Blog | Serenity Virtual Assistant Services | Creating Serenity From Chaos

Work At Home Success Interview

Posted on August 20, 2013 by Christine BuffaloeAugust 22, 2013

Last week Tuesday, August 14th, my husband and I were interviewed by Leslie Truex of Work At Home Success.

It was such a pleasure speaking with Leslie.

I have been working at home since 2005 (maybe even longer) and I am so grateful that I do. My husband joined me back in 2010 and we have been going strong as a team since then.

What is remarkable about our working relationship is that we complement each other in so many ways. I like to say that he is the “left side of the brain” and I am the “right side”.

Now, as you listen to this replay, you will hear that it’s not always easy. Respect is the key to our working and personal relationship. If you don’t have that, well, you have nothing.

So, I hope you enjoy listening to this interview with Serenity Virtual Assistant’s work at home success.

Work-At-Home Success was one of the first work-at-home websites on the Internet particularly in the area of telecommuting. “Work At Home Success was one of the first sites to post legitimate work-at-home jobs. Back then it was hard to find telecommuting jobs online, and I posted only one per week. Today I can find 100′s in a single sitting and I hand-select 40 for the site and 30 for the newsletter per week.”~Leslie Truex

Serenity VA Tweets of the Week– Why Social Media Optimization May Perform Better Than SEO

Posted on August 13, 2013 by Christine BuffaloeAugust 13, 2013

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

Research: Why social media optimization may perform better than SEO
Any online marketer will tell you that keywords still play an important part of your SEO. This also applies to social media not only for the search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to find your social media content, but for those searching within the networks.

4 Press Release Tips for Succeeding in the Wake of the Latest Google Updates
With some of the more recent changes to the Google design and content guidelines, PR pros need to be aware of some old search engine optimization tactics that can now do more harm than good. Here are some tips to think about before you start writing:

9 Pro Tips for Entrepreneurs on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is more than a handy way to sort through connections and make introductions — it’s also a powerful platform to supercharge your content marketing efforts (even if you’re not a LinkedIn Influencer just yet).

Hello, My Name Is Google And I’m Your New Best Friend
Technology companies have collectively set themselves on a mission to make technology “more human” — meaning more responsive to us, more receptive to our natural cues and more crucial to our everyday lives.

Make Money Blogging: 13 Exclusive Tips To Boost Your ROI.
Learn all that you need to know by persisting through thick and thin. Make money blogging by attacking your obstacles and learning from your failures.

Publicity Tips–This is Better Than Pitching
You probably already know how to use Google Alerts to discover stories that have been written about you or your topic. But do you know how to take the next important step that will practically force journalists to pay attention to you? It’s fairly easy. And Mark Amtower does it regularly.

How We Use AWeber For Our Clients | Serenity Virtual Assistant Services
AWeber offers a solid, easy-to-use product and impeccable customer service. I encourage all potential clients to use AWeber. One of first functions that is usually needed is list creation. Another way that I am able to assist many of our clients in using the list management functionality offered by AWeber.

Marketing Research Chart: Most effective email list building tactics
The goal of every element listed on the chart is to provide an extra incentive to encourage people to register for the email list.

Ready to start creating videos? Here are 5 quick wins you can knock off your to-do list today
Why are we so afraid of doing video? Most of us get paralyzed by the “no time, too hard” fallacy. If done right, video can be made quickly and easily — all while supercharging your engagement and click-through rates.

How to Create an RSS Feed from Twitter
How to create an RSS feed from TwitterDlvr.it can help you share your Twitter streams including create an RSS feed using any Twitter handle.

Serenity VA Tweets of the Week—How We Use AWeber For Our Clients

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Christine BuffaloeAugust 8, 2013

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

How We Use AWeber For Our Clients | Serenity Virtual Assistant Service
AWeber offers a solid, easy-to-use product and impeccable customer service. I encourage all potential clients to use AWeber. One of first functions that is usually needed is list creation. Webforms are used to capture subscriber information. AWeber offers a fantastic selection of templates.

30 ways to improve your social media knowledge this month
Somewhere in between the PR pitches, tech announcements, and six second video snippets, you may just find time this month to understand a few new social media tools and best practices.

Entrepreneurship Highest in Decades –One Industry, Virtual Assistant Industry Leads the Way.
One industry that continues to lead the way is the Virtual Assistant Industry, which was voted as one of the most popular businesses to start, according to a recent article in Home Business magazine (December 2012 issue).

5 Tips for Launching a Product On Your Blog Without Annoying Your Readers
The answer is annoying… ‘it’s a balancing act’. There is no right or wrong answer but here’s what you can learn.

How tips lists can get you major stories in top-tier media.
It’s one of the most basic tools in your publicity toolbox, and Publicity Hounds have been using it for decades to get mountains of publicity in national print and broadcast media.

Pin Notifications Make Pinterest Even More E-Commerce Friendly
Social “pinboard” Pinterest, still one of the darlings of the social media world, is becoming increasingly attractive to e-commerce merchants.

The First Rule Of Social Media Is: You Talk About Social Media.
If the first rule of Fight Club is that you do not talk about Fight Club, then the first rule of social media is that you must talk about social media.

How to Test-Market Your Idea by Blogging Your eBook Before Release
Discover if your ebook will have an audience and if that audience will be eager to read what you’ve written by publishing your manuscript in post-sized bits on your blog.

How to Find New YouTube Content
If you arrive at the YouTube’s homepage with no clear search goals in mind, it can be difficult to discover something new. The best way around this? Subscribe to several channels and find great YouTubers

Better Business Blogging: Lessons from Liberace.
Here’s how you can take away some of Liberace’s style and wisdom and apply it to your business blog.

Serenity VA Tweets of the Week – 5 Profitable Places To Sell Your Books

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Christine BuffaloeJuly 30, 2013

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

5 Profitable Places To Sell Your Books
Knowing your book’s audience is worthless if you don’t know where they hang out. These two crucial marketing criteria should be met before you sit down and start writing any book. In fact, traditional publishers require a marketing plan and platform be submitted with a book proposal—often even before the book is written.

13 Tools and Services I Use Every Day to Build a Profitable Blogging Business
During a recent Q&A webinar, we received a lot of questions about the tools and services we recommend for different aspects of blogging. While we touched on a few, there are quite a few more that I wanted to touch on. Not all are strictly ‘blogging tools’ but all are things we regularly use as a team.

DropBox & WordPress have integrated to make managing website back-ups even easier!
Keep your valuable WordPress website, its media and database backed up to Dropbox in minutes with this sleek, easy to use plugin.WordPress Backup to Dropbox has been created to give you peace of mind that your blog is backed up on a regular basis.Just choose a day, time and how often you wish yor backup to be performed and kick back and wait for your websites files and a SQL dump of its database to be dropped in your Dropbox!

How to Make Your Summer Sales Sizzle by Getting Your Video On
Summer may be time for sun, sand and surf, but that doesn’t mean it has to be the season when your sales slow down. In fact, you can still relax at the beach and keep your business booming! What’s the secret to enjoying more of the season while avoiding the dreaded summer sales slump? It’s video – your 24/7 automated sales person!

5 ways to use curated lists of blogs in your niche.
When you find a list of the top experts in your niche, even if you aren’t included on it, don’t just give it a passing glance and move on. Figure out how you can use that information to make more contacts, become smarter, and get more publicity.

Blog Content: 4 Ways to Make Your Blog Unique
Want to make your blog stand out? Try finding unusual facts and weird blog content. Give your blog a unique look and feel by publishing unusual blog content. With such an abundance of content available on the Internet, how can you make your blog unique?

How to Find New YouTube Content
YouTube is pretty incredible. Surf from cat video to amateur vlog to high-quality episodic show in just a few clicks, all under one network. Of course, with billions of hours of video available to chose from, how does one go about tailoring his interests and finding the people who create that great stuff? While extensive YouTube searches can help fix your bike or tie a Windsor knot, a television-like experience that offers a stream of entertaining content requires more work.

How to create perfect social media posts [INFOGRAPHIC]
Although there isn’t a general foolproof formula, there is a guide that can help you craft the best social media updates and posts possible. An infographic from My Clever Agency provides basic guidelines for creating effective Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ posts. Here are a few of the tips:

10 Smart Moves for a Successful Local Marketing Campaign
Marketing for local businesses has come a long way. Just 20 years ago, “marketing” meant buying newspaper ads, yellowpage ads or perhaps billboard or radio advertisements. Marketing was costly and often ineffective. Today, the game has changed. There are literally dozens of tools available to the smart entrepreneur for marketing his or her business. Many of these tools and techniques can drive hundreds of paying customers to your business, without costing you a single dime. This checklist will help you get the most out of all the tools, technologies and techniques available today.

Better Business Blogging: 7 Lessons from Liberace
Liberace was well-known for his flamboyant lifestyle both on and off stage. During the 1950s-1970s he was the highest paid entertainer in the world. That’s pretty amazing considering he was a pianist. His career spanned five decades. His career spanned five decades. I just saw the HBO film “Behind the Candelabra,” with an amazing performance by Michael Douglas in the starring role.

4 Lessons Learned:
Premise WordPress Plugin

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Christine BuffaloeJuly 29, 2013

I have been using the Premise for WordPress plugin from CopyBlogger for a couple of years.

This is how the plugin is described:
“Point-and-Click Membership Sites and Landing Pages, Add All This Do-It-Yourself Functionality to ANY WordPress Site, Using ANY Theme or Design Framework!”

I can tell you from experience that the “out of the box” product is very good. Easy for any do-it-yourself-er. But, buyer beware!

I recently had an experience with a new client who had purchased the plugin. Very nice, very business savvy, and above all, extremely patient.

She had contacted me via a Google search looking for assistance with her new membership site using Premise. I was happy to help. I’ve done this before. No problem…..not this time!

First off, I updated the Premise plugin on her site and the whole site went down. Crap! What to do. Call support? They don’t offer call-in support. Not even for an emergency like this. So, we had to go through the support via a help ticket. Also, called the host. Apparently, there was a conflict with other plugins. Fixed.

Premise has a whole page of support items such as video tutorials, step-by-step instructions (with graphics) and examples. But, at no time can you just pick up the phone and call someone. Very frustrating.

Lessons learned from this?

Use a dedicated shopping cart when using this plugin. Too many conflicts.
Hire a coder or a web developer. Unless you are one yourself or just want to use the product as is.
Give yourself plenty of lead time. If you’re doing a product launch, plan ahead.
Be prepared.

I would recommend this product for anyone. It’s a good product. Does it have bugs, yes, most do. If you do your due diligence, this plugin can work for you.

Share your experiences with Premise or other membership plugins for WordPress by submitting your comments below.

Serenity VA Tweets of the Week–5 Action Steps to Slow Down Your Blogging

Posted on July 23, 2013 by Christine BuffaloeJuly 23, 2013

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

5 Action Steps to Slow Down Your Blogging:
Before you cast this movement aside as not being for you, simply ask yourself if you’d benefit from a more engaged community, more readers and more popular content. Then see if there are elements of slow blogging you could incorporate into your work.

5 Profitable Places To Sell Your Books
Knowing your book’s audience is worthless if you don’t know where they hang out.

Foursquare rolls out first true ads with new check-in pop-ups
True ads have arrived on Foursquare — but, as you’d expect, there’s a twist. The social network focused on check-ins and recommendations is now rolling out full-page ads in its mobile apps, according to AdAge.

Is your blog on the right track? Here are 5 ways to know.
One of the drawbacks to blogging is that it’s very difficult to gauge your progress. Because every blog is different, every audience is different and every blogger uses a different marketing approach, there’s nothing carved in stone. It’s impossible to say “If you have this exact number of subscribers or this exact number of comments you’re on the right track” because everything varies from blog to blog.

12 things you can do right now to supercharge your business.
The lazy days of summer are upon us, and many people in the working world insist that business is dead. Or is it? Instead of whining that everyone is on vacation or not signing contracts, it’s time to set yourself up for success. Whether you work for a company or own a business, these 12 suggestions will strengthen your professional and personal development.

Create Expert Status in Your Industry and Attract Your Ideal Clients [VIDEO]
If you are not doing any of these to create Expert status in your niche, I urge you to start today. Do them with consistency and you will see your business grow. What are you doing to create expert status in your industry or niche?

Are You Sharing Article Links to Google Plus? It’s Time to Stop It
Do you merely link your article to Google Plus every time you write a blog post? If so, you are missing a BIG opportunity to showcase your article. Why? Because images attached to links on Google Plus are small. They are not showcased. They are lost in a stream of great imagery. In this post, I show you a simple way to get your content noticed, and join in on the Google Plus image-fest!

Why Authors Should Be “Selfish” Bloggers: And How To Be One
One surefire way to make it easier and worthwhile–one way to make sure you enjoy rather than grudge blogging–is to be a “selfish” blogger, as strange as that may sound.

Business Blogging: How to Optimize Older Posts
Clearly, one of the most important things that you can do when it comes to a business blog is to share new content. But what about those older blog posts that are hanging out on your blog somewhere? Why not make good use of older content? Make it easy for your blog readers to learn more about your solutions to their problems.

Serenity VA Tweets of the Week–3 Great Tips to Grow an Audience for your Blog

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Christine BuffaloeJuly 16, 2013

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

3 Great Tips to Grow an Audience for your Blog
So you’ve made a blog and you post all the time. You think everything you write is pure gold and your readers love it. But your number of subscribers won’t budge. Neither will your unique visitors, social media shares, or comments. What gives?! You may have a few devoted readers who comment every now and then – but it’s time to switch up your game-plan. Here are some solid tips for increasing readership.

Best of the Web Book Marketing Tips for the Week of July 8, 2013
We’re highlighting some of the top tweets that offer marketing and publishing ideas, courtesy of bloggers, marketers, authors and others. The topics include finding the right keywords, using Pinterest effectively, promoting and marketing your blog posts.The no hype, buzzword-free guide to creating good content for your business.

The No Hype, buzzword-free guide to creating good content for your business.
Great content can spark engagement, foster relationships and generate new leads. It can also help to establish you as a thought leader. Content is seemingly the gateway to a new world of success for every professional and business. You must have a plan in place that helps you to regularly produce quality content for your marketing.

Google Brings Voice Calling Back to Gmail, Now Under Hangouts
Gmail users who upgraded Google Talk to Hangouts back in May were up in arms after discovering that doing so removed the ability to make voice calls. Google addressed this issue on Tuesday, July 9 after it finally introduced voice calls to Hangouts.

6 Unconventional Tips For Writing An About Page For Your Blog
Now is an opportune time to quit all of those traditional ways of writing the About page and start something new, Something real and convincing.Something good enough to convert every single visitor to your blog into a reader. Before we continue this journey, I would like to say this – if you have not been seeing your About page as a virtual sales pitch then you have not started blogging.

Joan Stewart on Building a Career as a Publicity Expert – The Creative Entrepreneur
A former journalist, Joan Stewart has been self-employed as a widely recognized publicity expert for more than 20 years.In this fast-paced interview, she explains the steps she took early on that set her up for success. No matter what field or topic you want to stake a claim in, you will benefit from the principles Joan reveals in this inspiring interview!

5 Ways on How Brands Can Leverage Facebook Hashtags
Social networks continue to look and feel more and more alike, “stealing” the best features and components of competitors. So it was no big surprise when Facebook recently released hashtag search capability to its ever-growing list of features. Since most personal pages remain private, there isn’t much room (yet, anyway) for hashtags to take a life of their own in the way they have on Twitter.

Sell More Books on Amazon – Keywords, Categories & Amazon’s Algorithms
Most of us know Amazon as one of the biggest online stores where you can get everything from the latest tech gadget to your favorite book.But what many don’t realize is that Amazon is a search engine and subject to many of the same algorithm rules that sites like Google and Bing subscribe to.

Serenity VA Tweets of the Week– Top 3 Reasons You Can’t Ignore Google+ For Another Minute

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Christine BuffaloeJuly 12, 2013

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

Top 3 reasons you can’t ignore Google+ for another minute.
GooglePlus has just turned two. If you’re not using it, you’re making a big mistake. And you’re missing out on some truly incredible tools.Google has made you an offer you can’t refuse. If you ignore Google+, then Google search will ignore you. You’d be crazy to let that happen. Could your brand benefit from better search engine rankings in Google?

Author Media Develops a New WordPress Plugin Designed Just for Authors.
Selling books is hard. Getting your books into the hands of your adoring fans is a difficult process that would test anyone’s patience.At least, it used to be.I received this update from Author Media and they have just launched their new WordPress plugin “MyBookTable”. This is an amazing
WordPress plugin.

3 Creative Ways to get more Clicks and Shares on your Images
Images get noticed quickly. They spark emotion.They compel people to engage with them. And they drive traffic. You just have to know how to “guide” people from the social media “image” to your website.

3 Modern Marketing Mistakes and How to Fix Them.
Traditional marketing isn’t inherently flawed, but it hasn’t evolved much despite changing technologies. Even with so many new tools with which to convey our messages to prospective customers, especially social media like Facebook, Twitter, and beyond, few businesses are actually doing anything markedly different than they used to.Let’s look at three common marketing mistakes and how you can fix them using the principles in the new book Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is about Help not Hype.

From David Foster: Google+ Setup Guide
There’s been a lot of excitement flowing through the office lately in regards to Google+. Now I know what you’re thinking: “Google+? Nobody uses that!”. But contrary to what you might think Google+ is actually becoming a prominent player in the social media world. In fact Google+ is
currently the second largest largest social networking site in the world, (surpassing Twitter this past January).

How To Drive Traffic To A Website From YouTube (YouTube Tip)
A quick video from YouTube offering tips for getting website traffic from YouTube. Great viewing!

Why Smart Consultants Blog… To Get Found, Get Known, Get Clients!
Smart consultants – the ones who always have clients – publish at least weekly on a business blog. It’s the best way to get found online, get known, and get clients. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that consultant blogs are the best damn marketing tool on the planet! Why? Well, as an independent consultant, you’ve probably got a really nice professional website – and spent a few bucks getting it to look right. That’s nice, but how will people find you?

SEO Tips for Business Blogging: What You Need to Know.
Here are a few basics you can use on your business blog that take into account the “rules” for search engine optimization, from a non-techie, plain-and-simple point of view. These SEO tips are “organically” correct, meaning you make each blog post optimized for the search engine spiders, AND for your readers.

How the Average Facebook User Feels About Facebook Changes [HUMOR VIDEO]
“Facebook Changing Again?”This is exactly how the average user temporarily feels every time Facebook (or any major social media network, in fact) makes changes. Warning: This video is rated NSFW (Not Safe For Work). I think you’ll find it as fitting a representation and good for a laugh.

Authors, Sell More Books on Goodreads!
At Book Expo last week Patrick Brown of Goodreads had some fun tips from his session and a link to the slides! Not on Goodreads? You may want to consider it. Check out the stats…18 million members on Goodreads and 24 million reviews:

Author Media Develops a New WordPress Plugin Designed Just for Authors

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Christine BuffaloeJuly 16, 2013

I have been working with authors for some time now and as always, it is a challenge and hard work to get your book not only published, but once it’s published, how do you get it sold?

Selling books is hard. Getting your books into the hands of your adoring fans is a difficult process that would test anyone’s patience.

At least, it used to be.

I received this update from Author Media and they have just launched their new WordPress plugin “MyBookTable”. This is an amazing WordPress plugin.

According to the description on the sales page:

A WordPress Plugin to help authors sell more books and make affiliate money through sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Here are some of the features of MyBookTable:

1. Support

They built this plugin from the ground up. Beyond the tutorial videos, they’ve created a support system for the Pro & Developer levels.

2. Search Optimization

Most authors don’t rank for their own book titles on Google. Scary, right? That means someone else is cashing in on your hard work. MyBookTable helps you retake control. Ranking #1 on search engines for your book title is extra valuable when you have affiliate accounts set up.

3. Affiliate Compatible (PRO & Developer only)

Amazon, BN.com, and CBD.com all offer affiliate programs that can help you supplement your income as an author. You won’t have to sell your book out of the back of a van to make more money. It will also integrate with leading SEO Plugins like Yoast and Scribe.

Author Media is offering 3 different options as far as the pricing is concerned:

Level 1: Basic (FREE) with limited options

Level 2: Professional ($49). Many more options, no shopping cart integration.

Level 3: Developer ($99). Offers the whole shebang….shopping cart utilities to boot!

One of the items I especially like is that this plugin supports Audible as well.

If you need assistance setting this plugin up, please contact us for a free 15-minute consultation.