For some the ability to go back in time to their early postings may prove embarrassing but getting Timeline now allows you time to alter previous postings, removing and/or changing privacy settings.

With 7 days to tweak the page before it goes live, it’s an opportunity to design and get things right. If you think you’ve got it right you can choose to publish at any time within the week or leave it to go live at the end of the 7 days.

Your cover photo can now fit across the width of the page, rather than the small square shot previously allowed. This can allow you space to put a more panoramic shot of favourite places or express what you are about.

Although old posts have always been available to view by clicking again and again on a friends profile, now the Timeline lists them in years and months so it’s far easier to go back in time. The privacy settings on the posts will remain the same as when you posted unless you alter them individually, if you feel the need.

Timeline has already tried to guess which of your posts are the most interesting and has made these viewable. If you think a post needs expanding and it hasn’t been, you can expand it. Any item now added to your Timeline can now be given a date so they will appear in chronological order.

Facebook have added a very helpful page called the Activity Log and this is the best place to edit you Timeline. It is accessed from your profile page and every single item from a user is listed here allowing each piece to be deleted or tweaked accordingly. If you don’t want to remove completely from Facebook, you can change the visibility of the post to ‘Only Me’, then only you can see the item.

Facebook is hoping that given the Timeline design people will add to their profiles with before-Facebook items, adding to the already massive amount of data they hold.

Eventually Timeline will go live for everyone, use the opportunity to organise yours so people will see what you want them to see. Make an impression with your page and get to know how it all works.

Do you require any help with Facebook? Email us or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594

Now, it’s all a beautiful use of social media and while not everyone appears to have accepted the apology in the same way, (and why would they?) I think it’s entertaining but then I’m not personally affected by the brand disappearing off the shelves.

The video has worked and more than that people who don’t need to see the apology have viewed the apology. Downside of this, the video wasn’t made to be viewed on mobile devices, so a lot of niggles from people who were sent the link but couldn’t then view it. Mobile audiences are growing so don’t restrict your audience by forgetting them. Think mobile.

Social media, customer services, online petitions raised the voice level of the customers. The voucher offer, initially only available to its Canadian customers, J&J have now realised the errors of their ways and made it available to the US. Slight problem here is Canada get an easy to print coupon and the US have to download Coupon Printer and then print it out.

The coupon is dated for use by Dec 20th 2011 and for any product, as they are still working on the time-line for production of the much loved Ultra brand. So a bit tight with the expiry date of the voucher. Considering how viral the video has become, use the momentum and don’t lose everyone on December 20th 2011?

Is there any way we can help with your social media? Email us, or telephone 0203 468 8594 and speak to Tamara.

I personally think they have their work cut out to promote another social network when Facebook has become so well established. But as it seems to be directed at businesses it may provide a better experience for brands. Google’s significant difference being the sharing of groups, eg. colleagues and activities, rather than the entire Web. I’m not sure this is a plus for them with Facebook’s recent refinements in this area, where all parts of your information can be shared, (or not shared) with whatever part of Facebook you desire, from all of your friends down to a single individual.

Initially the project was open to only a select group, but has now been opened up to one and all. Available to one and all, you will be able to share and discuss photos,links,status,etc in the much the same way as on Facebook together with group text messaging and video chat.

With the production of Google+, they will benefit directly from Web search, with the information they can process. They still have some catching up to do but will be better placed. According to comscore, 180 million people visited Google sites,(which includes YouTube) with 157.2 million visiting Facebook. Their time spent on the sites, Facebook (103 billion pages) is 375 minutes for Facebook and Google (46.3 billion pages) an average of 231 minutes. A substantial difference, one which advertisers will pay close heed to, when choosing their platforms for advertising.Where do you primarily ask your questions? Twitter, Google or where?

Analysts are of the opinion that people will not duplicate their groups on both sites but will use them for different types of communication. Also that people who have seen Facebook as too public, too invasive and have been uncomfortable with the network will turn to Google+ as a more select offering.

How do you feel about Google+? Will it add anything to your social networking?

Do you need help with any of your social networks, email us or phone Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

Are you admin for pages on Facebook?

From then the social network will no longer collect data from the old page insights and insights as we know it, will disappear completely on February 15th 2012.

On the old page insights they advise you to back up your information as this will be deleted on February 15th but your data from December 15th will be collected in the new improved insights.

Have you also noticed…. on your personal Facebook page how you can fine tune what you see or what people see of you? If you are tired of seeing what everyone is listening to and reading, change the settings. You now have multiple choices for handling this overload of information in your news feed, by hide,delete,unsubscribe,unfriend, report or block options. The button to the right of a post drops down to give you all these options and a much calmer way to handle the regular (far to regular) postings of some. You can then still decide to visit their feed when you choose rather than your page be overloaded.

You can click to view all updates, or most or only important ones too, so again you can refine individually, what you see according to how much you want to see of friends. Further changes can be made on a friends’ profile where the subscribe button allows you to customise even more precisely. Options are here too, to add friends to particular lists; Places of work,schools,residences and family relationships.

How to hide yourself away…on chat. The follow on from all this privacy and hiding of other people’s posts, leads me to this option. On the chat screen there is a small settings button which gives you the option of, to chat or not to chat, primarily you can see who’s on line and they can see you are available to chat. If you want to refine this, limited availability can be optimised and you can restrict who can communicate with you at any point in time, alternating between your various lists.

Do you need any help with all the things that Facebook keep changing? Email us or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594 to find out how to optimise your pages

Email can be one of the most cost effective ways of marketing. With low cost initial start-up and on-going fees usually rated according to the number of recipients, the need for a good content management system and plan are essential to utilise the list you will be able to build.

Your list:Where and how are you going to collect the addresses?

Have your sign-up page on your website and Facebook page.

What will you provide as a welcome to your new subscribers?

When you have your list how will you manage it and what will you do in the future?

Now you have your list , say thank you and don’t take them for granted. Work at keeping your list and supplying a service of value to your customers and one that will then be monetarily beneficial to you.

For more help and advice, contact us here, or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

Although the events still require time to organise, 12 weeks (as proposed by ON24), it can be far less time consuming than organising a physical event. Removing the need to travel (and accommodation) your audiences expenses will be less. They will be ‘fresh’ for your virtual event and ready to utilise the knowledge acquired the instant the event has finished. Sales staff can immediately implement all the latest information about your products.

If you still have the need for a physical event the ability to integrate some virtual aspects into it can be a benefit, creating a hybrid event. The combination of both types opens the event to a world wide audience, one that is not constrained by distance or time.

Success is dependent on good planning and the following blogs give you some tips on how to plan, ideas for content and which is the right event for you and your audience, whether they are customers, employees or for training programmes. Going virtual provides an easily used medium for all of these needs. The collection of genuine customer/audience data (emails,names and locality)properly managed in a CRM, allows you to continue marketing to them and target future events/product launch.

In the next few blogs, I hope that you find a few items that help you decide about virtual events or offer you a few ideas that you hadn’t realised were possible.

Ideas for a virtual event

Trade Shows
To showcase and promote your product, individual products or services can be photographed or filmed, explaining how it works and comprehensive information added to the product
Sales Meetings and Support
Sales staff, wherever they are, can see your latest offering, learn all about it and be back out selling, armed with all the information they need. Use your virtual event to provide your staff with all relevant information throughout the sales cycle so that they have all the knowledge necessary to close deals.
Virtual Marketplace
Let your virtual event be your marketplace where your products and those of fellow exhibitors can be showcased and sold
Customer training
Provide your customers with virtual event training sessions, so they know how to get the best from your service and to keep them informed about any changes.
Community building
Build a virtual event to connect people in different locations with similar interests and build a community
Annual Conferences
Knowledge of you and your business exchanged and always available to review, this will expand your user base.
Partner Events
Share knowledge and best practices with partners and provide a forum for team communication.
Internal training
Easily accessible knowledge base, used to keep staff up-to-date as regards policies and procedures. To ensure everyone in your company receives clear and consistent messages bring them together with a virtual event and develop a good employee relationship.
Committee Meeting
If the timing of general committee meetings is difficult for some could they attend via a virtual connection? The meeting could be recorded making minute taking easy.

If we can help further, please contact us, we are here to help. Telephone 0203 468 8594 and speak to Tamara.

At the moment existing Facebook business pages with existing custom tabs (built with FBML) can still be edited. If you have been procrastinating about getting Facebook pages for your business you need to stop and take action now before Facebook introduce this change. With only just over two weeks left of the FBML style Facebook and pages taking a few days to build, make that decision and contact us now to get your Facebook business pages.

As one of the largest social networks with 500 million users worldwide, Facebook now directs more web traffic than Google. It shares and finds more weblinks, providing an incredible platform to advertise your business. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to spread the word about you and your company.

We can set up your Facebook Business page or fix existing ones. For those ready to take action and get ahead of the last minute rush we will install Google Analytics on two of your Facebook Business pages at no extra cost. So make that decision now and contact us to get your pages before it’s too late.

The workshop looked at the following topics:

If you attended the session please post your comments and feedback below.

Because the name and subject line may be all your prospects/customers see in their Inbox, it’s important that first impressions get across as much as possible to achieve higher ‘open’ rates.

Try different things:

Keep a common element in your emails, so even if some parts of it change you have consistency and don’t automatically get deleted when your email, in the main, goes unrecognised.

It’s been 3 years and just how much I had to learn! Running a small virtual assistant business is nothing like being employed in the City. When you are employed you:

1. Typically work for 1-5 people, same people, day after day (unless someone changes job or is made redundant).
2. Deal with the same workload:email, diary, paperwork, meetings, projects, travel, a few conferences thrown in here and there, a few purchasing orders to do… OK it does vary a little based on the department you work in, but the core of PA tasks will be the same wherever you are.
3. Start and finish at a set time, have (at least in theory) a lunch break, water cooler moments.
4. Endure the daily commute in any weather, hot or cold.
5. Rely on other corporate departments to sort things out for you: your computer, insurance, pension, payroll, accounts, HR, legal issues, contracts with new clients, etc.
6. Have a holiday when you can forget about your job (as long as there is someone covering for you), have weekends and evenings to yourself.
7. May occasionally work over-time or start earlier than usual.
8. Have to get permission for any time off, be it 1h or 1 week, work it later, take it unpaid and stay within your holiday allowance.
9. Get a regular salary every month, including sick pay and holiday pay.
10. Get paid for every single minute you are at work: whether you are checking your Facebook profile, researching the next holiday or actually doing work!

When you are self-employed it doesn’t work like that. Why am I still here, you may ask?

• I love being in charge of my own life, deciding who I’m working with, what I’m doing and when.
• I don’t like commuting to work every day, but I do like getting into London a few times a month for business meetings and events.
• I am constantly learning new skills, new applications, new tools.
• I get to meet a lot of business owners, just like me, who are very determined to succeed and therefore are very inspiring.
• I love what I do and I love seeing my clients happy with the results!

It took a while to learn to balance work and family, business time and clients’ time. But I think we are getting there now. It took some determination, perseverance and a couple of important business decisions to get where we are now:

• Joining a VA Network in Australia which has proven the single best source of online referrals for us (thanks, Kathie!).
• Getting a 1-2-1 VA coaching with VA Coaching and Training Company which helped me to organise my thoughts about marketing, niching, client attraction and why I am here. Since the course has been completed things have spiralled out and it has become self-perpetuating with new referrals and enquiries (thanks, Carmen!).
• Joining the Athena Network, a very successful networking organisation in the UK for women in business. We’ve already got a lot of business through it, and it’s not even a year since we  became a member (thanks, Marilena!).
• Learning about Twitter and other online marketing tools, which not only brought us new clients but also helped launch new services (thanks, Mark Shaw and Mashable!).

So if you are someone thinking of becoming a virtual assistant in 2011, then think about the above 10 features of being employed – will you be happy without all of those? What’s driving you to become self-employed? What “big dream” will you be able to hang on to, when times get tough and cashflow takes a dip? Finally, check out VACT or other similar training on offer for VAs and don’t assume that because you are a great PA/Administrator/EA/Secretary you will automatically be equally good at being a virtual assistant!

Good luck, and maybe I’ll see you at one of the VA conferences in the UK!