Virtual Assistant – THE Blog About Our Industry

About the Virtual Assistant industry for VAs and for clients

Monthly Archives: April 2006

Posting on Chat Forums

I belong to a number of chat forums, some relate to the VA industry, some are other business related, some software, and a few more that are connected to personal interests.

What disturbs me the most is that on any of the chat forums that are business related in some way, people continue to post to the forums just like they sending an SMS to a friend or carrying on a phone conversation with a family member. They forget they are in a business forum.

Things I recommend you do when posting:

  1. Ensure your username and email address are suitable for a business forum – something like jonniesmum@…, or loveme@… just do not conjure up confident feelings about the poster in a business sense but are ok for personal interest chat forums.
  2. Leave a portion of the email you are responding to in your post so that there is some continuity there for the other members of the forum.
  3. Use a signature block – it’s a great opportunity to blatantly tell people who you are and what you do but keep it to a 6 line maximum. It doesn’t need to be a big long advertisement but rather a way for people to get to know who you are by clicking on your web address, or by emailing you direct, and/or putting your business name into a search engine so they can look you up.
  4. Don’t post things that amount to personal conversation between 2 or 3 people – take it offlist and email each other. This includes sending messages which are no more than gratuitous replies to replies.
  5. Be aware that most forums are global, i.e. they don’t belong to one country. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve posted to a forum to remind someone who made a post that their country isn’t the only one represented. For that reason, people shouldn’t be picked on for incorrect spellings or grammatical errors if there’s a possibility that they’re not native English speaking and/or might spell something differently in their country. BUT, that doesn’t give an excuse for not taking care in typing your post properly – your business is on display through your posts.

I would like to draw your attention to the following link RFC and would advise reading Section 3.0 in its entirety. This is not something that is compulsory but would give you a good understanding of the general practices and guidelines that apply to most online communities. KMT

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Maintaining Professionalism 24/7

I belong to the TrumpU forum and post periodically when a topic pushes a hot button. The latest one was about whether spelling and grammar matters on posts. Below is a response from another member of the forum and my answer follows. I was pleased to get encouraging responses thereafter.

RE: Thankyou Mr. Trump for getting these Forums going
…Yesterday @ 11:31 PM EST

I must disagree with you about not wanting an edit / spellcheck feature on this forum. We all make mistakes typing. This is a business forum. In the business world if you send out written or email communications that have typo’s, incorrect capitalization and other grammatical errors, you don’t look professional. Simply put, spelling & punctuation DO count.

I totally have to agree about being professional on a forum of this nature. Whilst spelling errors can and do happen, it doesn’t mean we should just type in any fashion and post – what we say and how we say it helps present an image about us – one that we want to project to others who may be interested in doing business with us at some stage.

I run a team of people like myself – virtual assistants, and one of the first things I tell them when they join my team is that their email (and chat forum posts) are on view 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If someone wanted to engage us for our services, or outsource work to us, a badly typed email or forum post is going to go against us – because people will measure us by the standard of how we present ourselves in the written word.

This forum is great for those who want to advance their business (or themselves professionally) and it should be treated in the same way as you would communicate with a prospective client or business partner. KMT

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Steps for operating a blog

As I often share information about using blogs these days I’ve been asked several times, how do you go about it? So, for the benefit of those who wish to learn, and don’t yet fully understand, here are the steps:

1. Go to www.blogger.com and create a username and password if you don’t already have an account (if you are reading this at blogger then print it off, follow the steps and click on the blogger logo at the top left-hand of the screen).
2. Next choose a name for your blog – try to choose something that is meaningful to what your blog will be about (assuming, of course, you already know why you’re starting a blog).
3. Enter the blog address that will relate to the blog title – makes it easier for people to remember. However, if you have purchased a domain with the intention of forwarding it to that blog it probably won’t matter a great deal.
4. Choose a template – there are about a dozen to choose from – you can find other blog templates later on but for now choose one of these.

Your blog is now being created and it only takes a minute or two!

Click on start posting and you’ll be taken to the control panel for your blog. Spend time having a look around and familiarise yourself with the new tools at hand. There are four tabs: Posting, Settings, Template and View Blog. The first one allows you to create new posts for your blog, to edit existing posts, to moderate any comments left on your blog and lets you know the status of your blog.

Under Settings there are several more options: you can enter the title of your blog (which you can change anytime), add a description of what the blog is about , and choose the timestamp for posts (I choose the date rather than time), you want to add your blog to listings (choose yes) so that others can see your blog when surfing through blogger blogs. Under Publishing make sure you change Notify Weblogs to ‘yes’ so your blog is regularly pinged for listing with search engines and directories, the last, Formatting is fairly self-explanatory. Under Comments make sure you select Enable Comment Moderation so you are notified of any comments left by visitors for viewing before agreeing it goes public. Under Email you can elect to set an email address so you can email articles to your blog, instead of logging in – if you wish. Under members you can add other people to become article posters for your blog – it’s up to you whether you give them access to setting changes or whether you just want them to be able to post articles.

Under Template I would leave everything as is until you get familiar with how everything else works, but if you do have some knowledge of html coding (even minimal is fine) you can search for the word Google in the template and change the links in that section to website links that are meaningful to you. I don’t believe there’s any limit to how many sites you have linked there – when you view your blog you will see how they show in the template.

View Blog means exactly that – it opens your blog in another browser window.

Make sure you save settings in each area as you make changes.

Notice in the top right-hand corner of the screen you have your dashboard – that shows the list of blogs you own or participate in and you can click on settings or new post anytime. You can also edit your profile, add your photo or an image you want to represent you or what you’re about and add information about yourself – this will show up in the About Me section of your blog.

Now, why would you want to have a blog?

  • You may have a topic you are passionate about, whether business related, hobby-related, personal or whatever. Some use it for family news, and others as a diary for their wedding plans. Still others use it as a travel log for all their family and friends to keep informed. You might want to use it for your first webpage until such time you want to develop something more advanced.
  • Blogs are hosted free of charge.
  • Blogs have their own software so you do not have to know html coding.
  • Because they have their own software you don’t have to have it saved on your site, so can literally log in anywhere around the world and update your site.
  • A new blog literally takes 5-10 minutes to get started.
  • You can use FTP so the blog can be hosted on your own webspace.
  • There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of free blogskins if you’re prepared to spend a little time learning about how to tweak things in html. Some are very easy to use, others a little more complicated.
  • You can get a domain name pointed to your blog so could effectively use a blog for your own business website, many do.
  • It’s a cost effective way to start your very own first website and you can then move onto something else once you have more understanding/confidence in how you want to develop it.
  • Blogs can be managed by more than one person in different locations – you just add them as members of your blog.
  • Blogs are meant to be updated regularly and you can post a new article to your site just by sending an email – often websites are allowed to grow stale whereas the nature of blogs allow for regular content to be added in the form of articles or short notes without the need for a webmaster to do it for you.
  • Blogs have communities and a ready-made audience of people who are happy to view your blog and make comment, give advice, etc.
  • Google has a blogging community (connected to blogger.com) with experienced members there to give advice readily.

So, what’s stopping you now from starting your own blog? KMT

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Addendum: Of course, this applies to only one of the blogging software programs available and there are many others too. If you’d like to discuss and learn more, why not join our discussion forum which will help further your knowledge? Or perhaps, you have knowledge you want to share with others who are learning to blog? Click here to join.

Client Case Study #2

I met William a year after I started my business. He found me in the Yellow Pages after the secretarial service he’d been using moved out of the area. William was in his late 60s at the time and still a practising Export Trade Consultant with a government department. He ran his business from his home and would fax me his handwriting and I would fax back the typed document so he could fax it on to someone else. His handwriting was difficult to read but I got used to it and gradually, over time, grew to understand the words and terminology he would use regularly. I also developed templates of his letterhead, his business plans and all the regular types of things he would do.

We operated that way for 10 years before he finally stopped working. He still occasionally sends through personal letters and papers for me to type or will ring me to ask if I would research something on the internet for him and fax back to him.

If I ever doubted whether or not I should advertise in the Yellow Pages, it was shortlived. The work I got from him alone more than covered my advertising costs each year and he was not the only phone call I ever got. He was, most likely, the first call however. KMT.