Working virtually, from my own office for other business people is a wonderful experience. It is amazing how much technology changes so quickly and offers so many wonderful tools to automate processes. I’ll keep posting to this blog when I can with tips and tricks for working in the virtual world. Best of luck to you!
Jaylene Gonyea
http://www.BusinessAssistMe.com
Maine is known for its way of life and for being a great state to start and run a small business in. The downfall is that every business needs to grow and with the costs of health insurance and benefits rising, it is most often not feasible for small businesses to hire more employees. That is where the virtual world can help. Virtual Assisting is a fairly new market and an important resource for small business. While the exact inception date is hard to trace, the late Thomas Leonard, founder of Coachville, coined the source of the term in the mid 1990s; although it is newfound in Maine. With the world traveling at market speeds and the availability of the internet growing every day, more businesses will soon realize that they dont need to hire an office assistant to grow their business. A virtual assistant is a micro business owner who partners with clients, to learn about their business and provide the professional support that is needed in order to succeed. Working with a virtual assistant enables the small business owner to enjoy the support benefits that were once available only to individuals in large corporations.
Outsourcing the tremendous amount of administrative work (that comes with any small business) to a virtual assistant (VA) allows you to use your time to do the things you enjoy. Many tasks including calendar maintenance, customer service follow-up and database management can be delegated to a VA to handle, offsite. Think of the time you would save if you did not have to listen to and answer every phone message or email with basic questions about your business. Your VA can screen your messages and emails and reply to the basic questions for you. This leaves you time for other important tasks.
Jaylene Gonyea started a virtual assistant business called Business Assist in May 2005. The office is conveniently located on Route 4 in Turner, Maine. She has over 10 years experience in the administrative and executive assistant fields including work in both the profit and non-profit industries. By choosing Business Assist for your administrative needs you will avoid paying all of those expensive overhead costs associated with hiring an office assistant like workers compensation insurance, health insurance and employee benefits. You will also boost the local Maine economy by keeping money in state and supporting local business. Business Assist can handle some or all of your administrative tasks without ever coming to your office, hence the title VIRTUAL assistant. Everything can be done by telephone, internet, fax and mail.
Do you want to know more about how a virtual assistant works? Be sure to view Jaylenes website at http://www.BusinessAssistMe.com to sign up for her free e-course, How a Virtual Assistant Can Help Grow Your Business. For more information about the world of virtual assisting contact Jaylene at info@businessassistme.com or by phone at (207) 754-3460.
You may or may not have heard of a virtual assistant. This is a fairly new term, however, it is growing tremendously with the current changes in the business world. Because big business’ are cutting back and downsizing, many wonderful people are finding that they can provide administrative services from the comfort of their own home or office. What a wonderful idea. But, how does it work, you may be asking yourself?
My answer is this, there are a multitude of services that can be completed by a virtual assistant over the telephone, fax, regular mail and internet. If it can be done by your own office assistant, than most likely it can be done by a virtual assistant as well. If you’d like to know more about how virtual assistants work, please check out my free e-course, “How a Virtual Assistant Can Help Your Business”. You can sign up for it at my website.
Do you find yourself getting caught up personally when something goes wrong for a client? I know that I do. Being a perfectionist, I have learned that sometimes you need to just own up to the problem, do what you can to make it right, learn from it, and move forward. We all make mistakes – no one is perfect. However, I have found that if you are able to accept responsibility, not take it personally, and take action to correct the problem immediately, it shows that you are a good business person. Business is Business and if we keep that thought fresh in our minds, it is easier to make the right decisions and keep your business and personal life in a positive place.
I offer a wide range of services to assist you and allow you time to do what you do best.
Please contact me to discuss the services that your business needs.
Read this article about the owners previous experiences.
Having a good communication plan in place with your VA is an important step in creating your working relationship. When both parties know how the communications will flow there is a sense of comfort in the relationship. This does not mean that you have to completely stay with the plan you develop. As business grows and changes you may find the need to adjust your communication plan to better suit the current needs of both you and the client.
Some examples of communication plans that I have used are below:
The VA and client communicate by regular email and a one-hour telephone call each week to discuss current and future tasks. This type of communication plan works well with the client that you are working closely with on multiple projects. It provides both parties with a personal connection and allows for easy discussion rather than interpreting details from within an email. This weekly call is invaluable in the relationship with clients and I know they appreciate it also.
Another type of communication plan includes regular emails and bi-weekly or monthly one hour telephone calls. When working with a client on specific self-directed tasks such as article bank submissions, it may be easier to talk by telephone less often, but to keep communications open through email more frequently.
You and your client may also choose to check in by phone more or less frequently that the two plans I have mentioned above. The need for live voice communications (telephone or otherwise) is purposeful. It adds strength and builds trust in your relationship, which we all know is very important in growing and expanding your business. Each clients needs and business are unique and require an individualized communication plan that meets both the needs of the VA and of the client.
Jaylene Gonyea is a Virtual Assistant with over 10 years experience in the administrative and executive assistant fields. She has been working full time as a virtual assistant since May of 2005 with continued success. For a free consultation or to find out more about how a virtual assistant works check out her website and free e-course at http://www.BusinessAssistMe.com copyright 2006 Jaylene Gonyea and Business Assist. This article may be copied in its entirety as long as this paragraph is included.
I have been working with shopping carts, autoresponders, email broadcasts and merchant account softwares for a while now.? Many people do not realize that each of these is different.? Many companies do offer each of these services in a combined package and that can be a wonderful benefit.? However, the more types of services a company offers, the less details it may provide within each program.? When looking into these types of programs, it can be very confusing.? There are many providers and some are better than others.
The sun is shining in Maine (finally!) and the summer air is upon us. The strange thing about the seasons in Maine is that they seem to change in an instant leaving behind all of those “want to do before summer” tasks.
With the change of season comes many changes in our lives both business and personal. The boost of energy from the new found sunshine drives me to want clean off my desk and dive into those marketing projects that have been on the back burner. While it also entises me to want to take time off to enjoy the season.
To accomplish all of the personal and business goals that I have in mind I have decided to pay special attention to my calendar. By looking deep into my own habits and inspirations, I have found that I can use my calendar to my advantage. By scheduling tasks according to times of day, I find that I am able to accomplish much more. For example, I have setup bookkeeping tasks and website updates for 7:15 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. After that I bring in other, less detail oriented tasks such as telephone calls. I then try to schedule a break (going to the bank, post office or store) around 2:00 in the afternoon. This is an afternoon pick-me-up and refreshes my thought process.
By becoming aware of my bodies needs and how it functions throughout the day, I have been able to create a schedule that allows me to leave work filled with a sense of accomplishment each day.
Take a few minutes today to look at your schedule and your bodies schedule. This will help you to determine when is the best time to work on different types of tasks. Don’t forget to allow yourself time to refresh and enjoy the season. We too often wade through life in such a frantic pase that we miss out on those special gifts we are given in the simple things.
If you are doing buisness online, selling products or services, at some point you will need a shopping cart. There are many shopping cart programs available for purchase. Each offers a slightly different variety of features and benefits. Ask around to friends and fellow business people for reccomendations and then do your homework before purchasing one. Shopping Carts are a wonderful feature that save time and money.
The 4th of July has come and gone again. The wonderful holiday with fireworks means so many different things to so many people. To me, independence means freedom. Freedom to make my own choices, follow my own dreams, live happily, and build my business to it’s fullest potential. With that thought I am bombarded with thoughts about marketing strategies and steps that need to be taken and followed. These are things that I do on a day to day basis for my clients, but seldom have time to do for my own business. What do you think? What are your marketing strategies? How do you find the time to complete them? Do you work with a VA or someone to help complete these tasks for you? Send me your thoughts. I’d love to hear them!
I recently took a day off and spent a long weekend with friends and family. It was quite refreshing, although my schedule was packed full. We had a birthday party for my son on Saturday. On Sunday morning I got up early and headed south. My mother and I went to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusets for the 2006 New England Country Music Festival. The weather was extremely hot, however we had a great time at the concert and truly enjoyed the ambience of being among 65000 other people listening to music we love.
The entertainers included Carrie Underwood, Dierks Bently, Big n Rich, Gretchin Wilson and Kenny Chesney. A few bonus musicians came along as well. They were Cowboy Troy, who played with Big N Rich and Uncle Kracker, who played three songs with Kenny Chesney.
The highlight of the show was when Kenny Chesney played “Boston” from his “Be As You Are” Album for the first time ever at a concert. He had been asked to play that song by Red Sox Coach, Terry Francona. Kenny had invited several of the Red Sox team members to the show. Playing on the big screen during “Boston” were video clips from the previous day, where Kenny explored Boston and pitched at the Red Sox game.
Although we did not get much sleep, the weekend was refreshing because we were able to meet new people and see areas in New England that we had not been to. Mini vacations like this one can be a great way to refresh your life without spending a fortune on traveling.
How do you feel about shopping at auctions? Sometimes you can save a tremendous amount of money. However, if you have not done your homework, you can end up paying twice as much for something. As a virtual assistant, I assist clients with preparing for auctions, among many other tasks. I am currently assisting a client with a consignment auction of construction equipment and real estate. This task can be very time consuming and stressful, but with the help of a virtual assistant, the headaches are few.? What are your thoughts on auctions?? What types of auctions have you attended?
There are some tools and steps to take to effectively market your website.? Do I do this myself, hire someone in house to do this, or outsource the task?? These are questions most businesses ask about their website marketing efforts. The key to this answer truly lies within you and your company.? What kind of money are you willing to pay for this type of service?? Think about this and let me know.? I’ll share some tips and marketing strategies that work.
Select the right keywords
Keywords are an important part of having your website found. You need to know what your customers are looking for. What words to they use to search for your product or service? The answer to this question is so important. As a virtual assistant, I know that my customers do not necessarily look for me by searching for virtual assistants in google or other search engines. What do they look for? Well, some have been known to look for thinks like bookkeeping services, website help or many other varried terms. Narrowing down the language to find the right keywords is a critical part of search engine marketing.
Finding your keywords is step one. The next step is to refine your key word bids. If your clients are searching for specific terms, than those are the terms you need to bid on. Bidding for the appropriate words will allow your customers to find you easier. This is also more cost effective for you. Keep in mind that you will need to monitor those terms against click fraud.
The most important factor of your ads is the headline or title. More than any other part of the ad, the title can impact the CTR of your ads. The more potential customers identify with your heading, the more likely they will be to click your ad. The number of characters allowed in your heading is quite limited, so optimizing the best possible combination of words is of utmost importance. Using relevant keywords in the ad title usually work very well. This technique captures the attention of users by putting their search terms in the most prominent position in the ad. It is best to display URLs with the “www” in front of them. It is not necessary to use the “www” to reach your site, it lets customers clearly know that they are seeing a website URL and becomes more likely that they will remember your site. Avoid using hype in your ads. You cannot write PPC ads in a vacuum. Testing is essential and you need to pay attention to what your competitors are doing in the PPC engines. Study competition’s ad copy to determine how your own marketing voice can be different from that of your competitors.
For more information about search engine marketing and optimization, here are a few websites that provide a great deal of information. Check them out and let me know what you think of these sites and the information they provide.
www.searchenginewatch.com
www.sempo.org/
www.iprospect.com/
www.submitexpress.com/
Ebay is the world’s largest online marketplace. Google has convinced ebay to let it sell text based advertising on e-bays non-us websites.? The deal that was announced Monday does not include an provisions for promoting the companies’ competing payment services.
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