While I emphasize the importance of defining a target market, I don't advocate choosing one blindly. Most new VAs need to get a little experience under their belt before claiming a target.

In fact, I'm a firm believer that, if you clearly define what makes you different, your target market will find you.

My suggestion about drilling down on one audience was not for your VA business but for your speaking topic.

So let's say you have a lot of real estate agents in your local networking group and tailor your topic for them, it'll be far more impactful (is that a word?) than a too broad topic.

I hope this helps!

That is the main questions though, how does one FIND their niche?! I am unfortunately a Jill of all trades and a master of none in my opinion. I LOVE social networking and social media and, like Janet below, I love organization but I'm not sure how to market either of these topics to a specific type of audience.

Hopefully in these weekly tips you can touch on finding your niche a little bit, that would help me SO much! : )

As I suggested to Sara, I highly recommend you narrow your topic down to a particular audience.

The good news is, once you've written a speech for one target audience, you need only make small changes to address another set of prospects.

I know for myself, I would definitely be interested in your topic!!

I'd like to challenge you to take this marketing tip one step further. Replace “small businesses” and “business” with a particular audience. The best place to start is to think of a current or past client whom you've helped with one of the topics you mentioned.

For example, let's say you have a real estate agent for whom you've done social media projects. Spin your first topic for real estate agents. So now your first topic would be “Social Media for Real Estate Agents.”

The next step is to name the benefit… what will your speech help them achieve? For example, it could be “to get more listings” or “to close more sales” or “to gain local visibility.”

Finally, you don't just want this to be a list of topics and do nothing with it, so you'll need to start developing this topic into a speech.

Let us know how it goes!!

- Social Media for small businesses
- How to organize your e-mail and make it work for you
- Using SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis to help build your business

Thanks Cristina for a great first marketing tip!