Virtual Assistant – THE Blog About Our Industry

About the Virtual Assistant industry for VAs and for clients

Category Archives: Technology

Starting off the new year

If you’re like me, you may have been spending the past week still on a holiday break, knowing full well that work was just around the corner.  So, now it’s time to really take stock of what is ahead, or perhaps outstanding, to get the year started off right.  Here are a few hints and tips on things that VAs, clients and other business owners can do, to start the new year off right.

Your Outlook file. How big is it? Mine was nearly 2.5gb in size – too big!  At the beginning of each year, I usually rename outlook.pst to outlook20xx.pst for the previous year and then re-open Outlook. When it can’t find the old pst file it automatically creates a new one.  Then I go about importing my contact folders, drafts folder, and any other folders that are important to me. For my inbox, I elect to import everything for the past week (or month, whatever suits you) into the same folders as the previous file, so my preferred structure is reset up and I’m operating again.  After that I reset up my rules wizard as often that’s gotten into a mess too. Don’t forget your appointments too – make sure anything you’ve entered over the past month for the future is included too. My Outlook program is now ready for the new year.

What other things can you do?

Check all the folders on your computer.  Are there folders no longer relevant?  Perhaps for clients you no longer service, or groups you no longer participate in?  Archive, file or delete what is no longer required.

Does your computer need an overhaul? It’s gotten slow, or has software on it no longer relevant? If you don’t have the ability to do this yourself, book it in for a service with a reliable service provider.

Check the (c) notices on your websites and blogs to make sure they reflect the new year.

Basically, you want to clear out the clutter you have on your computer (and your desk) so you can start afresh for the New Year and be ready to jump to action without being held up by old messes and old things.

 

Special offers for Virtual Assistants and their clients

You may remember my mention recently of a ‘sick scam‘ where an affiliate was processing orders using stolen credit cards on my shopping cart on this site.  Not a nice thing to happen and I’m still getting things sorted and processing refunds as people contact me. I can say the bank hasn’t been as helpful as I would have hoped, given that I’m not the perpetrator but a victim too, but that’s another story.

At any rate, I’m working hard to recoup lost funds, cover refunds and pay additional fees so have decided to set up a couple of special offers to help speed things up for me.  And that means you, my reader, get to benefit and anyone else you’d like to tell about it.

If you, or someone you know, would like to become a Virtual Assistant, they can participate in the 10 week VA Trainer course, and become a member of our VA Directory at a reduced rate.

Or, perhaps you, or someone you know, are needing a website with webhosting and control of the site yourself? I can provide you with a year’s webhosting and WordPress installation with site set up at a reduced rate. Contact me for more details.

Keep a watch on my blog for further offers.

How easy do you make it for your customers?

My husband is a ham radio operator.  He was perusing websites recently looking for some equipment to further his hobby.  He was looking at sites here in Australia as well as overseas.  He found one based in Sydney that had what he wanted BUT, they had no shopping cart set up for their long list of accessories and once you were on the list, there was no link to get back to the site itself.  The list was in a PDF format. Some Australian businesses are complaining about customers shopping overseas via the web, but if they make it hard on their customers, why wouldn’t the customer go elsewhere?

Another site my husband saw was  from the US but it was hideous to look at, working with frames (a very old concept of web design) that didn’t work too well and the colours clashed.  He went on to find another site.

This brings me to think about our own websites for our industry.   Do we make it easy for our customers to buy from us?  Perhaps we don’t have product so therefore don’t have a shopping cart. But what about accessing the information they want to find out?  And how easy is it for them to move back to a previous page?  What if they want to contact you?  Is a phone number visible? What about a contact form or even a postal address?  Don’t make it hard for people to make decisions – give them the information they need and make it easily accessible. Otherwise they’ll move on to someone else’s site.

Work your database and it will work for you

Virtual Assistants!  And small business owner operators!  Do you have a database? You do?  Do you use it?

I’m a keen advocate for networking, both online and offline, as it’s important to keep meeting people and to keep letting them know you exist. You need to be visible – not invisible.  What amazes me is that people go out and network, and most of them admit to wanting new work, but then you rarely hear from them afterwards. What are they doing with my business card, and the cards of others they collect?  Do they not use them or do they store them away for a rainy day?

Waiting for a rainy day, read ‘no work’, is not the time to start using your database. You should be priming it long before then.

I’ve just gained a number of new clients all in one week.  Lucky! you say.  Luck hasn’t got anything to do with it but work does. I’ve been working on these people for some months now and keeping in contact, via a regular newsletter, occasional emails or even a card in the post.  I keep in contact – that’s the key. And I can only do that if I’m using my database.

Don’t wait till things are quiet to start working your database, make it a regular activity alongside of all your other regular activities. Someone I heard once called it ‘feeding the funnel’.  Whatever you call it, your database is important to your business and past, present and prospective clients should be in that database.

So now you’re thinking about having a database, what program will you use and should it be online or on your computer?  Well, there are tons of different programs to use so it really depends on what end result you want as to which one works best for you. But with respect to computer and online – you should have both!  People can self-subscribe to your newsletter or blog, or whatever you do online to keep in touch and also unsubscribe.  Not everyone on that online list needs to be on your computer database.  However, once they’ve had personal contact with you or have become a client, then they should be on your computer database too. So it’s very realistic the two databases will be quite different and that’s not unusual.

And who is going to spend the time doing all this? Your Virtual Assistant of course. And if you are a VA but data entry isn’t your thing, then there’s no reason why you can’t outsource to another VA.  Your database is an important part of your business and can literally be your lifeblood. So don’t ignore the potential it holds for your business.

Tools Virtual Assistants love to use – Dropbox

File storage and backup is an important part of the life of a Virtual Assistant.  It’s something we discuss regularly at the VA forums and a question that is frequently asked by those new to the industry. Enter Dropbox.

I first discovered Dropbox when looking at online facilities for photosharing and storage.  I wanted to be able to showcase photos I’d taken at mountain bike (MTB) races so that the participants could view their images and choose which ones to buy. The photogallery system is great in Dropbox.  But then I began exploring, and noting that other VAs were using it too, so moved the whole contents of My Documents to My Dropbox on my computer.  My whole data is now backed up with Dropbox online. It’s not my only backup. I also have a 1TB external hard drive which is backed up regularly too, but unlike Dropbox it’s not as it happens.  The external hard drive backs up incrementally regularly overnight – Dropbox backs up the instant a file is changed on my computer.

What’s more Dropbox has the facility to share folders so you can create a folder for a client inside your My Dropbox folder on your computer, then launch the Dropbox website and find that folder to send an email invite to your client to share the contents of that folder. Great way for sharing files without having to email them – no more problems with large files. And only your client has access to that folder, no-one else. A great secure way of sharing files that you’re working on.