Category: Top Tips

Email marketing: it’s a crucial part of business, but it can also be one of the hardest things to get right. That’s because inboxes fill up quickly and online attention spans are short. If you want to be welcome in your customers’ inboxes, you’re going to need to stand out from the crowd.

Let’s take a look at some of the stats. The average email user receives 88 emails per day, and marketing messages, newsletters and spam account for almost half of these. Only 30% of all emails received will be opened, and just 3.2% of marketing emails will get a click-through to the sender’s website.

Those are tough odds to go up against, so how do you make sure your emails get noticed? Look no further – here are 5 tips for creating marketing emails your customers will read. (more…)

LinkedIn might have been around for a while, but stats published earlier this year show that it is still hugely influential. There are around 500 million users on LinkedIn, 40% of whom use the site daily. Research by the Society for Human Resource Management discovered that, of the employers who use social networking sites for recruitment, more than 90% use LinkedIn.

Even so, it can be tricky to keep your LinkedIn profile up to date, and with so many other tasks demanding your attention it’s all too easy to let your profile languish, out of date and unloved. If this is how your profile is feeling, here are some things you can do to freshen it up, so you can keep making those valuable online connections.

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Prep your business for summer

The longest day of the year was last week, and that means summer is officially upon us. But what does that mean for your business?

For many businesses, the good weather and longer days can mean a slump in productivity as everybody turns their attention to leisure rather than work. But summer doesn’t need to spell disaster for the savvy business owner.

If you want to know how to avoid the dreaded summer slow-down, here are four useful ways to prep your business for summer.

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At Get Ahead VA, we’re always on the lookout for exciting tools that can make running a business just a little bit easier – that’s why, earlier this year, we blogged about some of our favourite apps for business.

Today we’re taking a closer look at one of those apps, Canva. We’ll show you how it can help with all your business’ graphic design needs, and why our VAs love it!

What is Canva?

Canva is a free-to-use graphic design website and app that allows you to create beautifully designed media for both online and offline use. Canva provides it users with thousands of photos, fonts and graphics, as well as lots of handy templates for creating everything from social media posts, to banners and thumbnails, to flyers and leaflets. The program uses a drag-and-drop format, so it’s easy to create your designs. Although Canva is free, you can upgrade to ‘Canva for Work’, which provides access to more features, including extra photos and templates, and makes it easier to save and share designs with other members of your team. (more…)

Networking – love it or hate it, it’s an inescapable part of business. It’s how you make connections, discover opportunities and form lasting relationships that can help your business soar.

With hundreds of business events held each year in the UK, there’s no shortage of ways to get networking. Events like Liverpool’s International Business Festival draw thousands of professionals from all around the world, but whatever size event you attend, it’s important to get your networking right.

Here are our 4 top tips for networking effectively at any business event.

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We all know how important it is to protect the planet, and with World Environment Day taking place on Tuesday 5th June, there’s never been a better time to think about the eco-friendliness of your business.

Going green isn’t just good for the environment – it can be good for business too. Not only can environmentally friendly alternatives save you money, they can also attract customers. In 2017, a global study by Unilever found that one-third of consumers prefer to buy from sustainable companies.

Interested? If you want to boost your business’ eco credentials, here are 5 easy steps you can take today.

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There’s no shortage of great tech out there that can help your business to run more smoothly – in fact, just a couple of weeks ago we showcased some of our VAs’ favourite apps for business. But this week is National Stationery Week, and even with so many wonderful tools available online, we’re still very fond of good old-fashioned stationery.

Of course, we’re not alone. A study by Epson UK discovered that 82% of new British businesses – including those started by ‘digital natives’, 18- to 24-year-olds – still favour physical tools such as whiteboards, pens and paper for their creative work.

Fortunately, stationery and tech don’t need to compete with each other; there’s enough room in our hearts, and our offices, for both. With that in mind, here are some stationery essentials we think belong in every office.

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Spambots have long been a problem for Twitter, and as of 23rd March 2018 the platform introduced new anti-spam rules to try and combat them. The idea behind the new rules is to prevent users from posting multiple Tweets with the intention to “disseminate spam” or to “artificially amplify or inflate [a Tweet’s] prominence”.

The changes are designed to combat duplicate content, so they’re likely to have the most significant impact on social media managers and business owners who post the same content across multiple accounts. Want to know if these new rules will affect you? Read on to find out what steps you can take to avoid your Tweets being marked as spam.

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Here at Get Ahead VA, our team of virtual assistants 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.

With that in mind, our VAs are always on the lookout for the apps, tools and tricks of the trade that will help them to work more efficiently. We asked them to name their favourites, so you can discover the programs behind the people, and get some inspiration for your own business.

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Stress at work is an extremely common problem in the UK. According to the Health and Safety Executive, in 2016/17, 12.5 million working days were lost to work-related stress, depression and anxiety. Add to this the pressures of being your own boss, and stress can be a particular problem for small business owners.

So what can be done about the stress epidemic? One of the schemes that has been put in place is Stress Awareness Month, which takes place every April. The aim of the month is to encourage people to talk about stress, share their coping strategies and take care of themselves and others.

If you’re looking for somewhere to start with managing your own stress, here are 5 of our top tips. (more…)