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15 Things You Should Know Before Blogging in 2020 [Infographic]

Blogging in 2020 is a different world than blogging in the past. The internet has changed a lot since the far-off history of 2011, the start of the modern blogging era.

Is Podcast Marketing Right For Your Business?

Podcasting is a great way of getting awareness for your business. As podcast listeners are increasing year-on-year, is podcast marketing right for your business?

20 Call-To-Action Phrases

Conversion optimization has always been a hot topic in internet marketing. To be honest, all of us already know the best call to action phrases or marketing techniques out there! Yet, here you are, reading through this post in hopes of improving your conversion rates.

What are you missing? There may be a lot of ways to improve your conversion rates, but we cannot stress it enough; targeted call to action phrases work, and it has been proven.

Are freelancers the new prey for money laundering scammers?

When, a seemingly great opportunity comes your way, with nothing to lose you are going to follow it through aren’t you? This is what happened to us at Virtu@dmin; read on for all the details and how to NOT let it happen to you, a freelancer or not.

Freelancing as Virtu@dmin for a few years now, predominantly transcribing, I was very excited to receive a message on the freelance platform Truelancer, on the 4th October 2017. A person by the name of ‘Catlin Tracey’ claiming to be on the hiring board of a very well know global insurance company sent me a direct message me to inform me that my profile had been thoroughly reviewed and selected for an interview via Google Hangouts. (I have been invited to send a proposal for many jobs, but either they are for silly money or the job is awarded to someone else.)

I duly was on Hangouts at the time they wanted me to be, which was approximately 15-20 minutes later, of the mind I had nothing to lose. My partner said to me just end the conversation if they want you to pay out any money. In fact, after being interviewed on Hangouts, I was successful, earning $20 an hour whilst training, $35 an hour once the training was complete. I wasn’t to pay out any money, they were, in fact, to pay me, for software.

Having spent a lot of time researching this, the pay and type of questions they asked, there was nothing on Google (where I did my research) to suggest this was a potential money laundering scam.

I made notes, looked up the software I would be using and still nothing. (Although at the time of writing, Monday 13th November 2017, Truelancer have now deleted all the messages and a note to say, “Note: Kindly do not reply to this client. It was a Spam message”.) Shame they were not quick enough to do that back at the beginning of October when I was contacted. The profile had been active on there for approximately 3-4 months at the time of being approached.

Offer Letter

After being successful in my interview, I was sent an offer letter by email the next day, for what I thought was one of the biggest leading global insurance companies. I signed and emailed back to this guy, as requested.

Warning

So, if you are a freelancer and registered on freelancing platforms like Truelancer, and you get approached by a message directly, offering you this fantastic job opportunity, it is a money lanundering scam.

How do I know this? Well, as advised by the guy on Hangouts, (all of our conversations were on Hangouts, so another thing to watch out for) he said they would be paying money into my bank account for me to download software from a vendor they deal with directly.

How a typical money laundering scam works

He/they paid the money into the bank account as advised, but it all changed from downloading software to collecting office equipment and I had better have enough office space. The instructions were to withdraw a large sum IN CASH and pay into their vendor’s bank account. This is when alarm bells were rining loudly.

Upon advising him that we would have to order this sort of money he/they began to panic, and then requested we do it online, into a different bank account because this vendor was not accepting online payments at this time!

My partner (and partner of Virtu@dmin) and I knew then that this was indeed what appeared to be money laundering, and as I did a lot of research into the insurance company he ‘so-called’ represented, phone calls confirming they did have not that person working for them, the email addresses did not exist we have gone to the authorities.

Conclusion

As the jobs for life have virtually gone now, and in the UK having zero-hour contracts, and many part-time positions, that do not pay a living wage, more and more people are turning what skills they have to freelancing.

As a freelancer, getting work is hard, I/we have been freelancing enough years now to know how up and down it can be. Obviously, the more skills you have, the more freelance opportunities you can apply for.

Because of the insecurity in freelancing, the ‘not knowing’ of how much you will earn from one month to the next, I believe now that criminals and fraudsters are targeting freelancers to ‘clean’ their dirty criminal money. From one vendor not accepting online payments at the moment, to another bank account with all the details,including BIC and IBAN details, it became obvious what was going on. We simply do not want anyone, freelancer or not, to get stung by this new trick of theirs.

* For more information about money transfer scams please see this post from the Financial Conduct Authority.

Guest Posting and Link Building: My Warning

On Thursday 25th May 2017 Matt G Southern a well-known and respected writer at the Search Engine Journal published the article “Google Issues a Warning About Guest Posting to Build Links“.

I began to read the article hoping that an issue that happened to me recently would be mentioned, but it wasn’t. This article is also a warning, but of a different kind when accepting guests posts onto your website for the purpose of forming genuine, respectful links.

However, as already stated in the published post by Matt Southern, the posts can be misleading and the links are in fact spammy. This was what was quoted yesterday directly from Google.

Google has issued a warning to remind site owners about the dangers of publishing content on other sites for the purpose of building inbound links.

The company doesn’t frown on guest posts or syndicated posts in general, but lately there has been an increase in spammy links stuffed into these types of posts. That’s the reason behind this sudden warning from Google.

Distributing content on a large scale when the main intention is to build links back to your own site is strictly prohibited under Google’s guidelines on link schemes.

But what if there is another reason that people are approaching small businesses to guest post? I, from experience, can tell you there is.

Is Guest Posting What it Seems?

I have been approached by email on several occasions over the years I have had my website asking if I accept guest posts. Surprised at this as Virtuadmin.uk to be perfectly honest doesn’t have a tremendous amount of traffic, so together with other SEO (search engine optimisation) publishing guests posts is an ideal way to gain genuine backlinks to improve my SERPs results myself.

The person that contacted me introduced themselves to me as a “Content Writer & Editor” full of praise for my website and to quote in their opening statement “I am a business content writer and I chanced upon virtuadmin.uk“.

I am no website designer, personally, I feel that my website is somewhat amateurish but enjoy the challenges of attempting to improve it to what I consider a professional standard (not there yet but trying!); I am not a website designer but an experienced touch typist and transcriptionist!

Emails were sent back and forth, not very frequently, once every two weeks or so. They would send an email to say they were working on my article and would email once it was ready for review and any edits I would like.

When the final article came back, I read through it very impressed, suggested some edits to the post, which were duly done.

In the meantime of waiting for the finished article to come back and then be published on this website, I decided to do a bit of research into the person that had contacted me. I usually do this when I get requests to accept guest posts or infographics.

My Shock

I was horrified to discover the person that had initially contacted, maintained communications with me so professionally, written such a brilliant post I couldn’t wait to publish it, was my biggest competitor.

Just to be sure of my facts, I looked for information on the person on the professional alternative to Facebook, LinkedIn and Tweeted the company directly to ask if they had a content writer of that name, to which they replied they had and gave me their email address!

This company did not just provide the service in the niche area that I am working solo as a transcriptionist and typist, but many other types of administration duties that can be outsourced and carried out online. They are very established, very large. In my mind, if someone chanced upon the article upon my website, I always reference guest post at the beginning, therefore technically I would have been sending business to them.

Personally, I just can’t help wondering for a company so large why are they trying to take out small-time work-from-home Mums like myself? It’s not just that, why the underhanded way in which they approached me, not even volunteering the information of who they worked for as a Content Writer and Editor!

My Warning and Advice

My warning to anyone that is trying to genuine improve their website rankings without the budget of hiring SEO experts or other tactical ways of achieving page one on Google SERPs, if you are approached out of the blue, just like I was, be polite, the might be genuine but check them out.

How? Firstly, Google or Bing is a great start. If it is a common name like the person I was researching, narrow the results down with the details you have. Location, their job, email address, alternatively LinkedIn.

Even with minimal information, I only had a name, email address and job title, for example, but believe me, you can research the person concerned, you can find out who they are that has contacted you to make this request it.

Hopefully, unlike my unfortunate experience, they are equally a small-time business or stay-at-home Mum or Entrepreneur looking to make genuine backlinks because you share a common niche area.

An easy account of how important transcripts are for videos

With video broadcasting becoming more and more popular it is projected to claim more than 80% of website traffic in 2019, so the question is how do you get your video to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) above everyone else’s?

How To Increase Your Video SEO The Affordable Way

Hiring a professional and affordable transcription service like Virtuadmin will give you a valuable transcript for your video providing accessibility, indexing and higher search engine results.

How to Run A Business While Travelling For Six Months Every Year

Thank you to Start Blogging Online for their guest post/infographic on Virtuadmin.

A lot of successful business owners would suggest that running your business while far from your actual business location is effective. Even if you are far away, you can still keep things running. It is just a matter of time management and division of tasks.

As the owner, you can make major decisions or think of creative ways to boost your business. You can leave someone to manage the day to day activities in your store. The point is for you to not get burnt out. If you are affected by the pressure of running the business well, everything else could fall apart.

Making the business work while you are away is easy. The difficult part is being away from your family. Of course, you can’t bring them with you. They also have to go to school or work. To solve this problem, divide your time within the year.

Perhaps, you can spend 6 months away from home and 6 months at home. This also helps you manage the business in different locations. While you are home, make the most of your time and spend it with the people you love. Make up for the time that you are away from home.

Just be positive. It can be done. It is even easier than running the business on location at all times. For more tips on how to make it possible, check out the infographic below. It provides useful information that you can also try.

How to Save Valuable Time When Looking For a Transcriber

Do you regularly use freelance portals like People Per Hour, Fivesquid and Fiverr to name a few of the platforms out there, to economically outsource your audio or video transcription requirements? Then read on there is important information inside!

As a freelancer offering very reasonably priced professional typing and transcription services, I visit daily the freelance platforms that I have active profiles on to search for assignments with potential clients that I can assist with in their typing or transcription projects.

It takes up a lot of my time, but frequently time after time that frustrates the hell out of me, to be honest, is the fact that businesses, entrepreneurs, students, or anyone that requires outsourcing to a transcription service, fail to put four important things that matter most to a transcriptionist: –

Audio quality
Number of speakers
Length of the Audio
Turnaround time/deadline

Quite often people needing audio or video transcribed are under the impression that touch typists can type at the rate of speech, and therefore as an example, a 20-minute audio recording would take a professionally trained transcriptionist, like me, 20 minutes to transcribe into text. This is in fact not the case, please see my post and Infographic Audio Transcription Time Guidelines for more insight on this.

What Is Not Helpful

This is a typical example that I see day after day when people are advertising to get their audios or videos transcribed into text.

This example is better than some, it describes the length of the audio which is a good start, the format they would like the transcript in, which is generally Word anyway unless the transcript it being used for video captioning.

But, this example does not state how many speakers the audio contains, or the quality of the audio. These two factors will determine combined with the other two points highlighted above, the time it will take to listen and type the recorded speech into text. There are other factors also, for instance, if it is a two-speaker audio is there a lot of cross-talking? Are there any additional requirements within the transcript required, time-stamping for example.

Advice on Best Practices

When advertising for a transcription service vendor, or freelance transcriptionist, it is always best practice to give as much information as possible about the audio. To get the best transcriber for the job, it would be very helpful attach a sample, or the audio itself, but this isn’t always possible for confidentiality reasons.

By doing this it saves the transcription provider time from having to contact you asking these basic transcription questions that they need to ascertain whether they wish to submit a proposal for the work or not. Advertising the basic details, audio quality, the number of speakers, length and desired deadline, transcription service providers know what they are applying for.

You, as the contractor of transcription services then do not get delayed with your transcription, especially important when you have a deadline to meet. It will prevent your service provider telling you they cannot fulfil their part of the agreement because of incorrect or missing details about your specifications. It saves time for both parties concerned and speeds up the whole process with the transcriptionist having a clear understanding of the audio content from the outset.

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5 SEO Tips for Videos: How Google Ranks Them & How to Optimize

Videos are becoming increasingly important for B2B marketing. Companies with dedicated video marketing strategies generate more leads, earn more revenue, and enjoy better brand awareness than those engaging in all other forms of marketing.

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are great places to get eyes on your video content, but prospects aren’t necessarily in work- or buy-mode as they scroll through these platforms.

We do know, however, that 90% of B2B decision-makers use search to research business decisions. To reap the benefits of video marketing, your videos must be optimised for search. By following a few best practices for video SEO, you’ll enjoy more visible video search results and drive more organic traffic—and qualified leads—to your video content.

How Does Google Rank Videos?

In its general search and video search functions, Google ranks videos using the same ranking factors as written content—content quality, the number of backlinks, and RankBrain are the most important signals. When hosting videos on your site, the tasks for optimizing video content are similar to those for written content and images.

Similar, but not identical. Here are five steps you should take to improve your search rankings so your videos stand out in search results:

1. Transcribe Your Video Content

Providing both a video and transcription on a single page offers dual benefits: it caters to different reader preferences, and it makes video content more likely to appear in general Google searches.

Video transcriptions can be optimized for search in the same way as any other text-based site content. While this may seem to break duplicate content rules, transcriptions actually provide a good user experience by catering to different learning styles. While some visitors may prefer videos, others may prefer reading. In fact, 85% of business executives prefer reading over watching videos when making business decisions.

When transcribing video content, there are two approaches you can take:

Provide a full, word-for-word transcription as Moz does for their Whiteboard Friday videos.
Provide text highlights like Content Marketing Institute does for their This Old Marketing podcast.

Full transcripts provide more engagement SEO opportunities, while highlights are good for long videos and can encourage more views by teasing readers with compelling content that’s discussed in more detail in the video. Ultimately, use the approach your audience prefers: you can poll them to find out, or do some A/B testing to see which approach drives the kind of engagement you’re looking for.

Read the remaining 4 more tips for video optimisation on Marketo Marketing Blog.

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5 Secrets to Increase Your Typing Productivity and Speed

A transcriptionist or typist is often involved in repetitive work and meeting very tight deadlines. A typist is either looking at the text to be copy-typed or a transcriptionist listening to recorded speech and typing the text spoken. When undertaking the transcription or typing process, there are things that you can do to help you obtain better productivity, efficiency and accuracy.

As a touch-typist and transcriptionist with over 20 years experience, to help you achieve a higher capacity in the production of transcripts or copy typing text, I will give you my top 5 secrets to increase your typing productivity and speed.

Picture courtesy of Cornell University Ergonomics

Before starting any work at all prepare your workstation to the correct ergonomics for your stature. Preferably work with an ergonomic keyboard too. This is a picture of the ideal workstation set-up to prevent any strains on your joints through repetitive typing work.

2. Take regular and frequent breaks. I personally like to take a break from typing or transcription every 20 minutes for 5 minutes. Recommendations by the University of New South Wales in Australia also recommend taking breaks every 20-30 minutes, if only for 2-3 minutes. This gives you chance to stretch, give your eyes and ears a break too. Even after just a couple of minutes not listening to someone speak, or looking at the text to be typed, is enough to recharge and carry on more productively.

3. If you are a transcriptionist and using specialist software, such as Express Scribe Professional, make sure everything is set-up correctly and to your specification. Test your foot pedal is ready to use to what you are used to. When I am transcribing I like to have it set to jump 5 seconds back for if I don’t catch what the person said the first time round. Listen to the first few minutes of the audio and adjust the replay speed according to your typing speed and the rate of speech that is being spoken. Check there is no background noise, if there is, some software players have ‘background noise reduction’ feature such as Express Scribe Professional. Alternatively, if that hasn’t had an effect or has helped but not cleared the audio up completely try an online converter such as www.online-convert.com. I have found from past experience that converting an audio can sometimes help clear any background or interference noise. If it is not in a mp3 format I will always convert an audio into the mp3 format and then perform the background noise reduction feature again.

4. Check with your client the purpose of the transcript. If you are transcribing a video it may be prudent to produce the transcript in a text (.txt) file and not a word document if it is being used for closed captions. Syncing the speech with the text is much easier. If it is to be produced in a Word document utilise the auto-correct and find/replace if you need to perform several replacements of a word.

5. Ask your client for the names involved in the audio or how they would like them referred to in the transcript if more than one speaker. Before commencing also enquire as to whether there is any specialist terminology you should be aware of, and/or any websites that may help with research if you cannot quite make out the word.

So there are my five secrets to help you type more accurately and transcribe more productively. Even taking regular breaks may seem like it is time you could be transcribing, as many transcriptionists have to work to tight deadlines. This may feel the case, but in reality, because you have taken even just 2 minutes away from listening, you will return to your keyboard and foot pedal and type more productively because of it. From many years experience working from work as a typist and transcriptionist, I know that frequent breaks and the correct ergonomics, preferably with an ergonomic keyboard too, are instantly going to help you be more productive and complete the work much quicker.

Please don’t hesitate to use the ‘contact me’ form if you would like to ask any questions about transcription, typing or my virtual assistant services that I can offer.

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The New Invaluable Social Media Image Sizes For 2020 Infographic

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