Virtual Communication: Is it as good as the real thing?
Posted in Rob Cameron | 
Tags: Albert Mehrabian, Communication channels, Social media, verbal signals, Virtual communication | 
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When to say goodbye to your clients
Posted in Business planning | Tags: Customer service, high maintenance clients, Pareto, PITA, work life balance | 2 Comments »
The difference between having a logo and building a brand
Posted in Ces Loftus, Marketing | Tags: brand buzz, building a brand, Ces Loftus, difference between logo and brand | No Comments »
Fantastic Competition coming to intelligentVA
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: intelligentVA, intelligentVA launch, resources for VAs, va competition, VA support, VA training | 1 Comment »
Case Study: Virtually Anywhere – my journey so far
Posted in Home Working, Jade Pluck | Tags: setting up as a Virtual Assistant, starting out as a VA, tips for new VAs, VA case study | 3 Comments »
The Complete Guide to guest blogging, growing your traffic and boosting your business – Part Two
The Complete Guide to guest blogging, growing your traffic and boosting your business – Part One
Top 10 Tips for VAs with WordPress Websites
by Nikki Pilkington
It’s a well known fact that WordPress is becoming the web ‘design’ package of choice for many industries, but I come across a huge majority of VAs using and recommending it. Easy to update, a plethora of themes, and a plugin for anything you can think of; it’s pretty much perfect once you get the hang of using it.
But talking to my VA friends (and other industries too I hasten to add) it seems that there is some confusion when it comes to how to use WordPress in the best way for SEO; so here are my top ten tips for SEO for WordPress.
1) If your theme doesn’t come with built in SEO options, install an SEO plugin. There are many out there; some free, some paid for, but the basic thing that they all need to do is allow you to change the title of a page and a blog post to something different to the name you have given it, allow you to add a META description tag, and in some cases allow you to add a META keywords tag.
These are the most important aspect of SEO (alongside good copy) – your Title is what helps Google decide where to ‘put’ you for your keyphrases, the META description is the description that shows when your listing shows up, and some search engines still use the META keywords tag to help your listing.
2) Don’t try to over optimise – you can’t stash all of your keywords in one page and hope for the best. Create a different page for each of your services, and using the SEO plugin, optimise it for one or two keyphrases. There are many tutorials on the web telling you how to construct titles and meta descriptions, it’s a little too much to go into here 
3) Sort out your permalinks. By default WordPress names your pages with numbers and characters – you want them to be named with words – preferably the words you’re using as keyphrases. Permalinks are in the settings options and again you should be able to find a good tutorial on how to make the best of them.
4) Think about your content. Make sure the content contains your keyphrases high on the page, and in links from other pages. Don’t spam the copy; mentioning the keyphrases 2 or 3 times should be fine.
5) Use the H1 tag. Most themes make the name of the page H1 by default – use this to your advantage by naming your page effectively. “Services” is not a good page name. “Virtual Assistant Services” is better. “Virtual Assistant Services for Accountants” is even better. Be focused and niche rather than generalised and risk losing out in such a competitive area.
6) Blog! Blogs add decent content to your site, Google loves blogs, and they’ll generate interaction. No-one is saying you have to blog every day, but once or twice a week keeps your site ticking over and the mighty G happy. Consider signing up to my 30 Day Blogging Challenge for inspiration.
7) Track everything. Install a good stats package such as Clicky (which allows you to track visitors in real time) or Google Analytics (which makes you wait to see your stats until the next day). Test what works, what brings visitors to your site, and do more of it.
Use Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to the site. Not strictly SEO, but a great way to get traffic. Don’t just post your own links – share stories, other people’s info and thoughts and observations – build relationships, Twitter and Facebook are not broadcast facilities.
9) Guest blog. A guest blog on another site will bring you incoming links, a new audience and new readers. Approach other VAs, clients, website you admire, and ask if you can provide them with an educational and informative blog. This is not a self promotional exercise, it’s to build awareness. In most cases you get an author bio at the end – use it well.
Which brings me to my last point
10) Learn about anchor text. This is where you link a keyphrase to your site with a hyperlink. So, rather than having “Jane Doe is a Virtual Assistant working primarily with SMEs. ‘Click here’ for her website”, you would have “Jane Doe is an ‘SME focused Virtual Assistant’ and you can find her online in a variety of places including Facebook and Twitter” or something like that. There’s more about anchor text here
So there you have it – ten tips that are by no means the be all and end all of SEO, but will help you to get a grasp on it. I’m happy to answer any question in the comments.
Author bio
Nikki Pilkington is owner of Social Media Marketing Support agency NikkiPilkington.com, based in the UK and France. She has 2 daughters 18 years apart, multiple cats and not enough chickens. You can find her on Facebook (/nikkipilkington) and Twitter (@nikkipilkington) as well as on her own Internet Marketing blog
Posted in Marketing, Nikki Pilkington | Tags: SEO for virtual assistants, Wordpress for virtual assistants, Wordpress SEO | 4 Comments »
E-Mail Marketing Tools – MailChimp
Email marketing is a minefield. A lot of people assume they can send email marketing to anyone they like, to anyone who has ever given them a business card at a networking event, or someone they have found an email address from on the internet.
It’s not that easy. If you send email in that manner you will be reported as a spammer and probably blacklisted at the least, not to mention the ill will that unsolicited email causes. I have seen an instance recently when someone purporting to be a specialist in the field emailed people who had never given permission. When the recipients subsequently reported this as spam and complained it caused a lot of damage to the senders reputation.
So how can you do email marketing and stay safe? The best way is to use an email marketing system that allows your subscribers to opt in. Here at intelligentVA we use MailChimp. MailChimp allows you to create a sign up form that you can embed into your website. When a new subscriber signs up they receive an email asking them to confirm their subscription. This is known as a double opt-in. You can add subscribers manually but you must ensure that if you are ever asked you can prove that the subscriber gave permission for you to send them mail.
One of the best forms of email marketing is a newsletter. MailChimp allows you to create different templates and subscriber lists for your different communications. You can also send one off offers and notices via MailChimp as well.
MailChimp integrates with CapsuleCRM, the cloud based CRM system. From within your CapsuleCRM you can manage which lists your contacts appear on, remembering of course that you must have permission to have added them to your mailing list.
In order to cut down on spam MailChimp will not allow you to add via CapsuleCRM or import email addresses that are generic such as mail@, enquiries@ or sales@, however, you can add them manually via MailChimp.
If you are moving over from another system then MailChimp will allow you to import a csv file, just remember that you may need to prove at a later date that you had permission to use these email addresses.
If you get a large number of unsubscribes from your list then your account may be blocked. One way to avoid this when first importing a new list is to send an opt in request to the recipient. If you are in doubt about the quality of the list you are importing it is better to do this than to have your clients account blocked on MailChimp.
MailChimp offers statistical tracking, you can tell who has opened your email, what links have been clicked on, and who has shared the information, using this to improve your future mailings and to make them more relevant to your audience.
If you want to build your newsletter list then offer something to your prospective audience that is relevant to them such as a free book or top ten tips. This can then be sent out via an autoresponder once the subscriber has completed the double opt-in.
Consider offering a competition or special offer in your newsletter in order to increase sign ups.
As with any marketing material it is important to ensure that the content is relevant to your target audience. Don’t give away all your trade secrets in your newsletter either as you will find that quite often your competitors will sign up to your newsletter to see what you are up to!
Posted in Business, Marketing | Tags: E-mail, Email marketing, MailChimp, Marketing, Newsletter, Spam | 3 Comments »
Data Cleansing for Virtual Assistants
Posted in Marketing | Tags: Data cleansing, E-mail spam, Internet marketing, Marketing, Telephone Preference Service | No Comments »
