Their CEO hunts Elephants ….bad.   They have “sexist ads”  ….who doesn’t.  There are a ton of complaints about their services, but in my world and my “small but thriving” client based Virtual Assistant Services the technical support staff at Godaddy are powerful gods who help my days flow seamlessly from website to website.

Now to be fair I have only been using their inexpensive basic hosting plans for my WordPress Blogsite clients.  Even though they say they do not offer WordPress support….every single tech guy or gal has gone above and beyond the call of duty to assist me during the day or in the middle of the night.  With patience, understanding and a sense of humor we sail through the repair of template glitches before anyone notices there was an issue.  Every single time, without fail or exception, they knew their way around WordPress and never flinched at offering support.  I know there are diehard html website supporters out there but for a lot of us a WordPress Blogsite saves so much time and money while tripling the SEO effortlessly.

I got out of affiliate marketing a long time ago because I found it more trouble than it was worth.  I have now changed my tune!  So far there are only two companies that I can say have never let me down when it comes to customer support, Godday through the phone and Elegant Themes through their forums.  Most forums are so derogatory and complicated it takes a long time to find a solution, but not with Elegant Themes.  So I now I am an affiliate with two companies at the moment.  As long as the quality of service continues for the services that I use …I am sticking with them!

As long as we are still engaging in the chip landscape we might as well get the most out of our social media efforts so they work for us instead of working us to frustration.

There are some simple things you can do to take the sting out of the process and leave you free to enjoy your business and your life.

There are also many different versions of the top 5 social media elements or tools as they all reflect the experience of the writer.

Here are my most important Social Media Elements:

1. Website/Blog
2. Facebook Page
3. Twitter
4. Linked In
5. YouTube (Video Distribution)

All of these can easily be integrated so that they enhance each other while providing a smooth transition for your audience from one to the other as they get to know you and your business.

BLOGSITES

Many are finding that turning their WordPress Blog into their Website is allowing them to quickly update their website ‘in house’.  I actually provide training as I believe in giving the power back to the people !  WordPress templates, with their built in applications and SEO make a lot of steps automatic.

FACEBOOK PAGES

Biz Pages are created from your personal page and allow you to develop relationships with potential customers. Some people are just using their page as their online presence, pointing back to it wherever they can.

TWITTER

This is the fastest way to reach the most amount of people online if of course they happen to see your tweets. I have my Twitter posts automatically posted to Facebook and also to my LinkedIn Profile. The key is to post interesting tweets and mix them up with tweets about your business. I believe in Twitter etticate which means that we should follow back those who follow us. It is easy enough to do a check on www.justunfollow.com to see who is not following you back and unfollow them. An even ratio between them inspires trust.

LINKEDIN

Over 100 million professionals use Linkedin partly because of it’s “gated-access approach” which limits the ability to make connections to an introduction through another member. One of the most important features is LI’s almost 900,000 groups another is that employers post jobs and search for potential employees.

YOUTUBE

Hiring a professional videographer to shoot a segment, ad or promo for your website is the best way to go to ensure you have the best audio and final product. If you have to keep the expenses down you can use your webcam to record yourself or put together a photo slideshow video that can act as a mini-commercial. Link it back to your site on Twitter and post it on FB, LI and everywhere else you can while while linking it all back to your website.

Here is a video slideshow I created for my client Mazza Landscaping Enterprises

The only downside to this video platform for some is the increased censoring and copyright issues. I appreciate that YT is making it easier to support the musicians who provided the music that is driving your video by linking their music to itunes for purchase.

I can walk you through some of the processes above on skype using “share screens” so please contact me if there is anything I can do to make your social media experience a joyful one!

If you start a free blog on BLOGGER you can install a beautiful third party template and with a few tweeks and image uploads make it look very professional. After you purchase your domain name it only takes a moment to point that domain name to the BLOGSITE. All of this is extremely low cost unless you want to hire someone, like a VIRTUAL ASSISTANT, to do the work for you. This is also cost effective as it would take a lot less time for us to create these sites leaving you to focus on your business.

WORDPRESS blogs have to be hosted on a paid hosting site and there is a steeper learning curve when working with their templates as opposed to BLOGGER, but the advantages to a WORDPRESS blog are numerous. One big plus is that once you have published a blog post, WORDPRESS lets the Search Engine Crawlers know your site has been updated.  Updated websites is what Search Engine’s like GOOGLE are looking for.

Another important factor in using a Blog template for a website is that each blog posting can be enhanced with SEO (search engine optimization) bringing people back to your site and building traffic.   Consumers or Potential Customers are looking for short posts that answer simple questions.  Instead of writing an article from scratch you can use your old promotional materials and just update them.

Please contact me for more information on how I can either provide these services for you or assist you in a DIY (do it yourself) website.

Both small and large business owners are perplexed when it comes to Social Media Marketing, blogging, branding and creating an Online Presence. It is understandable because the speed at which these new marketing platforms are being created  is keeping everyone in a constant game of catch up.

Speed is the operative word here as we are in fast times and the faster we can get new information online and develop relationships with our potential customers the faster our business moves forward.

Back before there was Social Media I was in Music and Film promotion. There was a simple format to promote your event through Press Releases, Press Kits, Interviews and Cross Promotion with complimentary groups, organizations and businesses. Either you had a budget for Print, Radio and TV coverage or you didn’t and  it all came down to promotional campaigns and word-of-mouth.

Today we have to think not only locally but globally as our potential markets have gone beyond the location we currently reside in.  The numbers of users on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, You Tube, and countless other platforms are astounding and with every application comes another LEARNING CURVE.  For those who tend to get frustrated learning anything new technically, especially if you cannot immediately see the benefit, Social Media Marketing can be daunting.  This is where OUTSOURCING YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE to a VIRTUAL ASSISTANT can not only keep you in the game, stress free, but the cost is far more efficient then paying a full time employee or spending a lot of your valuable time.

Setting up and creating your Online Presence on multiple platforms also includes linking them all reciprocally and maintaining regular updates.  Setting up Social Media accounts alone can take an enormous chunk out of your day.  If you are going to be distributing videos of your product or service there is a lot of video site accounts that will have to be set up even if you use a video distribution service.  An experienced virtual assistant can set up all these accounts in a shorter amount of time.

During a free  consultation I will discover your:

• Desired look of you Online Presence including website options
• Options to match that Presence with your current Branding
• Target audience/groups
• Budget
• Preferred social media platforms
• Other possible distribution vehicles such as video

Please contact me and let me know your thoughts on developing or expanding your online presence I would love to be of assistance.
 

A fast free and easy way to set up a website is on Blogger.  Free Blogger templates from 3rd parties can be beautiful.  I tell my clients who are setting up a blogsite for an extended department that is separate from their main website, to keep searching as they will know the right template when they see it.  This was one of those times.  It took a bit more tweeking of the HTML code because I wanted the “description” line to run along the left side of the template rather than under the title.  There are some limitations as there is not much room for manipulatio,  for example with spacing so I had to eliminate a lot of the SEO words.

Now to get some of these clients to actually post content is another challenge.

At 55 years in service, The Doreen Hayes School of Dancing is the longest running independently owned dance school in Canada. Miss Hayes still does not have a computer and it took years to talk her into having some kind of online presence.

I am a big fan of WordPress 3rd party templates as they work so well when designing a blog to be a website, but the domain has to be on a paid hosting site not free WordPress. WordPress does not really offer any cool free templates but you can find some great 3rd party Blogger templates and Google allows them on their free hosting site. Free templates are just that or you can make a donation which would complete the exchange and keep it in balance.

I could not find anything that represented dance for this client so I chose a city theme which pleased the client being an old Toronto Gal.  It also had to be simple so her staff could update it themselves. Now the only ongoing cost they carry for their website is her yearly domain renewal.

After having my own struggles  getting my graphic artists to quickly respond to my requests for artwork, I decided to get past my own photoshop resistance and embrace it.  As a result I am now creating headers or banner logos for my clients for their website conversions.

I converted the Mazza Landscaping Enterprises HTML website to a premium WordPress template from Elegant Themes who have amazing customer support.  This theme came with photo, text and quote feature elements which enabled us to show off their landscaping photos.

Just two years ago no one had heard of virtual assistants but they did exist.   Virtual Assistants everywhere can give appreciation to the first Virtual Assistants…Real Estate Agents.  They were the first to learn how to get their sites updated on a daily basis and fast because it was crucial to their ongoing business.

I converted an HTML website for City Alliance Real Estate & Mortgage Broker of Toronto & GTA to a Theme Forest Premium Real Estate WordPress template designed by DesignSpike. There have not been many Real Estate templates designed but this one is fabulous and I had an immediate email response rom DesignSpike when I needed technical support.  Using this template made it easier to create a more professional  Real Estate blogsite that provided the company with an easy, fast and efficient way to update the site themselves.

Paid hosts like Hostgator or Godaddy  have excellent customer support and even though they do not support wordpress almost every person in technical support are very knowledgable and supportive. This process can save any small business a lot of money, time and frustration.

The benefit of using a blog template for a site is that you can increase your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by using a blog post for every entry that includes tagging.

Welcome to my new WordPress Blogsite.  I just switched domain servers and in the process I had to let go of my Wix flash site before I created my new one.   Creating my new BLOGSITE live was not my intention but that is how it is unfolding.  My purpose here is to demonstrate how what I call “blogsites” can greatly assist small businesses with their online presence.

I was receiving a lot of complaints from frustrated small businesses owners that they either couldn’t get their website designers to respond to their requests or they were being  charged huge fees for small updates or adjustments on their HTML sites.

I suggested that they allow me to convert their HTML websites to a blog,  then with a little adjustment of the code and pointing their domain name to the blog I  could create a new website.  The beauty of this format is that, with a little training, their own staff can make the updates and simple changes without having to wait for their webmaster.  Some businesses still prefer to keep their blogs as an attachment to their websites but this method is for those who have less time and smaller budgets for website maintenance.

I will be adding more posts as I build and re-work the design of this template so  I hope you come back, and thank you for taking the time to visit.