Virtual Assistance and You

We had a discussion recently about targeting your market; about how it’s important to be as specific as possible about who your market is and how they act. We noted how the more specific you are about this market segment, the better for your business; but that does not at all mean that you only do business with your target market. To the contrary, you’re likely to serve many different kinds of people. Nonetheless, if you deliver your message with a certain, finely-etched individual in mind, you’ll attract the returns you seek.

I’ve often wrestled with this phenomenon. Defining your target market means envisioning your ideal customer in every detail, and keeping current with the experiences of that individual, so that your conversations with them are vital and effective.

During that recent discussion, though, I had a realization: defining your target market is a tool for you, as the seller, much more than it is a way to get customers. That is to say, in the end, the exercise is likely to give you increased business. But going through the process of imaging and defining and following your target market is not about knowing who to court, it’s about knowing who you are.  It produces for you a much sharper picture of your product/service; a much more clearly defined idea of the value you offer.

Let’s consider an example. A cake maker wants to boost her sales, but getting past the gatekeepers to reach decision-makers in her industry is proving troublesome. Then she takes some time to flesh out a picture of her ideal customer. With this information, she realizes that the associated social venues, connection points, and networks are suddenly definable as well; and from that data, she can design communications that speak intimately to the viscera of her audience.

The process she sets in motion then renders the gatekeeper problem irrelevant because her communications are so precisely targeted.

But our baker’s new clientele may, in actuality, be a mish-mash of a multitude of types. All sorts of different people may resonate with her targeted messages. If, for instance, she targets women 40-60 years old, income $100,000+, USA and Canada, she might easily attract women outside that age or income range, men who appreciate the female sensibility of her messages, or people from France or China.

They all come to her, though, because her message is crafted with careful specificity. It’s deftly branded. Its integrity captivates.

This is an ancient rule in fine art: that great art exists in the specific, not in the general.

The baker is speaking from her heart to a certain person in her imagination, a flesh-and-blood vision of someone who could be real. She speaks with respect, passion, and generosity, and her message hits the spot.

Defining her target does not necessarily deliver those exact customers to the baker. What it delivers is her own self-knowledge and ability to express. And with those skills come profits.

Categorizing and marketing

When it comes to your relationships, your clients, your colleagues, contacts, and suppliers, it’s tempting to categorize them and set up automated systems based on assumptions or aggregate descriptives about them.

The possibility of categorizing – i.e., labeling groups of people with certain shared characteristics – has triggered the past century or so in advertising. Some Henry Ford idea of standardization has blinded us to anything else but a mechanized version of human life.

But people are not essentially mechanistic. Our differences are both subtle and enormous.

Do you judge rather than serve?

Are you positively paralyzed by the fracas over the “Ground Zero” Muslim community center? Could we possibly be more splintered, more divided than we are over this issue? (The whole thing makes me sad.)

I realize I have a palpable fear of certain political viewpoints. I am actually afraid of those who espouse certain affiliations. I feel threatened by them.

These realizations cause me to re-assess. To have such extreme responses bodes no good. I am believing in my categories instead of perceiving the individuality of every moment, person, and situation.

Do you agree that there is a difference here?

You can hold to the hard line, insisting that everything can be categorized; or you can open to the reality that there is no categorization, that every instance is unique.

The tools for service

It is, of course, a lot easier to sort things into boxes and deal with them in bulk. But real life, nature, and the environment around us all suggest that it’s a lot more complicated than that. Especially when it comes to other people, shortcuts created by generalizing are costly if not completely destructive.

So thank goodness for social media, giving us the means by which to address our ‘public’ one by one. The technology has an uncanny way of expressing solutions to needs we hardly knew we had! But our need to serve rather than judge surely preceded the internet’s explosion.

That thing you do …

The old ‘billboard’ outbound marketing had to die. People do not want to be categorized, so any system that perpetrates categorization is doomed from the start. People want to be seen in their individuality, and it is the extent to which you can convince them you see them accordingly that you win their trust, and patronage.

Applying this maxim to the continual search for my ideal client, it becomes clear that there’s no final definition of that elusive personality. The person who resonates best with me may actually fit a multitude of ‘profile’ types. I can no more hope to predict the type than I can resolve the “Ground Zero Mosque” question.

Ultimately, que sera, sera, right? If I be what I be, you be what you be, and we meet through the internet or anywhere, then you are my ideal client. At least until proven otherwise.

We editors are a cranky bunch, always hacking away at misspellings and grammatical errors. Our rules, I’m sure, seem arcane to many.

As I’ve often pointed out, excellent written English is so far from the norm online that proper use of the language would seem to have lost all value amongst us.

There’s a core problem with ignoring good language, though: when ‘anything goes’ in language, communication is compromised. We could go so far as to say, the more tightly disciplined the language, the more powerful the communication. So when you start accepting any number of variations on the rules, you must also accept that you will not communicate as well.

Imagine saying something to another person and you really really care that the other person hears and understands. Do you speak differently than when you are not so intent on communicating something?

When representing your business in public, for marketing or any other reason, how much do you care that your audience (those who ‘audit,’ who hear) really gets your message the exact way you intend it? If you care much at all, then use of language is your central concern.

Communicating well is far different from merely spelling correctly or using complete sentences. It’s so much more than your spell-or-grammar-checker can catch that it belongs in another world entirely. The nitty gritty rules of writing are foundational, to be sure. But communicating well is where the pedal hits the metal.

Please consider these samples. Though well-meaning, each of these misses the mark the writer intended, and ends up instead conveying only a lack of careful proofreading or, it must be admitted, a lack of intelligence.

“With a Methodist mother and a Southern Baptist father, Clinton’s fiancé, who is Jewish, will invite another religious perspective into the family.”
What’s wrong: Clinton’s fiancé (subject of the sentence) is Jewish; it is Clinton who has the Methodist mother and Southern Baptist father.
Said properly: Clinton has a Methodist mother and a Southern Baptist father.  Her fiancé, who is Jewish, will invite another religious perspective into the family.

” … looking to ameliorate my skills and further my experience in the financial domain.”
What’s wrong: it would be very bad for you if you ameliorated your skills. Best to be sure you can state the definition of a big word before you use it – especially in any branding statement!
Better way to say it: “… looking to build my skills and experience in the financial domain.”

“I love Chocolate and it was just like , no better than most!”
What’s wrong: Was it really no better than most?
Better way to say it: “I love chocolate and it was like – no, better than most!”

” … he attributes Kurlan & Associates as a large part of his success.”
What’s wrong: ‘Attributes … as’ doesn’t make sense.
Better way to say it: ” … he attributes a large part of his success to Kurlan & Associates.”

“I’m in the business of helping independent professionals maximize their billable hours by handling their administrative support needs.”
What’s wrong: I hope you can see that though we might infer the meaning here, the language tries hard to obscure it.
A better way to say it: “I handle administrative support needs for independent professionals so they can maximize their billable hours.”

Note that in each of these cases, the best use is that which serves the reader’s understanding with most power and precision – and often the most simplicity.

Writing should be used to communicate, if you’re going to publish it. Do it with your reader firmly in mind. Serve his/her interests and nothing else. Create and polish your messages like love letters, because if you are selling anything, that’s what they have to be.

If you use the web for business, you surely know that building your opt-in list and sending email newsletters is the heart of your marketing.  For some time now, focusing on recruiting subscribers and increasing your inner circle fan club has been regarded as best practice if you want to grow your biz.

But, also for some time now,  the spam filters have been wise to email marketing software, summarily dumping many a well-meaning post. And, though you have ten on your list, who’s to say eight of them are not deadbeats who may open your post but never read it? Email client software that shows the top part of each email when you click on it in the list will report that the email was opened. But there’s no way to know if it was actually read.

The fact is, if one-third of your recipients open your email newsletter, you’re doing extraordinarily well. And if 20 percent click on your links, you might be on a terrific roll. Most stats are far below these levels.

Now, email marketing can be done very inexpensively, so we may as well keep doing it. But since we’re doing it, we should figure out how to do it better.

We want to be more effective, more compelling, closer to our clients than we are.  Yet email marketing, to be meaningful, has to have an enormous top of the funnel. The more people you’re mailing to, the more people are likely to actually read your messages. So you have to appeal to a wide base, while creeping closer to intimacy. It can be tricky.

But however we might frame things, in practical terms email marketing is perhaps terminally threatened by spam filters and pervasive ADD. So the question is, what can work better in its place?

The concept of the landing page, perhaps, begins to fill the bill; or micro-sites, as described in this article. In both these cases, the standard would be to send a short, plain text email, with a link to the online page.

Why is this better? While reserving the right to – eventually –  judge it not better, after all,  I might suggest that with such a system, you’re efficiently capturing those people who are most interested in your product. You’re not missing those whose spam filters would hide your html email; or those who have no time to read a lengthy post.

The subsequent online page, the link you provide in the text of your email, may include sub-pages, interactive elements, and other tools. It will contribute to your search engine optimization, and remain indefinitely in your website cache.

It’s a strong contender for html email replacement, IMO. What’s your take? Or are you successful enough with emailed newsletters, and not looking for alternatives? Sure would like to hear your comments.

I wonder how many web content producers are old enough to remember personally the experience that was the Grateful Dead. Now that David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan (I’m not sure they can count themselves amongst the elders – ?) have exhumed the Dead’s philosophy in their soon to be published Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, perhaps we can all begin to appreciate the legacy of the 60s/70s as productive in many ways.

After all, half a century later, we are realizing the marketing brilliance of those musical prophets. We have even developed technology to facilitate their ideas. Though we may have thought that the internet itself forces change, perhaps it’s more true that soul and society have changed, and the internet was created in response to those transformations.

It’s evidence of his superior intelligence that 26-year-old Dan Schawbel celebrates the coming launch of the Scott-Halligan book on his Personal Branding Blog, providing an excerpt for his audience.

The given chapter celebrates the Dead’s love for their work.

“We are taught as children that work and play are opposing forces in nature. This teaching is incorrect—it is possible that your work can be like play! In fact, if you do what you love the way the Grateful did, you’ll never ‘work’ a day in your life.”

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re undergoing an enormous re-calibration of work, all over the world. All facets of employment and career are being renovated, morphing because of pressures from the economy, society, and acts of God and mammon. Mine is the first generation in a very long time to believe that life should be personally fulfilling, and work should be more than drudgery.

The Dead shocked us with their simple being-ness, no excuses, no pretending. They gathered their following through happy sharing. A micro-economy still revolves around their heirs, descendant bands, and ever-living fans.

The most famous Dead takeaway for marketing:  let your customers sell for you.

The Dead invited fans to record their concerts, rather than fight costly battles over copyright. This meant that their fans were the record producers, and thus they were the marketing department as well.

I don’t know if this was sheer prescience on someone’s part; maybe Gerry Garcia thought it up. But it’s certainly likely that the Dead’s tactics were a result of their conviction that going with the flow is the right way to live. When you run into brick walls, go around them. The Dead, in an ironic sense, gave us a new way to live. Heroism transformed, through their culture, from monster bashing machismo to loving peacemaker.

So now we’re experimenting with inbound marketing, because

• the establishment of relationships is clearly so much more profitable than yelling at crowds;
• erring on the side of generosity brings our customers closer to us and gives them the tools to become our advocates;
• giving equal value to work and play in our lives allows us to become the best we can be, instead of trying to fit in molds.

I thank Scott and Halligan for paying this tribute to the Dead; and also for reminding us that the internet did not spring full grown from the head of Google or anyone on our current cutting edge. Rather, it’s been a long strange trip, and its origins go back 50 years, at least.

Look out, here comes one of those writing posts. I didn’t plan this, but today I ran into such an obvious example of mindless writing online that I have to go there with you for a minute.

Because communicating clearly is what writing is all about. It’s not a bunch of rules to frustrate you. Good writing respects the reader to the extent that it strives to communicate as easily, as seamlessly as possible.

You would not prepare a soup and serve it without giving it a taste, would you?

If nothing else, good writing requires, demands, and mandates proofreading, absolutely every time without fail. Please take that statement as verbatim, irrefutable law.  Part of my living is made by writing, and it’s still necessary for me to proof at least once, every email, update, and other iota that’s published online or elsewhere.

Because if you want to communicate and not just waste your time and everyone else’s, you must take the time to proofread.

Consider this sentence, culled from a news article I browsed today:

They also predicted using genetics alone many of those among study participants would be a centenarian.

Go ahead, read it again. See if you can make certain sense of it.

This was an article on CNN.com. Official sort of piece. Completely lacking proofreading, and therefore incomprehensible. What a shame. The news is confounding enough in its own right. Must its communication to me be equally garbled?

Okay, here’s what I think the author meant.

They also predicted, using genetics alone, many of those among study participants would be a centenarian.

Knowing that the article was about how scientists are now claiming to be able to predict which people will reach 100 years old in their lifetime, I can hazard a guess that the sentence and its sense might have been far better served stated thusly:

Using genetics alone, they also predicted that many of those among study participants would become centenarian.

And we sigh with relief. Here is language we can understand, language that cares enough about us to make sure it communicates cleanly, language that discretely disappears behind meaning.

Nobody really cares about grammar and proper usage, but we sure do care about understanding. It’s a fundamental need that can be satisfied by dedication to proofreading.

Like slow food, taking the time to proofread is a lifestyle choice that can boost returns in every area of your endeavor.

Here’s the third and final installment in my What is … mini-series. Having examined the contemporary roles of virtual assistant and social media marketing assistant, we’ll wrap it up with a look at the inbound marketing assistant.

The way I see things, the virtual assistant designation applies to anyone who provides contracted administrative computer and internet help to businesses. A social media marketing assistant is more specifically working in marketing for clients, especially in terms of execution of a social media strategy.

An inbound marketing assistant helps with marketing, too, but in a more comprehensive way. Duties may include activities both online and offline. In the inbound marketing capacity, your assistant may function more as a consultant and strategist. The emphasis here is on creating that mega-magnet which attracts customers to you, as opposed to traditional broadcast advertising models. Inbound marketing includes social media, website design, tracking and measurement, email newsletters, direct mail, and advertising, as appropriate for the individual situation.

Looking at these related-but-different definitions of VA, SMM assistant, and inbound marketing assistant, I’m struck by one thing in particular. This one thing helps to understand and define virtual assistance. The salient characteristic of all three roles is that they require attention to the big picture, while working intimately with the tiny details.

VAs are people who live on these two levels simultaneously all the time. We may offer specialized services, but we do so with a watchful eye on your goals and overall operations. Somewhat like alternative concepts in healing, we work with awareness of the whole organization, not just isolated parts.

Perhaps it could be said that a professional is one who confidently assumes such a bird’s eye view. A VA is admin turned professional. And a VA that specializes in inbound marketing is part of the current re-visioning of marketing as a concern of the whole organization, and not something relegated to one department.

Here’s a potentially controversial subject. Your opinion in the comments is eagerly encouraged.

To wit: A fellow said he’d reached astronomical numbers in his daily web traffic, and he was very happy about this. But he would not tell us where to find these wonderful sites he had created (there are, apparently, more than one). He would not reveal URLs because:

“- People copying my niche
-  People copying my content
-  People copying easy keyword phrases I rank for which I’ve discovered from years of gaining specialized knowledge on my niche
……  ”

I responded swiftly, and far too emotionally. This whole situation seems wrong, wrong, wrong to me. But I must not assume others feel the same way. I should look at things more objectively.

There are, after all, swarms of deluded people, spammers, cyber criminals, blackhat operators, and page sculpting creeps who are seeking to game the system however they can. The interactive web lays itself wide open to their shenanigans. And if you’ve worked hard creating content, it’s a burn when someone steals it.

And I know pride of keyword discovery can be enormous. The search engines churn along in a ineffable cloud of unknowing, one that every would-be superhero wants to pierce. Success with keywords can be directly translatable into big cash and big renown.

Especially if your methods can be easily replicated, you probably suspect from the get-go that anyone could do what you’re doing. You know your ideas will probably be stolen. And once it is out of your hands, your system will go to work for the thief, returning the same benefits to the criminal as to you. The bad guy’s easy ride enrages you.

What you’re overlooking, though, is your audience’s intelligence. A person who launches online businesses based in such easily-replicated system-gaming techniques is loudly demonstrating their lack of respect for the individual souls who make up their market. They are happily making lotsa bucks from faceless masses. They’re using an industrial/corporate model; one in which sensitivity to the individual customer makes no sense.

The internet model, though, does an about face (pun sort of intended). Its technology and venues allow building your client base with utmost individual attention. Specific targeting is easy. Connect with a few key people and watch your network bloom. End up with a tailor-made, ready-and-willing opt-in list who will remain loyal for a long time.

When you build a list with care and passion, you bond with your market for the duration. When you game the system, you rent your market, short term.

It’s as if you invented and then tried to hold the patent on dancing the rumba. All of a sudden, there are a zillion rumba teachers, making money off your invention.

The smart rumba inventor is thrilled to death that the invention has received such popular approval, and encourages teachers and students of the dance form wherever they may appear. The deluded rumba inventor is offended, and wants to keep the rumba for himself only.

I’ve tried to look at all this sympathetically, understanding the stresses and strains that many an internet marketer will undergo. But in the end, I’ve failed to produce a conclusion any different from my original gut reaction.

Building an internet basis for business that’s founded in manipulative structures and techniques is going to be problematic.

Building an internet basis for business that’s founded in sincerely helping people is going to be sustainably successful.

Anonymity is a bore and frustration online. We want to know and do business with real people. We want to trust you, but we won’t do so unless you provide good reason. And without our trust, you are faceless. But worse, you can be replicated.

Do you want to establish a business that’s respected for being helpful, that has a steady and reliable clientèle, that will thrive despite the creeps who would rip you off? The only way to do that is through being true to yourself while deeply respecting your public. Then you need not bury your treasures for fear of losing them; instead, you trust and create and share, finding your riches in the largesses of these three.

Such a long post! Yet there’s more to say. You say it for me, in the comments …

Over on the marketer’s forum that I recently joined, I posed the question, “Why are blogs so often urgently encouraged when the vast majority of people don’t read much at all?”

The commenters vociferously denied that blogging is essential. What is essential is content creation, content marketing; it’s really not about writing blog posts. You shouldn’t get hung up in the blogging idea, as if it’s a literal thing, they admonished me.

This, to me, confirms that we should be making videos, or maybe podcasts, but certainly not writing posts for markets that have neither the time nor the patience for reading.

Or perhaps we should be holding daily group sessions, or contests, raffles, games, news updates, meetups, events, specials, discounts, whatever. Totally hilarious videos du jour. Awesome beauty tip of the day.  Morning tips on car maintenance.

Content marketing. It’s like good old fashioned merchandising, done with internet tools; endlessly creating displays online, especially ones that include participatory elements. This is the practice of the new marketing.

To call it simply ‘blogging’ is deceptive. Blogging is keeping a web log. A journal on the web, relating/sharing your experiences as they unfold. It’s a useful endeavor in its way, but it’s only a sub-sub-set of content marketing.

The key concept that is necessary to understand and execute is content marketing, because the online goal is recognition by search engines, and those hungry machines are appeased only by continuously refreshed content. Search engines surmise that the most active and engaged publisher of content in any field is the one most relevant to search queries.

So how can your biz be active online on a daily basis, in a natural, sustainable way? This is the question for small businesses who want to brand themselves online. Don’t get deterred by all the emphasis on blogging; you don’t have to be a writer. You do have to be active in your field, perhaps with an intensity that’s new to you.

If the prospect of so much activity scares you, contact a virtual assistant, who will partner with you to keep your brand energized on the internet and beyond.

What was that recent commercial that showed a bimbo groupie saying, “I dunno what it is, but I want it”?  I thought it was an especially funny image, a parody of hype and at the same time encouraging that kind of fan-atic behavior.

Makes me wonder: how much does business depend on hype and how much does it rely on authenticity?

The measurement varies for every enterprise, I suppose. How about your biz? Do you build hype or trust?

What makes hype so pervasive?

How does authenticity become trust?

Is it better to build thrilling suspense or to cultivate security? Does it serve small business purposes to approach markets as if they’re looking for entertainment?  Or are mundane, concrete  solutions for practical everyday living more profitable these days?

Should you latch onto the glitzy affiliate program, selling flashy products from your internet heroes? Or should you carry on the campaign to get your personal brand established, slowly building your own highly select audience, one by one?

I’m a relationship-oriented type, so the slow build is my obvious preference. But honestly, I can’t say which approach is better in terms of making money for you.  Small business marketing is rather like college athletics: mysteriously unpredictable.

For some, the extravaganza is the natural modus operandi; for others, the routine is the only trustworthy way.

Some can produce spectacle upon spectacle, dazzling their public with unflagging celebrations. At higher corporate levels, this is the only way to survive. Others of us in day-to-day commerce feel most productive when establishing solid personal connections that are well positioned to strengthen over time. We like customers that directly dialog with us; we seek clients of a well-defined ilk who will stay with us over the long run.

As much as the gurus would have us believe that authenticity reigns in social media, it’s easy to fake it, and to present hype that avoids all contact with deep inner truth. Sincerely revealing your ‘nekkid’ self in social networks takes precise skill and awareness. Not all of us are up to meeting the necessary standards of authenticity every day.

I think  we have to keep trying, though. I think this is the core value of the internet. It’s a tool that can guide us to a new kind of self-awareness – a self-awareness that actually sells.

How does this contrast strike you? How do you orient your communications – to be entertaining, or to solicit a response from the receivers? Does one or the other of these approaches get a better return on your investment?