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This blog post by @TimeOnTaskVA caused me to review how I spend my day. This is a very good thing to do in order to review if you are making the most of your time! I now consider myself optimized.
It seems every single week there is something new in the social media marketing world.
I had been making flow charts for clients social media accounts on what account was automatically linked to what account. Finally, my wonderful accountability partner, Kathy Colaiacovo, from Time On Task Virtual Assistant Services answered a question on VAnetworking regarding posterous.com. This lead me to an afternoon of exploring the features, logistics and setting up an account here. I will be moving some clients off of ping.fm and over to posterous. It really is a simple service.
One email to post@posterous.com and you are able to post to your blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as well as a myriad of other sites. The biggest benefit that I see is that posterous sends your message as a Tweet and the characters that don’t fit end up with a shortened URL back to the main posterous site. Brilliant!
As a Virtual Assistant, I have been using social media for quite a while now and recently have found myself disturbed by other’s ideas of how to handle it. This is the first part in a series of blog posts regarding social networking and my beliefs on proper methods of success.
A well written social media networking plan is necessary to help guide you to success with minimal effort. You will be able to see on paper, (or the computer screen), what your needs are in order to reach your goals. A great plan should include: (more…)
I was very surprised yesterday morning to discover a Google Alert in my inbox indicating that I had won the VAnetworking Blog of the Month Award. How honored I am especially since my blog is so new! In addition to being new, my topics tend to be all over the board, depending upon what project I am working on at the moment or what is paining me or inspiring me. This just proves the support and family-like atmosphere that this group projects. I would not be where I am today without discovering Tawnya Sutherland from an article in Entrepreneur.com. (This link goes to an article about Tawnya but not the one that got me involved with her. That one is a number of years old and no longer posted.)
Are you an aspiring virtual assistant like me? Do you have an Insiders subscription to VAnetworking? I have found this group of VA’s to be the most open, addressable and helpful people in the industry! You don’t really even need the paid Insider subscription, if you don’t want to receive the valuable RFP’s or invitations to special classes and trainings. It is just a great place to tips and tricks of the industry. The response time is incredible. I don’t think that I have ever posted a question that wasn’t answered by the end of the day.
However, I do suggest that anyone that is starting up their own virtual assistant business check out Tawnya’s Virtual Business Startup Solutions package. There is also a Kick Start download on the website. I should have gone this route, but, I thought that I could start my business by myself. Yes, I was able to but it took quite a while and occasionally, I would have the horse before the cart and have to back up and improve my plans! It would have been a lot easier if I would have just followed Tawnya’s program.
And, if you are not a virtual assistant, but think you may need one or would like to find out more information about how to partner with a VA, first, read their blog and then join the forum! This is an excellent place to hang out. Once you easily discover the openness and honesty of professionals in the VA industry you will feel very confident by posting your Request for Proposal on this board. You can also find out more from my webpage “Why a VA?”
I found this post this morning on the VAnetworking.com blog site and felt that it was worth more exposure, so I posted a link to it here. Karri Flatla of snap-va.com is a great Virtual Assistant and peer of mine. She writes for the VAnetworking blog regularly and always provides excellent information!
Karri’s post is very timely, addressing the client that can’t afford much but knows that they need help. Currently, I am working with a client and by following Karri’s advise in her post, I am able to help this client move the business forward at a steady, controlled pace without breaking her bank.
I read the best little book ever written recently, Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson, M.D. with the forward supplied by Kenneth Blanchard, Ph.D. These men are the Co-Authors of The One Minute Manager. This book should be required reading for everyone, especially young people just getting out into the world. It is an easy read with a cute story about coping with change, rather being able to anticipate change and deal with it as efficiently as possible. The story is about two mice and two miniature people, (mouse-sized) and how every day they run through a maze looking for cheese. The “cheese” being a metaphor for a goal or wanted situation. (more…)
Late last week, I was startled to find that people had been signing up as users on my Wordpress site. This was about the same time that Tawnya Sutherland of VAnetworking discovered that one of her websites had been hacked due to a security breach in an older version of Wordpress. Well, just before Tawnya made her announcement, I had posted my puzzling question on VAnetworking. The response that I received from member Crystal Pina was to go to my dashboard and then go to Settings>General there is a box there that was checked saying “Membership – Anyone can register.” (more…)
Trusted Email Marketing
The educational process should be a non-stop thing for everyone. In our society, technology, information and processes are changing on an almost daily basis. This is why I am always looking for new things to learn and new processes to explore. Learning Wordpress was one of those challenges. I didn’t take a formal course to learn it; I went through the trial-and-error process, which worked for me.
My next challenge will be to learn all the ins-and-outs of Constant Contact. I will be travelling to Chicago, on the Metra System to take their seminars titled The Power of Email Marketing and Getting Started with Constant Contact. I am really looking forward to this. I love taking the train to Chicago and the seminars are quite the bonus.
I have invited members of the two local chambers that I belong to: the Wind Lake Chamber of Commerce and the Waterford Area Chamber of Commerce. I hope that a lot of people reply to me with interest in this event. It would make the experience richer to share this knowledge with some friends. So far, I have one friend that is going, along with my daughter and a friend of hers, (they are just going to shop, though).
Constant Contact has been quite the impressive program so far. I downloaded their free trial less than a month ago and have sent out one email so far. The really impressive thing was that within one hour of my download, I received a call from a tech support person, asking if I had any questions. I almost fell off my chair! It was a good thing that he called though; I did have a few questions. Like “are you going to scrutinize every email and address that I attempt to send out; even to people in my personal address book?”
My VA colleague, Jessica Maes, has just launched her book Exploring A Career As A Virtual Assistant and she is currently on virtual tour to promote it! Jessica operates a busy Virtual Assistance practice from her home office in Madison, WI. Additionally, Jessica has taught a class at the University of Wisconsin through the Minicourse Department called Exploring A Career As A Virtual Assistant since early 2009. The class has had great response based on the ever growing interest in the Virtual Assistance industry and the current job market conditions that have people exploring their career options more vigorously than ever before. Jessica wrote the book so that people beyond driving distance to the University can learn much of the same information she shares from the comfort and convenience of their own home. After all, this is a book about working virtually, so sharing the information offsite is a natural fit! You can read a free sample from the book by clicking here.
As part of this tour stop, Jessica is available to us today to answer your burning questions about the Virtual Assistance industry! Post your question by leaving a Comment below. Jessica will respond in the Comments section so be sure to check back!
To celebrate the book’s launch, Jessica has a few goodies to offer us. The first is a 20% discount off the purchase of the book. Simply use the promo code THANKYOU during check out.
The second is that one lucky reader will receive a free copy of the eBook version of the book! To be eligible to win, you simply need to post a question about Virtual Assistance in the comments section of this post. The winner will be chosen at random and announced here in a couple of days.
The book is currently available for immediate download via an eBook format and in hard copy. To purchase the book, click here.
