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According to Website Magazine’s February issue, MySpace is in the top 2 of social media resources available on the Internet, just behind YouTube. This makes it a very appealing place to market your business. However, you have to consider your market … just because a lot of people are flocking to MySpace, doesn’t necessarily mean they are your peeps.

For example, a majority of MySpace users are teenagers and young adults. If your market is Boomers, this isn’t the social network you should be spending your time on.

Also, MySpace is very media-centric. Meaning, people who use MySpace are most likely to be interested in music, film, television and other forms of mass entertainment. In fact, a lot of comics have MySpace pages as their only website.
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Optimize your website! That is the cry heard throughout the land these days. You won’t rank if you don’t optimize your site. It sounds both simple and daunting, but it doesn’t have to be.

In a nut shell, optimizing your website for the search engines means making it easy for search engines, such as Google, to index your website so that it will show up in search results.

People out there want to find your information, and you want it to be found. Search engines are the “middle men.” So how do you help these “middle men” help you? You use strategic content on your website to improve your site’s relevancy in the search results. And, you can do this in many ways:
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Did you know that 55% of communication between people is in body language and eye contact? Yep — only 7% of communication is the words you use; 38% is your pitch, speed, volume and tone.

This underscores the importance of body language in negotiation — both in controlling your own and in understanding the other party’s.

Facial Expressions
“Reading facial expressions is a particularly useful skill for business executives because, so often in business settings, people don’t say what they really think,” wrote Meridith Levinson in an article for CIO magazine. According to Paul Ekman, author of Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life, facial expressions are hard to decipher because they are fleeting and people try to hide them, but they are the clearest indicator of what someone is feeling, as well.
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By Heather L. McMillan

Editor’s Note: I thought busting a few misconceptions about working with virtual assistants was a great way to round out this month’s topic.

1) I want to use a virtual assistant to save myself money, because they are cheaper per hour than employees.

This is the largest misconception businesses have about virtual assistants. If you compare hourly pay of your employees versus hourly pay of your virtual assistants, you will find the virtual assistants is generally MUCH higher. However, you are saving money in that you don’t pay for hardware, utilities, office space, payroll taxes, worker’s compensation, and benefits (insurance, vacation, sick days, etc.) for a virtual assistant. Sure you can find virtual assistants for $10.00 per hour and under. However, they are going to be from another country offering less than stellar communication and English grammar skills.
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