I saw an interesting ‘side’ comment from a VA at one of the VA networks this morning.  She’d commented about how unselfish and sharing the VA community has been to her and that although she works at home alone, as we all do, she felt she had a number of allies to call upon. And she is right about that.

Working at home alone day in and day out does require commitment and a resolve to manage on your own.  Many don’t succeed at this.  They end up suffering from feelings of isolation and depression and crave the company of others on a day-to-day basis.  They leave their VA businesses and return to a fulltime job because of this.

I’d mentioned in recent posts about the value of networking outside the home to help gain resources for your Virtual Assistant business as well as gaining new clients.  But there is another benefit – that regular face-to-face contact with others which can help alleviate the feelings of ‘aloneness’.  Getting outside your four walls on a regular basis is important – if not just for your own physical health but for your mental well being too.

However, when you are working at home there are other things you can do to help you not feel so alone. I have the radio on in the background all day long – it’s just nice having voices and music there behind me, although not directly interacting with me.  It gives me a sense of comfort.

And then enter the VA networks and forums. There are many online these days and they all have their own culture and way of operating.  Below I list those that I belong to and I encourage you to visit, explore and join.  Note – the forums are free to join, but the networks usually do have a membership fee.  One provides companionship and the ability to share and learn information, the other provides you, the VA, with services and benefits to help you with your business.

A Clayton’s Secretary (VA Directory)
Forum connected: Virtual Assistants International Group (VAIG @ yahoogroups.com)

Australian Virtual Business Network (AVBN) and forum

Home Secretarial Services and forum

International Virtual Assistants Association (IVAA)

VANetworking (they have a membership network and forum)

Virtual Assistant Forums

Virtual Assistants @ yahoogroups

Some of the above also have LinkedIn discussion forums as well.  So, as a Virtual Assistant, working in a home office, there is no need for you to feel alone and unconnected – join a VA forum or two or three and learn about the networks that are connected to some of them and join those too!  You’ll find a vibrant helping and friendly community available to you 24/7.

If you’ve been wondering whether or not to provide social media services for your clients and where to begin, then this webinar will be very timely for you.

I met Keith Keller at a recent Networking World event and we found a perfect synergy with what he does and what I do.  I’ve been assisting clients with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for sometime and am well aware of the challenges clients have with respect to not just understanding how social media can help their businesses, but also how to find time to do it all. Enter the Virtual Assistant.

When Keith was presenting how to use Twitter for business the information he gave excited me – I could see a lot more potential growth for not only my own Twitter account but for that of my clients.  However, when the audience started to call out questions I got even more excited.  You see, we (Virtual Assistants) were the missing link for Keith’s clients.  People were asking if he could help them set up their accounts and how are they supposed to find time to tweet throughout the day or watch what’s being said on Twitter?  I responded with ‘that’s what VAs are for’ and got Keith’s attention.

We had a chat after his session and found that a working relationship would indeed be ideal for Keith and myself.  He can teach people how to use Twitter and we (VAs) can assist them in the daily use of it.

Enter the “Twitter 4 VAs” webinar which takes place on 27th of this month.  So, what are you waiting for?  Why not book now while I have your attention?  Click here for more details.

Networking is such a useful thing to do. Less than two weeks ago I attended the 90 Day Networking Event in Melbourne, being held by Networking World. I met quite a few people (there were over 150 in attendance) and have connected with some of them since.

One of these people is Keith Keller, whom I like to nickname “Mr Twitter”. Keith is a Global Social Media Coach who focuses entirely on Twitter. He teaches you how to get the best out of your Twitter experience and runs sessions called Twitter 101, Twitter Kickstart and Twitter Intensive.

He teaches our (the VA industry ‘our’) potential client base how Twitter will benefit them and how to make use of it. What he doesn’t do is set up Twitter accounts and manage it for his clients. That’s were we VAs come in and what a perfect alliance this will be for our industry!

Enter Twitter4VAs.com.

Keith and I have collaborated to bring a 60 minute webinar to VAs teaching them how to get the best out of Twitter, great tools you can use for Twitter and suggestions on how to promote your Twitter services to potential clients. Sound like THE webinar you should attend? Good, I thought so.

This webinar will be held on Thursday 27th October at 10am AEST (Melbourne, Australia time) so that our fellow VAs in the northern hemisphere can also attend (Wed evening). Keith is an enthusiastic bubbly guy who will infect you with his love for Twitter. I found his presentation exciting and his enthusiasm contagious when I attended his session two weeks ago and was surprised to find that he wasn’t promoting VAs to help clients set up and manage their Twitter accounts. That has changed now as you can imagine. I didn’t waste time in introducing myself and explaining what I do fulltime – supporting clients with their admin/secretarial and web based support needs. Keith had heard of Virtual Assistants but hadn’t had much direct contact with them.

So, set the date in your diary and head on over to Twitter4VAs.com to book for the webinar now. You will be so glad you did this!

I logged into my business page last week and was surprised with a promotion for a service by someone else that I hadn’t put on my wall. What disgruntled me was that I also provide that same service (WordPress Training) and I thought that person had a cheek promoting on my wall to all my likers about their services.  I reported it as spam and removed the post.  I had tried to leave a comment on their wall however because they were an individual posting and not from a business page, and I hadn’t ‘friended’ them I couldn’t leave a comment on their wall.

This was only a day or two after a colleague of mine had complained that someone had been spamming on their wall doing promotions for their business and thought it totally inappropriate. I hadn’t seen who had done that but wondered if it was the same person now posting on my wall.

I really thought it was inappropriate to do.  So, what do I think they should have done?

Obviously this person is keen to promote their services however went the wrong way about it. What they should have done (in my opinion) was promote via their own business page, then asked their likers to share the promotion on their walls. That would then mean they were getting endorsement from their likers and they wouldn’t be seen as blatantly posting from one wall to another.  It’s all in the way it’s done.

So, if you want to promote something at Facebook to those who are connected to you – best you do it via your business page and then ask your likers to share with their connections.  We all know that things can go viral – it’s just important to start the process off in the right way.

By the way, that person has now apologised and said they hadn’t intended to be seen as spamming and will rethink how they do things.

I am, however I’m as yet undecided about the usefulness of it.  I know that there are over 20million people on it already even though it’s in Beta form.  I do understand how the circles work and find that could be a useful tool.  But do I need another social media tool?  Who am I reaching that I’m not already via Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter and do I have the time to really want to play around with it?

How about you? Are you using Google+? Would you like to share your highlights (or lowlights) on its workings for you and your business?  Or, if you’re not yet on it, would you like to be but haven’t yet received an invitation?  I received 2 on the same day just a couple of weeks ago and have been playing with it since.  If you are on it and would like to add me to a circle or two, you can find me at ?http://gplus.to/kathiemt

I did a double take when I saw the latest selection of ‘people you might know’ this morning at LinkedIn.  I bet you recognise some of these names too?  Obviously an April Fool’s joke – although it’s now April 2nd in Australia. Or perhaps LinkedIn has found a way to resurrect people too.    Wonder how many people try to connect to them?

aaarrghh!  I can’t believe how many emails I get these days where people do not sign off, or include contact details. What is wrong with people these days? Is email no longer considered a professional way of contacting others?

What am I talking about?  Signature blocks. I receive emails from Virtual Assistants, from service and product providers, from other organisations where people just sign off with their firstname and nothing else.  No surname, no business name, no website address, no phone number, nothing.

Like yes I have everyone’s details at my fingertips and why shouldn’t I waste my time trying to look up that information if I want to visit their website or give them a ring on the phone?  The amount of time I’ve wasted going through older emails to get someone’s details if I don’t have them on my database, or having to google to find them.  It’s extremely annoying.

I was purchasing wooden photo frames recently for an exhibition I have coming up – the provider just signs off with her first name and nothing else.  I already had to email her and ask for her address. And then she wondered why I didn’t know what hours her shop was open after I complained I’d gone down there for a pick up only to find the shop was closed.  How was I to know she’s not open on Mondays?

An NFP organisation that was fixing a problem on their website for me – not giving the web link after letting me know things have been sorted.  I don’t remember everyone’s web addresses off by heart.

Many VAs do it too. Give your readers and potential audience/clients the chance to know how to find you online and by phone by always making it available to them through your signature block. It’s your online business card!

Ok, vent over, but hopefully you get the point.  Make sure that you have more than just your name at the end of your emails – you stand to lose potential business otherwise.

As many business owner/operators have done, I’ve turned to Facebook for networking opportunities.  When I first started using Facebook a few years ago I set up two profiles – one for personal use and one for business. I didn’t want to confuse personal stuff with business stuff and really didn’t want my business contacts seeing what various members of my family were chatting about.  For me, that made sense to do.

However, Facebook has in their Terms of Use that you should really only have the one account and when the use of business pages became the thing to do, I closed down my business profile and created business pages for people to ‘like’ and remain connected with me on a business level.  So I contacted as many as I could to let them know, but not all followed me to my new location and I lost a few.  Hopefully they read this blog and might reconnect by liking my new existing pages.

I have made many new contacts via Facebook and because I use it consistently have also gained new clients through being able to provide a service setting up Facebook pages and helping clients to maintain their Facebook business profiles.

I have more than one business page on Facebook – in fact, four, and each have their own list of followers.  It is, however, mainly my A Clayton’s Secretary and KathiesPhotos pages that have the most followers and activities and I have my respective blogs feeding both of these pages, plus connections to Twitter.  Photography is a passion of mine outside of working hours and so it was with both surprise and pleasure that I picked up a booking for an exhibition of my photography, simply because my photos had been seen at Facebook.  I also gain many comments at Facebook about the photos – more than at my blog, although my blog does cry out for comments (hint, hint).

One more thing – if you have a signature block for your business (and you should) why not include your Facebook and Twitter links – I use the logos for each social network tool in my signature block. A great way to encourage people to connect with you and continue networking.

So, if you haven’t already, I invite you to ‘like’ my Facebook pages – either one or both.  And please understand that if you send me an ‘Add Friend Request’ it will be refused but only because I prefer to keep family and friends separate to business.

Today I want to discuss Facebook.  Facebook has changed considerably in the 2+ years I’ve been using it. At first I thought of it as a program that young people use but over time I could see that businesses were utilising it and it has an important part to play in the game of networking for business.

So, you can set up a profile, set up multiple pages, and set up groups.  They all do different things.  If you set up a profile who do you connect with – close family and friends only or clients only?  Or perhaps both? And how do you manage these seemingly unconnected two groups?

At this stage I have a profile and 4 pages on various topics but am looking to refine how I manage my own FB account.  I am reluctant to mix business with personal however with Facebook’s Terms & Conditions you are supposed to have only one account and not two. So, how do you manage your FB life?

I am constantly refining the way I do things and researching new and better ways to do things. So I thought I’d open up for discussion here the various tools we use as Virtual Assistants.

Today I want to discuss using Twitter on behalf of clients.  Because I monitor multiple accounts on Twitter I’ve chosen to use Seesmic as it allows me to have several accounts open all at once and I can post/tweet to any one of them or multiples if I want to.  However, the version I’m using seems to struck a limitation, i.e. the last two accounts I’ve added won’t automatically login whenever I open the account – I have to keep entering the passwords.  The first 4 log in fine but the last 2 don’t.

I know there is a new version of Seesmic but I don’t like it and prefer the older 0.8 version.  I don’t know if the new version will manage 6 accounts fine or not.

Do you run multiple Twitter accounts and what do you use to monitor it? Not only that, but why do you like that program?