Category: Top Tips

We all have a vision in our heads of an angel – the being that came to bring messages of good news and great joy in the nativity story – or the little girl dressed in white with her fluffy halo on her head in the school play.  But how does that work in a business context?   What is a business angel?

“An angel investor is a high net worth individual who makes use of their personal disposable finance and makes their own decision about making the investment.” UK Business Angels Association

A business angel is someone (or a group of people) who decides to invest their money in other businesses.  It is described as equity finance, as the angel would usually take shares in your company in return for the finance they are providing.  In contrast to other forms of lending, angels will usually wish to volunteer their expertise as well as their money, helping you to achieve your objectives and them to achieve a return on their investment.  One of the most famous groups of angel investors is of course the BBC Show Dragon’s Den.

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April is National Pet Month and up and down the UK thousands of people will be celebrating life with their pets.  The National Pet Month charity aims to promote responsible pet ownership, make people aware of the mutual benefits of living with pets, increase public awareness of the role of pet care specialists and raise awareness of the value of working and assistance companion animals.

For some individuals, assistance dogs are a vital part of their life that enables them to get to work every day.  For others, pets are simply a happy part of family life. So could an office dog (or cat or goldfish?) actually boost your productivity? 

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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 marketing and social media management specialists Jenny talks about how you can use icons to boost the visual impact of your marketing – both on and offline:

As consumers, we are bombarded with marketing messages every day.  Our phones receive marketing emails, texts and even calls wherever we are.  As soon as we log into our social media accounts we are bombarded with sponsored posts and ‘suggested’ updates.  Our brains are firmly on overload.

So as a business, how do you cut through all that clutter and ensure that your marketing messages do get through?

Graphic design can be a really effective tool, providing visual impact.  Icons are an important part of the designer’s toolkit which can add an identity to your marketing messages and bring them together to reinforce their impact.

An icon is a small picture that represents a topic, information category or programme.

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Today is Safer Internet Day, a global event which is celebrated in over a hundred countries, coordinated by the joint Insafe/INHOPE network.  It is supported by the European Commission and national Safer Internet Centres across Europe.  The day offers the opportunity to highlight positive uses of technology and to explore the role we all play in helping to create a better and safer online community.

Be the change: unite for a better internet

This year’s theme is ‘Be the change: unite for a better internet’ and it is something we can do in our professional, as well as our personal lives.  Teaching internet safety is vital for children and young people – but it is also critically important for businesses too.  There are regular headlines about major multinational companies like Yahoo and Tesco Bank being hit by hacking.  But small businesses are vulnerable as well, yet might not have big IT departments to address the risks.

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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 our founder and director Rebecca Newenham talks about how to work effectively from home, drawing on her experience since setting up Get Ahead VA over six years ago:

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It is just 3 weeks to go until the Self Assessment deadline so if you haven’t already got your tax return sorted, now is the time.  Under current tax rules, if you run your own business and are registered self-employed you may need to submit a tax return online, along with other people who are required to file returns such as those whose annual income is over £100,000 per year, who have Capital Gains Tax to pay, who live abroad or who are trustees.  The deadline for filing online is Tuesday 31st January and there are fines to pay for every single day that you file late – however good your excuse is!

For some of you this might be an easy task.  Your accountants may already have everything in hand, you may have already set the money aside to pay the tax owed and you are simply waiting to press the ‘go’ button.  For others this might be the first time you have had to do it – or the annual panic. (more…)

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 virtual assistants can add value to many aspects of your business.  Each month we like to share some of this expertise with you through our series of ‘How to’ guides to help you get the best bang for your buck in your business.

In this guide one of our Digital Marketing experts Carrie talks about what keyword planning is and how you can integrate into your online marketing.

Carri-Jones Get Ahead VA

Keyword planning is a vital part of your online marketing strategy.  It helps to tie together everything you do – to reinforce what you want to say about your company and to help get you noticed online.  Done well, it helps you to rank higher in the searches that you want to be found for, driving more customers to your website and more sales through your business.   But first things first, what really is keyword planning?

Keyword planning is the process of researching and evaluating the words and phrases most relevant for your business and formulating a plan for how to integrate those into your online activity.

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This Saturday 3rd December is Small Business Saturday.  Small Business Saturday UK is a grassroots, non-commercial campaign, which highlights small business success and encourages consumers to ‘shop local’ to support small businesses in their communities.

As a small business you can visit the website www.smallbusinesssaturdayuk.com and download and print free marketing packs and logos to advertise that you are part of the nationwide campaign.  You can also get involved online by listing your business on their ‘Small Business Finder’ for free.

On social media you can get a free shout out for your plans for the day on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, using the hashtag #SmallBizSatUK.  Last year #SmallBizSatUK trended at number 1 all day on Small Business Saturday with over 100,000 tweets sent in support of the day, reaching more than 25 million people.  That could provide fantastic exposure for your business.

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We are really excited to introduce you to our new email newsletter. Each month we will be asking our readers to ask us a question that they have not got around to finding the answer to.

This month one of our contacts asked us….’How do you set up a webinar?’

So here goes…Carrie one of our Marketing Specialists explains how do you set up a webinar?

You’ve watched webinars yourself or seen them advertised across the web. Everyone is talking about them and you would like to give one a go.

It just seems like far too much trouble and you don’t know where to start. There’s the huge cost and research to be done into creating one and hosting one!!!

I promise you, it is affordable, easy and you will be able to do it, I’m here to help you!
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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 are delivering 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 our award winning social media expert Angela talks about how Linkedin Company Pages are changing and ways in which you can make the most of the new format:
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