Virtual Assistant – THE Blog About Our Industry

About the Virtual Assistant industry for VAs and for clients

Category Archives: Yahoogroups

Virtual Assistant Forums – their benefits

I’ve mentioned from time to time the various VA forums I belong to.  It’s where some of my material comes from to share on this blog. Today I want to share on the benefits of forums like these.

If you are a VA and if you are working alone, then becoming a member of 2 or 3 VA forums would be very beneficial to you.  Don’t mix up the forums with the networks.  Many networks have forums attached to them but not all forums are attached to a network.  The forums are usually free to join and some have a few hundred, others have a thousand or several thousand members. Even with that larger number that doesn’t mean there are thousands of messages every day, usually just a few hundred a month and it’s often the same people who get involved with the chats.

The great thing about these forums though is that you’re learning from the best in the industry. Those who have walked their talk and have the experience to back up what they write about and share.  As a result these forums are often to new VAs as honey is to bees and they are well worth joining.  Of those connected to VA Networks it also gives you some insight to the culture and benefit of those networks before you decide to invest in a paid membership with the networks.  It gives you an opportunity to get to know some of the members and find out what they get out of the paid memberships.  You get to mix and mingle with their members.

What if you aren’t a VA but perhaps a client who uses a VA?  Are there forums out there for you? Most likely. There are thousands upon thousands of forums out there on almost any topic imagineable.  You can join forums based on your industry, your personal hobbies and interests, family needs and so on.  Yahoogroups.com is probably one of the more well known facilitators of such groups but there are heaps of other forums, many that aren’t email based but perhaps operate via a board type forum with email notification of answers.  Why not do a search to find something you like?

And for those of you interested in joining a VA forum here’s a list of both networks and forums to get you started.  Perhaps I’ll see you online at some of them sometime soon.

Social networking – good or bad?

We’ve recently had a very interesting discussion on the VA forum about the use of photos on websites and that then grew into a discussion on social networking.  Is SN good or bad? Is it necessary or time wasting?  Does it work?

And then recently on LinkedIn a question relating to the same thing was asked and I thought I’d share with you my response there and some of my response at the VA forum.

“Spam is probably the ‘worst’ part about it.  Geez people/spammers, get a life!  But apart from that I love the social side of connecting with people and learning about them.  I love meeting people that I might not have met during the normal course of my business day.

“Social networking takes me out of my office and into the world beyond literally.  I can tell you that I’ve been given opportunities I never would have had, if I hadn’t taken up social networking and it alone was responsible for my being asked to speak at a conference last June in Niagara Falls – I live in Australia.  So I’m a real advocate for social networking.

“I currently use Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin as my main tools which are added to existing tools of blogging, discussion forums, attending local networking events close to home and so on.”

Most of you know I spoke at the Forum on Virtual Assistance (FoVA) in June but might not realise that it came about because of a webinar I was giving last year on Linkedin for VAs to a US/Canadian audience.  They knew about me because of my involvement with forums and different networking tools like Linkedin.

Below is a partial copy of my response at the discussion on the VA forum:

“Many of us choose to use the new tools as they become available because we need to keep ahead of our clients.  I know that my own clients were the ones that drove me towards blogging, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. I’ve tried several others too but decided that they weren’t worth pursuing. And my clients expect me to tell them about these tools and how to use them and what they could mean to their businesses.  It’s been through client demand that my own service provision has become what it is today.

“So, for those of us who want to use the Social networking tools, it’s a great fit! That doesn’t mean everyone has to or should.  It’s not about ‘having a case’ because it’s not about ‘for or against’.  It’s about what’s out there and what’s available and if people want to use those tools, then they can go ahead and do so.”

So, what do you think?  Good or bad?  Do you use Social Networking or don’t you and would you like to share why?

VA Networks – a ready resource

When I was first growing my VA Network it soon became obvious to me that I had to find a way to put all the members in touch with each other, without having to pass on email addresses all the time or get them to remember to ‘reply all’.

It was around that time (late 1996) that I was invited to join an online forum for home based businesses at Boxplanet and I saw first-hand what I needed for my team to be able to chat to one another. So our forum was started and shifted to a few places before finally settling at yahoogroups a few years ago. It later went through a name change and is now known as “Virtual Assistant International Group” or VAIG as the short name is listed.

The VA forums that are available online (and there are many) are an excellent way for VAs to keep abreast in changes in technology and their industry at large.  For some it’s to learn from scratch as they enter a new field (new to them) and for others it’s a way of being able to get information without having to pay an ‘expert’ to come onsite to teach them something.  That was me early 1996 – I paid someone to come and teach me Frontpage so I could set up my first website.  But if the forums had been available back then I would have made use of those as I enjoy exploring and learning things and then ask questions when I can’t quite join up the dots.

If you’re a VA and you don’t yet belong to a forum, or perhaps you belong to only one, I invite you to come join VAIG so you can mix and mingle with those who are working their businesses, either part-time or fulltime, read through the archives to learn lots of things and make lots of friends in the process.  We look forward to seeing you there!