I did a post on a newspaper article about our industry yesterday and then heard that another newspaper had published the same article. So I did a Google search to see who else had and was amazed to see my blogpost on the first page of Google in 4th position less than 3 hours after I published it. Now that was fast.
I was alerted to an article by the Sydney Morning Herald titled “The Rise of the Virtual Assistant”. The author has evidently experienced some challenges with their contact with a VA and has written about it. What was obvious to me straight away is that the article confused a VA with being sales staff or a receptionist, handling phone calls. Whilst it is true that some VAs might provide this service, I can say that the majority do not and it’s important that prospective clients recognise this. It is wrong thinking in my mind, and I’ve been in this industry since its inception over 11 years ago. They also mentioned about ‘set and forget’ and I don’t know one VA who is put in motion by a client and then forgotten. We have regular client contact, reporting back to them, actioning items, following through and asking questions. My longest term client has been with me over 10 years and we have weekly meetings on the phone, not to mention the daily emails that go back and forth. And for my other clients, we work with regular emails or Skype.
At any rate, the following response was written to this article and is waiting to be moderated – if you are a VA I encourage you also to go over and read this article and leave a suitable response about your experience as a VA.
I am a Virtual Assistant and have been operating online since early 1996. I also manage a team of Virtual Assistants, having established the very first network of this kind in Australia over 11 years ago.
It is important to note that VAs do lots of things but they were never meant to replace your sales staff and not many clients use them for phone answering – you are the voice of your business.
But they certainly can do your admin and secretarial support very capably. One of my longest term clients has been with me for 10 years and speaks highly of my abilities and the support to her business. I manage her database, desktop publishing, wordprocessing, printing, registrations for events, and even her broadcast emails and websites. I provide similar services for other clients. Many of my team have similar stories to tell with their own clients.
VAs do need to be properly briefed by the client and there is a settling in period, but again, I emphasise, we were never meant to become sales staff and that is not our function. Seek out a VA with the skills you need provided and you will indeed be happy with your choice.
I encourage your comments here also in the hope that the Sydney Morning Herald and its writer come here for a visit! KMT
We all get numerous emails on a daily basis but when we get something that’s a warning and seems like it’s important, the urge to forward it on to as many people as possible prompts us to do so. But I’d like to encourage you to stop and think for a moment and do something else first.
Put the subject heading into your search engine and see what comes up. More often than not you’ll find sites like Urban Legend, Symantec’s list of hoaxes, Hoax Busters and others at the top of the list.
Ok, so now you’ve confirmed it’s a hoax and you are now able to delete the email, thereby effectively stopping it in its tracks and preventing others from getting yet another annoying email and continuing it on its journey.
But what if it were an email you still needed to forward on? If you are going to forward on email to a group of people, think about how you are going to do that. I’ve lost count of the times that I receive an email forwarded by someone (usually one of the above-mentioned hoax emails) and it has half a page of email addresses and names on it. This is because the addresses were entered into the To: or CC: field. Don’t do it! Do not put multiple addresses in these two fields. It’s not a safe practice and it also smacks of a lack of professionalism, i.e. someone who doesn’t use email much and doesn’t know better. And if you’re running a business via the Internet, you had better know better!
You see, if just one person on that list is infected by a virus or a trojan you have just given their computer a whole new list of email addresses to send out to. Ooops! That wasn’t a good idea, was it? Also, if just one of those people is desperate for email addresses to build their list with – you’ve just given them half a page worth and they’ll be very grateful for that. Give us a break! We all get put on too many spammer’s lists now, why make it easier for someone else to do the same? Whether they are a friend or a family member, it doesn’t matter – if they use that list to send to, they could be branded a spammer, so don’t make it easy for them.
Sending bulk email to large lists is better done using BCC or via a mail server list service so that each individual only sees their name and address and no-one else’s. Sure, it’s fine to send to a group of friends or family but not to a list of unconnected people – not a good idea. KMT
As a Virtual Assistant, I love exploring new programs but am sometimes skeptical towards some until I hear from others of their own personal experiences. Free programs I do view warily until proven otherwise, I don’t want to get caught with something I wished I hadn’t downloaded.
However, recently my team were discussing a photo storing program called Picasa which is a free download from Google and it is worth checking out. It does a full scan of your computer or will only scan the sections you specify. So, if you have photos you don’t want suddenly exposed using this program, it would be best if they were not in your My Documents folder or any of the folders you want the program to go through.
Once it’s collated all that information you can view them in year order or alphabetical order and sort them into categories, or whatever. It has this great facility for collecting your chosen pictures for emailing them, or create an html file which you can upload to a webspace (your own webspace that is) for sending out to anyone. It has 3 different background colours (grey, black and white) and 2 different layouts. I expect since it converts them into html you could fiddle with them afterwards and make changes – I haven’t done that yet, but I like how easily it creates the thumbnails with a viewing screen.
This program could save you a lot of time if you work with images for clients and need to quickly upload images in a suitable format for viewing. If you also work with photo blogs or other sites that have a lot of images in it, this would be a worthwhile tool to work with. I had a bit of fun with it as you’ll see if you click on this link. KMT
Some call it ‘diving into the deep end’, others call it ‘stepping out in faith’, but whatever it is leaving a (secure) job and moving full time into your own business is a big scary step and it’s hard to know when is the right time to do it. There are some guidelines that can help you with that decision.
There are most likely other things you can do to help yourself but these will get you started. Starting a business is one thing but then deciding ‘now is the time to be at it full time’ is another thing and I know of many VAs who left their jobs too early to take that plunge. They may have misread the signs, got caught up in the excitement or perhaps naively thought it would just happen as a matter of course, without having the foundations properly laid.
Whatever the reason, don’t despair, it just means you acted prematurely and next time you come back home you’ll be more prepared for what’s involved. I’ve had people join my team and then resign in less than 6 months and go back to a full time job, only to come back again 2 years later ready to give it another go and succeed this time. Research should play a big part in your decision making and joining one or two VA forums so you are mixing and mingling with those who are already doing it will help considerably too. It can, and will happen, with the proper planning and preparation. KMT
virtual assistant, VA business, work at home, business building, research