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Bringing Your Dog To Work Reduces Stress, Increases Productivity

One of the main reasons why I was inspired to start my Virtual Assistant practice is that I wanted to work with a dog by my side. 

Previous to that, I was working in the corporate world where bringing a furry friend to work was a no-no.

Before I started my own business, I didn't have a dog. Since I spent all day away from home, I didn't feel like I could handle taking care of a dog.

That was what drew me to starting a home business--I could finally get a dog and keep her by my side all day! 

This month I saw an encouraging article in Cesar's Way magazine that reported that 1 in 5 businesses (including Google, Amazon, and Ben & Jerry's) now allow employees to bring their dogs to work. 

How To Create An Online Procedure Manual For Your Virtual Team

Your online procedure manual is basically an "intranet" for your business. You and everyone on your team (even if your team is just you and one other person) will use this intranet when doing various tasks associated with the operations of your business. 

It's for your eyes and your team's eyes only--although your business' procedure manuals are online, they should be password locked so that only the people on your team can see them. 

Last time I was telling you 5 reasons why it's really smart to set up your procedure manual when your business is small and less complicated. Believe me, your work will be so much easier if you start compiling your manual when there aren't that many tasks. 

Virtual Teams and Small Businesses: Procedure Manuals Are A Must!

You might think, "It's just me and my virtual assistant--why do we need to have a procedure manual?"

Even if it's just the two of you, it is still a great investment in your business to start compiling a procedure manual. Why?

Here are 5 reasons why you should start building a procedure manual today:

1 - For one thing, it is a teaching aid.

You assemble the procedure one time, and then every time you or your virtual assistant does the task, you can just look at your procedure manual to see the step-by-step instructions on how to do things. 

2 - It helps keep you in the loop. 

As your virtual assistant takes on more and more of your work, she may be doing things that you haven't done before or things that you're not that familiar with. By having a procedure manual in place, you will be able to do what your virtual assistant does, if needed. 

How To Market A Book Online: The Series Wrap-Up!

For the last several weeks, we've been covering how to market a book online. Here's what we've covered:

How to Market Your Book Online: Your Book's Website: This post was the reader question that started this whole series. 

My first novel is due to come out in the next few months. Rather than looking for a traditional public relations expert, I thought it might be interesting to contact you and brainstorm what ideas you might have to work as a virtual assistant in developing an online marketing campaign to include blogs, articles, newsletters, etc..as well as developing relationships with various online media in order to promote the book.

This post covers the first step in marketing a book online: Setting up a website where you can capture email addresses.

Step 2, Setting Up A Blog For Your Book : This post talks about the crucial step of having a blog for your book. The blog helps funnel traffic into the book's website. It's also a place where you build a community around your book.  

Step 3, Article Marketing : In this post we cover how to do article marketing, why it's beneficial, and what types of articles you should be writing. 

Step 4: Your Newsletter : This post details how having a consistent newsletter can increase sales and build relationships between you and your potential customers.

Step 5: Social Media : No online marketing campaign would be complete without social media. This post gives you a starting point entering the world of social media.

Step 6: The Virtual Book Tour : This post talks about different ways to take your book on a "tour" on the internet. 

Now, these marketing techniques that we've covered aren't just for marketing books--they will work if you're marketing a website, a product, a service, or your business.

None of this stuff is brain surgery. You can probably do it yourself, but the question is--do you have the time and do you have the interest? 

If doing online marketing is not your cup of tea or if you would rather spend your time doing other things for your business, you can easily delegate some or all of these tasks to your virtual assistant.

How To Market A Book Online: Step 6, Virtual Book Tour

A virtual book tour is a very cool idea. Instead of traveling from bookstore to bookstore in your area or across the country, you make things "virtual" by visiting different communities on different websites and doing live webinars. 

Here are some of the forms a virtual book tour may take:

• Guest posting on people's blogs. These would be blogs that you have researched to have readerships that might be interested in your book. 
• Doing interviews with bloggers and then the interview is posted on their blog. 
• Doing a live webinar (as mentioned above). This is like doing a seminar on the web where people can see you and hear your voice. 
• Doing a free online class, either over a conference call or via a webinar. The idea is that people will be drawn to the free class because of the value that you offer. That also sets you up perfectly to make sales for your product. (It's sort of like when Home Depot does those free classes for home improvement projects, and then you end up buying your supplies from their store!)
• Being interviewed on people's podcasts and videos.