My Virtual Blog

In Laymen’s terms when we talk ROI (Return on Investment), we ask “will this expenditure actually provide the benefit that justifies the expense?” if so, “how long will it take?” and “how much will it improve ongoing business?”

With social media, ROI also stands for “Return on Influence”.  The influence you gain by being an expert in your field and gaining the reputation as a quality resource for answers and solutions.

In most investment situations, you use metrics to measure the impact of change.  The metrics in a traditional investment are calculated in terms of cost savings, workforce reductions, increased profits… etc.  These are easily quantified with dollars and cents.  With social media, the metrics are still there, they are just viewed a bit differently. 

Let’s take the example of “Jack’s Book Store”.  Jack sells all types of books but he specializes in antique books.  He established a “shopping cart” website last year to sell his books online and help his customers find him. 

Jack wants to get more traffic to his website and his store, as well as more sales from both.

There are two main points that Jack must understand:

1. Social Media is not a silver bullet; it takes time to realize the benefits
2. Participation on a regular basis is a REQUIREMENT or the campaign will not succeed

We develop a “Metrics Report” showing a starting snapshot of the current state of Jack’s business. 

We then design a campaign strategy tailored to the specific business, which for Jack, would include updating the website for SEO (Search Engine Optimization); developing a blog; establishing profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, and teaching Jack the “link strategy” of making all his social media components work together.

Once the strategy is complete, we add metrics to the “Metrics Report” for all the social media channels.

Three months after the campaign is implemented we would take a snapshot of these same metrics, compare them to the starting metrics and analyze the progress of the campaign. 

When all is said and done, there should logically be an increase in website visits, an increase of sales from the website and an increase of sales from the store.  The amount of that increase is usually proportionate to the amount of effort invested in the social media campaign.

There are obviously mitigating factors in any advertising campaign, such as; you aren’t selling a product that is widely sought after; your prices are higher than your competitor; your customer service is lacking; your website or your store are not an appealing places to visit… and so on.

The bottom line is that social media is not the answer to everything, but it is a cost-effective way to strengthen your brand, promote your products and services, and drive more traffic to your door.  Once they get to your door, your products & services as well as your customer service have to take over.

Oh yes, and about “Return on Investment?”  When your social media marketing campaign is well designed and implemented, positive ROI is attainable and measurable but it takes diligence and effort to make it happen.

Visit our website at www.myvirtualproject.com

I was talking to a business owner last week who said “I can’t afford to keep up with changing technology while the economy is in the state that it’s in. I just finished paying off a phone system and now it’s out of date. I need to replace it but just can’t justify the expense right now”.

If your technology is outdated, but still functional, you could concentrate on increasing revenues by using Social Media Marketing techniques to drive more business to your door. In today’s challenging economic times, entrepreneurs have to leverage the most cost effective tools available. More and more companies are turning to social media strategies. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and many other sites are FREE, so take advantage of them. Make a one-time investment in someone with the expertise needed to provide a well-designed, cohesive social media marketing campaign. It will help increase your brand recognition and grow your business. There are proven methods that really work. It takes commitment on the part of the business owner to make this type of campaign effective, but if you commit the time, you will succeed. When you increase your customer base, more revenue follows and the technology cost will take care of itself.

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When we started My Virtual Project, the vision was to provide a valuable service in an unpredictable economy that would save money while at the same time deliver first class support to our clients. 

Susi’s background began in administrative support working for high-level management.  After several years she migrated into Information Technology providing her with a technical as well as administrative background.  She even ran her own business called Pro Office Support giving her the experience and knowledge necessary to run a business.

I come from a long career in Information Technology, beginning as a programmer and advancing over the years to the position of Chief Information Officer, running a 40 million dollar IT division, giving me the strategic planning, project management and people management skills necessary to run a large organization.

The initial vision for My Virtual Project was Susi’s and hers alone.  It was Virtual Office Support; to provide the kind of quality administrative support only experienced professionals can deliver, but at a price that could save the client money when compared to hiring a full time employee with just a moderate experience level.

Clients would not have to pay for employee benefits like health insurance, vacations, sick days, break time, phone time, down time when there’s not enough work to do, let alone not needing to provide office space, office furniture, computer equipment, phones, training… the list goes on.

Hiring a virtual assistant allows a client to use the services when, and only when, they are needed whether that is 10 hours per week or 10 hours per month.

So the company opened its virtual doors and business began.  After a slow start, things began to pick up.  Within the first few months, however, the vision began to change.  Susi got involved with the concept of Social Media Marketing, took a 6 week course from VAClassroom.com and upon graduation, received certification as a Social Media Marketing Specialist.  Our focus began to switch more to the Social Media Marketing activities and less on the administrative support functions.

Along with Social Media Marketing, one of Susi’s long-time passions is graphic arts, particularly design of logos.  This love of art and design dovetailed right into our Social Media Marketing package service offering which includes logo design, business card design, marketing brochures and blogs.  All these things are becoming more and more important in today’s “connected” world.

So welcome to the “NEW” My Virtual Project.  Re-focused and ready to rock.  We specialize in marketing material design and social media marketing assessment, planning and implementation. We also support a small array of office support functions such as desktop publishing, word processing, spreadsheets, database maintenance and project management.

The morale of this story:  Do what you love and you’ll do it better than anything else.

There is heated debate in the Social Networking circles about those who completely “outsource” social networking response maintenance to another person or company. Recently, comments such as “I just don’t have the time to do it myself” have been made by those doing the outsourcing. Also, comments like “They pay me to do it, so I do it” came from some in the industry who perform this service and believe this is an administrative task and a way to generate revenue.  Others strongly believe that this is a core ethics issue and misrepresents the intent of social networking.

There is no law against hiring someone to represent your social networking initiatives, so the playing field is wide open to do whatever you like in this situation.  However, remember that your social networking presence is all about YOU, who YOU are and what YOU think.  Nobody else in the world can represent your thoughts, opinions, and personality like YOU can, that is, unless they dictate every word to you beforehand. 

The result is that everyone looking at your online presence will not know the real you.  They may not even like your online personality, as it is represented.  To quote Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Little Black Book of Connections, “All things being equal, people want to do business with their friends.  All things being not quite so equal, people STILL want to do business with their friends”.

Can you afford to take that risk?  Personally, I think NOT.

What do you think?

It used to be that when we wanted to locate goods and/or services, we would look to the Yellow Pages to find local businesses. They were alphabetically listed by category and once a potential was found, we would call or visit them for what we needed. But this is now a virtual world and more times than not customers will turn to the internet to locate their goods and services. Some have turned solely to the internet for all their purchasing needs. Typically, they will choose a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, type a few keywords based on what they’re looking for, hit enter and BAM, 10,000 – 100,000 hits are brought back in the blink of an eye with websites and related items based on what they entered in the search line. A quick scan down the list for a possible choice, a click on the link and you’re instantly visiting the related website. This is today’s shopping experience. It is uncommon for this type of customer to look past the first few pages of the returned result.

If you are a supplier of goods and services, and you have a website, you want YOUR website to show up on the coveted first page of the potential customers search and the one that is clicked on. This is a tall order and most times, your website is found 10, 20 even 50 pages down the list and because of that, it is basically never seen. So how do we get our website viewed by those that don’t already know it exists? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the answer. SEO is a technique of designing your website to be search engine friendly. When you publish your website to the search engines, they use what is called a “Spider” or “Crawler” program to examine your website for things like material content, keywords, links in, links out, links within, age, frequency of maintenance, and this program finds all the places your website is referenced throughout the entire internet. The better your content, the more links and external references that are found, the higher the score assigned to your website and the higher the ranking in the pecking order of results.

A great many business owners are unaware of the potential marketing impact that exists with a website. You should take advantage of all the capabilities that the internet has to offer. This includes not only website design and SEO tuning, but also blogging and social networking. If you invest the time to learn and set up accounts with networking sites like “Facebook”, “Linkedin” and “Twitter”, AND take the time to maintain the information there, it will not only help with your social networking efforts to build contacts and business relationships, but it will also help with SEO for your website. At the end of the day, you want your name and your website mentioned online as often as possible and in as many places as possible.

If you don’t have the knowledge or the resources to do these things on your own, you should enlist the assistance of someone who is trained in this area. You’ve spent time and money on putting up a website, now go to the next level and actually use this tool and the internet to your maximum advantage.

Thoughts?

They say that one of the best ways to get business is through networking.  So what is business networking all about, what makes it so invaluable to its supporters and how can you maximize your networking time?

My wife and I joined BNI, a local chapter of the largest business referral network in the world.   I was a bit skeptical at first, thinking “how could this possibly help our business?”  It didn’t take long for me to see that there actually can be value in meeting with other business owners and discussing what they do and how we can help each other grow our businesses.

We believe that in our networking meetings, if we focus on other people’s business, other people’s interests and engage them in conversation; it will make for a much more enjoyable experience.  We ask ourselves, how can I help this person?  Can I introduce a member to a possible partner or business opportunity?  Do I have some great resource that they could benefit from?  What one piece of information, advice or one contact could I give to this person?”  Sooner or later most people do say, “So what exactly do you do and how can I help you?” which comfortably let’s you talk about what you offer without it appearing as a “sales pitch”.

All the effort you invest in helping others will come back to you as a positive impact on your business.

Our BNI group also schedules a 10 minute presentation each week that rotates from member to member, providing the opportunity to describe, in greater detail, what the member does and how the organization can help them achieve their goals.  We also have the option of scheduling a one hour 1-on-1 meeting with a member to exchange information on each other’s business.  We have had one meeting thus far and have three more scheduled for the upcoming weeks.

We have a referral process as a standard agenda item each meeting where referrals are given back and forth.  These referrals are recorded, tracked and the results are shared with the group each week as part of the referral update agenda item.  It is amazing how many referrals are passed each month and the dollar impact it has on the businesses.

Maximizing your networking time can be summarized in the following points.

1.      Dress appropriately for the meeting so you feel comfortable but also think about how you can be noticed and remembered. You are marketing yourself and representing your company – how do you want to be perceived?

2.      Make time before the meeting to really think about the message you want to deliver.  It will serve you well once you “get into” the meeting itself.

3.      Try to speak with at least one new member each week to get better acquainted.  You could even take the opportunity to set up a 1-on-1 meeting with that person.

4.      Listen, Listen, Listen… spend time really hearing what other people are saying. Get them talking about themselves, their business and what challenges they are facing.  Great networkers create relationships first.  Time spent listening and gathering information will enable you to really understand how you can help someone. This is always the primary activity – give first.

In my short-lived experience with Business Networking, these are my observations.  Thus far, I would say Business Networking DOES make a positive impact.  This is FACT not Fiction.

Opinions anyone?

Making time for both work goals and personal goals is not as easy as one would think. You may feel fragmented or overwhelmed if you are not achieving a sense of balance between the two.  Your work and personal life will both suffer if you are not managing to meet your needs and responsibilities.  We can’t do everything, we know that, but if you ask yourself; “Am I doing things that are the most important to me? Am I spending time wisely? Am I making time for both work and play?” and your answer is NO, you may want to step back and examine your life.  Remember, we have to plan for tomorrow but LIVE for today.

At one time, I was married with a small child and a full time job.  Being a musician, I had a hard time balancing work, home, rehearsal and gigging time.  I would get up at 4:30am every morning so that I could practice for 2 hours before going to work (of course I used headphones so as not to wake the family).  This way I could prepare for band rehearsal without impacting my family responsibilities as well as still being able to work full time.  Although not fun, and I don’t necessarily recommend it, it was a solution that worked for me.  Having balance in your life is easier if you:

·        Identify your priorities

·        Reduce unnecessary activities

·        Set goals and make a plan

·        Revisit priorities and goals occasionally

Also, get a handle on the stress in your life.  This can help you make time for work and play and feel good about your general well-being. 

·        Locate the sources of stress and work to reduce or eliminate them

·        Work off the effects of stress physically

·        Accept the things that you cannot change

·        Organize what you can, without being a perfectionist

·        Realize that you do not control the emotions or behavior of others

·        Take one thing at a time

·        Compromise. You don’t always have to have it done your way. Agree to disagree

·        Get away from it for a while

Finally, you should ask yourself, “Is my work and personal life in balance?  Do I feel good about the balance”?  Remember:  LIFE IS NOT A DRESS REHEARSAL.

Are the deadlines for your projects often not met?  Are you unsure of the status of your projects at any given time?  Is the original budget for your projects typically exceeded?  Are the results of your projects less than initially expected?

If you answered yes to most of these questions, chances are your projects need more effective management.  Project management helps prevent these problems by organizing and managing resources to ensure that deliverables are completed on time, within budget, and that they are of high quality.  The larger the project scope, the more important this becomes.

Certainly in the case of a friend of mine this is true.  His manufacturing company implemented an upgrade to their main computer application and on the Monday when it went live, the system went down and stayed down for a week while problems were identified and repaired.  They couldn’t order parts, make products or know when deliveries were due.  Most businesses today cannot easily survive after a week without their main computer system.  This situation really needed an experienced project manager.

What does a Project Manager actually do?  The primary function of the project manager is to coordinate all project-related activities and to monitor progress of the agreed-upon work, timelines, and costs.  Before initiating the effort, the project manager works closely with the client to prepare a project plan outlining critical paths and milestones and determining the budget.  Throughout the project, the project manager reports the status of each task, changes in scope, and potential risk of not meeting targeted timelines and budgets.  This person becomes the primary point of communication between the client and the project team members, facilitating the flow of information between the two parties.  The project manager must proactively assess and evaluate resource allocation, execution of project tasks, and timelines for deliverables.  He or she also drives implementation of contingency plans, problem resolution, and is empowered to motivate and influence the project team to achieve the project’s overall goals.  The term “project manager” often becomes synonymous with project champion, project coordinator, project advocate, or project leader.

Throughout the delivery, the project manager monitors the use of resources against project timelines, budgets, and requirements, and recommends necessary adjustments to resources and timelines.  Key to the effectiveness of project management is proactively identifying potential impediments to completing the project in a timely and cost-effective manner.

The next step involves prioritizing the risks in order of probability and magnitude of impact on costs, quality, and timelines, and then formulating a risk management plan.  The plan should list strategies to mitigate risks, persons responsible, and timetables for implementation, resources, assumptions made, and ways to measure effectiveness.

Every project has its share of problems and issues.  It is wise to devise a plan detailing when and how to escalate an issue to the next level supervisor, someone from upper management, quality assurance, or the client. Although there are no hard-and-fast rules, the following are some of the warning signs that someone of greater authority should be consulted:

•             Timelines are going to be compromised

•             Client has started to express concern or dissatisfaction

•             Several attempts or approaches at resolving the problem have failed

•             Expertise within the team is limited or there is turnover mid-project

The project manager’s role is to inform the client of the problem in a timely manner and facilitate the resolution of the issue.

Some project managers use software such as “Microsoft Project” or other similar product to manage projects.  Project management skills take a great deal of time to learn and hone, usually requiring formal training and years of experience.  With these disciplines in place, projects have a much greater probability of success.

What are your experiences with projects?  Do you agree with the need for a project manager?  Have you worked on projects in the past that have been successful without a PM?  Your opinions and stories are welcome.