Out of Office Etiquette

Posted on March 31, 2010 by Jennifer Gallaher

Spring break is here for most of us and summer vacation is fast approaching. So I thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about Out of Office notifications.

As virtual assistants, we are fortunate in that we can be flexible with are schedules. However, we still need to be responsible business owners and inform our clients when we will be unavailable for a length of time. This is just good business etiquette. No one wants to feel ignored and that includes our clients. So when you know you will be taking a vacation or going out of town for a long weekend, have the courtesy to create an Out of Office reply/notification within your email system.

For your convenience, I have listed the steps below to create an Out of Office notification for Outlook and for Gmail.

Outlook 2007

Start a new email message
Type the “Subject” and create a message for your out of office reply
- Make sure to include some sort of indication as to when the person emailing you can expect to receive an actual response back.
Next, click on the “Office” button, click the “Save As” option and choose the “Outlook Template” option under the “Save As Type:”
Then click “Save”
Next, select “Tools/Rules and Alerts” from main window
Click “New Rule” and select the “Start from a Blank Rule” option
Select “Check Messages When They Arrive”
Then click “Next”
Under “Step 1: Select Condition”, click “Where My Name is in the ‘To’ Box”
- As a suggestion, you may want to leave all other boxes unchecked to the out of office reply will alert all incoming email
Then click “Next”
Under “Step 1: Select Action”, click “Reply Using A Specific Template”
Under “Step 2: Edit the Rule Description”, click “Specific Template” (it should be underlined)
Under “Look In”, select “User Templates In File System”, highlight the template you just created and click “Open”
Then click “Next”
Under “Step 1: Select Exception”, click on “Except if it is an Out of Office Message”
Then click “Next”
Finally, under “Specify a Name for this Rule” type in a particular name for this rule, click “Finish” and click “OK”

Gmail

Click on “Settings” at the top right corner of your screen
Scroll down to middle of page to find “Vacation Responder” and click “Vacation Responder On”
Next, choose the dates you want the responder to start and stop
Then, type a message in the “Subject” and create your “Message”
Then click “Save Changes”

Now, relax and enjoy your well-deserved time off!

Short Essay About My Internet Job

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Amber Whitener

The Internet uniquely provides us with a wide variety of “truth” and a sort of bi-product of “experience”. As I see it, you have two choices with this powerful medium of communication. You can either accept it at face value or press on to learn more and come to your own conclusion. At thirteen, I began doing tech support for a small ISP (Internet Service Provider) in the small town I grew up in. Anything you learn on the internet is available to learn somewhere else. However, the time that it would take to research and validate your data could easily take hours, days, and in many cases years to come to the same conclusions that now come with simply typing in the right keywords into Google or Wikipedia.

The Internet has also produced a new problem with its exponentially growing number of solutions. The problem will come when so many answers will be available online yet so many “experts” are online preaching their version of the truth. How will we verify our international network of shared “answers”? Will we be believed if we come to a different conclusion? The truth is I have no idea. However, I choose to see the Internet for its possibilities and dare to hope that its “powers” will be used for good.

The Internet is now the source of my work life and the reason I am able to have such a fulfilling personal life. I am a work at home mom now. I am going to keep my Internet job even when both of my children are in school and I am home alone. (By then, I plan to open a new office outside of my home.) The discipline or knowledge it takes to really make money while working from a home office is not going to be found in some scammy “make money online by doing absolutely nothing” program that are unfortunately too popular nowadays. My life’s ambition has even become helping other talented parents work online and still be able to be there for their kids when they need them.

Slow the Information Overload on Facebook

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Amber Whitener

There has been much talk lately among virtual assistants regarding “information overload” and many of us battle issues like adult ADD (attention deficit disorder). Nowadays, if we don’t write our articles and emails with enough bullet points and well structured headlines, our readers miss important details.

If you are like me and most of my Facebook friends, you do a lot of work and play on Facebook. This article should help you weed out some of the junk in your news feed that doesn’t interest you.

First, I must make a confession: “I heart Farmville.” The fact that it’s a game of “make-believe” that really and truly provides no real benefit should queue me in on the fact that it’s really not worth playing at all. However, I play it almost every night, and I play it with my mom and about 30 ladies I used to go to church with as a child. It’s a fun way for me to stay connected.

In case you have friends like me, you can easily hide “Farmville” or “My Daily Luck” updates from constantly popping up in your news feeds.

Here’s How to Hide Some Unwanted Info from Popping Up in Your News Feed

1. See an app update from your friend that you don’t care to see anymore.

2. Hover over your friend’s post on your news feed until you see the word “Hide” in the right corner of the feed.

3. Click on “Hide Farmville” or “Hide Cafe’ World” or whatever.

4. Make sure you don’t accidentally hide your friend’s feeds! You might miss pictures or links that interest you too.

Use these links in case you:

accidentally blocked a Facebook app or
blocked a Facebook friend click on the Edit Options at the very bottom of your news feed.

You may need to be logged in to Facebook for these links to work properly.

My point is to encourage the use of these features of Facebook. It’s not being rude or uncaring. They are here to help us make sure we are getting the information we do want and cutting out the information we don’t want.

Are You a Tire Kicker? If So, Knock It Off!

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Kena Roth

Wow, this has been one crazy week! I’m helping a local client with tax preparations, not to mention the growing need for Social Media – clients inquiring everyday (new and current clients), a child with the stomach flu and the other child was in the school play this week. I’M EXHAUSTED! Did I mention the last minute project that needs to be finished by Friday night at midnight?

Being a Virtual Assistant, you receive a lot of inquiries, such as, “Now what does a Virtual Assistant do exactly?” That’s ok, since most VAs I know love to explain what a VA can do for you and how it works. But, quite often you get these tire kickers – asking repeatedly how you can help with no real intention of using your service at that time. Anyone else experience this?

In the middle of one heck of a busy Friday – I see a post from a prospect, potential client or tire kicker. I had spoken to the prospect a couple months back. They asked me how I did this, this and this and I told them. Yea, I told them – They were inquiring about using my services and expertise to add to their list. Well, guess what? They’re now using my services exactly how I told them I would do it, but, without me. That’s ok though

The saying, “You get what you pay for,” is oh so true in the virtual world. It’s taken me awhile to learn this, but it always comes back to you. Word to the wise for you tire-kickers…we’re catching on and we know your kicking several tires. The Virtual Assistant community is a close knit community for the most part and yes, we do give warnings to our friends.

That being said, there’s nothing wrong in speaking with several Virtual Assistants to see which one (if one) is a perfect match for you; but not on a continual basis. Our job is to help your business grow and that’s why we’re here. So, no more tire kicking and let’s take your business to the next level!

Policies for Time Management???

Posted on March 24, 2010 by Jennifer Gallaher

Many of you may not know this about me, but I am an avid Real Simple magazine reader. The magazine contains tons of tips to help simplify your life, whether it is for work or home life. Then I came across an article, “How do you say no to people who want too much of your time?” answered by Julie Rottenberg, who is Real Simple’s etiquette expert and it really got me thinking. Julie talks about having policies in place to help manage our time.

Hmmm….Policies for time management? The concept sounds pretty silly to me. But, the more I thought about it, the more I really liked the concept. In our daily lives we are constantly bombarded by things or people who require more time and attention than we may have to give at any given moment. Julie Rottenberg calls them “Time Suckers.” Some examples may be: 1) Running into an old friend while on your way to meet a client, 2) Constant requests to join various groups or clubs for which you either have no desire or time for or 3) Television on “for noise” while working at home. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been caught up in all three of these examples at one time or another, as well as many others. It’s called life. But that doesn’t mean things can’t change.

So, I have decided to do an experiment. I am going to create and implement a few policies and for the next 30 days I will try my best to follow them. Here is what I’ve come up with as starters:

I have a standing play date for my son every Thursday. I am going to create a recurring appointment in my Outlook calendar for the next month for this and come rain or shine, I will keep that appointment (that is of course, if my son stays healthy).
My hours of operation are supposed to end by 5:00 pm PST. However, I tend to put certain small tasks off until later in the evening, like sending out daily reports to clients. I am going to create a daily reminder in my calendar that will alert me at 4:30 pm PST each day to start wrapping up all work related tasks and projects. This will not only force me get those reports out on time, but will show my family that I mean business when it comes family time.
When I run my errands throughout the week, I inevitably run into other moms that I know. I say “hello” to be polite, but keep going. I know that if I stop, I’ll get caught up in a conversation that I won’t be able to get out of. My goal here is to not only wave hello, but to acknowledge the person in a way that lets them know that I do want to get together, but not at that particular time. Then call or email them later in the day with some dates/times I do have available for that long overdue chat.

What policies can you enact today to help get your time management under control? Let’s do this together and see what our results are in 30 days. Good luck!

Virtual Assistant Friends Learning from Each Other

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Amber Whitener

A few weeks ago Kena, Jen, and I all got an email from another virtual assistant, Darlene Victoria of A Virtual Perception. A Virtual Perception is the audio podcast that provides business resources (and more) to Virtual Assistants and other business professionals.

We were invited to do a podcast interview regarding our virtual assistant group blog! We were all so happy to be invited to share our purpose for writing about our work at home life!

To download the podcast and get links to the services referenced in this podcast, see A Virtual Perception’s latest blog post: Episode 57: 1 Blog + 3 VAs = Awesome Results

To hear the interview while reading this post you can play here:
[audio http://mypodcastharmony.com/avpnew/podpress_trac/web/1043/0/avpep57.mp3]

This turned out to be a fun conversation among all four of us virtual assistants who shared the common bond of building our virtual businesses while balancing a home and personal life. We each have our own story and our own struggles. The highlighted point of this podcast was that even though we have never actually met, and in traditional business we should even be in competition with one another, the truth is that when we work together we can build so much more.

Darlene also asked each of us some targeted, niche specific questions:

Kena was asked for advice about Facebook fan pages for business. She also shared some really great advice for those of us who are working with clients who have us virtual assistants run their fan page.

Amber (that’s me! ; ) schooled everyone on keywords. I also wrote up a little virtual assistant keyword cheat sheet to provide a bit of visual aid and remind you of some of the most important places to use your keywords.

Jen was asked to share a bit about organizing your virtual office. She gave some great tips that anyone can use like how to go paperless!

The Work at Home Life bloggers are virtual assistants who came together to write a group blog to help other internet companies grow their businesses as we have. If you have a team of virtual assistants that you trust and know their quality of work, you may want to consider starting a group blog of your own. It’s amazing what we can learn from each other.

A special thanks to Darlene Victoria from A Virtual Perception for asking us to be a part of one of her professional and educational podcasts!

“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” Helen Keller

Pleasantly Using Social Media

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Kena Roth

Upon logging into Facebook after my lunch break to check updates and read up on all my favorite pages, I noticed a very rude and nasty post on my profile page. Yes, on MY profile page! The post was not something I would want a client, let alone my mother or any other family member to see.

One thing I always try to do when using social networking sites and life in general is: BE PLEASANT! If I don’t agree with or like a post on Facebook or Twitter, I ignore it. Simply move on. I did, however, take the time to remove this post from my wall and then un-friended this person. I don’t want that kind of trash on my wall or anywhere else in my Social Media happenings. I’m not saying not to have fun, just use it pleasantly.

When marketing yourself as a business or business professional, remember people look you up on these sites to learn more about you and your business. Search engines are crawling all over Facebook. I can’t speak for you, but I do not want to be associated with anything like what was posted on my wall. If my sex life is going to be broadcasted, I’ll be calling the shots on that one I’m a “fan” of 240 pages on Facebook, and yes, I’m one of those Social Media geeks that actually takes the time to read ALL the updates from those 240 pages [most of the time ] I’m there to network and engage in decent conversations. Do you check out the profile of the person requesting to be your friend on Facebook? I do, and will pay even closer attention, especially now .

Thought I would just share this bit of information, especially to those who are on Facebook , to build awareness about your brand and your business. Here are a few tips when adding friends:

View the info tab on their profile page
See who their friends are – any in common?
Take a look at the Wall post and see what kind of posting/updates are there
Get a general idea if you two are there for the same reasons (whatever that might be)
As I always say: Be yourself and have fun with Social Media

In Honor of St. Patrick’s Day-Go Green!

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Jennifer Gallaher

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you! I hope you all are wearing some type of green, I know I am. After all, I am of Irish decent. However, I was thinking that while we may all wear green each year, we may not all practice being green. To that end, I would like to offer up a suggestion. Why not stop and take stock of your office or work space and see where you can go green?

Start off small so that you don’t get overwhelmed. For starters, take a look at those paper files or piles, if you will. Do you really need all that paper lying around or can you create data files and then recycle all that paper? I did just that a few months ago. I scanned in all my paper documents creating .pdf files, and then added all my newly created files into the appropriate client folders on my computer. But, I didn’t stop there. I bought a portable external hard drive from Newegg.com to back my files up to, twice a week. This not only saves me time, but cuts down on the amount of paper (no more piles) that I use on a daily basis. Now, I only print documents that are essential for me to have a hard copy of, which incidentally, also cuts down on the amount of space I need in my file cabinet.

“What did you do with all the paper files”, you ask? I turned it into scratch paper for my kids and me. I am notorious for grabbing the nearest Post-It pad and scribbling little reminders down. So, I hid the unopened packages of Post-It Notes and have strategically placed small stacks of the scratch paper around my office and home so that I grab them first. When homework time rolls around and extra paper is needed for math scribbles, we reach for the extra scratch paper.

As I look around my office, there are plenty of other ways that I can “green” up the place and believe it or not, I have set a goal for myself that within six months, I will be a completely green VA! My thought is this: If we as VA’s can find creative and inexpensive ways to go green for ourselves, what an asset we would be for our clients! We could not only show them what a “green” business looks like, but we can also offer up suggestions to help them in the transition as well, thereby, perhaps finding a bigger pot at the end of both of our rainbows!

Create Friend Lists in Facebook

Posted on March 15, 2010 by Amber Whitener

This weekend, I just started putting my friends in friend lists on Facebook. (You may need to be logged into Facebook for some of these links to work.)

Why should you take advantage of Facebook friend lists?

Click Image to Enlarge

You have a lot of friends from a lot of places. The next time you want to share a link or a video, you can share with one specific group of your friends and not bother the others with info that doesn’t interest them. This especially helps for those of us who get a lot of our business on Facebook.

Once you get your lists in place, you can:

☑ Send out an email to all of your friends in a list

☑ Invite your list of friends to an event, group, or Facebook fan page. For a Facebook fan page, click on suggest to friends, then choose the filter to find the list you’d like to suggest to. See Picture. ->

☑ And be assured that more targeted sharing technology will be utilized in the future.

Familiarize yourself with this technology now!

How to Add Friends to a Facebook Friend List

Login to www.facebook.com
Go to “Accounts” in the top right corner
Go down to “Edit Friends“
Click on “Friends” under Lists
Then you should see an alphabetical list of all of your friends in the middle section. It should look similar to the following:
Click on the “Add to List” button and put them in a list!

I just added Jen and Kena to my “Virtual Assistants” and “Virtual Business Owners” lists.

What to Name Your Facebook Friend Lists

You can have up to 100 lists and up to 1000 people in a list. These are some examples of list names you may want to consider:

Just Facebook Friends (Perhaps you’ve never met them IRL…yet.)
Church Friends (If you’ve ever made friends with someone at church.)
High School
College
Geeks not all of my friends are as excited about the new techie geeky stuff that I am. So it’s good to filter that stuff out for them.
Virtual Assistants (If you have a lot of VA friends.)
Farmville Friends (Yeah, on the weekends I am seriously a Farmville junkie and I am working it out so that not all my friends have to deal with my Farmville pop ups about how I found a lost cow and it needs to be adopted. LOL – only Farmville people will understand or appreciate that! It’s still a work in progress.)

If you are part of a club, list your friends who are part of it too. If you have had lots of different summer jobs, and kept in touch with friends you’ve made, remember where you met them, etc.

*Note: Don’t create a list called “annoying people” or “party animals” unless your friends are ok with being known as that. Your friends can see your lists and who is in them. You can hide your lists, but why risk losing friends because you created a Facebook friend list called: “losers”?

When to Start Grouping Friends

Even if you only have 10 friends so far, you can and should start creating lists right away. Start putting new friends in lists when you accept their friend request.

If you want to start your own virtual assistant list on Facebook, you can add the writers of this blog: Amber Whitener, Jennifer Gallaher, and Kena Roth.

Taking a break – Getting Away in any Small Way

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Kena Roth

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions. – Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s words are truer today than ever. The native of our home state knew that to be effective in your work life, you also need to know how to play. As you dive into social media marketing you are often mixing work with play. Personal relationships cross over into your work world. It may mean you forget the fun.

You started this venture to be in control of your own destiny. You might have wanted to earn a little bit of extra money. You might have wanted to grow an existing business, or start fresh on your own. Now, don’t forget the fun that’s in the adventure.

If you’re struggling with which move to make next, try getting away to figure it out. Everyone needs a break. When you get consumed in work, a step back may be the best thing for your growing business.

You could take a virtual vacation (http://www.link4u.com/vacation.htm), but maybe you need a little more than that. Remember the world is a real place. Remember how to play. Put your actual feet in actual sand, or if you’re not able to do that, just find the best that your area has to offer and go do it. Stepping away for a few minutes, or a few days is a great way to unwind and think about what’s next.

Play may be the best way to improve your work, and remember the enjoyment in it.

So, our advice for this week is to check out the local “What to do” section of your newspaper. Get your family or friends together and put some extra “life” into your life. You might not be able to completely log off, but you should take time to enjoy the reward for your efforts and step back for a few days before diving into the grind again.

Have fun.

The Virtual Assistant Journal

Monthly Archives: March 2010