Communication Tools for Virtual Assistants...

When you setup your virtual assistance business, navigating through the world of possible services can be time consuming, overwhelming and frustrating. There are endless options and sometimes, we can run the risk of adding way too many services to our companies. When we do this, we pay excess fees and we end up with things we may never use.

Over the next few blog posts, we’re going to explore some of the services that I feel are the most vital for virtual assistants to have in place and why.

Communication Tools

The next area that I want to look at is communication. Communication tools are vital for a virtual assistant’s business because of the nature of how we work. Working virtually means that we lose out on the face-to-face opportunities that are present in the real world. To get around this, we need to have open lines of communication with our clients.

As we mentioned in our discussion on project management tools, a lot of our communication goes through Basecamp or Web Collaboration. However, not all of our clients like working through these tools and some prefer to have a more direct line to our team.

Skype becomes one of our most direct connections to our clients. With Skype, you have the ability to do computer-based telephone calls but more importantly, you can instant message through the tool. Not all of our clients are on Skype and not all of our clients use it to message us but for those that do open up that line of communication, it becomes a valuable tool.

Using Skype though means setting some ground rules with your clients. For example, I don’t pick up Skype telephone calls unless they are scheduled into my calendar. I also won’t allow our clients to delegate items to me via Skype.

The way that I explain to them that they should use Skype is to get quick answers or do quick check-ins. For example, “Where are we at with the sales page for the upcoming telesummit?” or “I sent over a fax, did you receive it?” Quick check-ins like these alleviates the stress that your client may face when sending things off into the black hole that is the Internet.

Aside from Skype, Twitter has become an awesome tool in opening up the lines of communication for our clients. Twitter allows our clients to do the same thing that they would do on Skype – quickly check-in. It also allows them to see what I am up to as a member of their team. If I am Tweeting about going to lunch or checking out early, they are made aware of that as well.

As with Skype, you want to set some ground rules here too. For example, you don’t want your clients getting into the habit of direct messaging you items they need done. All of your delegation should happen in one place. For us it is Basecamp / Web Collaboration but for you it could be another place or another tool.

If there is a tool that you would like us to explore, I’d love to hear from you. I’d also love to know which tools you are most curious about or where you feel there are gaps in your business. Leave your questions on our Formspring account!

Tech Tip: Setting Up an E-mail Account in the cPan...

If you haven’t heard, I’ll be presenting at the IVAA Online Summit 2010 on the subject of the cPanel.  You can learn more about my topic description here.  This post is in a new series we will be running on the blog called ‘Tech Tips’ and will help virtual assistants get through some of the pesky technical items that pop up on a regular basis.

This blog post will cover setting up an e-mail account inside of the cPanel.  The cPanel is the control panel behind your website.  It does not exist on every single website host but when it is there, it is a very powerful tool.  You can tell if your web host is running cPanel in one of two ways.  You can check their website to see if they list cPanel as a selling feature or you can login and see if the interface is called ‘cPanel’.

Setting Up an E-mail Account in the cPanel

To begin, you want to login to your website host.  For our website, we host it at Bluehost.com – one of our favorite website hosting companies.  Once you’ve logged in, scroll down to the e-mail section which looks like this:

You’ll see that there are many options for your e-mail accounts here but the one you want to focus on for this task is the “Email Accounts.”  Click on the “Email Accounts” icon or hyperlink to be taken to the setup screen.

On this screen, you can set the e-mail account name (for example, ‘info’ or ‘support’) and choose the domain name it should be connected to.  Then, you will want to set a password, confirm the password and watch the Strength meter to ensure it’s a strong enough password.  Then, decide what the mailbox quota on this account should be – that means the accumulative size limit of e-mails and files for that account.  If you are not concerned with space, choose ‘unlimited’.

When done setting all of the particulars, click “Create Account.”

That’s it!  Setting up your e-mail account on the cPanel is easy as that.  If you have any questions, please post as a comment to this blog post!

Doing a Newsletter for Your VA Business...

When you own an internet-based business, it might be hard to figure out all of the moving pieces and to know what to do to push your business forward. When you’re just starting out, it’s made worse by overwhelm and overload of ideas, options, etc.

As a virtual assistant, you still need to be thinking like a regular, internet- based business owner since that is exactly what you are. You may not think that you need a newsletter or ezine but the thing is, you really could benefit from it.

A newsletter does a few things for you as a virtual assistant business owner. It allows you to illustrate that you know how to do this particular task and it also allows your clients to stay in the know with your business.

You can also use it for sales, specials and other important announcements.

When a brand new entrepreneur comes to our business, Business Services, ETC, looking for advice about his or her business, the first thing I always say is start building your list. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know right now how that list will be used, just do it.

The reason is because a list helps to do two main things:

(1) Keep Your Best Customers in the Know

We all know that keeping someone’s attention can be difficult at times.

On the Internet, this is made even more difficult because there is just SO much out there. What you want to be doing is capturing the attention of people immediately and letting those people register on your site so that you can keep in touch with them in future.

The thing is, those who register for your information or your newsletter, will become your best customers. These are the people who knew, right from the beginning, that you could help them in some way. Now it’s your job to find out what they are most interested in.

(2) Provide You With a List of People to Market Your Products & Services to Over and Over and Over Again

If you think about all of the work that goes into building a website and setting up a web presence, you may not be thinking about the work that goes into marketing that site once it’s built.

Marketing is one area that a lot of people freeze up in because there are just so many options and ideas out there. The best way to market your products and services is to have a captive audience that you can deliver your message to over and over and over again.

There is a theory that people need to see your message at least three times before they’ll commit to purchasing. Combine that with the need for trust and credibility and you’ll find that marketing takes time.

How do you get people on your list?

Many people build their list by offering a newsletter or a freebie to those who register. Although some people say e-books and special reports that are given away for fr*ee to those who register, I think you should still offer something.

What I find works really well and is growing in popularity is the fr*ee e- course. On our website, www.bsetc.ca, we offer a fr*ee e-course called, ’30 Days of Delegation’, in which we illustrate thirty ways you can delegate and outsource to free up your time.

What sort of follow-up can you do with the list?

Once someone has subscribed to your list, there are a few ways you can keep in touch. If you were offering an e-course that is delivered over the course of a few days or weeks (even months or a full year) then you may only want to do that keep-in-touch strategy since it’s a lot of e-mail.

If you are offering a fr*ee report or e-book, you can setup your autoresponders to automatically send out messages at pre-planned intervals to check in with your prospect and see how they are doing. You can also cross-promote other products and services.

You can also do a newsletter (also known as an e-zine) where you can deliver your messages to your clients and promote your products and services there.

Whatever you decide, be consistent and start building your list from the get go. You’ll be glad you did!

Did you find the information in this post helpful? If so, check out our Build Your Virtual Assistance Business course! The course contains information like this to help you build, grow and manage your virtual assistance business.