Are you admin for pages on Facebook? Facebook are advising you to back up your old page insights in preparation for them being phased out from December 15th.

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

Can your business benefit from an affiliate programme? A virtual assistant can help with all aspects of the procedure. With an affiliate programme the chance to make extra money from your business, by having others advertise and promote can be dealt with by your virtual support. From the initial set up of your account and details to maintaining the programme. Choosing banners and links and embedding on your site can all be handled by virtual support. By liaising with your graphic designers promotional links and banners can be created to complement your business brand.

Copy can be written, for your approval, that regularly connects you with your affiliates and can supply them with banners and links to use for promoting your business. For Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, virtual support can write social media updates that affiliates can use to advertise and promote. They can write examples of blog posts that can also be used to spread the word about your product.

By implementing a timetable, promotions can be scheduled and materials organised that will be required to run the proposed campaign.

A VA can manage your programme by supporting your affiliates, answering any questions and help them with any difficulties they may have. By keeping in touch with them by email they can provide tips to help promote your product. Contacting affiliates by phone, providing a personal touch, can help your team, knowing that there are real people within the business, there to assist them, in what can be a rather ‘lonely’ internet world.

A virtual assistant can run regular reports to check on affiliate sales and follow up with contact to them to help with promotion or congratulate on their performance!

Are you thinking of starting an affiliate programme for your business? You can email us here, or telephone and speak to Tamara, on 0208 468 8594.

A virtual assistant can really help you when it comes to customer support and admin, relieving you of the worry of dealing with day-to-day jobs. They can provide customer support in many areas leaving you free to concentrate on building your business.

They can handle voicemail messages and respond to enquiries where they are able and provide you with details when necessary. When handling phone calls a VA can take notes of important items raised and pass this information on to you.

Customer support in the form of setting up billing, and scheduling appointments are easily dealt with, together with assisting with your group membership.

Support can be set up an online calendar so appointments can be scheduled with you, informing you of time, date, place and who the meeting is with. You can then be fully prepared for an appointment.

With an online calendar in place birthday cards (and any other card) can be sent out for you. Never miss that birthday or anniversary again! You can then be reminded of important dates and deadlines.

Reports of monthly sales and expenses can be correalated for you, so at a glance, you can see how the business is running.

Virtual support can put in place all manner of online systems, an online calendar, membership software and shopping cart are all within their remit, building your online presence without the need for you to learn all manner of programmes which are required to manage them.

They can offer help on how to organise document folders and your email, screen email to reduce time wasted on things that your assistant can handle, sending you only the email that you need to see and action.

A VA can set up recurring payments and pay your bills online. They can manage projects and tasks offering an all round support for your business.

Just recently I had cause to use an online plant company and thought what a grand opportunity it would have been for them to have introduced a virtual support team into the business to have helped handle customer enquiries during what is obviously a frantic time of the year for them. They only need the extra assistance for a small period of time during the year and a virtual assistant could have helped without the need to employ extra staff, and the time would have been billed accordingly. Customers need to have a response within 24 hours to any enquiry they make and not be told that the answer will take four days! One of the advantages of using virtual support, you only pay for the hours worked, reducing your wage bill considerably and keeping your customers happy with a timely response.

To find out more of how we can help in your business, email us or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

If you are unsure what you want to happen in your business and are feeling stuck, before you hire a Virtual Assistant, hire a coach or a mentor to help you define your business ideas and plans. Coached, or mentored, you can then hire your team to reach your goals, show them your vision and you will be able to work as a cohesive team, when you know where you are going.
Your coach or mentor, will help you clarify the things that you should be doing as an entrepreneur and the parts of the business your team will do far more effectively than you can, leaving you to do the things that you do best. Not only will they be efficient in getting the job done, it will also be more cost effective.

The best of both worlds comes from a team that is provided with a clear picture of your vision , who are then given the freedom to do the job to the best of their abilities.

Are you are afraid of taking the plunge because you’ve heard horror stories of Virtual Assistants leaving you in a mess, and you have no idea how to access the parts of your empire they have dealt with?

To avoid this happening:

It’s a mistake to carry on with something that is only OK, it’s a waste of their time and your money. Don’t settle for second best just because it’s easier. Your team should support your business, helping it progress and grow. If you have chosen your team unwisely, you can change this. Don’t expect things to get better until you have taken responsibility and made the moves necessary to remedy the situation, whatever that entails. Having a heart to heart with your team may sort things and give people the opening to either follow and really work with you at your business or take the moment to move on and find something else.

You don’t have to go it alone, there are many virtual support professionals available who can help you succeed in your business . Trying to do everything yourself is a recipe for disaster . There are people available to do all the jobs you hate doing, or the ones that take you such an inordinate amount of time to do, which would then allow you to get on with building your business while they take care of things.

Have you got the right team?
If you feel, or can say, that your team cares as much for your business as you do, you may well have the ‘dream team ‘.
With the right team in place it should give you the confidence that they understand what you want and they will make it happen. They enjoy what they do and share with you in the success of your business, proving with what they do, that they care about your business as much as you do.

For help and advice, email or telephone Tamara, on 0203 468 8594.

For any business to thrive they need a good support team in place. To keep things running smoothly your team need to be good at what they do and you need to be sure of them and know how to get the best from them . When you are employing the right people all is good in your world and you business will thrive.

Have you employed your Virtual Assistant and now don’t know what to do? If you are unsure of your needs before you hire you may end up with the wrong person for your business. Choosing someone needs to be based on what they can do for your business and if you haven’t a clear idea of what you want them to do, then your ability to choose the right person for the job is made more difficult. Likewise, if you are unaware of the capabilities of a Virtual Assistant, you may be looking at a work load that you think you need to do, when in fact the work load is better managed, and more efficiently done by a Virtual Assistant.

Your team that you employ need to be given a clear picture of what you see as the future of your business, what you want to see happen and where you want to be. If they know and understand your vision they can apply their knowledge and ability to help you reach your goals.

For your team to be able to achieve this, they need to be aware of the ‘big picture’ and will be working at a disadvantage if you expect them to gain this knowledge by mind-reading or ‘osmosis’. Don’t hire a team and think that all the work is now done. You still need to share with them and keep them updated on changes that could affect your vision. The inability to share the knowledge with your team will lead to frustration for them, and could lead to an incorrect decision being made. An error in judgement leading to a wrong things being done, result; a waste of time and money. The other scenario being no action by your team, again a disgruntled you and a frustrated team, twiddling their thumbs and again, a terrible waste of man power.

Have things run well for a while but things seem to have taken a backward step? Did you jump at the chance of hiring and made a mistake and hired the wrong person for the job? Or were you unsure of where you were heading? Before hiring, clarify where you are in your business and what you want to achieve. This gives you a basis for selecting the right people for the job.

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