H.Y.V.A. and Save Time™

Asking someone else to do something for you is as old as mankind. Fairly compensating that person for agreeing to do the task on your behalf is what we normally call work or employment. Outsourcing is simply asking someone coming from outside a group to do something. The group can be a family, tribe, nation or even a culture. Simply defined, outsourcing is delegating a task to an outsider.

Outsourcing during Ancient times

Ancient cultures delegated a lot of tasks to outsiders. Most of these tasks were related to farming, construction, craft making and even war. An example of outsourcing tasks to other groups is farming. Many ancient people asked other groups to tend to their farms and build irrigation canals. The Egyptians had nearby civilizations assist them in the construction of irrigation canals so that their farms would get water. In return, these groups were given a share of the harvest.

The Han Chinese was known to delegate jewelry making to artisans coming from other tribes. Jade carving, silver and gold smiths came from other tribes to the Han Chinese. Most of these smiths knew where to find the precious metals, while the Han Chinese had a lot of food and other resources that these tribes also needed.

The navigators of the old world were mostly Dutch mariners who knew how to travel by sea just by following the stars at night. These Dutch men were asked by the Spaniards and Portuguese to navigate their ships to the Orient.

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Social media marketing is a method of online marketing that will make your business profitable over time; basically you plant the seeds and begin to watch your efforts grow and eventually reap the rewards. It is not a quick fix, it will take effort on your part and I am saying this now so that I can correct any wrong assumptions you already have about it. That said, it is a very potent strategy of promoting your business through the most popular social media networks such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and LinkedIn. As a Small Business Owner, you should not ignore the efficacy of creating vital content and promoting them on social media channels; this very act will lead to a decent Return of Investment (ROI) in the form of exposure, gaining expert status in your field as well as getting clients.

Even though Social media marketing might be time consuming, it is not complex at all and it’s definitely not only for the experts. It doesn’t require any computer programming skills; everyone can do it, the secret is just quality effort and the eagerness to learn. One of the many advantages of taking this strategy is that you get to interact directly with potential clients on the sites that they frequently visit. It is informal way of engaging your target audience by sharing vital information that they can use immediately; they eventually will become loyal supporter and fans of your business as well as future clients.

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Hiring a Virtual Assistant (VA) for your business is ONLY the first step in the process of leveraging your talent and your time. Ensuring you get the expected results from your VA, as well as setting up the working relationship between you and your virtual assistant is the main goal of the whole process.

Allow me to walk you through the details of managing your Virtual Assistant. The process is seemingly straight forward; just be aware that you also need to constantly adjust to the situation. Working with anyone – real or virtual – is a dynamic situation where adjustments need to be made at all times, every time. The key word here is resiliency.

Interacting with your Virtual Assistant is done by means of various new technologies and the internet. Setting up a virtual workspace for communicating with your VA is essential.  The tools needed are readily available and cost anything from free ($free.99) to a fraction of what it would have cost to implement 4 to 5 years ago. I am going to cover some of the basic tools that your VA needs to have set up.

Here are 3 important basic tools to set up (and how to use them):

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Hiring your own Virtual Assistant (VA) needs proper preparation and candidate selection. Making the decision to hire a VA and posting the job position online are the easiest parts of the process. The crucial parts are; choosing the right candidate, and managing the Virtual Assistant that you eventually hire. In this post, I will present to you the first part – Choosing the right candidate.

What job or tasks do you need the VA to do?

Before posting the job online, it is wise to determine the specific tasks the VA will be doing on your behalf. Knowing what task you will be asking the VA to be responsible for will give you a clear idea on the specific skill sets the job requires. List the task and the skills needed to carry out the task, and then ask yourself how many hours will be needed to carry out the task, and how much you are willing to pay for the number of hours that the job will require.

You then will have to determine if this task is a one time task, such that once the job is done, then there will be no need to repeat the job, in the future. If this is the case, then this job can be posted as a fixed price job. But if this task is part of a repetitive process within your business, then this job is classified as a weekly task that will need a fixed amount of time each week. Jobs of this type will require you to set a budget on a weekly basis to compensate the VA for doing the job.

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