Email – it is an advert for your business
Email, for Virtual Assistants, is often our first point of contact with potential clients. It works like an amabassador for our businesses.
Many experienced VAs, like myself, get a lot of emails from would-be VAs wanting to get work outsourced to them, or wanting to find out if they can work with us as a sub-contractor or similar. We are, in effect, a potential client for them.
So it concerns me considerably when they don’t take care to read their emails properly before hitting send, correcting any obvious errors. Nor do many of them sign off their emails properly either.
It doesn’t take a great deal to take a deep breath, read through the email carefully, correct any grammatical or spelling errors, and then make sure the email is signed off before sending it on its way.
Poorly written or constructed emails will be an immediate turn-off for those whom they are contacting. The same applies for any networking forums they belong to online. The way they communicate via the forums gives others an idea of whether they could work with them. The written form of communication has become very important in the way business is run online these days. If you are unable to communicate properly via email you stand to lose opportunities for work simply because the recipient won’t have any confidence in your abilities – irrespective of whether word-processing is one of your service offerings or not.
I know that many say they can copy type accurately but I do believe/feel that if that is the case, then they should have learnt something from the copy typing they’ve done in the past. Take time with your written communications and you’ll find you will be rewarded.
Written by Kathie Thomas - Visit Website
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Great post Kathie!
You raised some very valid points.
First impressions count and if one is pitching for work, they have to ensure everything (visually, grammatically, and audibly) is mistake-free and concise.
Here’s a question, how would you feel if you received an email from yourself that wasn’t up to scratch?
Thank you and all the best.
@Iconic88
Good post! I agree, you have to be careful with e-mail. I get a lot of e-mail from my client’s clients, and I am amazed at the mistakes in spelling and grammar.
It seems people are taking a “microwave” approach to their communication. They want to just zap it and be done!
Thanks for the advice.
Connie
Hi, I hope you don’t mind me asking but is your site using wordpress and if so is it a standard theme or one you designed yourself? I like wordpress but don’t like the way that most sites look like, well – wordpress! I’d love to have a site that looks like yours! Can you reveal your secret? Thanks, S x
Good post Kathie; You’re right, we must be very careful with our spelling and grammar in writing emails to our clients. It is a must to every VA it gives an impression to our client on how professional we are.
Great advice! Cathy
Wow, this is a powerful reminder also for all of our online communication.
I agree with what was said in the above blog. Many people do not take time to look t their email before they send them. Thank you for this information it is greatly appreciated.
Yes, SEO, this is a WordPress theme and I had the banner designed for me. I’ve modified some of the colours and layout slightly.
Thanks for publishing about this. There’s a bunch of good tech info on the internet. You’ve got a lot of that info here on your website. I’m impressed – I try to keep a couple blogs fairly up-to-date, but it’s a struggle sometimes. You’ve done a great job with this one. How do you do it?
I totally agree with you. As they say ‘better safe than sorry,’ we should at least double check the emails we send especially now that accuracy and presiceness weighs alot not just in the Virtual Assistant industry but also in other professions. Sending poorly written emails could mean that that person is not so professional and does not take his/her job seriously.