6 Reasons Why Implementing An Online Office Will Help Your Business – especially Now

by | Aug 19, 2019 | Business, Cost of work, Office, Virtual Assistance

Over recent years the many advances in technology have ensured that almost every aspect of running a business is now supported by an online system. Many of these online systems offer different versions that can be selected according to business needs and budget. These systems combine to create an online office and offer a powerful transformative effect for efficiently running business operations.

 

It’s likely that when you started your business you imagined yourself as the cool, calm, wonderful business owner, with everything organised and very little stress affecting you. You didn’t imagine that you’d be rushing around, stressed out and frustrated that you’re wasting time on seemingly unnecessary tasks. You have probably never considered your business being forced to shut down due to the situation like we all facing now.

When we are staying at home, have to work from home an Online systems, as well as hiring a brilliant VA could very much help you run a better business and restore your work / life balance, not to mention your original business vision and here’s 6 reasons why…

 

1 Increase Efficiency

If your systems aren’t working for you, it can feel like you’re working harder but not moving forward any faster. You end up with less earning time and less time to yourself to wind-down.

Streamlining your business to reduce inefficiencies and wasted time with readily available online systems means there’s no need to ‘reinvent the wheel’. A suitable process and system almost invariably already exists and can be integrated with your procedures to support your business, reduce your to-do list, increase efficiency and free up your time.

2 Free up Your Time

You want to be focussed on the income generating tasks and business strategy, not bogged down by the day-to-day management of your business tasks. You want to run your business, not have it run you!

With increased efficiency, your workload is reduced and a large amount of your time freed up. This allows you to better manage your time and focus on more important things, such as your clients and the wider business strategy, either that or some much needed time to switch off and de-stress.

When you add home-schooling that will be back after the mid-term your time will out of the sudden be even more precious.  

 

3 Improve Client Experience

Using online systems will help improve consistency in your business processes and allow you to focus on meeting your clients’ needs and expectations – so you can deliver a better experience overall, for instance through a service like Asana, which has been specifically designed to assist you with actively managing client experience via ticketed support.

 

4 Increase Your Profit

With a more efficient business, and the wasted time now freed up, you’re able to turn your attention to income generating tasks, your customers and business strategy and steadily increase your profits.

Always remember, an improved client experience also leads to more recommendations, increased sales and repeat business.

 

5 Build a Better Team

Using online systems you can outsource tasks to VAs more readily and are no longer limited geographically when it comes to finding the best resource for your business. You can take advantage of a global talent pool and collaborate online using communication and project management systems such as Skype, Asana and Active Collab.

 

6 Be Competitive

If your competitors are more efficient than you, there’s potential that you could lose business, for example they may be able to respond quicker to enquiries, or offer a better service to their clients. It’s important to continuously refine your systems in order to stay competitive.

 

So, now more than ever it is the right time to start to improve your business systems, engage the services of one or more VAs and get your office online today!

Top Benefits Of Working With An Administrative Virtual Assistant

by | Aug 7, 2019 | admin advice, Cost of work, General, Virtual Assistance

In the old days, when the business needed additional administration help, it meant hiring a new employee. After an application and interview process, the right person was signed on to the company payroll and got to work. In our days when almost every company is online in some way or other, administrative virtual assistants who work on a freelance basis creates the need for a new way of hiring while still completing all assignable tasks that keep the business running smoothly.

Of course, that companies still hire administration assistants as they used to and these people offer invaluable services, including email management, scheduling, workflow organisation and even customer care. However, after they complete all the tasks, they sit at their desks and keep drawing a paycheque. And it is where the difference is. The Virtual Admin Assistants charge you for the tasks they complete according to their client agreement, without any wasted expense or downtime.

Virtual Assistant Save You Time

The most obvious way a virtual assistant saves a company’s time is by handling specific tasks so the business owner or employees can set their focus in other directions. Many of the jobs dealt with by a freelance VA include things like organising, managing and answering email, addressing support requests, phone messages and the social media posts, maintaining a schedule or calendar programme so that you never miss an important meeting or deadline again. The entire company can run far more smoothly without unwanted interruptions.

Freelance Virtual Assistant Save You Money

When a business decides to hire a new employee, it creates not only a new paycheque to leave the company’s funds, but also other expenses associated with hiring. The business can face new tax situations, additional insurance or other benefits that will have to pay. New employees also (in most cases) require equipment such as a computer, mobile phone, possibly a landline and even a chair and desk for businesses that operate with a physical location.

When you decide to work with a VA, you will soon realise they operate from their own office or home, already have existing computer hardware and gadgets necessary for them to provide the services they offer. Since Freelance VA aren’t salaried or hourly employees, they are not generally bound by the legal guidelines associated with providing health care and other benefits or insurance either for that matter. There’s also no wasted expense associated with paying for slow periods or times when there’s not enough work to go around. Freelance agreements should spell out clearly what are the tasks you are being charged for.

Virtual Assistant Save You Headaches

Imagine a daily schedule on your mobile phone, an appointment calendar in the cloud, multiple email accounts demanding attention, social media overrun with questions, spam attacking from all sides, the phone ringing off the hook and at least five other tasks that have been forgotten or pushed aside in favour of simply maintaining a company’s forward flow. Running a business involves a lot more than having a vision for the future, setting goals and making profits. A professional virtual assistant can do more than save you time and money; they can also reduce stress and alleviate the uncomfortable feeling that the company is a house of cards.

The right virtual assistant removes the day-to-day struggles to keep organised and on top of everything. Some administrative VAs begin by setting up your calendar, scheduling, email and social media accounts for easier management. They then remove the challenge of giving enough attention to each aspect of these tasks to make the business run smoothly. When the company owner feels confident everything is flowing smoothly in the background, he or she can truly focus on business growth and future development.

So tell me, what is your business about and what type of help you need. I am sure I can help. I promise you will not be disappointed working with me.

Why You Need A YouTube Account

by | Jun 8, 2019 | Social Media, Virtual Assistance

It should come as no surprise that YouTube is the third most popular site in the world according to the Alexa rankings. You may not know however that YouTube is owned by the company that owns the number one ranking, Google. Putting two and two together it also should come as no surprise that YouTube videos show up quite often in relatively prominent positions within search engine result pages. People love to view a moving image and it has been proven time and again that people would much rather watch a video online than read a lengthy article that essentially says the same thing. This is why video promotion has become so popular online and why we should look at integrating video whenever we have an opportunity.

Embedding videos is only part of the plan however. You can make even more of the potential associated with video by creating a branded “channel.” This can become a repository for videos produced and you can establish a concerted plan, building a logical database of video archives surrounding your particular products or services. The bywords here are creativity and standards.

Whenever you establish a YouTube channel it is possible to focus a little bit on branding, at least as far as the background is concerned. It is certainly possible to work some SEO magic into all of this and your virtual assistant will help to ensure that the appropriate keywords are positioned correctly.

Clickable links can also be inserted into videos to help with direct traffic potential. Underneath each video is a place for comments to be made. This is where you can get responses from visitors or customers and with some creative effort you can establish some kind of feedback generating project such as a review or even a contest.

Many organisations choose to use YouTube as a platform for hosting their videos – the material that appears on their individual Web pages. This can get around the problem of having to host potentially large files on your own server, although yet again in most cases the videos viewed through the YouTube portal may well show advertising generated by Google.

It is however possible to set up a partner agreement with YouTube through what can be unfortunately a little bit of a lengthy process. However, by doing so you retain the rights and copyrights to all the content that you place within your partner channel and you can make a certain amount of money associated with the AdSense ads placed on your channel page.

We are not likely to see any slowdown in the popularity of online video content and as such video generation and placement should become part of a concerted effort for you and your virtual assistant. It is of course vitally important to ensure that the content is of the highest quality possible and always remember that the primary goal is to supply useful information, rather than creating an out and out sales pitch. Today, it’s remarkably cost-effective to outsource the creation of the videos, as well.

5 Steps To Recover An Unsaved Word Document

by | Apr 30, 2019 | admin advice, General, Office, software tips, Virtual Assistance

HOW TO RECOVER AN UNSAVED WORD DOCUMENT IN 5 STEPS.

It happened to me many times before. I have been working on a document and out of the blue my computer screen went blank, and I realised I didn’t save the most recent updates!!! Well,yes – it happened to me several times. It happened to me quite recently when I was working on meeting notes for one of my clients. I thought I will cry as I thought I have lost few hours of my work! However, I decided I am not going to give up as it must be a way to recover it as it has to be stored somewhere. I knew that if I was only able to recover version from 10 minutes before the computer went off, I would be the happiest person in that minute in the world as it would save at least 3h of work. I managed to do it and decided I will make a post on how you can do it if it happens to you. So, how to restore an unsaved Word file? You can find step-by-step instruction below.

  1. Before you do anything and start digging deep into the computer files, I recommend you check your Recent Word Files, as you might be lucky and find version current enough there. You can check it by opening a blank Word Document. It should show a list of the most recent documents you were working on before the computer crashed. It would be possible if you have your save option set up to autosave every 1 minute. Below you will also find an instruction on how to set up your save options.

  1. How to set up your Autosave option the o minimise the loss of document?

It is not as difficult as you may think. All you have to do is open a Word document. Even blank will do. Go to File (top left) choose Options and next Save; Now you have to make sure your autosave is set up to 1min. By default, it is set up to 10 min. Please be aware that setting it up to 1 minute make slow your computer down as it will be saving your work every minute. I tend to have it set up to 5 minutes but re-set it if I have a very long document to type up or prepare. The last thing you have to do is to make sure your auto recovery saving path is set up.

  • If you have not found your file in your Recent Files, the next place you can check is Managed Versions.  You can do it when you have a blank document open by going to File (top left corner). It will open up a list of options to choose, and you can locate the Managed Versions on the bottom left. However, it might be that your document will not be there. It happened to me!

For some reason when I clicked Recover Unsaved Documents, the folder was empty. If this happens to you, you will have to dig a bit further. However, you might be lucky ;-).

  • Chances are you still have not been able to locate your lost document. I was there and believe me; it wasn’t a nice feeling. I had to dig further. Therefore, our next step is going to Windows folder and checking if there is something saved in a Recovery File.

However, before we do it, we have to make sure we can see all the folders that are there. We have to enable an option to see hidden folders.

  1. How to enable an option to see hidden folders

Not that complicated. However, we have to make sure we enabled the right one. Ok, so let’s open up Files Explorer, next go and open up the View tab, find Options and open it up to change settings.

The above picture shows how it should be set up. Please, remember to save your new settings. Now you should be able to view all your hidden folders.

  • Now we have to Recover the file. Please follow it Step by step with me.

Go to your C-drive where your Microsoft Word is installed.

Locate Users Folder, choose the user under which you have been working on. Go to AppData, Roaming, Microsoft, Word, and all the unsaved documents should be there.

It might be that there are files in there in a different format than *.docx, probably a *.asd files.  

  • Now you have to Open up the folder you have just found. So, follow me again: open blank Word document, go back to last saved version of the document by following the path AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Word and open up the most recent *.asd file as a Word document.

That should bring up the most recently saved option of the document you were working on.  

I usually open it up by clicking Compare, so I see the changes that have been made over some time before the document crashed. You can either Accept all changes or Reject depending on what you were doing with your document. However, now after you have recovered your document Please Make Sure You Saves It Under New Name.

How a Virtual Assistant Can Help You Build A LinkedIn Strategy

by | Apr 17, 2019 | Business, business planning, General, Social Media, Virtual Assistance

How a Virtual Assistant Can Help You Build A LinkedIn Strategy. 

Do you have a specific strategy in place when it comes to
dealing with LinkedIn? It may be correct to say that a lot of small business
owners bypass this social platform altogether, but this is increasingly a
mistake due to the amount of work that the network itself has put in over
recent years. Now it makes a great deal of sense to spend time on building up
your LinkedIn profile and company pages, to say nothing of getting involved
with their Groups feature. Maybe you need to have a detailed discussion with
your virtual assistant who can operate your LinkedIn profile daily.

Even if you have a LinkedIn presence, how “fresh” is it?
Just take a look at your profile for example. How up-to-date is that
photograph? It’s incredible how many people use a relatively low-quality picture
that they just happened to have in a folder somewhere. It shouldn’t be understated
how important that first impression is and in this case your photograph needs
to be professionally composed and produced and show you in the best light
possible. If you are going to use LinkedIn to its fullest extent and are the
type of person to attend industry conferences, meetings or events then you want
to be instantly recognisable. Of course, you don’t have the time to talk to
every single person at such an event, but what if that potentially lucrative
contact happens to recognise you from the far corner of the room? Now you will
see just how important it was to update that photograph, after all.

Nothing stands still in life in general or in your business
world. Why is it, therefore, that people tend to leave their profile “as is”
for an extended period of time? LinkedIn itself has made some changes to the
makeup of the personal and company pages, and you should work with your virtual
assistant to ensure that your profile is adequately optimised today.

You may well find that you can use some good industry
buzzwords within the body of your profile to make yourself appear more relevant
within your industry. Don’t be afraid to blow your own trumpet here and
remember that your updates will be shared with the networks you belong to, so
long as your virtual assistant has enabled the appropriate setting within your
profile details.

We all know how important keywords are in our online world.
Do you have the right keyword phrases in your profile summary? Have a good look
at your skill set as itemised in LinkedIn. Are you missing out on search
exposure because you have less than a comprehensive set of skills listed? Keep
updating your profile headline often, and you will find that you have more and
more visitors to your profile; this can only be potentially lucrative in the
long run.

LinkedIn is part of a network of sites that your virtual
assistant must maintain for you including of course your blog and your website.
By keeping up to date, fresh and relevant within LinkedIn, you will be able to
grow your network, enhance your visibility and drive traffic to your commercial
sites.

How The VA Can Help You With A Technological Minefield

by | Jul 30, 2018 | Business, business planning, General, Office, Social Media, Virtual Assistance

How The VA Can Help You With A Technological Minefield

 

These are exciting times for any business owner. In the space of only half a dozen years, the face of marketing has changed almost beyond all recognition. Conventional methods of marketing, while still in existence, are being increasingly overtaken by the new methodology. This new approach was until fairly recent times known as “Web 2.0,” but such is the pace of development and technological advancement that many are now starting to refer to a completely new era in Internet marketing, even a “Web 3.0.” (more…)