Latest Blog Posts

Here's what Instagram is all about and how people are using it

What is this trendy thing called Instagram that all the cool kids seem to be into? It's been around for a few years, quietly picking up traction mostly thanks to everybody's new obsession with mobile photography, so don't feel embarrassed to ask if you have absolutely no clue what it's all about.

An Intro to Instagram

Instagram is a social networking app made for sharing photos and videos from a smartphone. Similar to Facebook or Twitter, everyone who creates an Instagram account has a profile and a news feed.

When you post a photo or video on Instagram, it will be displayed on your profile. Other users who follow you will see your posts in their own feed. Likewise, you'll see posts from other users whom you choose to follow.

Pretty straight forward, right? It's like a simplified version of Facebook, with an emphasis on mobile use and visual sharing. Just like other social networks, you can interact with other users on Instagram by following them, being followed by them, commenting, liking, tagging and private messaging. You can even save the photos you see on Instagram.

Devices That Work With Instagram

Instagram is available for free on iOS and Android devices.

It can also be accessed on the web from a computer, but users can only upload and share photos or videos from their devices.

Creating an Account on Instagram

Before you can start using the app, Instagram will ask you to create a free account. You can sign up via your existing Facebook account or by email. All you need is a username and a password.

You may be asked if you want to follow some friends who are on Instagram in your Facebook network. You can do this right away or skip through the process and come back to it later. 

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In this post you’ll learn the twelve steps that will take you from a beginner – to mastering Google Analytics. By following these steps you’ll be collecting actionable data that you can use to stay ahead of the competition. You’ll be a Google Analytics pro in no time! And even if you only have time to apply a few of these steps today, you will still find you have a more complete Google Analytics implementation that you can continue to improve.

Let’s jump in and cover the twelve steps to mastering Google Analytics!

Step #1 Set up goals

Goals allow you to understand how your website and your marketing channels are performing. They let you report on important actions people are taking on your website. For example, you can use goals to report on people completing forms, like your contact form, subscription form, and other leads.

Apart from tracking people viewing particular ‘thank you’ pages on your website, you can also set up goals based on events, like watching videos and for particular levels of engagement. It’s a good idea to track your primary and secondary objectives as goals – they are also known as ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ conversions.

Step #2 Tag inbound campaigns

Using campaign tags for your inbound marketing allows you to understand the exact links people are clicking to find your website. And even if you can’t tag all of your inbound marketing, by starting to use campaign tags you’ll begin to gain an understanding of what’s working and not working.

Campaign tags can be used to track everything from your email campaigns through to offline campaigns that direct people through to your website. Google provides a great tool to get started; it’s called the URL builder, once you're comfortable with it you'll also see that you can create campaign tags without the builder.

Step #3 Use Google Tag Manager

If you’re not using Google Tag Manager, it makes it quick and easy to add Google Analytics tags (and other tags) to your website. Using Google Tag Manager means that when you have additional requirements in most cases you can add tracking without having to change the code on your website. For example, if you wanted to track people watching YouTube videos embedded on your website, form submissions or even people traveling between two different domains, you can add these types of tracking with the help of Google Tag Manager.

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Businesses that are successful and growing sometimes have the need to hire additional staff.  But hiring additional help adds overhead and cuts into your business profits. Not only that, but sometimes you don’t really need full time help.

Those are just two of the reasons for a business to hire a virtual assistant instead. In fact, there are a lot of benefits of hiring a virtual assistant.

1. Saves Time

Hiring the right person to help in your business is not a fast, easy task. First, you need to get the word out that you’re hiring, so advertising is usually involved. Then you must wait for applications and resumes, sift through them, and set up interviews.

Next you have to take the time to interview the applicants that interest you. Narrowing them down to the one or two you will hire isn’t always a simple job.

Still, it is part of the process and must be done to accomplish your goal of hiring additional staff.  To get there, though, it sometimes requires a second interview of one or two candidates. Finally, after making a decision, you can complete the hiring process and begin training.

Fortunately, you can skip a lot of this process by simply hiring a virtual assistant as an alternative.

2. Reduces Costs

There are a lot of cost benefits of hiring a virtual assistant. You can hire them by the hour for certain business tasks rather than paying a part-time or full-time employee.

In addition, you won’t have to pay for training, or at least very little. The virtual assistant you hire should already have most of the skills needed to do the job.

If you were to hire one employee they might need extensive training to do every task. Rather than paying for all that training you could hire several virtual assistants to do specialised projects. Most times it will save money in the long run.

Another cost reduction is in benefits. They are not paid to virtual assistants because they usually charge by the hour or task. Eliminating costs such as these drastically reduces overhead for your business and can result in great profitability.

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1. Action Emails When You Read Them

If you're prone to rereading emails over and over, this could be the trick you need to get your inbox back under control. Instead of reading new emails and leaving them to be dealt with later, getting into the habit of "processing" new emails will save you the time and effort of handling each one multiple times.

Robby Macdonell shared a way to force yourself into this habit on the RescueTime blog. His Gmail setup automatically archives all read emails. This means he has only one chance to act on each email: the first time he reads it (unless he wants to hunt through his archive for it later). For any email Robby needs to action in the future, he adds a star, so they're easy to find in his "Starred" folder. Everything else is archived or actioned immediately.

2. Surface Forgotten Emails that Need Action

This is another tip from Robby that keeps those starred emails from being left too long. With a simple script, Robby automatically adds an attention-grabbing red label, "DEAL WITH ME," to any starred email that is over two weeks old. You can grab the script in Robby's post, which offers detailed instructions for setting it up.

When those emails are finally dealt with, the label gets removed automatically. Pretty neat, huh?

3. Use a Separate Inbox for External Emails

This tip comes from Scott Hanselman, a program manager at Microsoft, author and avid blogger and speaker. Scott uses filters to send incoming emails into three different inboxes: one for external emails (anyone outside his company), another for any emails he's CC'd on, and a last one for all internal company emails sent directly to Scott.

* Inbox
* Inbox - CC
* Inbox - External

This is a really good way to manage the time and energy you put into processing emails, because you can prioritise external emails if you want to (as Scott does) without wasting time looking for them in your inbox—or getting distracted by internal emails instead.

Likewise, if you set aside time for internal work emails, you can focus on just those.

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