We are trying something different this time.

Almost every virtual assistant or virtual worker has a blog post entitled (something like)

“Working with a virtual assistant”

So we thought we would collect a few onto one place so you can get the general feel of the postings.

The post title is shown as a hyperlink with the first few lines of the blog post. NO credit taken for any of these posts – They all link back to the original source. Enjoy…

Working with a Virtual Assistant Could possibly be the Neatest thing …

www.cherokeehumanities.com2/5/12

Working with a Virtual Assistant Could possibly be the Neatest thing You Did In your Small company. 5 Feb 2012 by anjals, No Comments ». Have you operate a organization? When you’ve got you’ll know the most significant purchase any …

Top 5 Benefits of Working with a Virtual Assistant » Sharon Waxman

sharonwaxman.net2/4/12

Top 5 Benefits of Working with a Virtual Assistant. Feb 04. Posted by mark in Uncategorized. If your company is, expanding as well as profiting you can definitely find that time could become hard to find. You might want to look at using the …

Going Fully Mobile As A Virtual Assistant « steve …

bayintegratedmarketing.wordpress.com2/6/12

Virtual assistants have the luxury of having plenty of options when it comes to their careers. A virtual assistant can work from anywhere in the world provided they have the right set up, and that’s something that not a lot of …

The Benefits of Working with a Virtual Assistant – blog*spot

staceysadminsolutions.blogspot.com2/3/12

You have heard the term Virtual Assistant banded about but don’t have the time to look into it properly. You know you need help so you can focus on growing your business but the thought of working with someone remotely …

The Ultimate Guide to Hiring a Good Virtual Assistant for Your Small …

frugalentrepreneur.com1/5/12

Make sure your efforts to save a few bucks and streamline your work process don’t end up costing you more in the long run. Over the past few years I’ve had the opportunity to work with various virtual assistants (some based …

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Blog post originally from Sharp End Training

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Yesterday we didn’t actually give a January sale item but today hopefully makes up for it.

Our rookie manager series features 5 FIVE top titles all aimed at new managers, supervisors and team leaders.

• Time management
• Planning training
• Recruitment & selection for managers
• Train the trainer
• Presentation Skills

All these HOT BITESIZED titles are available with instant access online PLUS a physical CD in the post.

Anyways – for the WHOLE of January 2012 – all these titles have a massive 25% off. (The discount is applied at the checkout).

Here are further details about the rookiemanager program www.rookiemanager.com

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First day back at work (for most people) today and things start to get back to normal. Schools are starting, normal meetings are starting up.

Business networking groups are starting to meet again.

So our January sale today is networking related. Join our networking university for just £9.95

For JUST £9.95 per month, you get UNLIMITED access to every piece of, business building networking training we have ever produced.

PLUS access to all the recordings of our future networking webinars. There are recorded webinars, online training – hours of good stuff just designed to get you more business.

By the way,  technically this isn’t a sale. The price of £9.95 has been set for the last few weeks.

HOWEVER – This price WILL be rising as we firm up our webinar calendar for 2012.

Jump over now

www.networkinguniversity.biz

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One of my earliest memories from this time of year is the January sales. With the state of the world economy, the whole retail thing seems to swing between a state of permanent rip off and permanent sale status.

Anyways, for reader under the age of about 25, the world would work like this at this time of year.

Up to Christmas, prices would be jacked up as high as possible.

Then, as soon as the Christmas period was over – the January sales would start.

And by sale, I mean HUGE slashing discounts. I recall scenes of hysteria in central London stores shown on TV news programs. People pushing each other out of the way to get a handbag or some jeans from a specific manufacturer.

A sort of 20th Century version of an apple, Microsoft or google launch.

So what about our January sale?

We have picked out a series of products that we think fit the January Sale bill exactly.

Over the next few days, we will be unveiling stunning discounts and never to be repeated offers. One blog post a day.

These products will be discontinued and some of them WILL NEVER be available again. They will be defunct, finished, desupported and removed from our inventory.

So what is first up in our January sale?

First up in our January sale is our “Marketing Basics” training course.
If you are a start up or new business, then the marketing basics is for you. Assuming you know nothing about marketing, this online training will walk you through working out what EXACTLY you sell and WHO you want to sell it to. Dealing with the pitfalls of each and helping you to work out the best plan of action to PROPEL YOUR business upwards in 2012.

So to get this SUPERB training (which will NOT be available again) for just £5 – jump over to the marketing basics site.

http://www.marketingbasics.info

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We have TEN £50 adwords vouchers up for grabs for people who help us with our with our research.

We have put together a short (no a very short) simple survey on small business marketing habits.

There are no right or wrong answers. It is totally confidential. You can give us your views WITHOUT entering the contest. We will make a “results” video later when all the results are in.

The small print
We will be giving away 10 x £50 google adwords vouchers. Each entrant can only win ONE prize.

These vouchers are for NEW adwords account or those less than 14 days old. They expire on 31st December 2011.

Your prize is a serial number which will be emailed to you week commencing 28th November 2011. UK registered businesses only. Winners picked at random and we need to your email (to tell you if you have won).

You wil be double opted in and therefore will receive other news of what we are doing.

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What to blog about is a question that crops up quite often – most new business owners use wordpress (because it is free). But wordpress is a blogging engine and they don’t know WHAT to BLOG about.

I read a lot (and I mean a lot of blogs). For someone who has a first wordpress indexed post in 2005, I feel I can talk with some confidence about what to blog about.

Firstly, take a step back and think – before you even write.
What is the purpose of the blog. Is it engagement, is it to get signups to your newsletter or list, is it to show your expertise in a topic.

Once you have this – you can start to construct a plan. (Yes I know thinking and planning are boring but jumping right in is never a good thing).

Once you start writing a blogging plan, bear in mind, one thing the blogging gurus continually bang on about is your “authentic voice.” Writing in corporate speak isn’t for me – I had enough of it in a previous life. So you will find my writing peppered with questions, brackets and generally broken up.

(This has the added benefit of making it easy to skim read).

How does all this help you with what to blog about?
As an aside, many people seem to make the mistake of confusing blogging with selling. If a blog post is a veiled sales piece (or even an unveiled one) – it leaves the reader very little scope for doing anything meaningful.

For a sales blog post, all you will ever get comment wise is
1. Great blog post (Difficult to distinguish these from spam comments – reap what you sow and all that).
2. People complaining they have used your product or service and it was lousy.

Neither very good if you blog goal is engagement.

So, what’s the £63,000 answer
Take ideas from this list (assuming you have a business blog related to your expertise..)
Product reviews
Book reviews – You do read don’t you?
TV programs (No – the ones RELATED to your expertise)
Industry events, conferences and exhibitions you attend.
What YOU personally think about news or current affairs and how they affect your industry. (Maybe you want to be controversial, maybe you don’t?)
Things you did recently – No not what you had for lunch – more interesting stuff. Did you see something unusual or strange related to your industry.

See this blog post from a while back – which is really about nothing at all. Even more relevant given Sepp Blatter’s recent comments on racism.

What to blog about (not)

You should probably avoid one or all of the following

Revealing personal information about yourself or your family. (Unless you are a publicity seeking, no shame celebrity whose scruples know no bounds). It’s probably easy enough to find all this anyway.

Overtly selling (as discussed)

Knocking your competition (The laws of libel apply online just as they do anywhere else).

If it helps decided what to blog about

Buy a notepad and carry it with you. You can jot down thoughts where ever you are.

Oh and one more thing – If you can’t write – maybe you can speak. Record your blog posts as audio and get a virtual assistant to transcribe them for you.

Leave a comment if this helped you with what to blog about.

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Very few businesses can survive without a website these days.
Unless you have such devoted customers or are in such a small niche, you need a site.

But what are your options for designing the site?

Get someone else – a pro designer to do it for you?

But that costs money…

Get a friend or relation

Sorry I meant a wannabe web designer.

Here’s the thing – If you are paying no money, you can’t really insist on what you want.

You do it yourself

Now we are talking – but you don’t know anything about webdesign – or more importantly – layout & presentation. You don’t know your divs from your alts.

FREE TRAINING

What if we said that we wanted to GIVE AWAY our “what not to do with wordpress” training to one lucky person.

Easy to enter contest

No hunting around the web – no wild goose chases – just 3 simple steps

1. Like us on facebook

2. Send a tweet (using the oauth system so we don’t get to see your password)

3. Leave a comment below – as short or as long as you like – but there may be a bonus prize or two for the best comments.

That’s it

Winner picked at random

Off you go

PS – You can see more about this training at http://www.wpmistakes.com

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The activity illusion came onto my radar earlier in the summer in the Chartered Management Institute magazine. There are a lot of “airport manager” type books in the summer months. The kind of light reading that isn’t too taxing but gives you a nice warm feeling.

The activity illusion looked different. It was a book about… amongst other things why you shouldn’t read business books on holiday….

So I bought “The activity illusion” to read on holiday…

(I should add that I almost always take MORE reading on holiday than I can possibly do. It’s amazing how on holiday, as in life generally how little “nothing” you get round to doing)..

The activity illusion is in two sections.

Firstly, a tour round email and related technologies. Why they hold you in a vice like grip and captivate you, why you are powerless to resist just “having a quick look just in case”

And secondly, good management practices and techniques with the first section in mind.

Let’s take the first section… first.

Ian suggests (and I agree) that 20 years ago, it was pretty easy to see who was in charge in an organisation. The boss had their own parking space, a private office, secretary to guard the door, all the trappings of success.

Fast forward and with everyone in soft shoes, an open neck shirt and with a mobile phone glued to their ear, it’s pretty hard for those in charge to get the same “respect” or “status.”

So ACTIVITY is the new status indicator. Hence the “activity illusion.”

The one thing that SHOWS people you have status is that you are busy.

The one with the most meetings, sending the most emails, rushing about the most is the winner. Simple as that.

Ian tells us EXACTLY WHY we are addicted to chat and gossip. Hint – It goes back to our days as cavemen and separates us from animals.

So I read the first section and I thought “Yep” that all makes perfect sense.

The second section is Ian’s thoughts on management and leadership.

As I was reading this, I thought that he must be a good guy to work for and with.

Almost all of the material made perfect sense and some of it could even be from my own book…

All of the material (in both sections) is a superb mix of perfectly researched academic material and little stories from Ian’s working career as Chief Executive and Director level manager in big hitting technology firms.

So I got back from holiday and emailed Ian to see if he wouldn’t mind being on a webinar.

He rang me back and said something along the lines of “I don’t answer emails but yes I would love to be a guest”

(I instantly thought of Mr Spock from the original Star Trek – when something unexpected happens, he would raise an eyebrow and express surprise. I imagined Ian to be the same “Hmmm – An email – how unexpected..”)

Anyways, If you are spending all your time rushing around and getting nothing done, if you have tried endless productivity apps, systems and tools, if you have read all the books on time management then you need to STOP. And then do two things…

Firstly you need to get the activity illusion, and secondly you need to drop your email below to see the webinar recording. (Ian’s views on social media are pretty punk rock also).

(This session is geared towards lone workers – but anyone will find nuggets of intelligence in the discussion).

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Most web users of a certain age have grown up with outlook (or for those of us who are old enough – outlook express).
Outlook though, has it’s limitations. Here are ten tell tale signs you may need to look for something else.

1. You have bookmarked more that 2 microsoft technical help pages.

2. You saved an attachment but you can’t remember where

3. You get an error message when you open outlook “An unexpected error has occurred”

4. You have mistyped someones email and now it is in your address book wrong seemingly forever,

5. Your machine has crashed and you have lost your entire history of messages.

6. You have had an outlook or email related virus.

7. You find yourself on the “wrong” computer unable to send or receive email.

8. You have set up signatures and mail filters (to be more efficient) more than once (ever)

9. You work mobile or on more than one machine

10. You don’t use any other microsoft products.

Help is available >> http://www.emailmanagement.biz

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This post got us thinking about the booming DIY web design industry.

However, there are millions of people out there who have never heard of wordpress – so this post is for all those who are forced to consult a web designer but really don’t know where to start…

Very few businesses can survive these days without a website.

Unless you have such loyal customers or are in a niche so small you have no competitor the decision to have a site is a no brainer.

Unfortunately, web designers are everywhere and the technology is relatively cheap and accessible that you need to be o your guard.

Here are a few things to watch out for.

1. What do you want the site to do?

What is the purpose of the site? How will it help your business?

The web designer will design a site but will it make your customers pick up the phone or contact you.

Does the designer understand marketing?

Remember, it is you who is paying the bill. Therefore, you have the final say on what is in and what is out.

The job of the site is to sell for you right?

NOT for the designer to put in their portfolio and impress their designer buddies on how smart they are.

2. Who will actually own the end product?

Unscrupulous designers may sign you up to a contract where they lock you in. You may find a nasty surprise if you ever want to move to a different designer.

3. Do they own the rights to the artwork they use?

Photographs, video and sound should be licensed for commercial use.

Sites like Flickr are easy to use and make everyone a photographer these days. You need to make sure that the

You don’t really want a legal battle on your hands because the designer didn’t have the relevant permissions.

4. Manage the site building like a project

Depending on how you are paying the designer and how complex the project is, you need to build in time for testing, building content, those annoying but required pages like “terms of service” and “privacy”

Agree deadlines and deliverables in writing and in advance.

5. Who owns the domain name and where is it hosted?

Who owns the domain name – the www bit.

It’s fine letting someone buy a domain on your behalf but if they vanish without a trace – you have a problem if they registered it in their name.

If you are not sure check nominet.org.uk for .co.uk and whois.sc for everything else.

Free hosting is good but if it at the expense of popup ads, banner ads, prolonged downtime – then it isn’t so good.

What do you think ?

Have you employed a webdesigner?

Have you had any experiences?

We would love to hear your comments below.

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