
From here, you can also look at “People also ask” to get other topic ideas that you know people are searching for. And these themselves can also lead to even more ideas.
Step 4: Go Even Further
You can then also scroll down to the bottom of the page and look at this section:
When you do this, Google will show you the things that people want to know about. And if you are clever, and you tune into it, you have all the information here.
Step 5: Implement The Topics
For the example above, I would suggest writing an article about how to prevent dry skin in winter naturally. And then, I will include headings within the blog article, such as addressing questions like, “is it normal to have dry skin during winter?” That should be a paragraph in your blog. You can do another part under home remedies with a heading about it.
You don’t have to use these phrases word for word. Instead, you could say something like, “Home Remedies To Get Rid of Dry Skin.” Google will still understand that it is addressing the question.
Other Tools For Keyword Searches
There are tools available that will give you more details, like the volume of search traffic. These tools can get quite pricey. There are free versions; however, they will be limited in features. If you are a solo entrepreneur and have your own business, you’re probably watching what you spend your money on. It is unnecessary to pay for the pro versions because Google will tell you everything you need to know.
Keyword Tool is excellent to use but, they use the information that Google gives them, which is effectively Google populate. They take this one step further and provide you with search volumes. KeywordTool also lets you search what YouTube is showing for the topic.
Ubbersuggest has a feature for content ideas as well, but as I said, it is not necessary to pay for these tools; you can just use Google populate. Of course, if you decide you want more than that, you can do a free trial first.
Targeting The Right Location
It may look like you need a tool to make sure your location is correct, but you can do this with Google as well.
Start by opening a new incognito window, and use Google relating to the country you are targeting. For example: If you are in the UK, make sure you use www.google.co.uk
The blog topics should be what your target audience is searching for. Location is important.
How to Plan Your Blogs
It’s a good idea to group your blogs by themes and plan them twelve months in advance. If we use the skincare clinic:
When you are planning out your blogs and themes, you would consider the seasons. It wouldn’t make sense to talk about winter skincare in summer!
I hope that has helped you out and inspires you to go ahead and plan out your blogs. Find out what people are searching for and get writing because content is queen.
When I speak about lead magnets, I have seen people’s eyes glaze over. Often, they have no idea what I am talking about. This is absolutely normal, so don’t feel bad if you can relate to this. In fact, there are terms in the online marketing world that I have to look up sometimes, even though it is my forte´ because there are just so many.
The Why, Who, What, and How
The ‘why’
There is so much going on online that it makes it difficult to get people’s attention. You need to stand out. Competitors are vying for attention, and there are so many distractions (like social media). We need to build a connection with our users, and that’s where lead magnets come in.
Did you know that most visitors to your website will leave after 15 seconds and they’ll never return? With this in mind, you need something to start building that connection with them so that they do come back, they do get to know you, and you build their trust and eventually convert them into a lead in a sale.
A lead magnet also shows why they should choose your business to solve their problem as opposed to competitors.
Lead magnets should be created to connect with the people who visit your site. You want to stop them from leaving after those 15 seconds. Who would get value out of your offer?
The ‘what”
Photo by Vlada Karpovich from Pexels
Simply put: a lead magnet or freebie is a free item or service that you give to a user in return for their contact details.
As I mentioned, to stand out you need to create a connection, and building a list is the first step. It’s not just as simple as asking people to sign up for a newsletter though, because email is personal so not many people choose to do that. Someone allowing your emails to pop up in their inbox is a privilege. It’s rare to find someone who wants to be spammed with how amazing a business is all the time. This takes us to the “how”.
You need to give something of value that will make the visitor feel comfortable enough to give their email address. You do this by creating a lead magnet with a high perceived value, that leads the person to feel like they got something great for free.
But it’s actually nothing, it’s their email address, but there’s no monetary exchange. They get a result immediately; they get the instant gratification that they can act on now that will solve a problem they have right now.
5 Types of Lead Magnets
There are lots of different types of lead magnets, but I’m going to give you five examples that will help you get your brain going and give you some ideas.
Training Videos
An Example of Training Videos
Generally, when someone doesn’t purchase from you, it’s because they’re not ready, and they are lacking the information that they then feel ready to purchase from you. Education is an important building block of that. If you can give a short training video on how to use your product or how they can do something to make their lives easier. That is a great lead magnet.
Free Consultations
Sometimes people have questions and doubts but they don’t want any financial commitment attached to find out more. And, a free consultation with you will answer those questions and clear up any doubts that they have in their mind which will get them ready to actually purchase from you.
Checklists and Cheatsheets
These are generally a one-page PDF. It helps to cut through the noise and saves time on Googling how to do something. It will also make a connection to your business and your service, and how you can help them. People don’t want to be reading a whole 100-page book. They just want quick, fast, instant results. So a checklist in their cheat sheet is just a no-brainer. People will quickly download that.
Quizzes
Quizzes are very, very powerful. They’re actually one of the highest converting lead magnets we have online. Although they are sometimes difficult to set up and it’s quite a process, people love learning about themselves. The results of the quiz will show them how your service will actually help them at whatever particular stage they’re at in their lives.
These are a bit longer than the cheat sheets and checklists and they give a bit more information. But again, they don’t have to be 100 pages long, maybe four or five pages. In it, you give them a backstory, and how to do something in a more elaborate way than the PDFs.
Rethink Lead Magnets
You now have five examples of lead magnets to use for your business so that you don’t have to go with just asking people to sign up for your newsletter. Remember, you won’t grow your email list that way, because they want something in return.
If you have the right lead magnet that solves a problem for your ideal customer, you will grow your list. If you haven’t thought about lead magnets and how they can build your business online, give this some thought. I hope that you now feel more comfortable when you hear the term lead magnets and it has also sparked some ideas of what you can use in your own business so that you can grow your list. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to get in touch with me.
