Despite the title of his blog, Patrick Schaber of Lonely Marketer is not lonely whatsoever. He’s running a popular blog, is part of a team of branding experts that just launched BrandingWire, and is a full time marketing manager for a successful hardware manufacturing firm. Pat is a master of branding and marketing in the highly competitive tech arena and offers a no-holds-barred look at what makes some businesses popular while other struggle for visibility and business.

Like many successful bloggers, Pat says that he began blogging wondering if anyone would ever read what he had to offer. However, Pat’s expert insight on marketing quickly made Lonely Marketer a favorite blog among bloggers and business owners looking for smart ways to boost their visibility and build their brand image.

“I didn’t go into this thinking that anyone would read my content,” says Pat. But when he read a post by favorite blogger Matt McGee at Small Business SEM listing the Lonely Marketer as one of the 5 new blogs he was reading, he knew he was onto something.

Pat faced a challenge experienced by many online bloggers- striking a balance between sharing business insight and exposing his company’s strategies to the competition. Not only were the businesses owners and bloggers that he wanted to help reading, his insider knowledge was also readily available to any of his employers competitors to indulge in freely.

Soon traffic and readership levels to Lonely Marketer increased to a point where he felt it necessary to let his employers in on his project. Luckily, his company is a big believer in blogging. The success of Pat’s blog has inspired them to launch a corporate blog in the coming months.

Corporate Blogging: Striking a Balance Between Personalization and Too Personal

Many businesses have concerns and questions about the role of a blog in their business communications. Pat says that one of the most important elements of any blog, business or not, is to have well defined personalities and profiles of its authors.

If readers aren’t able to connect, they may not come back. There is a risk of the personality developing badly and turning people off. But the rewards far outweigh the risks. “If you’re producing content that is relevant to their job, readers are going to engage,” says Pat.

But how much personality is too much? As Pat warns, there is always a risk of going too far. At the same time, there is also the potential that one personality will become too dominate and define the brand of the blog itself. Were this personality to leave, they could potentially take the brand and the business with them like what occurred with Danny Sullivan and his departure from Search Engine Watch.

Pat’s Advice for Business Bloggers

Pat’s advice for business bloggers is solid and a must read for any company currently blogging or thinking about blogging. Pat says:

Have multiple contributors: Different people will connect with different personalities. People will come and go within the company so it’s not safe to rely on one dominant personality.

A variety of personalities: Pat says that defining the ideal business/personal personality can be difficult to develop. The personality should be professional, yet engaging.

Have a dedicated and detailed about page: Readers want to know from whom they’re getting advice. Does the writer have credentials? Can they relate to you personally? What are your reasons for blogging? I don’t think that labeling a post with by so and so is enough. It’s important that the name link to a bio page why not have a personality? When I can’t find a good bio page on a blog, I normally don’t stick around.

Consistency: Even with multiple contributing personalities it’s important to strive for a consistent approach. Don’t go for all of the same personality types however, instead, strive for a consistent approach with mixed personalities.

Assign a moderator: With so many different personalities and the fine line between personalization and getting too personal, use a single moderator to review posts before they go live.

Have an opinion: Businesses have got to take a stance and can’t be afraid to state their opinion. That doesn’t mean they have to bash anyone I try to find something positive, but if I’m going to reference something on my site, I’m going to add my opinion.

Step off the pulpit: One of the most compelling things about Pat’s blog is that although he’s a professional, he is open to ideas and opinions from his readers. I’m always looking for alternate views. Who is going to come to listen to you preach? I’m not on a pulpit. I’m interested in getting feedback from the community.

Provide Actionable Content: Write content often that people can read and then implement immediately to see results.

Don’t go overboard with promotion: People come to your blog primarily to read content that relates to them and how they can improve some aspect of their life, not to read your marketing material. Instead, try to maximize the engagement. Draw your target market in deeper with engaging content. Engage and converse and convert.

Prepare to do the time: Blogs are time draining. Time is money. You have to define your goals, understand your goals for the site, and understand what your outcomes could be and what is going to define a positive result.

Redefine ROI: If you’re at a traditional company, no doubt the boss will ask what’s the ROI on this blogging thing? Pat says the businesses must define an ROI on engagement. An ROI on engagement might mean number of comments, inbound links that help the site’s optimization, bounce rate vs. high click through rates, or number of subscribers.

Pat’s Recommendations for Businesses on Tight Marketing Budgets

As a marketing manager for a small company, Pat gets to dabble with all kinds of tools from Pay per Click, to print ads, to creating a presence at tradeshows. But what about those of us that don’t have deep pockets for marketing?

“You don’t have to have thousands of dollars to create a great campaign,” Pat says offering his top picks for budget spending for companies with marketing budgets of $100 to $500 per month:

Press releases: Using PR Web, you can get your press release in front of thousands of readers for anywhere from $80 to $200.

Blogging: He uses WordPress, calling it one of the best platforms out there, which costs only your investment in time and the hosting should you decide to host off of WordPress free hosting platform. Set up a blog and start creating buzz online.

Go for longtail keywords in paid search: You don’t have to put a lot of money into paid search by executing smart strategies. You can get away with a couple hundred bucks a months by focusing on longtail keywords. You may only get a couple hundred clicks, but they will be a couple hundred better qualified people than using more generalized search terms.

Optimize landing pages: One of the biggest money wasters is to not optimize landing pages that are linked to your paid ads. Make sure that landing pages deliver on what the ad says they will.

Social Media: The key to social media is getting people who are well connected to link to your content. Become connected in the social media networks.

Relevant, interesting content: One thing Pat mentioned several times is that content is king. The phrase may be becoming clique, but its truth is absolute.

The Lonely Marketer and Branding Wire are both a goldmine of useful information for anyone serious about marketing their business and strengthening their brand. And this marketer says that blogging itself is one of the most powerful tools for doing both. Believe it or not, the Lonely Marketer has only been online for six months at the time of this post. In that time period, he has made a number of important business connections and met a great deal of professional friends and contacts.

Lots of people are trying to calculate the ROI on blogging, but no one has successfully accomplished this yet. I foresee that blogging will produce positive results for businesses that we aren’t even aware of right now.

This is NOT a sponsored interview

Avoiding Virtual Assistant Performance Pitfalls Part II

In my last article, Virtual Assistant-Hiring Pitfalls we explored the common hot water items companies face when hiring virtual assistants and how to avoid them. Now it’s time to talk about possible performance pitfalls and how we can protect ourselves and the virtual assistant when hiring.

What’s really most important when hiring a virtual assistant is doing your due-diligence before you make the hire. Just like anyone else, virtual assistants come with their own personality, life issues, and family situations. Making sure they mesh with what you need are paramount to ensuring smooth sailing after you’ve finally agreed to work with the VA.

Virtual Houdini – The Virtual Assistant Disappearing Act

Yes, it can happen. Back when you worked in the retro bricks-and-mortar world, how often did someone simply not show up for work? They quit, right? Unfortunately this can happen with virtual assistants as well. Perhaps not as often as in the bricks-and-mortar world but it does happen.

Why do virtual assistants quit, disappear, and move on? They do, for the same reasons they quit, disappear, and move on in the bricks-and-mortar world. Maybe they needed more money. Maybe they became ill and could no longer work. Maybe a better offer came along. Maybe they didn’t like the work.

You can’t entirely avoid the situation itself but there are things you can do to minimize the damage if and when it does. Protecting yourself ahead of time for when it does and realizing that it could happen is your best defense.

• Online files. Not only does putting your files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) online facilitate working virtually, but it also protects you if and when a virtual assistant leaves. Simply change the passwords then she’s locked out and you don’t lose any files or have to go hunting them down. Check out www.xdrive.com or speak with your website administrator about putting your files up via ftp.
• Pay withholding. Why not put something in your contract with the virtual assistant that says you reserve the right to withhold pay until work files are returned?
• Passwords. As soon as a virtual worker leaves or is let go, remember to change your passwords on everything he or she had access to!

What I Say Versus What I Can Do

Would you hire someone to watch your children just because they say they’re capable of doing so? I didn’t think so. Then why would you hire a virtual assistant (or anyone for that matter) without first finding out what they can do and if they can do what they say they can do? I recommend several steps be taken to test a new virtual assistant contractor before contracting with them. These steps are modeled after our own company’s interviewing process, which has evolved over the years. It’s a lot of work on your part but very worthwhile. If you don’t want to take all of these steps then look for a good virtual staffing agency, like Team Double-Click^SM who does all of the work for you.

However, be absolutely sure that you send the virtual assistant a 1099 Miscellaneous Income tax form (in lieu of a W2, which employees only receive) each year.

1. Job posting. In your case you’ll either need to make a posting on a job board, such as CareerBuilder.com, Monster.com, or Craig’s List. Or you can search those boards for virtual assistants looking for work.
2. Typing test. You want to know your new virtual assistant can type…accurately, right? Send him or her to www.typingtest.com and ask for the results back. Look for a high level of accuracy coupled with high speed.
3. Computer skills test. Again, you want to know your virtual assistant can use Word and Excel. Send her to www.expertrating.com, ask her to take the free Word and Excel (and any others you want to know about) tests and send you the scores.
4. First interview. Agree on a time and date for the first telephone interview. Then give the potential virtual assistant your number and have her call you. Have your questions ready. Did she show up on time? Did she answer your questions to your satisfaction? Do her skills still fit?
5. Work personality. You simply must know if the person you are about to contract is honest, has a high level of integrity, is a team player, and so on. We recommend www.totaltesting.com, where you can ask the potential virtual assistant to take such a test. Now this one costs a few bucks. It’s up to you whether you want to pay for it or require the virtual assistant to pay for it. Just remember – if you ask her to pay for it and you don’t hire her she’s not going to be a happy camper.
6. Second Interview. The cool thing about Total Testing’s work personality tests is that they give you another set of questions to ask the candidate during a second interview. Have a friend, spouse, or colleague interview this person the second time. Compare notes. How does each of you feel about this person? Will she work out?
7. Contract. If you’re ready to contract this person it’s time to pull out the non-compete, non-disclosure contract we discussed in the last article. Send it to the virtual assistant for review and signing. Be absolutely sure this is signed before putting him or her to work.
8. EIN and W9. We also discussed, in the last article, requiring the contractor to obtain a (free) EIN (employer identification number) to further protect you from possible employer/employee claims later on down the road. Now’s the time to ask for this, along with a completed W9 form.

This is the abbreviated version of our process. We throw in a few things like setting up a company email account, and we have a review process, which each virtual assistant goes through. A team of three HR pros discuss each candidate and determine if a contract will be offered. Because we’re a staffing agency, your screening process will look a little different from ours.

Give Me All You Got

Never send a virtual worker a ton of materials (letterheads, envelopes, brochures, etc.). It’s just a safeguard. While it is very rare that someone would leave and not return those materials to you, if they did, how much money would you have tied up in replacing all of those expensive printed materials? It’s just better not to do it in the first place. Send a virtual worker slightly more than what they need to perform the task at hand.

The Five Finger Discount – Identity Theft/Credit Card Number Theft

One of our clients’ biggest concerns has always been identity theft and credit card number theft. In all the years we’ve been staffing virtually, we’ve never seen this happen. It may be that the work personality profile is weeding out the people who might be tempted and our HR department is further ferreting out those who are less-than-desirable, but the other half of it is the contractor mentality of a virtual assistant as opposed to the employee mentality of an…employee!

You can minimize your risk by not giving out your credit card information to a virtual assistant. If you need to give the virtual assistant a credit card number for ordering products or services on your behalf, get a separate card that is used for nothing but items the virtual assistant orders for you. It’s much easier to check over your bill for erroneous charges this way.

Hours Availability

When hiring a virtual assistant, not only do you need to make sure their skills and abilities mesh with you and your business, but you must also be sure the virtual assistant has enough time to take care of your needs. Very simply ask the potential virtual assistant how many other clients she has, how many hours per week she is working, and how many hours she has to devote to you. Does it work with what you need? If not, move on.

The Rate

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never bought something without first knowing what it was going to cost. Important questions to ask before contracting a virtual assistant:

1. What is the rate per hour?
2. Are there different rates for different tasks?
3. If so what are they?
4. Do you round to the nearest hour or the nearest minute? To the nearest minute is the most desirable.
5. Is there a start up fee?
6. If so, how much?
7. Is there a termination fee?
8. If so, how much?
9. Is there a minimum usage?
10. If so, how much?
11. Can you work within my budget? In other words, if I can only afford 10 hours per week, what happens when you’ve reached 10 hours? How is that handled?
12. What are your future plans? How long do you intend to be a virtual assistant? Is this a career for you or a short-term venture for some extra cash?

My philosophy when hiring anyone, virtual assistants included, is to hire slowly and fire quickly. Trust your gut. If you don’t feel that a virtual assistant is working out, let her go immediately and don’t look back. Your gut is probably right. But do take your time hiring. Go through the paces to determine if he or she is the best fit for YOU; it’ll minimize the risk that he or she won’t work out for you later.

Guest Post by: Gayle Buske, President and CEO, Team Double-Click
Team Double-Click, Inc. provides virtual assistance for small and home-based businesses. Visit Team Double Click’s Web site at http://www.teamdoubleclick.com or phone 888.827.9129. Click to receive your free report, 101 Ways To Work With A Virtual Assistant.

If you would like to be a Guest Poster, contact David @ Create Business Growth dot com.

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