They've become Virtual Assistants. There is an article recently published by BloombergBusinessWeek exploring where secretaries have gone. Corporate recruiter, Pat Cook, says that far fewer people have secretaries or assistants now and the article said it's largely due to changes in technology and cost-cutting exercises. However, she also goes on to say that everyone agrees they would be far more effective if they had an assistant. Enter the Virtual Assistant. Many Virtual Assistants have … [Read more...]
Building takes more than one night
A chance comment at a VA forum made me think about building in general. When you're building a house, there's a lot of planning and preparation put into place. The piece of land is checked by a survey engineer to ensure the land is sound and that the building planned will be structurally sound on that land. The architect goes to great lengths to ensure his plans are suitable for the owner's needs. The builder reads the plans, works out what materials are needed and costs involved, who he needs … [Read more...]
Finding your target market
This is a topic that applies to everyone in business. Some businesses have it easy. They have a service or product that people are seeking out every single day of the week. And so it would appear they don't have to do a lot to be found. The reality is they need to look at their 'real estate', i.e. where they are located physically for the foot traffic to pass by, or where they are located virtually, i.e. their domain name, keywords, etc to allow searches to find them. So there are costs … [Read more...]
How do you know what a VA is?
As many of you know, I belong to quite a few VA forums. And there is one at Linkedin where a very talented graphic designer/VA participates and he decided to create this awesome info-graphic about what a VA is. I think it's wonderful, wish I had his talent! I always have to pay someone to do my graphics :-) Oh, and that's a caricature of him with the beard. Posted with permission Patrick Slattery, WorkingMatterVA … [Read more...]
Beware the fake LinkedIn connection emails
I've begun receiving a spate of fake LinkedIn Connection requests and 'Learn about your new connection' emails. They look pretty authentic but with an image missing here and there. What clued me in was I never remembered sending an invitation to the names that have been coming. I rarely, if ever, invite someone I don't know personally. When you hold your mouse over the hyperlink you get addresses like http://radio-roadrunner.de.vu/linkedwith.html and there have been many others. They always … [Read more...]
Growing your connection list at LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a very popular networking tool for people in business these days, but there are still so many who do not seem to know how to use it, or perhaps haven't thought about it a great deal. There was an article published today about how to protect your account at LinkedIn and prevent your account from being restricted. The article was aimed at job-seekers but it very much applies to us all. Basically the writer gives 4 tips for using LinkedIn: Personalise your invitations Go outside … [Read more...]
Starting out as a VA
On one of the LinkedIn groups for VAs a new VA asked about getting started and landing her first client. Some had been giving her advice about her LinkedIn profile. Below is my (edited) response to her. At LinkedIn people prefer to see photos rather than an illustration. So you might want to consider changing your profile pic. Your LinkedIn profile definitely needs adding to. Have you tried Googling your name? If people knew about you and were looking for you, the results that come up should … [Read more...]
How not to post a blog post!
My sincere apologies, the post that went out this morning was not complete and was supposed to be in draft mode. But it wasn't, and so you all got something that was entirely unfinished without all the extra material I'd intended for it. Stay tuned, it will come out complete soon and please forgive me if I've ruffled some feathers. That was not my intention at all. Kathie Thomas … [Read more...]
Website histories
Sometimes it's necessary (or worthwhile) to go and check the history of a domain to find out how long a business has been online, or in operation. It's hard to tell the age of a site because technology and our age require that information is regularly updated. And if you want to verify some facts, a good way to do it would be to verify the age of the site or the domain. Plus you can have a giggle about how awful some sites were many years ago. For example, if you were to check how long my … [Read more...]
