Your shingle, proclaiming “Jane or Joe Smith Virtual Assistant Services”, bounces around and blows in the cyber-wind. Proudly, and rightly so, you sport your membership in several like organizations and online networking forums. But where do you go from here? How do you establish your visibility to your target market? In short, you've built it; now how do you get them to come?



Short of standing on the roof-top to shout your whereabouts or purchasing billboard space along the nearest highway, it's best to choose a preferred and less noticeable way to “light your fire”. A way to advertise you! A good charcoal catalyst that will whoosh your spark into a raging business bonfire is “word of mouth”. In this instance, “word” garnered from interaction with members and guests at various message boards germane to the industry and your target market, as well as at least one of the many virtual assistant forums. There's barely a greater catalyst than “talking up something” (your something) with someone who “gets you!”

So you don't go off willy nilly, more stymied than a little white mouse in Drs. Jekyll and Hyde's laboratory's maze, you'll be best served if you take care to first develop some sort of “plan”. Without one, it's all too likely you'll miss the cheese.

Plans are like recipes or blueprints; as building blocks they help you get to where you're going when you don't know where you want to go, or even how you want to get there. If you don't know how, or find it difficult, to come up with your own plan, align yourself with someone who does and can. Then work to closely follow those “rules”. Veer out of the lane just enough to add “a little piece of you”; to make the plan unique!

Since you've already set many of your hard-earned pennies aside for your business start-up for perhaps local print advertising and for ongoing office essentials, what would you include in your Public Relations portfolio to increase your visibility; to help you stand out from the rest?

What do they want?

Be creative with your ideas. Make your statement by using one of the many increasingly popular communication channels available in the country today:

Write a blog

If you decide to do produce a blog, be sure to mark “post to blog” on your calendar “more frequently than once a year”! At least two to three times a week is ideal. Less than that becomes more like the drudge of writing a letter to the bill collector to say your check's in the mail.

Actually, regular blog posts keep you in the eye of the public; blogs give your clients incentive to come back to catch up on what late, breaking information about your business and you might be there.

“Show and tell” what you know, and how you know it.

Pick a topic.

Position yourself as an expert by increasing your credibility to your target market, write articles. Articles that offer a solution to a problem your visitor might encounter; submit the articles to article banks. And do it regularly. Download articles of others from these data banks; make them available for your customers. But don't stop there! Post the articles, with appropriate author credit, to your blog and at your Web site.

Continue your “blog missives” in a grander format.

Create a newsletter; distribute the newsletter, optimally at least once a month, to your clients and those recently registered visitors.

Announce something.

Not just anything. Make it something of interest to your readers. How about a “special” on your Services to coincide with some holiday of the year? Maybe the first snowfall! Or the birth of a baby, or the xxth customer to your Web site!

Keep them coming back for more!

Make a joyful noise.

Entice your public; include Podcasts as one of your “must haves” of the latest necessities of the 21st century's technological inventions. Visitors to your site will have an opportunity to immediately “hear” your message, and you don't have to let them see you sweat.

Go for free: do a give-away.

Produce a little bit of something, perhaps from your Services repertoire, to share. Make it a tip of the day, a hand-out or download; your customers will go away smiling. And come back for more!

What's hot and what's not?

Utilize Excel or a similar software program to create a database to collect your pre-determined information about your efforts for recognition. As you analyze the success of your Public Relations campaign, include a method to count the visitors who come to “your door”.

As with any recipe, if you don't get the results you anticipated then next time: change your strategy.