It’s almost 2012, what are your business plans? Do your plans include delegating the tasks that are not a good use of your time?

The more you delegate, the more time you create in your schedule for the income generating tasks that should be your focus. Delegation really does create less stress and more focus and I’m all for less stress and more focus, aren’t you?

Here are the top 5 Tasks to Delegate in 2012:

1. Transcription of audios
2. Transcription of videos
3. Blog marketing
4. Newsletter scheduling
5. Research of interviews
6. Scheduling of interviews
7. Social Media management
8. Research
9. Forum & Group moderation
10. Blog Tour

This is only a small list of  tasks that  can be outsourced.

What Should I Delegate?

The easiest way to decide what to delegate is to take inventory of your day. Write down what you are working on and then decide if those tasks that are filling up your day are better left to an experienced virtual assistant to handle or if it is truly a task that only you can do and is an income builder.

After careful consideration, you may be surprised that 90% of what you are working on is not a direct income builder and should be handed over to other responsible personnel.

Where does delegating fit into your current business model? Visit us on Facebook to join our conversation!

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Stephanie Fish offers a free 20 minute consultation. Visit my contact page to schedule yours!

Guest Post: Nicole Dean

*Stephanie here, if you are running an online business then you know how having website content published on a daily basis is important to your online success. I am in the process of sharing some of my secret tools for content, which is PLR (private label rights). *

Now onto my Guest Post with Nicole Dean:

If you’ve been working online for any amount of time, you’ve probably purchased private label rights content at some point or another. PLR is a great tool that helps website owners quality content to their websites without having to hire a ghostwriter to write it all for them or spend countless hours writing all of their content from scratch.

If you’ve purchased your fair share of PLR and find that it’s taking up tons of space on your computer’s hard drive and you’re having a hard time determining what content you’ve used and where and which articles you still have available for use, you’ll be happy to know, you’re not alone. It’s not uncommon to becoming disorganized with your PLR, until now that is.

Here’s one way you can organize your PLR content so that you know what’s been used and what is still waiting to find it’s way to the spotlight of your website or newsletter.

First, organize all your PLR by either niche or website. If you own more than one website it might be best to use the later organization method. Move all the articles that you want to use on that website into the site’s folder. Within your website folder create two folders. The first labeled “Rewritten – Ready for Posting to site” and the second, “Used.”

By creating two separate folders you can move the articles to the “Rewritten” folder once you’ve reworked them and they are ready to be added to your blog or website. After you have added them to your site, simply cut and paste the article to the “Used” folder.

And don’t forget there are tons of ways to use the same article over and over. If you’re looking for PLR eCourses that you can use to teach others about the many uses of PLR, have a look at this: EasyPLR.com

Click Here to Learn More About Rapid Product Formula!

We delegate on a daily basis and may not even be aware of it, forms of delegation include:

• Hiring Babysitters
• Ordering Fast Food
• Using a Dry Cleaner
• Hiring Roofers, Builders or Landscapers

The list could go on and on, but I think you get the picture.

I came across an online business coach who coaches millionaire business owners (this lady knows her stuff!) anyways, there were some things that she said that really stood out to me when it comes to delegating, especially speaking to 6-figure business owners who feel they can’t afford to delegate.

Here’s what I gleamed from the video:

1. Successful delegation creates leverage in your time and business, which increases your income.
2. If you don’t delegate on a regular basis, your income can’t grow.
3. You need systems and checklists in place in order to keep your team (and yourself) organized and functioning properly.

Here’s the eye-opening part of her lecture that I think will be helpful to you, as it has for me and my business:

Write down what you spend your working time on each day, do this for about 3 days. Pay special attention to the following:

• Are you scheduling clients? (enter that amount of time here)
• Are you on coaching calls?
• Are you printing your daily/weekly agendas?
• Are you actively seeking interviews, speaking engagements or other publicity opportunities?

Now she suggests to add a dollar value to each task you listed! So if you charge $495 per hour on a coaching call, you’ll place that value next to that task. Let me tell you, I can see where I am losing money on tasks that I could easily outsource to someone else for around $45.00 per hour.

At the end of your day, are you able to see where you are actually costing your business money doing tasks that should be delegated to someone else, so you can spend that time on an income generating activity?

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Stephanie Fish, Owner of Buckeye V.A., handles the online marketing for successful speakers, published authors and coaches. Are you ready to delegate? Let’s Talk!

Guest Blogger: Nicole Dean

Podcasters and Internet radio show hosts can use private label rights content in a variety of ways to help boost their listenership. PLR articles aren’t just for information sites and here are a few ways podcasters can put them to use on their own site.

1. Use the articles to post to a blog or website in between shows to keep your show fresh in your listener’s mind.

2. Use PLR to brainstorm future show topics.

3. Make recordings of the articles and post them as bonus or mini-podcasts.

No matter how you choose to use your PLR articles to boost your podcast, it’s extremely important that you realize you need to rework the original content to make it your own. Add your own thoughts, rewrite the content to make it fit your audience, add your own personal research and data, etc.

Looking for more tips to give your subscribers about getting the most use out of their PLR? Check out the 9 Uses for PLR Articles at EasyPLR.com

Blogs are popular and needful for getting your message out in a big way. You can build a blog for free (not recommended for the serious online business owner) and start adding content, but what goes does that do if no one is reading it?

I read some where that 1/2 of the blogs online fail to convert readers to buyers. Why do you think that is? And how can you make sure that you aren’t one of them? Blogging takes time, work, dedication and consistency. If you can’t commit to this type of business structure, fact is you may just not see the success you want.

Let’s jump right in to my list of 10 Blogging Ideas to Generate Traffic

• Fresh Content- no one wants to visit a blog day after day and see the same posts. Update your blog content at least twice a week. This will be easier if you write several posts ahead of time and schedule them at the appropriate time.

• Article Marketing- the niche you’ve chosen for your blog is one that interests you. If it is interesting you will spend more time writing for it. When you create your blog content why not turn it into an article and have your virtual assistant distribute it to your niche directories.

• Social Networking- these sites include Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and they are there for you to make connections. Connecting with your target readers and clients are much easier thanks to the variety of social networks.

• Viral Marketing- this is very important! You are going to want to share your blog online and offline. Talk to your online and offline friends, fans and family. Make sure to include your blog url on all of your printed  materials.

• Use RSS Feeds- RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. Readers can subscribe to your feed and get email updates when new content is posted. It is an easy way for them to keep up with your blog without spending all day online.

• Submit your blog to Search Engines- doing this allows your blog to be ranked. Google and Yahoo! are two of the most popular search engines you want to crawl your blog pages.

• Joining Forums-as a blogger you are a budding entrepreneur. Right now you are marketing yourself to find traffic and then profit. Find the forums that your target readers & clients frequent then be active!

• Visit other blogs – When someone comments on your blog be sure to visit their blog and leave a comment thanking them for visiting and commenting on yours. You could also request to be a guest blogger on someone else’s blog.

• SEO Marketing- Use relevant keywords that your target readers are using. Spend some time researching the keyword phrases that are popular in your niche.

• Social Bookmarking- this is my favorite tool to use on my clients blog content! You’ve taken so much time and energy writing a new blog post so the right ‘eyes’ can see it, why not take an extra few minutes to share your content with others?

Using any of the these ideas will start moving traffic in your direction and build readership. Be patient, consistent and offer value.

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Stephanie provides Online Business Management services for published authors who are struggling to organize and grow their online presence.

Why hire a virtual assistant?

As a business owner it is near impossible for you to do everything on your own. Whether you have a strictly online business, a direct sales business, or a traditional bricks and mortar business you’re going to need help getting various tasks done either due to not enough hours in the day, or due to lack of skill. Thankfully, due to the wonders of computer technology, and the speed of broadband, you can contract with an entire team of professionals all without hiring a single employee. Virtual assistants come in many forms from administrative, to technical to very niche specific.

Hiring a virtual assistant (VA) can help you pass off various tasks to others so that you can concentrate on only the money makers in your business rather than tedious tasks that you don’t want to do but are still essential to a well run business such as bookkeeping, customer service, uploading information to your website, posting blog posts, article marketing and many, many other tasks. The great thing is that you can do all this without hiring a single employee, but rather instead you contract with an independent contractor that markets themselves as a Virtual Assistant.

Hiring a virtual assistant (VA) can help you take your business to the next level. It does not matter if you have a bricks and mortar business, or a solely online business, you can still hire a VA to do various tasks that either you find tedious, or that you don’t know how to do well. You can actually be holding yourself back from having a successful business if you don’t let go of some of these activities by assigning them to a VA.

When you hire a virtual assistant (VA) you only pay for the actual time spent on your tasks, not benefits, breaks, or extra taxes. In fact, everything you pay your VA is a deductible business expense, dollar for dollar. You don’t even pay for training because a VA is an expert in his or her niche. VAs can be terrific resources regarding technology and business organization so take advantage of that fact by asking your VA for advice regarding various aspects of your business. You can only find out new information if you ask the right questions.

The very best reason why to hire a virtual assistant is the time savings and freedom that you will experience due to outsourcing some of your tasks to a VA. You will once again regain your nights for movies and family, your weekends for time with your spouse and your friends all without even one employee being on the payroll. Instead, you’ll have an assistant who will be conducting these tasks on your behalf who cares about your return on investment because if you’re successful they are successful.

As you see, hiring an experienced and dependable virtual assistant to help you run your business can pay off in many ways. You’ll have more time for family, or other money making activities, and if you play your cards right you’ll have one or more experts at your finger tips to help make your business more successful than you ever dreamed possible.

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Stephanie Fish, owner of Buckeye V.A. is currently accepting new clients. If you need office support without the burden of in-house staffer, contact Stephanie today!

When you invest in your business its quite possible to over look the value of having your own ‘go-to’ virtual transcriptionist. By outsourcing the transcription of your audio and video (including your live event recordings) you are in essence providing fresh content that can be used in 3 ways:

1. Info-products- Use your own words to create reports, books, landing pages
2. Mailing List- Add your transcribed words and create freebies such as: e-reports and e-books
3. Interviews- Take your transcribed audio or video content and submit it to online interview opportunities

Let’s not forget your that your transcribed words can be used for your social media marketing,  blog and website content, you know how the search engines love fresh, relavent content!  Your virtual assistant can pull information from your transcribed products and create articles to submit to directories to increase your webtraffic.

Here are the 2 most popular mediums to send your virtual assistant to transcribe for you:

• Audio- Record your next article or chapter of your book and send it to your virtual assistant to transcribe. Let her know what format you would like it to be returned to such as: blog post, website package page, letter, ect.
• Video- Whether you are publishing your own video or have a segment on a television show, your virtual assistant can transcribe the content and send it back to you.

Transcription outsourcing can give you valuable content using your own words that will help you stand out in the crowd and saves you time, time that can be spent with your family and other business building activities.

Buckeye V.A. can create your business video slideshow using  animoto.com services.

You are invited to contact Stephanie Fish for a free 20 minute consultantation to discuss your publicity virtual assistant needs.

Virtual assistants who’ve been trained and experienced in marketing research and business marketing — particularly through the Internet — can be invaluable to growing your business. It would take time for you to learn and do everything yourself, time that you could put to better use by focusing on the aspects of your business that you enjoy and are an expert at.

For example, not everyone is adept at using Web 2.0 for business marketing. Besides, it can eat up a lot of your time every day. Wouldn’t you rather use that time to develop your business in other ways or even relax and enjoy your family?

Here are a few marketing and research tasks that a virtual assistant can perform for you:

* promote your business in social networking sites, a very time-consuming task
* produce a podcast which will expand your business’ web presence
* look at competitors’ websites and report on what they’re doing – so you can analyze what your competitors’ approach is and come up with strategies to outdo them
* find information you need to grow your business, such as identify affiliate programs that are relevant to your business and could increase your market reach
* look for websites or blogs relevant to your business where it might be profitable for you to advertise your products or services

Could you do all this yourself and still live the life you want? Probably not. Yet these things could take your business to the next level and ultimately increase your income. You should certainly be familiar with these processes in order to effectively hire and supervise somebody to do them for you. However, you don’t have to do them yourself.

Let a virtual assistant declutter your mind of the minute but essential details of business marketing and research. Then you can focus on work that have greater impact on your business, such as monitoring and evaluating your marketing efforts and those of your competitors, formulating strategies, and mapping out growth directions.

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Stephanie Fish is the owner of Buckeye V.A, she works from her home office in Ohio. After completing her Associate of Applied Business Degree from KSU,she launched her own virtual assistance business. To learn more about the VA industry or how Buckeye V.A. can help your business please visit http://www.buckeyeva.com

Someone who is indecisive about purchasing a product or service, and never feels satisfied with what they are offered. In the end a tire kicker may or may not buy. The term comes from sales people at car dealerships. Tire kickers would come around frequently, kick the tires a few times on the cars that they liked, but never make a solid purchasing decision on any particular car or trim.

That tire kicker has come here every day for the last month, don’t waste any time on him.

Social Media is a great business tool. It really is free advertising, if you think about it. I mean where else can you talk about your business and reach millions of people without having to pay a fee? With all this social media wonderfulness comes a responsibility that many online internet marketers don’t realize, and that is, social media works when you develop the skill to build relationships.

If you’re only online talking about your business then you’re missing out on really building your business. What I mean by that is, if you are using social media to build your business you probably think you need to be talking about your business, right? Well, not so much. I mean, yes you have to talk about your business but not just about your business, you need to be spending time talking to your friends and followers having a real conversation on something other than your business.

Your fans and followers want to learn more about you, not just your business. Your social media manager can schedule your business updates, business facts, industry news and so forth, but no one, not even the best social media manager can be your voice.

You must be your own voice!

Don’t shy away from building real relationships with your fans, they want to get to know the expert behind the expertise, and social media has allowed this to happen. Just be wise in your update postings, make sure you’re taking the time to build a relationship and not tearing them down by throwing spammy updating on a continuous basis.

One thing that many online business owners are doing to build real relationships with their fans and followers is by hosting a live online events. When you create an online event, whether its 30 minutes or hours long, you are taking the time to be ‘real’ to others and that in turn, can really increase your business.

Take the time right now to create a live event and let all of your fans know about it. Tell them you are going to take Q and A during the live call, and to let their friends know about.

After its all said and done, don’t solely rely on social media platforms or your social media manager to create the contacts you need for your business success. Remember, your clients want the benefit of working with you!