How To Get Involved With Social Media – Blogging

With a blog you can post content in the form of text and pictures and it is possible to have a two way dialogue by way of people commenting on your posts. You can have control over what comments actually appear on your pages if you manage your comments using your preferred blogging software so you can approve, delete or mark them as spam.

Blogs can be written in many styles from the very informal personal right through to a professional corporate blog. It’s important as a small business to inject some personality into your blog as your followers are trying to get to know you as well as read your material.

Niching to Streamline Your Marketing Efforts

Many Virtual Assistants shy away from the idea of marketing to attract a particular niche as they are concerned that they will be turning away hoards of prospects from other industries. But if you have ever tried to be everything to everyone, you’ll soon learn that you end up appealing to no-one and as your marketing efforts are spread too thinly, you end up out of pocket and frustrated by poor results.

When you market to a niche you are targeting a very small select group of people. With research you can identify what that group of people have in common and in what areas where they will all be struggling. This way you can tailor your marketing message, the words that you use, to suit the target market. For example, if you were to target a group of individuals that were constantly away from home due to their line of work, you could say something in your marketing material like “Are you constantly away from home and worrying that the post is not being dealt with or you’ll come home to find that you car has run out of tax or the boiler has not been serviced?” Do you see how someone who was away all the time would identify with that question? They may well have already experienced a situation like that or know that it will happen at some point. Now you can follow up that question with your solution, something like, “Our Mail Handling and Lifestyle Management services mean that we can run your home and life for you while you are away meaning that you will never have to be reliant on public transport or have a cold bath ever again!” Do you see how that would appeal to them? You can of course use the same approach with any niche market. With a bit of research you can establish where you might be needed and what services you can offer to add value. So don’t forget next time you are out networking, chat to people in niches that interest you, find out what they struggle with and if these are general issues for people in their industry. Then even if that particular person doesn’t need your services yet, you can still tailor your marketing message using what you have learned and target others from their industry. A little bit more research will also tell you where you can find these people, what publications do they read, what groups or associations do they belong to? When you know what message to put before them, and you know what channels you have available to get in front of them the rest is child’s play.  So as you can see, marketing to a niche is an effective way of streamlining your marketing efforts and achieving better results.

Copyright 2008 by Justine Curtis

https://www.ukava.co.uk