Month: May 2019

These days, there’s no getting away from social media. In the UK, 67% of the population uses social media – that’s around 45 million individual users* – which makes it an invaluable tool for business. This is especially the case for small business owners, who can access an enormous audience for a relatively low cost.

However, it’s important to be smart about your business’ social media marketing. Rather than opening accounts on every platform and spreading your efforts too thinly, it’s better to concentrate on just one or two that you can dedicate serious time to in order to make them work for you.

But which platforms should you use? Today we’re taking a look at three of the biggest social media sites – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – to help you decide which could be right for your business.

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This week is Learning at Work Week (13–19 May), and to celebrate, we’re talking about CPD – continuing professional development.

CPD is the process of tracking your knowledge and skills, and investing time in your own training and development at work. It is reflective – it requires you to think about the things you have learned, to reflect on what you would do differently next time, and to set goals and targets for yourself for the future. Most importantly, it involves writing these things down, so that you have a permanent record of your own development.

We’ve talked before about how to do CPD as a business owner, but today we’re focusing on why it’s important, and why you should make time for it.

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Get Ahead VA offers a wide range of business and marketing services. In our Service Spotlight, we take a closer look at one of these and show you how our virtual assistants can help you and your business. This month, we’re looking at business development.

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Get Ahead VA is very proud to have branches across the country, and the Regional Directors that run them are brimming with good advice about being your own boss. Today Salvatore, who runs the Bristol branch, is here to share his advice about the all-important elevator pitch.

As a Get Ahead VA Regional Director, I do a lot of networking, and one vital tool for this is the elevator pitch. The elevator pitch is a quick and punchy sales pitch, designed to explain who you are, what you do, and what you can offer to potential clients. This can be delivered formally (many networking meetings give everyone a chance to pitch to the room), or informally, during one-on-one mingling sessions, which is where the real connections are made.

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Get Ahead VA is very proud to have branches across the country, and the Regional Directors that run them are brimming with good advice about being your own boss. Today Salvatore, who runs the Bristol branch, is here to share his advice about the all-important elevator pitch.

As a Get Ahead VA Regional Director, I do a lot of networking, and one vital tool for this is the elevator pitch. The elevator pitch is a quick and punchy sales pitch, designed to explain who you are, what you do, and what you can offer to potential clients. This can be delivered formally (many networking meetings give everyone a chance to pitch to the room), or informally, during one-on-one mingling sessions, which is where the real connections are made.

(more…)