Social Proof: Use it to Gain New Clients...

Make some noise about your business!

How often do you let your potential clients and website visitors know what other people in the universe are saying about you? Often times, we forget to add this vital information to our websites and it can actually prevent us from converting prospects into sales.

Social proof means having feedback and testimonials from people who have raved about you via social methods – generally, social media. For example, if a client posts a very positive Tweet about you, he or she has just given you social proof.

Written testimonials posted on a website are not as powerful because there is not always a real person attached to the other end. These testimonials can appear fake and thus decrease their effectiveness. Social proof, especially unsolicited, is much more powerful.

To encourage your clients to sing your praises socially, invite them to share a few words on Twitter in exchange for a link to their website on your testimonials page. You can screenshot the testimonial from Twitter or direct people to the Tweet itself which will create a more powerful testimonial.

You can also mark Tweets as starred on Twitter which adds them to your Favorites section. You can then compile a list of positive feedback which people can go and check out at anytime. Again, this is more powerful because each testimonial or raving note is attached to a person that they can connect with.

So, if you haven’t already, begin marking positive Tweets as favorites and invite your clients to share their experience with your company on Twitter or Facebook in exchange for publicity. Remember, you have to make it a win-win or some people won’t act.

Why You Should Be Building a List for Your Virtual...

Most virtual assistants that I know do not build a list. Or, they start one a year or two into their businesses. If you aren’t yet building a list, I am going to encourage you to start today.

Building a list provides you with an audience that is interested in what you have to offer and will read what you have to write. This gives you a very powerful avenue for marketing your services and turning prospects into clients.

If you are not building a list, people could be coming to your website and leaving again without ever letting you know. By offering them a reason to input their name and e-mail address (providing a free offering of an e-book or an e-course is one way to entice them) you will have an opportunity to connect with them again in the future.

To start building your list, sign up for a free account at MailChimp.com. You can add up to a limited number of subscribers but at least you will have something in place as a starting point.

If you are already list building but find the process slow, here are some ideas to increase your list size.

• The first is to offer your free report or free giveaway on Twitter at least 2-3 times per week. Do the same thing on Facebook.
• If you have a Facebook fan page, create a custom landing page where people can opt-in to receive your information right on Facebook.
• You can also do more time consuming things like host a free teleseminar to grow your list. People will opt-in for the event and you’ll be able to market to them in the future.

Make sure to at least be directing traffic to your list. Make it obvious, accessible and interesting. Build your list and in future e-mails, we’ll discuss what to do with the list once it’s captured.

How to Have a Fun (and Successful!) Tweet-Up...

Guest post today by Pat Romain of Vizion VA

If you are not familiar with the term “ tweet-up”, a tweet-up happens when a bunch of people who have initially connected through Twitter actually take it upon themselves to meet in person. A tweet-up is a fun way to meet your online friends and have a drink or a meal with them, it’s also a great way to expand your network with people who have the same interest as you; but such a meeting can actually come off very akward and highly disorganized; imagine all those online folks come out from behind their computers what would they actually talk about? (Preferably in more than 140 characters).

If you decided that you want to host a tweet-up, then kudos to you, but if you have no idea where to start, this blog post should help.  A tweet-up is just like any other meet-up; you have to plan and organize your tweet-up in advance to have a successful, and most importantly, a fun event because trust me… those people on Twitter love FUN. It also depends on what you want to achieve by hosting an event like this but let’s get clear, I don’t believe that you should go into any networking event with ulterior money making motives, it should be about the people and getting to know them.

Here are some key points that I have found to be helpful when organizing a tweet-up:

1. Plan your event in advance: I know that you are totally excited to meet your online friends if this is the first time you are doing this but don’t wait until the last minute to start organizing your tweet-up.
2. If you plan to have more than 6 people come, book a venue or at least reserve a spot at a restaurant, and go visit it beforehand, it would not be fun to get to the place on that day and discover that there is no WIFI, you know that your Twitter friends are going to tweet while at the event make it easy for them; don’t forget to think of your #hashtag for the event.
3. Be the first to arrive, you are the organizer, nothing is worse than arriving after the guests have arrived, this is not the time to make an entrance, this is your event own it!
4. Say no to open bar. PERIOD. You also want to be clear on the billing for food and drink, if you are giving one free non-alcoholic drink, what about the meal? Who pays for what? If everyone pays for their own meal and drinks , you should specify that.
5. If you are hosting an event with more than five people get good name tags and pens for them to write their Twitter name, yes their Twitter name since that is what we know them by.
6. Use a site like eventbrite.com or meetup.com to administer the details of the tweet-up: to know exactly who is going to show up but always plan for a bit more people, to list the event details for you tweeple to see like the address of the venue and the hours the tweet-up is taking place and all other services that could be available for them to get there (transportation etc..)
7. Make sure that you get your twitter followers involved in the process so that they can tell their followers who are going to be in the area that the event is coming up and where to sign up . Tweeple’s (Twitter people) are really good at spreading the word.
8. Decide on the mood that you want at your tweet-up: determine whether you want a casual-let’s-talk-about-Apple-products-over-a-glass-of-wine event or something really formal where you have booked a speaker.  Then, make sure that your Twitter friends know exactly what’s up.

Now that you have everything figured out, it’s time to have fun, meet new people and mingle!