Your Virtual Business Professional

Author’s assistants are well-known inside the publishing world, but not recognized by many outside of it. We predict that will change very soon because of the increasing numbers of authors who are getting published, either as independent publishers themselves or the more traditional route with established publishers.

Every big-time author has an author’s assistant – someone the author can call on to do the amazing number of tasks that surround the successful completion, publishing and marketing of a book. But first-time authors are lucky – they can have author’s assistants, too – virtually.

A new author can pay for just the time and expertise needed, without having to create a staff, making a virtual author’s assistant an important part of an author’s success. Here are the four biggest reasons this is an essential member of the author’s success team:

1. There is just too much work for one person. So many new or aspiring authors have day jobs and this is what they must do until their writing pays the rent. Until an author can clone him or herself, he or she must rely on others to help carry the load.

2. An author’s assistant has special expertise. Look for someone with training and experience in doing what you need done – from preparing a manuscript, to doing a competitive analysis, to coordinating a self publishing process to running a virtual book tour or an Amazon best seller campaign. Author’s assistants can do all this and much more. They understand the industry, the technology and have already established resources and connections.

3. The cost is greater when you do it yourself. There is a high learning curve for anyone who has never made the publishing journey. Whether the author is paid $70 an hour or $270 an hour as a coach, therapist, attorney or entrepreneur, the author’s assistant is a tremendous value at a much lower per-hour cost. With an author’s assistant the author has the freedom to concentrate on those things only the author can do, especially writing the best book he or she can. Expect to pay from $30 to $60 an hour (and it goes higher with greater expertise) for a qualified virtual assistant.

4. The synergy of the collaborative effort. There is nothing that inspires work like someone waiting for it. An author’s assistant is there to help you take each step so precious little time goes by between your writing and preparation for publishing and marketing. If you set the date, the author’s assistant will be there with support and encouragement to help you make it happen.

If you haven’t worked virtually before, talk to someone who has. Most people who start are hooked. One of the keys to success to have clarity about the tasks you want to have done and the payment arrangements – and then to memorialize these in a contract. Another key is to find someone with demonstrated training and experience since the first-time author may be in the dark about what the tasks actually are.

Take it from the established successful authors, don’t go it alone. Get the support you need and you will be well on your way to publishing success.

August 6th at 9:00 PM EDT

At the end of the webinar you will be able to:

• Identify which techniques will work best for your business


• Start with low and no-cost marketing immediately


• Make better marketing decisions that will boost your bottom line.

• A – Very important. This is something that you must do, something that has SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES for either doing it or not doing it.
• B – Something that you should do but that is not as important as an A item. There are consequences associated with doing it or not doing it but they are only MILD CONSEQUENCES that don’t last for very long.
• C – Something that would be nice to do but for which there are NO CONSEQUENCES at all for your career or your success.
• D – An item that you DELEGATE or outsource to someone else who can do it pretty much as well as you. Delegate everything possible to free up enough time for you to concentrate on your A activities.
• E – ELIMINATE. These are items that are such low priority that you could eliminate them completely and it would make no difference at all. Sometimes the disciplined act of eliminating low value tasks can simplify your life and free up enough time for you to accomplish those tasks that have the greatest possible consequences for you.

Just about everyone has a website today. Certainly, if you're in business one way or another, you have a website. And people have different objectives behind their sites. Some are content-driven. Others provide an online service and have sophisticated user interfaces. Others still are designed to entertain and amuse their visitors. But regardless what your website is designed to do, there are a few primary objectives you should keep in mind before you start building.

This first website objective is FOCUS. Your site needs to have a narrow and specific focus. Why is this? Because there are literally millions of websites out there and the visitors you're lucky enough to attract will only take a few seconds to decide whether they'll stick around or whether they'll simply click the back button and continue browsing elsewhere. Within those few seconds, your site needs to communicate exactly what it's designed to do so the visitor can decide if it meets his or her needs or not.

One of the best exercises to enhance the focus of your site is to establish a 15 to 25-word positioning statement that guides all your development activity going forward. Think about it like a mission statement. It should articulate exactly what your website does in just 15 to 25 words.

Another way to look at it is to do a Google search for a keyword in your field and see what comes up in the results page. Under each listing, there's a short description of what that site is all about. As it turns out, the search engines get that description from the meta tags on those websites but it's exactly the same thing. What do you want YOUR description to say?

Once you've established a positioning statement, you should display it prominently on your homepage. It should be one of the first things visitors see when they land on your website. And as I mentioned above, the same statement should be included in your meta tags as your site description. That way, the search engines know exactly what your site is about at the same time. And if your site shows up in a search results page, that description will show up as part of your listing.

The second objective is DEPTH. Again, this objective serves your visitors as well as the search engines. Build a massive amount of content all about your narrow business focus. That way, if a visitor lands on your website and decides in the first few seconds that they need what you're providing, they'll go on to find a ton of resources all about that topic, satisfying their need and establishing trust along the way.

Depth of content helps your website with the search engines as well. Google uses complicated algorithms to assess value to different websites and one of the biggest things they look for is content. If your website has a narrow focus and lots of content about that focus, it will get ranked higher within your area of expertise. Google will consider your site a good resource for people searching for your narrow focus.

The third objective is to make your site STICKY. This is a relatively new term that describes a website's ability to keep a visitor on the site. A lot of sites do a fairly good job of attracting visitors but many of those visitors take one look at the site and leave within a second or two. As I mentioned earlier, the positioning statement can do a lot to help someone understand what your site is designed to do. But you need more than that to keep them browsing.

The visitor needs to see immediate value when they visit your site. They need to see something that will benefit them right away. They need to see something they can use to make their own lives better. This is the foundation behind today's value-first marketing moniker. People have been over-marketed and have become skeptical in clever marketing slogans. They want to see the value. They want proof that you can deliver. They want to sample your product or service before they buy anything.

You should spend some time and think about what you can offer your website visitors as soon as they land on your site. It could be information. It could be a tool or calculator of some kind. It could be a free subscription. It could be an entertaining video or an interactive game they can play. Whatever it is, you need to capture your visitor within seconds and guide them to something that will benefit them.

Once they've received one piece of value, give them a second and then a third. Guide them through a maze of value, encouraging them to continue browsing and discovering even more. This is the key to a sticky website and you can get a good idea of your progress by measuring your average time on the site through your analytics platform.

There are a million different websites out there and they're all designed to achieve different objectives. But each one of those websites can be a bit better by incorporating more focus, depth and stickiness. All three improve your website' effectiveness and all three offer benefits with the search engines as well.

About the Author

Tactical Execution with Patrick Schwerdtfeger is a strategic company focused on growth marketing and program implementation across business markets. Visit the website for actionable guidance for revenue generation.

How many newsletters do you subscribe to? I'll bet my inbox is flooded with fifty or more each week.

Now some of those newsletters I just love. I file them away to read them later, week after week. I'd go ahead and open them, except that they're long and it would take a good five or ten minutes to wade through each one.

So they get filed away. I guess just in case I ever have so much spare time that I feel the need to open three thousand or so back issues of newsletters.

How many friends email you? A few each week? How many of those emails do you read? Every single one of them.

People love hearing from folks they know! I open these friendly emails right away, and I'll bet you do, too!

When creating a niche list (capturing names and email addresses from your niche website), you want to make sure you do one thing well. And that's become a friend to your subscribers.

Why is that so important? First off, as illustrated above, folks open emails from people they like and feel a relationship with. If no one opens your emails, they sure can't buy your product or look at your affiliate product recommendations.

Establishing yourself as a friend creates feelings of trust. Women (who spend money on the internet like it's going out of style) tend to buy more from people they truly feel a connection with.

So it's in your best interest to BE a friend to these folks and guard their trust well.

Imagine the money you could make with one mailing if the majority of folks on your list couldn't wait to hear from you each week. If they just loved seeing what you had to say next.

And what if you had ten niche lists that loved hearing from you and trusted your recommendations???

Relationship marketing works. Create trust and connection and don't be shy about sharing your heart from time to time. Your business will not only stand out from your competition, but grow by leaps and bounds.

Lisa Rae Preston is the creator of Instant Niche Emails, software that helps you create a year’s worth of relationship building, follow-up marketing messages in any niche! For her free report Insider Secrets to Follow-Up Fortunes, check out http://ping.fm/6ve0j

Contact the Author

Lisa Rae Preston

More Details about email marketing here.

Listening makes our loved ones feel worthy, appreciated, interesting, and respected. Ordinary conversations emerge on a deeper level, as do our relationships. When we listen, we foster the skill in others by acting as a model for positive and effective communication.

In our love relationships, greater communication brings greater intimacy. Listening to our kids helps build their self-esteem and the parent-child bond. In the business world, listening saves time and money by preventing misunderstandings. And we always learn more when we listen than when we talk.

Effective listening skills fuel our social, emotional and professional success, and studies prove that listening is a skill we can learn.

The Technique

Active listening is really an extension of the Golden Rule. To know how to listen to someone else, think about how you would want to be listened to. While the ideas are largely intuitive, it might take some practice to develop (or re-develop) the skills. Here’s what good listeners know – and you should, too:

1. Face the speaker. Sit up straight or lean forward slightly to show your attentiveness through body language.
   
2. Maintain eye contact, to the degree that you all remain comfortable.
   
3. Minimize external distractions. Turn off the TV. Put down your book or magazine, and ask the speaker and other listeners to do the same.
4. Respond appropriately to show that you understand. Murmur (“uh-huh” and “um-hmm”) and nod. Raise your eyebrows. Say words such as “Really,” “Interesting,” as well as more direct prompts: “What did you do then?” and “What did she say?”
5. Focus solely on what the speaker is saying. Try not to think about what you are going to say next. The conversation will follow a logical flow after the speaker makes their point.
6. Minimize internal distractions. If your own thoughts keep horning in, simply let them go and continuously re-focus your attention on the speaker, much as you would during meditation.
7. Keep an open mind. Wait until the speaker is finished before deciding that you disagree. Try not to make assumptions about what the speaker is thinking.
8. Avoid letting the speaker know how you handled a similar situation. Unless she specifically asks for advice, assume she just needs to talk it out.
9. Even if the speaker is launching a complaint against you, wait until she finishes to defend yourself. The speaker will feel as though her point had been made. She won’t feel the need to repeat it, and you’ll know the whole argument before you respond. Research shows that, on average, we can hear four times faster than we can talk, so we have the ability to sort ideas as they come in…and be ready for more.
10. Engage yourself. Ask questions for clarification, but, once again, wait until the speaker has finished. That way, you won’t interrupt her train of thought. After you ask questions, paraphrase her point to make sure you didn’t misunderstand. Start with: “So you’re saying…”

Susie Michelle Cortright is the founder and publisher of Momscape, an online magazine devoted to nurturing the nurturers. Read inspiring articles and essays, and register to win free pampering packages. Used with permission.