Continuing in our recent series regarding using LinkedIn for your business, I wonder how many of you know that you can set up a Company Page in LinkedIn to further develop your business presence.

I learned about this recently, and it looks like a wonderful way to increase your opportunities to network with clients, prospective clients, potential job candidates, vendors, and your peers.

The first step is to create your company page, integrating images, hyperlinked banners and links to your website and blog pages. Use informative descriptions about your ideal customer and the products or services you provide, and begin posting regular updates.

Similar to your Facebook page and Twitter profile, you will need to work to build a community of followers; your updates won’t be visible unless someone visits your page directly. Begin building your community by following the company pages of industry peers and current and prospective customers. Follow companies that are outside of your industry but in your location. Watch for their company updates and engage with them. Thank them on their page for something they post that is helpful to you in your business.

Send an announcement to your LinkedIn personal connections and group members, being sure to provide benefits to them in following your page. Be sure to provide interesting and valuable updates to your company page.

It is important to invest in your LinkedIn company presence regardless of the size of your business. Your LinkedIn company page will also be indexed by search engines, which can provide more visibility to your business. This is one of the best ways to set your company apart and provide ongoing value to your customers and prospects.

When using LinkedIn for lead generation, your goal is to stay connected to existing customers and branch out those connections to include prospective customers. There are several ways you can use LinkedIn to generate leads for your business, and what you need is to create a plan of action and make a commitment to following your plan.

• Applications: This is a great place to go to find new applications to improve your LinkedIn page. Everything from setting up polls for customers and prospective customers to adding blog posts to your LinkedIn page can be found here. The two most popular are The Reading List by Amazon, and the WordPress application.
• Groups: Check out industry-related groups on LinkedIn, join several of them and get involved with the conversation. Also, be sure to also join groups outside your industry circle that are related to your business or target market. Connect with the leaders and other group members, being sure to let them know that you are members of the same group and have some things in common. Commit to join 15-20 groups, start a discussion in each new Group every day for five days after you join each one. You will start to make a few new friends in the group if you do this consistently. If appropriate, include a link back to your website so people can download a relevant item of interest, or sign up for your newsletter. Now you will be able to stay on top of their mind through your newsletter on a regular basis.
• Answers: The LinkedIn Answers section is a place where people go to ask questions and get advice. Provide answers to their questions and show your industry experience and knowledge. It is a wonderful place to get your name in front of potential clients or referral partners by being helpful without being pushy. Answer two questions each week in the Answers section of LinkedIn. Doing this consistently over a long period of time is a long-term strategy for generating leads
• People: If you are trying to get connections within a specific company in your target market, the best way to get your foot in the door is to do a search in the LinkedIn search box for the company name, and then click on the company. If you have any direct connections to anyone in the company, the number of connections will appear on the right hand side. Clicking on the number will bring up a list of names of the people at that company that you have a first or second degree connection with. Consider asking one of them through LinkedIn to introduce you to the people at their company that you would like to be connected to. Commit that once a week you will connect with at least five current or former business associates. This will ensure that they will remember you when they or someone they know needs the product or service you provide.
• Direct Ads: LinkedIn’s advertising program works the same way that Google paid search ads work. They make it simple to create your ad, and then bid on how much you will pay when someone clicks on your LinkedIn ad. It’s a great way to drive prospects to your web page or other destination. Commit to creating a DirectAd that links to a page on your website where you can sell something direct or collect your prospective client’s contact information when they sign up for something you are offering.
• Mobile: Download the free LinkedIn application on your smart phone. When you meet new contacts at a networking event or trade show, get them to also download the LinkedIn application if they haven’t done it already. When you bump your phones together lightly, LinkedIn will transfer the contact information between the two phones, quickly and easily.

The key to LinkedIn is to be consistent and committing to the above. Don’t give up, because results will not be obtained overnight, but your network will be built at a slow and steady pace and you will eventually reach your goal. As always, I am happy to help. Call me at (832)295-9804 or email me at Jaclyn@croftvs.com.

There are many social media tools available, but many business owners would agree that LinkedIn is a very helpful and useful tool for most business people, and one of the best tools for making valuable business connections. It is great for connecting with prospective clients, research prospects, stay in front of prospective employers, build awareness of your company and expand your circle of business contacts.

The first step toward getting started with LinkedIn is, of course, setting up your profile and optimizing it with as much information about you and your business as possible. The next thing you will want to do is create your personalized LinkedIn URL. If you are active on Twitter, connect your Twitter account with LinkedIn by clicking on the “Twitter” link above the “Public Profile” link. Now every time you update your status on LinkedIn, you will be sending a tweet about it.

The next step is to grow your LinkedIn network by joining industry related groups. Click on the “People” link and drag it down to “Groups”. Here you can type in an industry or subject you’re interested in. When you do a search, LinkedIn provides suggestions in “Groups”, and also in other categories such as “Connections,” “Companies,” “Features” and “Skills.” Feel free to reach out to people you know or want to get to know, and just be sure you are not pushing your products or services on them.

The first approach is the direct approach, providing valuable information to prospects and connections on LinkedIn, keeping their interests in mind. If you have ever been to a party or business gathering and someone approached you and talked about themselves and their business for ten minutes, you will remember that as an unpleasant experience. But if they spent ten minutes talking about you and something of interest or value to you, there is a much better chance that you will be interested in what they have to say. Try to be helpful by offering advice, industry insights or general information.

Another approach is the indirect approach, in which you still start out by offering free advice or helpful information, but once you’ve connected with your prospect, you will drive them to a landing page on your website where they can download a white paper, sign up for your e-newsletter or get more information on your products or services.

Stay tuned next month when we will talk about using LinkedIn for lead generation. If you are not on LinkedIn yet, what are you waiting for? Now is the time to get started. If you need help, just give me a call or email me at jaclyn@croftvs.com.

One of the skills that is most often requested as a Virtual Assistant is WordPress website or blog set-up and maintenance. I have learned a little about WordPress “on-the-job”, with the maintenance of my own site and those of a few of my clients. I know a little about html, but the thought of getting into the back end of a website and taking the risk of possibly “breaking” something has always driven enough fear into me to avoid it altogether.

That is why I’m excited to learn about VAClassroom’s (my favorite online learning center) most recent course offering – WORDPRESS SKILLS. This unique, online, live and interactive class is scheduled for September 27 and 28, and it sounds like a wonderful opportunity to learn what themes to use, how to make the site SEO friendly, what plugins to use and more. They are offering some top-notch ideas and skills on WordPress development and implementation.

The best part is that they are offering a $50 discount if you sign up by midnight on Wednesday, September 21.

If you or anyone you know needs to brush up on your WordPress skills, VAClassroom is the place to be. Just click here to be taken to their sales page, and I will “see” you in class.

I was recently introduced to Online Logo Maker, a free logo creating tool with the single purpose of bringing a free professional logo design tool to everyone.

Although there are many computer programs available which can certainly be used to create wonderful logos, they are typically expensive and require a professional designer with a certain level of expertise to get the best results. Online Logo Maker, on the other hand, is very easy and intuitive to use, enabling you to create a customized logo with very little effort. No technical or design skill is required. They offer hundreds of symbols of various categories to choose from, and logo ready fonts selected by professional designers. All the user needs to do is drag and drop your selected items and choose your colors. They have tools to rotate, resize and transform your logo effortlessly.

Though Online Logo Maker is free, they do offer a Premium account which costs $9.00 and provides you with four weeks of full access to more than 250 exclusive symbols, more than 25 exclusive fonts, and unlimited email support provided by Online Logo Maker.

After a frustrating experience with another similar program a few years ago, I gave up and had my logo professionally created. I am now considering using the Premium account to create professional looking logos for clients who need them.

As a special gift to my blog and newsletter readers, for a limited time I am offering a free Premium Online Logo Maker account with three months of premium access to the first three people who leave a comment on my blog or email me at jaclyn@croftvs.com to let me know that they are interested. This is my gift to you, so don’t delay!

Do you suffer from Bright, Shiny Object Syndrome? I know I do. It is so easy to be distracted when you’re working from home, or any other small office. As the distractions arise, you’ll need to figure out the best way to manage and prevent them. You may not have co-workers in the next cubicle or in the coffee bar discussing the latest gossip or television shows, but there is another whole set of distractions just waiting to tempt you. How do you handle the distractions and still manage to be productive? It isn’t easy, but here are some tips …
Remove the television and the radio from your office if they distract you. Some people find it easier to work to music, but many people who work from home find the television to be a huge distraction. If you find that either of these distracts you, remove it from your work environment.
Set aside time for chores and errands. Just knowing that there is laundry to be done and dirty dishes in the sink can cause a distraction until you eliminate the problem. Schedule time to complete these chores before beginning your work, or when you take a break for lunch. Decide what time you will stop doing them and start working so that you remove this stress. Now you can focus on being productive.
Close or minimize any computer applications that aren’t directly related to what you’re doing. This means email, Facebook and Twitter.
Speaking of email, stop checking it! Check it three times a day, max. Check it once in the morning, once in the evening and once during lunch.
Create “work time” and set limits. If you work from home, it is up to you to be sure that friends, family members and neighbors understand that although you are at home, this does not make you available for last-minute baby-sitting, grocery shopping, dry cleaner trips and general errand-running. Just make sure they understand you’re working and not to be disturbed. It’s helpful if you can create special times during the day that are devoted to family, chores and errands and special times that are devoted to work.
Turn off your personal phone and ignore all other calls. Google Voice will send voice mail messages to you as text or email messages. Check your voice mail and your email both during your lunch break.
I hope these tips help you to eliminate distractions and interruptions so you can increase productivity when you work from home.

The greatest entrepreneur I’ve known – and my biggest mentor of all time – passed away last week. During Bud Hadfield’s 87 years on this earth, he lived the American Dream: being expelled from school before graduating; joining the Merchant Marines in World War II; starting and failing at a dozen businesses; teaching Dale Carnegie for 20 years; and eventually founding the Kwik Kopy Printing franchise, growing it to more than 1,000 locations and acquiring more franchise systems in the process; changing the lives of the hundreds of people he employed and thousands of new franchisees that were trained over the decades at the International Center for Entrepreneurial Development (ICED).

I was fortunate enough to be one of those employees. I started working at ICED in 1990, moving through several departments and working for several of the executives, one of them being the illustrious Bud. Larger than life, Bud was a dynamic, motivational, encouraging speaker who could bring an audience to tears. He was also well-known for being one of the few people I’ve met who could bring a person to tears with his temper tantrums, yelling and colorful language. For better or for worse, though, he was definitely one of a kind. I learned so much more from him than he ever realized, for his stories were the inspiration I needed to discover for myself that I could run a business and actually be successful at it. He believed in me, as he did every ICED employee.

ICED’s headquarters holds more than 1,000 paintings and statues of bald eagles, which to Bud were an example of the fierceness and tenacity that it takes to survive in this world and particularly in business. I believe Bud saw each of us as one of his eaglets that he fed, nurtured and taught life’s lessons until we were able to fly from the nest and make it on our own. In looking back at some of Bud’s tirades that I witnessed, I can’t help but wonder if those were his way of pushing us to our limit and beyond to teach us just those lessons, then taking us back under his wing again and smoothing over our ruffled feathers until it was time for the next lesson. He was the parent who never hesitates to give you a good hard spanking when you deserve it, but does it with tears in his eyes because he loves you so much that it hurts him more than it hurts you.

It is no surprise that Bud’s greatest mentor was Winston Churchill, and his favorite quote from Churchill was “never, never, never quit”. Appropriate words that can be applied to us in our businesses every day, as Bud applied them in his own life and business.

I left ICED in 2007 to pursue this dream of business ownership. Each of us has a story, a person or something that pushed us to believe we could be successful. I would love to hear yours if you want to share. Just remember that no matter how tough it may get “never, never, never quit”. Here’s to you, Bud. Thank you for changing my life.

Flying by the ‘seat of the pants’ method just doesn’t work for business today. Have you ever wondered how to get more organized, be more effective in your business and develop more efficient project management skills? My friends at VAClassroom recently created a 3-hour “Project Management Superstar” Clinic which they have scheduled for Wednesday, April 27 from 1:00-4:00 pm EST.

The Clinic is divided into four parts. Part One covers Project Management Foundations, Part Two covers Four Phases of Effective Project Management, Part Three covers Project Management Tools, Systems and Resources, and Part Four is a 30-minute Question and Answer Period.

Learn how to implement set procedures and systems in your business or your client’s business. You will learn to effectively coordinate and execute upcoming projects with great proficiency. Though this training is created for Virtual Assistants, the content can apply to almost any business. Check out the details here.

I plan to be there. How about you?