Sylvie Guiziou, owner of Optim Office asks the question “I’m just starting out with my VA business in Paris, France. So any helpful tips for landing clients would be appreciated! Seriously, I would have a question about marketing. I’m just starting to promote my business … I don’t have any Facebook account yet. What’s the point of having a Fan page? Could you please give me your opinion on this?”
Have Patience!
From my own experience getting starting and gaining clients can be a long and tedious process. I started my business with one client already in tow. That helped me through the long process of gaining the trust of clients online. So my first piece of advice is patience.
When someone visits your site online that have no way of knowing whether you can do an excellent job for them. There is a lot of trust that goes into someone finding you online and transferring what they know about you into actual client work. On average it takes me 3 to 6 weeks from first contact to actually gaining them as a client.
I have learned tons about marketing in my first 2 years of online business. I think the most important piece of information that I learned is that online marketing is about giving not selling.
Feed Their Hunger!
My business motto is “Keeping you on the path to success”! You know the adage that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. You are giving to him and showing him what you can do. Feed his hunger. As a virtual, executive assistant I need to show clients what I can offer them. Anyone can type a letter, but can they do it with the style and finesse that I can offer them.
Everything we do online needs to be excellent and it needs to show that we can go above and beyond the normal. It needs to show a spirit of giving and not that we are doing everything for ourselves. What can I do to make that client shine and his or her business sparkle? I want to keep them on the path to success. When they are successful I will be successful. I want to feed the hunger of the client.
Why have a Facebook Fan Page?
I have asked myself that question and strive to make my Facebook Fan Page a place to interact with my clients and colleagues. Make sure your Fan Page has a …
I really strive to make my site interactive. I ask questions and provide useful tips. I don’t like my Twitter stream coming into my Fan Page. It makes it too busy for my taste. Instead I feed my Fan Page status updates to my Twitter account.
Your Fan Page is just another leg in the social media stool which adds stability to your entire social media strategy. Can you be successful without it? Maybe, but with a little bit of effort you can reach an audience you might otherwise ignore.
Kathie Thomas had an excellent blog post at http://vadirectory.net/blog/how-do-you-recruit-clients/ which discusses networking and recruiting clients. Before you go and check that out though leave a comment and let me know your thoughts!
Jeri Winkler asked the question today on LinkedIn, “I’m looking for a secure proxy server in the US. Any suggestions?”.
The first question that came to my mind is “What is a proxy server?”. This is certainly not a subject that I review often. Terena describes it as …
Where a high level of security of required, a proxy Web server may be used to provide a gateway between a local area network and the Internet. The local network is protected by firewall software installed on the proxy server. This software enables the proxy server to keep the two worlds separate. All outward HTTP requests from the local network pass through the proxy server and similarly all information retrieved comes back in via the proxy server and is then passed back to the client. Using the options or preferences, Web browsers can be configured to point to the proxy server. Proxy servers will normally maintain a cache of retrieved documents.
Proxy Servers
I was still a little fuzzy on the purpose for the proxy server. I did further research and found this excellent information at http://www.publicproxyservers.com/.
During a HTTP connection, the IP address of the client machine is necessarily transmitted in order to get the information back. This allows a server to identify the source of the web request. Any web resource you access can gather personal information about you through your unique IP address – your ID in the Internet. They can monitor your reading interests, spy upon you and log your requests for third parties. Also, owners of the Internet resources may impose some restrictions on users from certain countries or geographical regions.
An anonymous proxy serves as a middleman between your web browser and an end server. Instead of contacting the end server directly to get a Web page, the browser contacts the proxy, which forwards the request on to the end server. When the end server replies to the proxy, the proxy sends the reply on to the browser. No direct communication occurs between the client and the destination server, therefore it appears as if the HTTP request originated from the intermediate proxy server. The only way to trace the connection to the originating client would be to access the logs on the anonymous web proxy (if it keeps any). So an anonymous proxy server can protect your identity by stripping a request of all identifying information.
Pic 2. Anonymous proxy serves as a middleman between your web browser and an end server.
Another common use of anonymous proxies is to access sites which are normally blocked by your upstream ISP. For instance, web proxies are often used by people to access sites which have been censored by their companies, organizations or governments.
An anonymous web proxy is a type of proxy server that works through a web form (also often called a CGI proxy). Instead of configuring the address of the server in the browser as is done for HTTP or SOCKS proxies, you simply navigate to the home page of the Web / CGI proxy. Web proxies hide users identity from the sites they visit, keep cookies at their site, and delete them after each session and selectively remove scripts, images, etc.
To use a web proxy all you have to do is to visit its home page, enter a web address in a small web form and hit "Go". A proxy makes all of your requests on your behalf, so the web site you are viewing only sees the IP address and information for the proxy server, not yours. Web proxies support HTTP and sometimes HTTPS and FTP protocols. There are many web proxies available, some are free, some require a low monthly or one-time fee for use, and some are for private groups or parties.
This article really helped me understand.
I would recommend that you visit http://proxy.org/. This website gives detailed information on different types of proxy servers and their highest recommendations.
Good luck Jeri! If you know of an excellent US-based proxy server, please feel free to comment.
