Virtual Assistant – THE Blog About Our Industry

About the Virtual Assistant industry for VAs and for clients

Category Archives: Blogging

Friday Finds

I haven’t done one of these posts for quite sometime – so I thought I’d show you some of my latest finds on Google Reader!

This one is mine – I write a number of blogs http://soho-life.com/blog/

Democratizing Twitter

My Blogging Journey (well, not mine but that of the author of this post)

Were you April fooled about Conficker?

Increase your changes to be linked at your blog (well, I’m trying to do mine!) :-)

Dare to stand out and be noticed

Top 10 strategies for marketing your business

And something to amuse you (Be prepared for a real belly laugh – good for the soul!)

Victorian Bush Fires and the Need for Tourism

Last year I wrote about two different situations where the VA community grouped together to help one of its own.  One was when a VA shared on her challenges and others rallied round to help her.  The other was when I, myself, was going through a family tragedy and so many once again, rallied round to support me and let me know they were there in my time of need.

Well, another need has been highlighted by one of my team today and it relates to the Victorian bushfires that most of the world now knows about by now.  There have been so many stories of those directly affected – lost homes, lives, pets, livestock, businesses, crops and so on.  It has been devastating and has swept our nation with grief and shock. And we’ve had firemen flown over from New Zealand and the US (and possibly other areas) to come help fight the biggest natural disaster Australia has ever known.

There is a massive fund raising effort being held currently and many people are donating clothing, food, goods, household items, places to stay and so on to assist those directly affected.

But it wasn’t till today that I’d given thought to those indirectly affected and this is also something that needs to be highlighted.  The businesses and communities that will suffer loss – extreme loss, if nothing is done – due to the drop in tourism because people are either scared or incorrectly assumed other towns have been wiped out.  One of those is Beechworth and because a member of my VA team lives and works there, it is something I want to highlight here.  I have blogged and twittered about this situation but I want to encourage you too, to write about it.  Perhaps even adopt a town you know of in Victoria, that needs that kind of attention and support.  And if you do, why not leave a comment here with a direct link to the post you’ve made and the town you are supporting.

Thank you for your help on behalf of all in Victoria who have a need of this kind.

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Intel Centrino – a Notebook to play with

Over the past few weeks I’ve had the privilege of playing with, and testing, an Intel Centrino 2 powered notebook.  It has a great easy to view widescreen, is very compact, slim and lightweight, and easy to use. This one has Windows Vista installed on it and OpenOffice suite.  It also has 4gig ram.

I wasn’t able to carry out my normal daily activities on it as it didn’t have the software I use every day (MS Office 2003, ACT!, Quickbooks, Dreamweaver) for my regular client activity and it would have taken a few hours to load and then add my data. However, the issue of putting client work on someone else’s computer isn’t a good idea as I would need to be confident that it was all totally wiped back off again.

But I did get to use it for web browsing, blogging, participating in chat forums, and tried out the OpenOffice which I’d never used before.

I was impressed with the long battery life and the speed with which it opened programs and seemed to download quicker although it had the same internet connection that the rest of the computers in my office had.

If you are shopping for a new laptop and wanted something that is lightweight, easy to travel with and could literally put inside a large handbag (I’m talking the ladies here) then this one is for you.

The website can direct you to a choice of different vendor notebooks for your needs so if you want performance and style, or long lasting battery life and performance, or all of the above, you can simply pick and choose. The site helps you to understand what you are after i.e a Toshiba or Dell before you go and make your purchase. The site also leads to online reviews, etc to understand the differences.  I consider myself lucky to be asked to try one out and give my thoughts.

Intel Centrino has a fantastic promotion on right now and some lucky people will get to win a notebook each or an entertainment system.  And if you click on the Great Prizes logo and then click on the link for the Centrino 2 room you’ll see others who have had the opportunity to test out this great little notebook.

You can find out more about this great notebook at http://www.centrino2room.com.au/

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Friday Finds

My favourite RSS feed reader is Google Reader and I have it saved as one of my home pages in my browser.

It allows me to read blog updates at times that suit me (like over breakfast for example) although I never fully keep up with them these days. I’ve subscribed to a lot and some have more than a few updates weekly – some several a day.

The RSS feed is also useful for some of the chat forums I belong to as I can see what’s been discussed without logging in and then I can choose to respond to posts if and when I have time.

Below is a small list of interesting reads I’ve comes across this week:

Aussie Bloggers Forum also has a blog and encourages its members to contribute.  I’m an active member there and invite you to come check us out!  Planning Queen wrote the post I’ve linked to, about great dining on the Great Ocean Road (Vic).

There’s an interesting post at Copyblogger about why should anyone read your blog?

Chris Garrett has been doing a test on pop up email subscriptions for his blog (wonder if I should try that?) with mixed feelings.

At ebooksandreviews, there’s a post about reading and eyesight, worth looking into.  I had to succumb to wearing glasses a few years ago and being able to both read and write in comfort is important to me.

Yaro writes about a JV Partner Invitation at his blog Entrepreneur’s Journey.   If you’re on the hunt for such partners, might be worth investigating!

If you have a blog you think I should be subscribed to on my reader, please leave a comment here and I’ll take a visit and consider it!

Are you a Virtual Assistant who wants to blog?

Blogs are a great way for sharing information and encouraging interactive discussion with your audience but many new VAs find the concept daunting and see it as just one extra thing in a long list of things they need to learn and get up to speed with.

I’ve recently written a book called “Blogging Basics” and it is exactly that – the basics of how to blog and why you would want to blog.  I’ve made it available at my SOHO-Life blog for all subscribers.

If you pop over there you can read the table of contents to see if this is something you’d like to download and read.

I wrote this simple book to help answer the questions I am often asked about blogging, both by clients and by VAs so here’s a quick simple answer to the most basic and often asked questions in an easy download PDF format.

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