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6 Business Goals You Can Actually Reach, and How To Do It.

Nicole Bandes — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 15:03:14 +0000

It’s that time of year again when you put on your warm clothes (here in Arizona, that means jeans instead of shorts), drink eggnog and search for a great new year’s eve party! But it’s also that time when you come up with new year’s resolutions that you know you aren’t going to keep. I mean I vowed to learn French last year but all I have learned so far are the words, baguette and duck l’orange (from the local french restaurant).

But hey, you can’t have the same attitude with your business - it might end up as bad as my French. Setting New Year Goals for your coaching business is one of the best ways to grow it every year. Don’t try for a moonshot, instead go with something more achievable - some goal you know you won’t give up on easily.

Obviously, the goals will vary depending on your particular coaching business, but here are a few ideas to help you get started. Some of these tasks might seem daunting, but don’t worry. You can easily complete them with the help from a virtual team.

Increase Email Lists

You know those annoying emails that you keep getting from your bank asking you to get a credit card that you can’t possibly afford with your shopping habits? Yes, that means you are a victim of their mailing list. This is just one of the ways that the banks market themselves and you can do it too! Now, it is your turn to increase your email lists so you can market your products and services to others including banks as well.

Modify your website

One of the most common ways to increase your mailing list is to target the people who are visiting your website. There is a multitude of ways of getting them to your website - we leave that up to a different article. For now, focus on getting the emails of the people who do end up visiting your website.

You can ask your web designer to create screen overlays with tempting offers in exchange for their email. For example, you can offer some of your content in the form of an ebook in exchange for it. You can also restrict the content to members who can gain access through free signup using their email ID. A well designed pop up, with easy to enter email and a tempting enough offer might just lure your users to give you their emails for you to add to your personal collection.

Leverage your offline meetings

Every day, you meet people offline who can be a potential lead, so why not ask them for their email to forward them some good content. A simple way of leveraging your offline meetings is to use the business cards that you receive from people and add their emails to your list.

Alternatively, you can also use the seminars to distribute sign up forms to online newsletters so you can get their emails. Trading your business cards in for theirs is also a great way to increase the number of people on your list.

Use Social Media

Finally, you can use social media too as a great tool to ask your followers to hit you up with their email addresses so you can send some new content their way. You can publicize this through media posts or text posts. Alternatively, you can ask them to send you an email so you can reply to it while adding their address to your list.

If you want to save yourself some of the efforts, you can just ask one of your connections in the same business to do an email list exchange of sorts. It would profit both of you equally with no hard work required. This is where all the skills of networking on Facebook and Instagram that we taught you would come useful 😉

Now there is a possibility that you already had an extensive mailing list which is lying dormant somewhere in your computer. You can skip a lot of this effort and simply organize and re-engage the old email list. This would save a lot of time as well.

Pro Tip

Use an email tracker to see the people who open your email and retarget those customers only. If you keep bugging people who aren’t interested in your product you may get reported as spam.

Create an Online Program

As someone running a business, your goal should always be to make more money with the least amount of added efforts. A clever way to do this is to create an online program for the same stuff that you are teaching in seminars offline. Once your online program has started, with some effort of marketing it, you will be able to sell more by not putting in any extra effort other than when you created the content. Furthermore, it would increase your reach from a local level to a national or international one. Meanwhile, you can continue running your offline coaching business to get more revenue.

Get the resource ready

The most important thing here is to create the resource that you want to sell online. It is up to you to decide what is it is. You can either create a series of videos as tutorials or go with an ebook that you can sell to others. Both of them will require quite a bit of effort from you in the beginning. However, with the help of a virtual team, the work can be cut in half or even lower.

For an ebook, you could hire a writer and give the basic points that you would like to be covered or a detailed summary of the whole book. The writer should then be able to form the content around that. On the other hand, the videos can be created with the help of an animator with your voiceover. Alternatively, if you are too lazy, you can just skip the animation part and jump to distributing audio files. As long as you focus on making good content and not something on lines of ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’, you would be able to sell the content easily.

Create Awareness

A popular saying goes “If you’ve got it, flaunt it”. Once you are finished creating your resources, you should start marketing them on your website as soon as possible. For higher chances, start advertising your new product on social media too. Facebook has some great options that allow you to advertise online. Hire a social media marketer to make this job easy as pie.

Pro Tip

Before actually releasing your content, you can generate hype over the internet for it. This way, it should sell more. But you have to remember that the content has to be worth it. You don’t want another Fast and Furious 8 on your hands.

Write a Book

Writing a book is something everyone says they will do but no one ever gets around to it. There are a number of reasons for this, but let’s not focus on that. Instead, let’s focus on why you should start writing a book and how you can go about it.

Firstly, it would be a great way to document all (or some) of your teachings and wisdom in your field. As you are noting all of it down, there are chances that new ideas come to you kid of like how you remember the best argument during a fight after the fight is already over. It may also be possible that while you are researching for this book, you find something out that you and/or others didn’t previously know about. All of this makes the book, something of great value. You can later use this book to sell it online or offline.

One of the best times to write this book is when you feel like taking a break from all your work. That way, you will be spending your breaks productively, stepping away from procrastination and writing a book all at the same time. Of course, you can take the help of a content writer from your virtual team and fill in the gaps, beautify it or just have it proofread. Either way, at the end of this, you will have something that you can call your legacy.

Pro Tip

A book is a great introduction to you and what you offer. You aren’t likely to get rich selling your book but a well crafted and marketed book can help you get rich.

Improve Social Media Presence

As the world takes to social media to try and beat their competition, it is time you do too. There are several businesses that haven’t lived up to their potential just because they lost out in a marketing war while refusing to take things online. This year, try something different and improve your social media presence online so more people get to know about you.

Expand to other Social Media

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Reddit - I would run out of fingers and toes to count but there would still be more social media left. Unfortunately, only a few of these websites are widely used for marketing. But this doesn’t mean that the other websites are less effective. First, check if you are already using most of these platforms to share your content. If you aren’t then get started on them now!

Start by moving on to some other site, then another one, and keep going until your goals are met. This might seem like a lot of work for you, and frankly, it is. That is why virtual teams like us exist. With the help of social media marketers and influencers, you are bound to see a rise in traffic and hopefully, conversions.

Improve on current numbers

If you are already marketing yourself in most of the platforms out there, you need to come up with ways to improve the numbers. In Facebook, you should attempt to get an increase in the number of followers on your page and the percentage interacting with your post.

Similarly, for Instagram, you would want more followers and a large percent of them liking your posts or sharing them. There are plenty of ways to do this, but some of the easiest ones involve you reaching out to viewers or posting advertisements.

Be More Productive

Everyone knows that one of the best ways to earn money is to get more work done. But the real challenge is to get more work done in the same amount of time. Thankfully, I have some tips for you to ensure you don’t get overwhelmed or overworked...with some help from your friends of course.

Set definite goals

One of the key techniques in avoiding procrastination and improving productivity is to set small achievable targets. So you take a big task like increasing your site’s traffic to over 1000 visitors a month and then you divide it into smaller targets with definite time constrained goals.

This will help you achieve them in a definite amount of time and increase your productivity. The completion of these small goals overtime also gives you a small morale boost which leads to better productivity as well.

It is important to ensure that you focus on one goal at a time. Otherwise what happens is that you try and juggle all the different objectives and hardly end up achieving a few of them.

Alternatively, you could reduce procrastination by unsubscribing to Netflix. But let’s not kid ourselves, that’s never going to happen.

Pro Tip

You can incentivize yourself for completing parts of the the tasks. For some, earning more money is incentive enough. But for others it can be power naps, some snacks or, you guessed it - Netflix!

Delegate work efficiently

Sometimes when people work in a group, one person tends to take on most of the jobs because he/she feels that they can do it the best. I know I do. But this often leads to a decrease in productivity as you can’t focus properly on one task at a time and thus in a delay in completing all the tasks.

Trust your virtual team and delegate part of the work to them. This will not only reduce your workload but it will help you get more work done faster thus increasing your productivity. Similarly, remember to assign them deadlines with smaller tasks one after the other. This should keep them in check too.

Another great advantage of delegating work is that it lets you concentrate on other aspects of the business. Overall, it increases the productivity of the full team.

Have more time for family

Those that know me well, know that spending time with family is about far more than an obligation. For those that don’t know the story, in 2013, we lost a son. He was just 3 weeks from turning 18. It’s easy to get wrapped up in working to grow your business. But, if you are growing your business so that you have more time to spend with your family, don’t wait. You are never guaranteed tomorrow. You can read more about the story on our About Us page.

Besides, taking a break from work is often one of the best ways to get more motivated and come up with brilliant new ideas.

Here are a few ways with which you can start spending more time with your family.

Free up your weekends

Weekends are meant for relaxing. Anyone who says otherwise is negative company you don’t need in your life. While you should work as much as you can, your weekends should help you detox from everything. Fortunately, this is the nice kind of detox - not the herby green juice kind. Take this time off to spend time with your family. Go out with your partner (or in search of one), show your kids who is the boss in Mario Kart, or simply take a nap on the couch - anything but work.

Pro Tip

Create a working plan that your weekends are off limits and inform your customers and clients. At Virtual A Team, we build work-free weekends into our agreements from the very start.

Go on Vacations

What is the point of making money if you don’t spend it, am I right? Going on vacations is the ultimate way to tune it all out, kick back and relax for a while. At the same time, you will be making your family happy as they will get to spend uninterrupted time with you as well. You don’t need to worry about a single thing. Your virtual team back home (from all around the world) will be helping you grow your business while you are away.

Conclusion

There are several ways to boost your business starting fresh from a new year. However, not everyone follows them through. Don’t try and accomplish all the goals that were mentioned in this post. Go about it at your own pace. To recap, you can accomplish the following goals with the help of your virtual team -

Spend more time with your family whenever you can
Be more productive and efficient rather than just blindly doing more work
Write a book, preferably about your specialty
Improve your social media influence across all platforms
Increase your email list
Create an online program for your followers around the world

Finally, to conclude, I’d like to leave you with a Super Tip.

I don’t know if you realized this or not but most of the goals here are interconnected. So, if you do manage to complete one of them, the other ones will start following dominoes.

If you start being more productive, you will be able to spend more time with your family and finish writing your book. At the same time, your virtual team will help you increase your social media influence leading to a longer email list. With your content and marketing aids ready to go, you can start your own online program creating a boom in business perfect for celebrating the next new year’s eve with multiple bottles of champagne 😉

Don’t wait too long. Get ready for attacking the first goal of the new year now!

You can't be happy with just one pair of shoes! Check out these other great articles...

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Download our Ultimate Guide to Delegating Here for More Tips & Tools on How to Delegate as a Solopreneur

The post 6 Business Goals You Can Actually Reach, and How To Do It. appeared first on Virtual A Team | Virtual Business Management Services.

Get More Speaking Engagements With These 35 Expert Tips

Nicole Bandes — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 15:07:41 +0000

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I remember when I first launched my coaching business. I understood the importance of building my reputation around the skills I was coaching . A fast way to do that was to get in front of large groups of people at one time. This meant becoming a speaker and getting booked as a speaker.

Fortunately, I didn’t have a fear of public speaking (in fact, I actually really LOVE to speak in front of groups). What I did struggle with was how to get on enough stages.

Getting booked as a speaker wasn’t always easy. However, there are some great tips that can help. I’ve brought together some of my favorite speakers to share their wisdom.

Before You Start to Look

Before you even begin getting booked as a speaker, there are some important things to consider. These things will make the searching that much easier.

1) Josie Tytus - Website | Facebook

Decide what you are going to be known for and run with it. Too many speakers are all over the board with their messaging. Those who hire speakers want to know they are hiring a genuine Expert or Leader in that domain. If you're a relationship coach, talk about the value and the ROI of building strong relations and develop a body of work in that area. Don't start teaching people how to start and run a business because it's something you've done. The stronger your claim to an area of expertise, the more likely you will be the one that gets hired.

2) Sorana Blackfoot - Website | Facebook

Being a non-fiction author (best-selling gives you an extra point) can be an advantage, when people can learn about your knowledge and expertise.

3) Jan Elliot - Facebook

Pretend you are being interviewed by Oprah. You may answer her by saying, well, Oprah, the real problem is that women today (fill in the blank) and what I have found is (fill in the blank). That's your topic. Put the problem and the solution in the tile headline with a sub-headline.Grab their attention. Also, send a beautiful over-sized envelope with perfect return label, quality where even the stamp looks good), It is almost guaranteed to be opened. It contains your speaker sheet, intro letter, whatever you want to include. Keep it simple. Clean and gorgeous!

4) Meshell R Baker - Facebook

Begin with WHY. Asking yourself WHY the audience will benefit from your talk is an essential and foundational question.
I hear a lot of people talking about how speaking will build “their” business’ and client rosters; yet I rarely hear people talking about WHY their talk is impactful or helpful.

Bonus Tip:

Event coordinators will often check out your website. If your website isn’t focused on your speaking topics, there will be a disconnect and you may lose a potential booking.

Finding Places to Speak

1) Felicia Slattery - Website

One of the easiest places to find events to speak at in your community is Meetup.com. Search your area using the type of audience members you're looking for. For example, if you speak to entrepreneurs search entrepreneur, small business, start up, and work at home. You'll find a bunch of groups and right through the MeetUp platform you can contact the meeting planner. Tell them your topic title and the bullet point description of your presentation and what the audience will take away. You'll be turning away bookings!

2) Sorana Blackfoot - Website | Facebook

Getting involved in the local and national groups that target the niche market you serve or want to serve, can help build the relationships with the leaders in the group and also open opportunities to address the group at meetings.

3) Gloria Monteleone Kovac - Website | Facebook

I speak at many events and Conferences and find a great way to make a connection is by researching the type of events and audiences you would like to share your expertise with. Asking other trusted entrepreneurs what events they go to and enjoy...and that deliver quality content is a good start. I then try to attend the event/Conference and make connections with the people that are organizing/presenting the event.

4) Diane Halfman - Website | Facebook

Connect with one or more other speakers that share the same ideal client as you. Share where each of you have spoken and the results to weed out or praise great places to speak.

5) Rachel Elise Trimble - Website | Facebook

Being really consistent on social media has opened up many doors. Doing FB Lives is like a preview for what they can expect.

6) Dawn C Reid - Website | Facebook

Create and promote your own opportunities for speaking at libraries and coffee shops, partner with others, reach out to civic and faith-based organizations and let them know you are interested in being on their speaker's list. For example, I do a monthly recorded talk with guests. I also do international cruises, vendor fairs, and conferences. I am always looking for experts and other speakers. These are great ways to build your speaking opportunities. I am happy to work with you on creating a speaking opportunity strategy to get you in front of the "right" people and getting you paid to speak. Just inbox me if you want to talk to me.

7) Christine Gallagher - Facebook

Don’t forget to “work” your connections. Many times my own speaking gigs came about because I reached out to people I knew were part of certain organizations.

Bonus Tips

Don’t underestimate the value of Linkedin. If you optimize your Linkedin profile as a speaker, you may find that you receive speaker requests from event coordinators searching for speakers in your area.
There are tons of speaker’s bureaus out there. Find one or two that you can get listed on. Do your homework first, though. Not all speakers’ bureaus are created equal.
Research trade associations and local organizations.
Do an internet search for Call for Speakers.

Getting the Booking

1) Terra Bohlman - Website

Research the event's target market so you can customize your offer to speak. For example, if you know the room will be full of working mothers, change your talk title to include them. When you reach out to the event coordinator, let him/her know how you can provide value to their audience with your suggested speaking topic using this simple script:

Hi , I saw that you are hosting an event on and would love to serve your audience as your speaker if you have not secured one yet. A topic that comes to mind is "5 Work-Life Balance Secrets That Work for Modern Moms." If this feels like a fit for you, let me know and we can chat for 5 minutes on more details.

2) Amy Cochran Westbrook - Website | Facebook

Make it easy on the group. Have a short bio, topics and takeaways, and headshot ready to send. (Have your Speaker One Sheet ready to send.) You can Google "speaker one sheet" for some great visual examples.

3) Karen Joy Fritz - Website | Facebook

Offer copies of your book (if you're allowed) but don't discount them! Say you'll donate the amount of a discount to the group's preferred charity. Maintains the value of your book AND gives them an incentive to take one home.

4) Debbie Page - Website | Facebook

Determine and confirm that the organization/association or company you are pitching to has the problem/challenge you are uniquely qualified to solve. Pitching the wrong solution won’t help your reputation.

5) Gloria Monteleone Kovac - Website | Facebook

An introduction from someone often goes a long way. Keeping your initial conversation short is best as they are most likely focused on the event at that time. Suggest a conversation for the following week to discuss the opportunity for you to be a Speaker at their next event. At that point...be prepared to send them whatever information they may need...Speaker Sheet, sizzle reel, testimonials, etc. Make it clear you are interested in serving their audience in any way you can.

6) Kay Miller - Facebook

Offer an add-on workshop (such as the day before) where they can charge and earn non-dues revenue (whatever is left after they pay you).

7) Deborah Bateman - Website

Often, when a client is strapped with a lean event budget or is unable to pay my stated speaking fees, I will create a payment plan and/or barter part of the fee.

Payment Plans:

If immediate funds are short, I will accept my speaker fee in installments. Normally 50% in payable prior to the event, and the other 50% payable on the day of the event.

Bartering:

Most often, I will trade for a sponsorship or membership in their organization. I see this as a win-win, as it provides me with the added boost and exposure to the audience and creates goodwill. In addition, I have traded for resources that are tradable, things like hotel stays, spa treatments, or exhibitor products. When doing the later, I just make sure that they are commodities that I will use or can give as a gift.

7) David Cooke - Website

Have a professional videographer capture you speaking to a large group. Capture a five to eight minute segment of that talk you can share.

8) Gelie Akhenblit - Website

The reason I was asked to present is b/c I'm an expert in the ONE thing (networking) and then people would see me in the audience and book me for other organizations. It was an entire Snowbowl effect.

9) Kelsa Dickey - Website | Facebook

We reach out using a video message. Most meeting planners are bombarded with emails so we stand out this way!

Bonus Tips:

Use Twitter or Instagram to connect with the event coordinators. Often they will check direct messages on these platforms while they may not notice an email.
Make the event coordinator’s job as easy as possible. Have a form or document to gather all the details needed for the event. Touch base with them instead of expecting them to always be in contact with you.
Going for paid events? Never tell the event coordinator what your speaker fees are. Instead, ask what their budget is. There are situations where you might get paid more than you ever have.

Getting Referrals

Sometimes what you do at one speaking event will help you get additional bookings in the future.

1) Debbie Page - Website | Facebook

Have 3 clear and key take aways and immediate actions that can be implemented. While the solution is likely long term, showing how the audience/participants can take something and apply it immediately for a positive step goes a long way in separating you from the competition.

2) Kricket Cody Harrison - Website | Facebook

Make sure everything in the talk is for the audience. Your stories should pull the audience in so that they can relate to your content.
Finally, it’s easier to get booked (and paid) when you are well-practiced, not memorized. Speaking is a craft that must be worked on. The best of the best, in anything, are always honing their craft.

3) Debi Silber - Website | Facebook

Start with the intention that it's ALL about the audience and not about the speaker. It's not what you know but how you'll take what you know to inspire and empower those who need a nugget of info you have to share. Come from a place of service, overdeliver and have the event planner jumping for joy that they chose you and your message for their event and tribe 🙂

Bonus Tips:

Ask event coordinators for testimonials and referrals. You can even add these contingencies into speaker contracts.
Live stream parts of your presentation. Just be sure to ask permission from the event coordinator first. This helps others see what you are up to.
Video tape attendee testimonials to use in future marketing efforts.

There are a lot of moving parts to becoming a speaker. This holds true whether you are doing it for free, to get exposure to new audiences, or getting paid. Regardless, doing it all on your own can be super time consuming and overwhelming. You certainly can:

Get your speaker media kit ready,
Research speaking opportunities,
Contact event coordinators,
Follow up as necessary,
Prepare your slides or presentation,
Show up,
And finally, follow up with all of your new prospects and the event coordinator…

Or, you can delegate much of this work out to a virtual assistant. And, if you truly want to avoid the headaches of managing your own virtual teams, you can look to hire Virtual A Team instead.

Are you ready to start getting booked as a speaker? What are your favorite tips for others?

You can't be happy with just one pair of shoes! Check out these other great articles...

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The post Get More Speaking Engagements With These 35 Expert Tips appeared first on Virtual A Team | Virtual Business Management Services.

What is the Best Social Media for Business?

Nicole Bandes — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 17:00:02 +0000

Need some help to pick the best social media for business?

We’ve mentioned marketing strategy before and I’m sure we’ll mention it again. There are a million things to consider when putting together a marketing plan (like stock photo sourcing). One of the first and most overwhelming for many solopreneurs like you is picking the right social media platform. There are many options, from generalist giants like Facebook to more niche networks like Goodreads. How do you know where to find your audience, how to most effectively present your products or services, and what site is the best fit for you and your business? Unfortunately, that’s not always an easy question. Picking the best social media for business doesn’t always follow a “check the boxes” formula. However, here’s a game plan to help you figure out where to go.

Define Your Target Audience

First, you need to know who you’re trying to reach. Using tools like Google Analytics, Survey Monkey and Google Survey you can figure out what demographics describe your audience. The characteristics that you can discover with these tools include things like age and gender. These characteristics will help you figure out which social media networks to focus on. You should also take some time to visualize an ideal client. Who are they, what is their income, what are their pain points, and what are they looking for?

If you aren’t sure how to go about defining your target audience, this is a great time to step back and bring in a professional. This first part of your marketing plan is foundational and will make all other forms of marketing easier. Everything is built on the combination of who your target market is with what you’re marketing to them. If you don’t know either of these, we can help you get a clearer perspective before moving forward.

Discover Where They Are

Picking the best social media for business starts with finding where your audience is hanging out. Now that you know who your target audience is, how do you find them online? You may get some hints from the survey methods mentioned above. There are also numerous tools to help you figure out where your fans hang out. Tools like Social Mention and Sprout Social allow you to see where and how your brand is already being talked about. Once you know where your clients are talking about you, you can go there to nurture your brand presence.

Pew Research Center is another great resource. They report on social media use with some regularity. Their stats can give you insight into where your audience might be more likely to see your posts. If you aren’t already being talked about, you can start with research like that provided by Pew. Then you can use tools like Social Mention to gauge response when you start sharing.

Determine Where Your Products And Services Sell Best

See where your competitors are marketing their products through tools like SimilarWeb, What Runs Where, and Simply Measured. Different tools give you different data, but any of these can show you where your competitors are active and which of their ads have been most effective. Once you know, for example, that their Twitter posts bring more visitors to their website than their Pinterest posts, then you know that your audience will likely behave a similar way. This sort of insight can show you exactly where to invest your time and effort.

You can use these and similar tools to also discover where your target audience is shopping for products or services like yours. This is a strong vote for the best social media for business. Engaging on social media can put you on the right track. For example, you can ask open questions about where people would go to find a specific product or service. Quora and industry-specific forums are a great place to ask questions like this. If you keep track of the answers you get, you’ll start to get a clear image of the clients that need your services and where they shop.

Each social media site also tends to attract buyers and sellers of particular products and services. Facebook is an excellent place to start since your business’s Facebook profile can be used as an indicator for SEO ranking. No matter what you’re selling, investing your time in a business page on Facebook is a safe bet. If you do create a Facebook business page, be sure to link it to your website and other social media accounts to make sure that clients who find you there can find you elsewhere as well.

As far as other networks are concerned, B2B products and services do best on Linkedin. Travel, fashion, and health and beauty products, on the other hand, are popular on Pinterest and Instagram. Twitter is a powerful customer service platform and is a growing consumer hub. These are just some of the largest names, but there are more targeted platforms like Goodreads for books, and Care2 for social and environmental movements. Pew and other research centers can provide more in depth demographics, and the social media sites themselves often provide demographic reports to business interested in using them. Do your research, or get help from one of our experts.

Decide What Network Works Best For You

Finally, it’s important to consider what social media platform will work best for you. For some formats, it might be worthwhile to create a test or personal account before you commit. You might discover that you don’t like the character limit of tweets, or that the organization of Pinterest boards is overwhelming. On the other hand, you may learn from client interactions that you would benefit from a YouTube channel, or that your target audience is more active on Dogster than Instagram. You have time to test a few different platforms before throwing everything into a few select networks. Your favorite places lend some weight to the best social media for business because you’re much more likely to spend time there.

You should also keep in mind how many platforms you can manage. Using a tool like SmarterQueue to schedule and manage your social media presence can help stretch your time and effort. It would also be smart to consult with an expert who can help. A virtual assistant can help you pick 2-3 social media platforms and strategize your posts and marketing techniques.

If any part of this seems overwhelming, don’t worry. Virtual A Team has your back. From developing an initial plan to creating and posting the actual marketing content, we can help you make the impact you want on the best social media networks for you and your business.

Empowering Women Coaches: Why a Virtual Business Manager is Your Ultimate Business Bestie

Virtual Services For Coaches: 6 Areas You Need To Delegate Now

Online Business Manager Interview Questions You Need to Ask

The post What is the Best Social Media for Business? appeared first on Virtual A Team | Virtual Business Management Services.

Using Stock Photos for Marketing?

Nicole Bandes — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 19:00:14 +0000

Using Stock Photos for Marketing?

In my early days of business, I was uneducated about using stock photos and grabbed an image off Google for my website. I'll never forget the way my heart sank when I opened the letter from Getty Images saying that I had stolen their property and now owed them an amount of money that was unimaginable in my mind. I made the mistake many new marketers make.

But image is everything. When your clients get their first taste of your brand, it will probably be through the images you share on social media and your website. Despite having an otherwise gorgeous website, if you are lacking enough stock photos, the right stock photos, or (worst of all) proper licensing for your photos like I did, you will have a problem. We can help you avoid those issues.

First, we’ll walk through the difference between legal stock photos and Google images. Second, I’ll give you some tips on using stock photos for social media and blogs. Finally, I’m going to show you ten different websites where you can get great stock photos that you can legally use all over your websites and accounts, often for free.

Keep it Legal

Copyright law can get fairly complicated, so it’s always best to err on the side of caution. A good rule to keep in mind is to never use a picture that doesn’t explicitly say (usually in a caption under the heading “Licensing”) that you are allowed to use it for commercial purposes. Just downloading an image from Google search results doesn’t give you the chance to see if the image is “personal use only” or “free for commercial use.” That one mistake can get you in major legal trouble.

The reason for this is that a photographer, digital artist, and model might require royalties or acknowledgment. You can be sued or face other legal consequences if you haven’t looked into the licensing and model release for each image and verified that you are allowed to use it for commercial purposes.

Google has recently updated their image search as well. You can no longer download high resolution images without going directly to the site where the image is located.

This is only a minor issue, as legal images are easy to find if you know where to look. Once you obtain these images, though, how can you make sure you’re getting the most out of them?

Use Smart Strategy

Images increase social media post shares and popularity, and can even increase your clickthrough rate. However, just slapping a free stock photo on any post won’t achieve the increase you deserve. Here are some quick strategy tips:

Pick authentic photos

We’ve all seen the generic smiling office worker stock photos – studies are beginning to show that these are irritating to clients. Instead of generic photos, choose images that show messy, realistic snapshots of the activities or objects you’re targeting. Don’t be afraid to be playful.

Match your image to the content

The image you use should relate to the text in both tone (through colors and emotions pictured) and content (pictures of headphones for music, animals for pet advice).

Keep your audience in mind

Once you have the right image for your content, make sure that any models in your images, the tone of the pictures, and the social appropriateness of your photos fit what your audience will resonate with.

Don't show an office environment if your clients work from home!

Customize where appropriate

For social media posts and marketing images, you will often want to overlay text, do some image editing, and adjust size and colors to fit your brand and the medium. For example, Pinterest and Facebook have very different ideal image shapes and post content, and you’ll want to make changes to images to fit each.

Facebook

Instagram

Pinterest

Check with an expert

If you aren’t sure how to target a post for your followers, or how and when to format your images, Virtual A Team can help. From finding just the right images to customizing them to fit your purpose, you won’t have to worry.

Get the Best Pictures

If you want to find the pictures on your own before getting help using them, take a look at the following list. These are some of the most popular sites to use to add stock images to your media toolbox today:

Stocksnap.io

Stylish, high quality public domain images can be accessed on a few of these sites. This one is easily searchable. Keep an eye out for the advertised Shutterstock results when you search, as these will be paid. They’re easy to notice by the watermark. While Shutterstock costs money (see number five below), Stocksnap.io images are free.

Licensing: Any Use Allowed
Price: FREE

Depositphotos.com

Depositphotos offers high-resolution royalty-free stock photos, vector images and videos. They have a handful of free images and videos available, and the rest of their collection is available for a membership fee, or for on-demand single purchases.

Licensing: Royalty Free
Price: From $29.99 USD / month

Unsplash

A popular, gorgeous website, Unsplash offers free, authentic photos donated by quality photographers. Most images also include details about the type of camera used, focal length, and shutter speed to achieve the image.

Licensing: Any Use Allowed
Price: FREE

Death to Stock Photo

A unique stock photo site dedicated to providing a curated library of quality images. For access to the full library, you have to pay the premium membership fee. However, they will send you a set of free images each month if you give them your email.

Licensing: Royalty Free with some limitations
Price: FREE or $12 USD / month

Shutterstock

A well-known stock photo site, Shutterstock was one of the first sites I ever heard of or ended up on. They have a huge library of stock and vector images for a variety of uses, but a slightly more complicated license and membership structure than the others on this list.

Licensing: custom
Price: From $29 USD / month or $49 for 5 images

Pexels

Especially popular for social media marketing images, Pexels has become increasingly popular for their high quality stock photos. Instead of the focus on unique, authentic images that other free stock providers have adopted, Pexels has more of a general commercial appeal. Nevertheless, they have great high-resolution images and many hidden treasures in their library.

Licensing: Any Use Allowed
Price: FREE

Pixabay

This free library of images and videos is a fantastic resource for gorgeous images under creative commons licensing. This site has grown in popularity among bloggers and graphic design circles in the last year and has proven to be reliable for great images.

Licensing: Any Use Allowed
Price: FREE

Thinkstock

An older site with a lot of advertisements, Thinkstock is a partner site to Getty Images and iStock. This site is less than ideal for browsing, as it is organized more like a store. If you know exactly what you need for a marketing image, it’s an ideal and wide-ranging resource.

Licensing: Royalty Free
Price: From $184 USD / month or $99 USD for 5 images

Morguefile

With a library of mixed high- and low-resolution images, Morguefile is intended to be a resource for creatives to use for commercial or personal purposes. Many of these images will need some editing and be more useful as part of larger graphic design projects, rather than as standalone blog post or marketing images.

Licensing: Any Use Allowed
Price: FREE

Freepik

A beautiful and modern website, Freepik offers a library of over 200,000 stock photos, and a number of vectors, PSD files and icons. The licensing you have for each image depends on whether you have a free or paid membership, and what kind of image you’re using.

Licensing: depends on package
Price: FREE or from $7.50 USD / month

Take your marketing to the Next Level

If selecting and preparing stock photos for marketing isn’t your strong point, leave it to us. A virtual assistant from Virtual A Team can sift through the legal jargon to verify what stock photo can be used for your site, find the perfect image, and develop excellent marketing products from it just for you. You won’t have to worry.

If you’re going through this process alone, know we’re here if you need help at any point in the process.

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