Month: June 2017

Writing press releases is a key part of PR.

Get your releases right and they’ll be published far and wide, but get them wrong, and they a) won’t generate the coverage that they deserve or b) you were hoping for.

It’s not possible to write all of your press releases in exactly the same way, but there are best practice techniques you can follow, like these:

1: THINK ABOUT HOW THINGS LOOK

Before we focus on the writing side of things, there’s just one small, but crucial thing I wanted to flag that has the potential to really impact how your press releases perform, and that’s how they’re presented.

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Here at Get Ahead VA our team includes experts in a wide variety of fields.  From Accounting to Admin, Hootsuite to Holiday cover, Email Marketing to Excel, our VAs can add value to many aspects of your business.  In our Expert Showcase series our team deliver some of this expertise to you, with a series of ‘How to’ guides to help you get the best bang for your buck in your business.

In this guide one of our virtual assistants Melanie talks about how you can organise, plan and track almost anything using an online tool called Airtable. (more…)

The media appears to be full of headlines talking about the gig economy at the moment.  The topic even featured in election campaigning last week, with political parties talking about zero-hours contracts and other employment related issues.  But what exactly is the gig economy and does it matter?

The gig economy is a way of working that is based on people having temporary jobs or doing separate pieces of work, each paid separately, rather than working for an employer. Source: Cambridge Dictionary

The gig economy is another form of freelancing or self-employment.  The gig economy phrase was coined to highlight the fact that people get paid for each ‘gig’ they complete.  This is in contrast to a standard employment contract – whether permanent or temporary, which would usually be based on a number of hours worked.  Famous examples of the gig economy include food deliveries for companies such as Deliveroo, taxi drivers for companies such as Uber, couriers and even independent contractors such as plumbers, in the recent employment case affecting Pimlico Plumbers.

Flexibility or exploitation?

On the one hand, the gig economy like other forms of freelancing and self-employment usually offers greater flexibility.  People can choose to work as and when they have time available, rather than being tied to a regular hours arrangement.  However it does mean that gig workers are not classed as employees, so they have no rights when it comes to things like holiday pay, sick pay or maternity pay.

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Whether you are running your own business or working in one, it can easily feel as though there are never enough hours in the day.  The ‘to-do’ list only seems to get longer.  You dream of having waving a magic wand to clear your desk and get things sorted.

What you might need is a top organiser to help you get things on track.  A virtual assistant can do just that – taking on administration, social media management and marketing tasks to enable you to get back what you do best. Our virtual PA services could be the magic wand you’re looking for!

What can a virtual assistant do for your business? Here are our top tasks to outsource:

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LinkedIn Pulse is a self-publishing platform.  This means that you can write articles or blog posts and rather than publishing them just on your own blog or website, you can publish them on LinkedIn.

Access to a worldwide audience

The immediate benefits are obvious.  For your own website or blog the audience will be limited to your website users – or possibly your social media or email database audience if you publicise it using these means.  However, publish an article on LinkedIn Pulse and potentially you can hit the millions of users worldwide currently registered on Linkedin – and even those without Linkedin accounts.

Publishing on LinkedIn Pulse can also benefit your SEO, providing good quality links back to your own website.  Your Pulse posts are listed on your profile, so publishing regularly can improve the appearance of your profile, as well as your influence within the Linkedin network.

So if the benefits are obvious, how do I get started?

Pulse used to be a standalone news aggregator app which LinkedIn purchased in 2013.  It has now been fully integrated into the LinkedIn desktop, so you may even be using it without realising it.  Every time you choose to click on the box ‘Write an article’ as opposed to simply sharing an update, you are publishing on LinkedIn.

The key steps to posting your first article are as follows: (more…)