This month we’re delighted to be celebrating Get Ahead VA’s 9th birthday, and we couldn’t be prouder of everything our Regional Directors and Virtual Assistants have achieved over the years.

We also understand that big achievements come out of small actions, so we’ve put together a list of 9 things you can do over 9 days to develop yourself – your motivation, productivity or general well-being. Each of these should take no more than half an hour, but you might be surprised by what a big difference they make.

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September is Get Ahead VA’s birthday month, and this year we’re turning nine years old! Back in 2010, Rebecca Newenham founded Get Ahead VA in order to provide business and marketing support to business owners, and the company has gone from strength to strength since then. So, to celebrate our birthday, here are 9 top tips for starting a successful business of your own!

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With 50% of the UK’s workforce predicted to be working remotely by 2020,* there has never been a greater need for virtual team meetings. Done right, the virtual meeting is a great way to keep in touch with the members of your team, even if you’re working in different locations or you’re on the road.

So how can you make sure your virtual team meetings run smoothly? We’ve got 5 top tips for business owners who want to make their online catch-ups both productive and useful for everyone involved.

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Thursday 1st August is Yorkshire Day – a day dedicated to celebrating the beautiful, vibrant and innovative county of Yorkshire – and Get Ahead VA is very proud to be part of this wonderful region. To celebrate this special day, we wanted to let you know how we can help your Yorkshire-based business to grow.

What is Yorkshire Day?

Yorkshire Day is an annual celebration of the county of Yorkshire, promoting the county’s  towns, beauty spots and top attractions through special promotions, festivals, art, culture, food and drink. This year the main celebrations will be held in Whitby, where representatives from across the county will come together to show off the best that Yorkshire has to offer.

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Taking a summer holiday might seem like an indulgent luxury for a business owner, but it is actually an essential part of running a business and making it a success.

When your phone runs out of battery, you recharge it, and the same principle applies to you too. The summer is the perfect time to take yourself away from work for a week or two and top up your batteries with fun, sunshine and, most importantly, rest. Not only will this make you feel better, it’ll benefit your business too, when you return refreshed and brimming with new ideas.

Have we convinced you to take a break? Then here are three ways you can make the most of your summer holiday.

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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 graphic design.

What is graphic design?

Graphic design is the art of creating visual content for a wide range of purposes, such as marketing, communication and branding. Graphic designers apply their skills to all sorts of different media – from websites to magazines, leaflets to logos – in order to catch an audience’s attention and convey a message. In this way, graphic design is hugely important for business owners – no brand, marketing campaign or company website is complete without graphic design.

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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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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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Are you a business owner on the lookout for new podcast recommendations? If so, have we got a list for you! We’ve talked before about how great podcasts can be, so today we’re here to share with you some of our favourite podcasts for business owners and women in business, as recommended by our team of virtual assistants.

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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 PR.

What is PR?

PR stands for ‘public relations’, and it covers all the activities your business does to spread information, build relationships and present a positive image of itself to the world. In practice, this means communicating with the media, building a reputation through social media or organic marketing campaigns, managing internal communications, and running damage control if something goes wrong.

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