Saw a great message in a forum last week. It was a sample of email addresses and what they say about the sender. It backs up my own thoughts about email. There is a place for ‘cute’ and ‘silly’ email addresses but when you are operating a business and participating in business forums, it’s time to put away the ‘cute’ and ‘silly’ and start using ‘business’ or ‘clever’ email addresses.

To quote some of what I saw:

Your email address says a lot about you….

Details are key when you are looking for a job and one thing that gets looked over time and time again is what your email address says about you.

Here are some examples:

hotgirl@—- (Self explanatory)

johndoe1967@—- (You are showing your age before they have a chance to look at your information)

sallysmith1985@—- (Same as above)

markandmindy@—- (Too much personal info here)

jacksonsdad@—- (Again too much info)

When you’re in business you need to be taken seriously – even on forums. So your username and email address are an important part of your identity for your business and will help with your branding.

Even if you don’t have a website yet it doesn’t hurt to get a domain name and use it for your email addresses. Later when the website comes you’ll already have your domain and your email address won’t need to be changed.

Think carefully about setting up addresses like info@, admin@, webmaster@ – these are addresses spammers will send to easily and you will get inundated with spam.

Finally, if you do participate in a number of forums, then perhaps having an email address that is different to your regular business email might be worth doing – so you don’t get inundated with forum messages and spam to the one address. You can separate them out.

One of the services I provide to clients is the maintenance of their databases. Entering business cards and new contacts, updating contact details, and removing bounced addresses.

Databases can get very messy at the best of times. There are always people changing jobs, shifting house, changing their lives and changing email addresses – it would be rare to do a broadcast email and not have some addresses bounce back.

Some broadcast email programs just bounce everything back to you – hard bounces or addresses that are dead, soft bounces where the server rejected the email for some reason and when mailboxes are full (I still don’t get why people don’t retrieve their email often and empty their mailboxes) and so on. What a mess that can be! Some broadcast programs absorb these and separate them into different categories so you can delete those who are dead, and reactivate those that might still be alive. This is much easier to handle and the mess isn’t in your inbox!

But what happens to your computer database if you maintain that as well as an online database? I’m of the mind that your computer database should really be proven contacts, people you’ve met personally, had some dealings with or have done business with. Online databases tend to have a large percentage of prospects and passers-by – people interested in what you have to say and who might, one day, actually conduct business with you. However, some of my clients feel differently and want an exact copy of their online database on their computer database. This can be very time consuming and means regularly cleaning up the database as it can show inflated figures. Addresses that are dead, people who have moved on, or contact details that are out of date. It is important to develop a regular action for this otherwise it can get out of hand very quickly.

If you are maintaining a computer database similar to your online one there is one very important thing you must ensure is updated very regularly, and if possible, daily. And that is the deletion of anyone who has unsubscribed from your online list. With spam legislations in place in many countries it is most important you honour the request of those who want to be removed from your list as promptly as possible. Otherwise you might run the risk of adding them online again if you periodically run updates from your computer to the online system.

database maintenance, spam legislation, database updates, bouncebacks

Recently at a VA forum we were discussing developing taglines for your business.

There is a fantastic book called ‘Seven Second Marketing’ written by Ivan Misner who is the founder of BNI. It’s about how to use memory hooks or how to make you instantly stand out in a crowd.

My own ‘memory hook’ really works best in my own country and for those of you who haven’t read my blog posts from 2006, perhaps this is a good time to explain something. My business name is “A Clayton’s Secretary” and the memory hook is ‘the secretary you need when you haven’t got a secretary’ (trademarked).

What that means is this: In the 1980s there was a non-alcoholic drink being advertised with Jack Thompson in the adverts. He would go into a bar and order a Claytons – the drink you had when you weren’t having a drink. The term caught on and thereafter a ‘claytons’ was the thing you had when you didn’t have the real thing. (You’ll even find a description of this use in Wikipedia under Appearance in Popular Culture)

When I was first starting my business I didn’t have a name but I was writing a brochure and finished it off with ‘let me be the secretary you need when you haven’t got a secretary’. Immediately my business name came to me and I went and registered it a day or so later.

The name has been with me ever since and many who have lived in Australia and are now overseas know what it means – I’m gradually educating everyone else! I started out as a homebased secretary but things change over time, don’t they?  It’s been the perfect ‘umbrella’ name for a network of VAs, rather than just a single operator as I started out.

Sometimes your memory hook can come before your name, just as mine did, but if you’re stuck with ideas, then I encourage you to get Ivan’s book. He’s got lots of stories and examples that should help you. You can get the book by clicking on the image.

Have you thought about Occupational Health & Safety in your home office? It might only be you in the office but safety is still important.

• Do you have leads running across the floor or showing at the back of a desk that is out in the open?
• Do you have young children or pets that could get caught up in the leads or accidentally pull them?
• Do you have clients come into your home office periodically?
• What is lying around or sticking out that might be a hazard to guests in your home?
• Are your filing cabinets secure or do the drawers pop out because of uneven flooring or overfilling of the drawers?

Just because it’s your home doesn’t mean there aren’t hazards and it’s worth checking into these things and casting a critical eye over your workspace.

How about the height of your monitor relative to where you sit? Is it in front of you or to the side slightly? If to the side, how’s your back, shoulders, neck, arms and do you suffer headaches?

Not being in the corporate world means we don’t fall under the OH&S rulings of those departments and we are responsible for our own health and safety.

Be kind to yourself and make sure you have your office set up as a safe environment, that your office furniture and computer equipment are ergonomically aligned and set up properly and that you have regular breaks to give your body a fair chance. You’re in business for the long haul, so hopefully that means your body will be too!

OH&S, safe home office, oh&s in the home

This topic was raised in my forum just recently and several team members came forward with an outline of what they’d done in the past.

It is important to protect ourselves whenever in the process of physically meeting a new client for the first time. After all, in many cases, they are complete strangers to us and just because they are seeking our business support, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take precautions.

Some team members reported that they meet at a neutral place such as a cafe in a shopping strip or somewhere else where there are lots of people.

Some team members reported they make sure there is always someone in their home when a client visits for the first time, or any time.

Others report that they’ll organise for someone to wait for them outside or call them a short time after they’ve gone into a client’s premises (if a private home or similar) just to check on them.

I have done all three of these at various times in my business. Especially in the early days as I was building up my client base and clients were coming from all sorts of avenues. Today I have a steady client base and rarely take on a new client and it’s not often I actually have to meet them face-to-face. When I do get new clients they now come through referral and word-of-mouth which saves a lot of ‘dancing’ getting to know one another in the early stages. Frequently the people referring them are people I’ve known for many years, and they in turn, have known these others for quite sometime.

Just because we’re known as Virtual Assistants, doesn’t necessarily mean that our contact with clients is always ‘virtual’. Some of the work carried out may mean we need to physically meet with the client from time to time and that’s fine but we should always make sure we are protecting ourselves, and our families and homes as well. A little preplanning or thinking ahead will help you in the long run.

virtual assistant, virtual work, meeting the client

I recently had the privilege of being interviewed by Stan Relihan of The Connections Show on the Podcast Network. Those of you in LinkedIn will know him as Australia’s most connected man. Stan has a great sense of humour and I’ve enjoyed getting to know him over several months now. So I was delighted when he decided to add me to his lineup of impressive interviews – I hope you like it!

TPN :: The Connections Show – Episode #022 [17:55m]

Running a Network of Virtual Assistants : Kathie Thomas

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