Virtual Assistance - Make Your Business Stand Out

I am very excited — I found a business partner for my Send Out Cards business.  I love Send Out Cards, I love the mission of intentionally reaching out to people and providing something happy for them.  I went to the Send Out Cards convention and really just *got* the mission.  It is a cool and wonderful thing.  I can tell you that my life is better now that I can easily send out cards to people beyond my immediate family.  I am all set to go full force and really make Send Out Cards work for me.  Trouble is… I have a very successful virtual assistance and internet training business.  I love working on Yellow Highlighter and mentoring emerging VAs through the Internet Monster Tamers School.   I can do both businesses justice –even though I very much want to.  At the convention, I met two friends who went into SOC together.  They say that working together not only spreads the load,  it keeps them both accountable.   I thought… this just might work.  Enter my new business partner TIffane Maltba.  Tiffane and I worked together at Fairfax County and we were an fabulous team.  We just seem to have very complimentary skills.  We had been looking for a way to work together again… this seems to be it.  I am delirously happy that Tiffane is now my SOC business partner.

Here are some tips for finding a perfect partner for your business (or for just one project…)

If you have an idea about something you would like to create but do not know anyone to team up with, start researching people that have the skills you need. Send them an email and let them know you like their work and might like to team up. You can also ask for recommendations from WAHMs you already know or put up a post on a message board about what you would like to accomplish.

Whatever method you choose to find potential co-workers, interview several people before you make any decisions; you want the project to be a success. Look at samples of the work each person has done in the past. You will also want to make sure your personalities do not clash, as you will be spending a lot of time working together.

When you find someone you are interested in working with, make sure you both understand how the work will be divided, when the deadlines will be for each step of the project, how you are going to sell your product and how the profits will be divided.

Keep looking for other joint venture opportunities as they are win-win situations ñ you can offer a new product or service to your current customers and the new product can also bring you a whole slew of new customers!

Happy partnering

OK… I know that this sounds very funny at first.  After all, you wouldn’t send your secretary to attend your local Chamber of Commerce event.  But, you might have her put the event on your calendar and send follow up thank you cards to the people you met there. She might set up a system for you to follow up with the people you met at the event.  Social networking is the same way.  There is no reason why you can’t outsource a very large part of your social networking busy work so that you have more time to develop strong relationships with your clients.   Also, having as assistant do the work means that you will develop a system and post to your various communities more frequently.

7 Great Ways to Outsource Your Social Networking

1.    Finding Potential Followers and Friends Your assistant can easily build your social network by looking at networks of people who are following the people in your community and sending friend requests.  They can also keep up with automated contact managers like Plaxo to make sure that all of your contacts are connected to your network.

2. Responding To Friend Requests
Your assistant can take care of most of this for you once you have developed a template “thank you for being my friend” message. A good assistant can also tailor the template to suit the person who is getting the message. You can also develop a friend policy to help decide which requests to accept.

3. Connecting the Dots – Make Your Posts Do Double Duty
A  good assistant will be able to help you connect the various pieces of your social networking empire.  Your blog posts can automatically show up on Twitter, your Twitter posts and Facebook profile can show up on your blog…. Etc.  Once the connections are made, your networking becomes much easier and much more effective.

4. Strategic Posting
Your assistant can send tweets and post Facebook announcements about your events, when the event is about to start, etc.  She can also publish information about your event in all of your different social networks.  She can also programs like TweetLater to schedule your Tweets to occur when you are not at the computer.

5. Birthday Wishes
One of the most powerful ways to build personal relationships is to send birthday cards.  Social networking tools like Plaxo and Facebook make this very easy.  Your assistant can send either e-cards, or (even better) actual cards. Send Out Cards is a great way to send real cards.  Your assistant types the message into the computer and the company mails a real card – for less than a dollar.  You can try out Send Out Cards for free to see if it will work for you.

6. Keeping Up with Your Peeps
You an learn a lot about what is going on in the lives of your circle through social networking.  Your assistant can be invaluable in keeping tabs on people so that you can build the relationship.  She can scan the updates and let you know when clients have launched new products, had babies, gotten new jobs – so that you can send out personal congratulations.

7. Pimp Your Profile
A good assistant can make sure that your profiles (the social networking equivalent of your business card) are in tip top shape.  She can add videos, links to other people, pictures from your latest trip and more.  She can expand your empire by creating and updating profiles on different social networking sites.  A good VA does this sort of thing for other clients too.  Don’t be afraid to rely on her expertise to help you keep up on what is new and important in the world of Social Networking.

You may have noticed that Yellow Highlighter has a fresh new look.  I had meaning to refresh it  — but I was forced to to an early makeover because my blog was hacked…  That means someone got in and put all sorts of malicious and evil code on my blog.  The timing couldn’t really have been worse for me.  I was applying for a merchant account, and trying out a new invoicing system for my clients all at the same time.   The merchant account is through PayPal — when they did their check to make sure my business was legit — they saw a blank screen…

And, shut down my PayPal account — just minutes before all my invoices went out to my cilents UUGGHH!!!

Here are a few hints for keeping your blog safe (er) from hackers…

1.  Make sure that you always upgrade when WordPress tells you to. (I think this is what got me in trouble…)

2. Make sure that your blog password is not something easy to remember — go as strong as you can — a longish combination of letters, numbers and symbols.

3.  Look at the code of any plugins you install… even if you aren’t an expert in .php — you can usually see text that just doesn’t belong there.

4. Every one and a while, take a look at the users on your blog — do you know all of them?  If not, delete.

And… if you do get hacked… here are some steps for “cleaning up the mess”… courtesy of SmackDown!

I used these tips to get my blog back up and running…

1. Backup the site and the database.

Even a hacked copy of your blog still probably contains valuable information and files. You don’t want to lose this data if something goes wrong with the cleanup process. Worst case scenario you can just restore things back to their hacked state and start over.

2. Make a copy of any uploaded files, such as images, that are referenced.

Images are generally exempt from posing a security risk, and ones that you uploaded yourself (as opposed to ones included with a theme, for instance) will be harder to track down and replace after things are fixed again. Therefore it is usually a good idea to grab a copy of all the images in your upload folder so as to avoid broken images in posts later. If you have any non-image files that could potentially have been compromised, such as zip files, plugins, or php scripts that you were offering people, then it is a good idea to grab fresh copies of those from the original source.

3. Download a fresh version of WP, all of the plugins you need, and a clean template.

Using the WordPress automatic upgrade plugin does make it easier to upgrade every time a new version comes out. However, it only replaces WordPress specific files, and does not delete obsolete ones. It also leaves your current themes and plugins in place, as is. This means that if used to upgrade a blog that has already been compromised, it can very well leave the attackers a way back in. It is best to start over from scratch as far as the files portion of your installation goes.

4. Delete all of the files and folders in the WP directory, either through FTP (slower) or through cPanel’s File Manager (faster).

Now that you have fresh copies of all the files you need, and copied all of your uploaded images, completely delete the entire directory structure your blog is in. This is the only surefire way to completely remove all possibly infected files. You can do this through FTP, but due to the way that FTP handles folder deletion (ie. it walks the directory structure, stores each and every file name that needs to be deleted, and then sends a delete command for each one), this can be slow and in some instances cause you to get disconnected due to flooding the server with FTP commands. If available it is much faster to do this through either cPanel’s File Manager, or via command line if you happen to have shell access.

5. Re-upload the new fresh copies you just grabbed.

This step should be self explanatory, but I would like to mention that if your FTP client supports it (I use FileZilla, which does) and your host allows it, then increasing the number of simultaneous connections you use to upload can greatly reduce your overall transfer time, especially on servers or ISP’s where latency is more of an issue than bandwidth. In FileZilla this setting is found by going to “Edit -> Settings -> File transfer settings”:

Also, if not using the EasyWP WordPress Installer script, don’t forget to edit and rename your wp-config.php file (when freshly unzipped this is named wp-config-sample.php).

6. Run the database upgrade (point your browser at /wp-admin/upgrade.php).

This will make any necessary changes to your database structure to support the newest version of WordPress.

7. Immediately change your admin password.

If you have more than one admin (meaning any user with editing capabilities), and cannot get the others to change their passwords right then, I would change their user levels until they can change their passwords as well. If there is anyone in your user list that has editing capabilities, and you do not recognize them, it’s probably best to just delete them altogether. If changing passwords is something you hate doing, then maybe my new memorable password generator can make that a little less stressful for you.

8. Go through the posts and repair any damage in the posts themselves.

Delete any links or iframes that were inserted, and restore any lost content. Google and Yahoo’s caches are often a good source of what used to be there if anything got overwritten. The following query run against the database can help you isolate which posts you want to look at:

SELECT * FROM wp_posts WHERE post_content LIKE '%<iframe%'
UNION
SELECT * FROM wp_posts WHERE post_content LIKE '%<noscript%'
UNION
SELECT * FROM wp_posts WHERE post_content LIKE '%display:%'

If you did not change the default prefix for WordPress tables, than you can copy and paste that directly into a query window and run it, and it should pull up any posts that have been modified to hide content using any of the methods I have come across so far (iframes, noscript tags, and display:none style attributes). To get to a query window in cPanel, you would click on the MySQL® Databases icon, scroll to the bottom of the page, and then click on phpMyAdmin. Once the new window or tab opens, you would click on the database in the left hand side that your blog was in, and then in the right side at the top click on the SQL tab. Then just paste the query into the large text area and hit the Go button.

I hope this helps someone

Why Social Networking? People Do Business With People They Like and Trust…

One of the keys to building a successful business is having a solid network of customers and partners who know you, like you, and can wholeheartedly recommend you to others.  Before the Internet, cultivating this type of network meant getting out there and becoming part of the local business community by volunteering, joining networking groups and (most importantly) talking face to face with your customers.  When I began my career in public relations, more than a decade ago, a significant portion of my time was spent at my local Chamber of Commerce and other networking events.

Now, my virtual assistance clients are in three different time zones and several different countries.  I do not have any clients in my hometown.  The Internet has made this possible to operate an international business from anywhere. But, even if your business is virtual, you still need to get out there and meet people.  The easiest way to meet lots of people who are interested in partnering with you is through Social Networking.

In the past few years,  it has become  easier to build personal relationships through the Internet.  College students have known how to use the Internet to build relationships for at least five years.  The business community is finally catching up and realizing the usefulness of viral social networking tools like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter that allow you to easily meet and create strong relationships with other people on the Internet.

Here are some reasons why you should consider implementing social networking strategies in your business:

•    Access to your target audience Social Networking provides unprecedented access to your ideal clients. You can learn a lot about your clients from the information that they share  on their social networking profiles and by who else they are following. Also, it is easier to become someone’s friend on a social networking platform (because it is a two-way connection) than it is to get them to join your mailing list.

•    Social Networking is instant/viral Social networking allows you to communicate instantly (Twitter) with your customers.  It is also very easy to pass on small bits of information.  Some very successful social marketers have used this to get huge increases of traffic to their websites in a very short amount of time.

•    Ability To Build Your Tribe This is the area where online networking both resembles and outshines traditional networking.   Building your tribe (or a community of dedicated followers) is like building your network.  But, at the same time, online networks allow your community to talk to each other – and that can be a very powerful thing.

•    Increased attendance at events  Advertising your events within your social networks is a great way to increase your attendance.  One of my clients has increased her preview teleseminar attendance by 25% just by posting an event invitation on Facebook.

•    Getting and Giving Help The online community is very helpful. You can get (and more importantly) give instant answers to questions.

•    Managing Reputation online Participating in the social networking community is a great way to create a positive reputation online.  You will come off as being approachable and in the know about technology.

Why aren’t you involved in social networking?

My daughter is NOT a small thinker...

Jarod Lam wrote a very interesting guest post on the Internet Marketing Sweetie Blog on thinking big in your business.  I must admit I am pretty much a small thinker when it comes to my business.  OK, not *that* small — I did work in Washington DC for 10 years where I made a pretty decent salary for my PR work.  But, my goals, up to this point, have been fairly modest, I want to make what I was making in DC, working part-time and have enough money to send my daughter to an awesome public school.  And… so far, I’m on track to meet the goal.

A few weeks ago, I was at the Send Out Cards convention.  As part of the training,  we were sharing our “I AM” goals.  I was amazed at the hugeness of some people’s goals.  People wanted 7 figure *monthly* incomes,  to advance 3 ranks in Send Out Cards, etc.  I was sort of ambivalent about these kinds of goals.  On the one hand, if you don’t shoot high, you won’t get there… and as Jarod says in his post… even if you make a smaller percentage of the goal (10% of 1,000,000) vs. (50% of 100,000) you’ll come out ahead.  But, there was some little part of me that says — “realistic” goals are key.

Thinking about it a little more …. you define your own reality — so why not think big?   The only limits are your mindset.  So, now I’m going to have to re-do my goals card (see above — I love al lthe things you can do with Send Out Cards…) to include more free time, more money and a bigger business.  Anyone else care to take this leap with me?   Here’s to our *seven* figure incomes, great vacations and newly found free time

I just recently managed to reconnect with the uber-fabulous Time Diva – Ann Rusnak. Since I was on her mind and I just sent her brownies, she tagged me. Tagging is a great way to encourage some cross-blog conversation AND get to know a little more about your virtual peeps. So, tagees..

 It’s fun!

Here are the rules… The Rules (and these were NOT made to be broken, got it?)

1. Link the person who tagged you in a new blog post.

2. Mention the rules on your blog.

3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks you possess.

4. Tag 6 bloggers by linking them.

5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged.

Here are my 6 quirks:

1. I come across as being *really laid back* — but I’m actually pretty driven.

2. I talk to myself out loud when I work.

3. You wouldn’t know it by looking at me — but I am an endurance athlete and have completed a marathon and a triathlon.

4. I was a French Literature major in college and I spent a year teaching English in Warsaw.

5. I haven’t lived in California since I was 11 — but I have a bit of a "valley girl" lilt…

6. I like bananas — but I can’t stand banana-flavored candy.

Now to tag six fellow bloggers for a meme…

Stephanie: http://evolvingarts.com/blog

Tricia: http://timesaverva.com

David: http://virtuallyyours.com/

Alexa: http://add-insight.com/blog/

Leah: http://leahj.blog-city.com/

Sheri: http://sherigaynor.typepad.com/livingourdreams/

Twitter is all the rage right now — because it is very easy to incoporate Twitter into your business routine.

If you’ve used Twitter before you probably already know that it’s a great tool for chatting amongst friends and fellow online business owners. I really enjoy learning what people are doing in thier businesses and in thier lives.

Here are 5 tips for getting started with Twitter:

1. Sign Up and create your own Twitter account.
The service is free to use and takes just a few minutes to get going. Simply go to www.twitter.com and sign up. When you set up your account don’t forget to fill in your website’s URL and a tid-bit about yourself or your business in the profile.  Having a clear profile is key to getting business from Twitter.

2. Start following other Twitter users.
. You can either save their pages to your web browser bookmarks or, and this way is easier, once you’ve found their page simply click the “Follow” button under their name. This will allow you to see their posts, or tweets. Now you’ll need to let others know that you have joined Twitter so that they can follow your updates as well. You can do this by telling your list subscribers, posting about Twitter on your blog, and more. There are even scripts you can add to your blog or website that will retrieve your most recent tweets and post them for your visitors to see.

You have the ability to use your Twitter page to see what’s happening with others or you can even download applications such as Twhirl or Twitterdeck that will allow you to have instant messaging style software on your computer to see all your posts and the posts of those you follow.  You can even post to twitter from your Treo or iphone.

Now that you’re all set up simply login to your Twitter page or open up your Twhirl software and start sending messages. Just as with any social networking site such as forums or message boards, Twitter can easily take big chunks of your time if not monitored carefully. This is one reason it would be wise to devote a set amount of time per day to network with it. A good starting point would be around 15 minutes each day. You can easily plan this with your morning email check and cup of coffee or at the end of the day.

3.  Let people know what you are doing. An ytime something interesting is going on in your business, whether it’s a site change, a product launch or even a special post to your blog, use Twitter to let your followers know. As with any marketing tool, don’t just bombard Twitter with your links. Be personable and establish your expertise in your niche. Be friendly and observant to others as well and you’ll go far with Twitter.

You may not see results from your twittering efforts immediately and that’s ok. The important thing is to begin to get your name recognized and be a regular contributor. The more post and incorporate the service into your daily business routine, the more recognized you’ll become. People will want to know what’s going on with you and your business and in time, you’ll be linked to over and over again by other users.

Don’t forget to follow me — http://twitter.com/meredithe

This past week I’ve finally had a chance to catch up on some past teleseminars. Over the summer, I took Andrea Williams’ Start Up Success Series. I ordered the “deluxe” package which included all 15 speakers on CD. This was a good thing because I can pop a CD in my car each day when I do preschool pickups. My daughter is too busy talking to her friend to notice what is on the radio…

Anyway, one of my favorite speakers in the series so far is Lisa McLeod. Lisa was very funny, but her message is very profound. The main message of Lisa’s teleseminar was that you need to come at your business from a place of love. If you adopt love as your ultimate strategy — your business will grow beyond your wildest imaginings. OK, I know that you all are probably thinking — Meredith has finally crossed over to “woo woo” land (a true danger when working with life coaches) — but if you think this through — it makes a lot of sense.

Studies have shown that people are happiest when they are in the moment (that is a whole other post for another time) and when they are doing something that they feel is making a difference.

If you can get to the point where you (and the people working with you) can see the difference you are making in people’s lives — everything will flow. The first thing I thought of when I was listening to Lisa was my (very on the side) business with Send Out Cards. It is very easy to get into the love mentality with Send Out Cards because SOC makes it very easy to show people that you love them by sending them a greeting card. You choose and create the card online, click send and then the company prints and mails the card for you. The company encourages its distributors to send a heartfelt card everyday. Yes, I know that means that they sell more cards — but… when I take the time each day to really tell someone how much I love them — it has a powerful effect on my life and on my day. Talk about a business based on love. If you want to try out Send Out Cards — you can send a card for free as my gift. I’ll even personally walk you through the process. Go to my send out cards website , and click on the banner. Or (even better), send me an e-mail at meredithe at gmail dot com and we can set up a time to walk through sending a card together.

If you’ve been following my blog/tweets at all lately, you know that I was featured in this month’s edition of Good Housekeeping. This is really very very funny because I have 5 year old daughter and my house constantly looks as if a whirlwind just hit…

One of my favorite clients, communications guru Liz Gurthridge suggested that I write a little bit about the power of the Good Housekeeping “seal of approval”. When I was little I actually used to think about the seal of approval and the Good Housekeeping test kitchens. I had visions of rooms with rows and rows of ranges and women dressed in pink dresses and lace aprons testing out all the recipes in the magazine to make sure they were good enough to eat. Although I don’t know very many people who read Good Housekeeping (I was actually surprised at how many people spotted my article though…) — the power of the seal lives on. The seal (like being favorably reviewed in Consumer Reports) lends some important “social proof” to a product’s claims. And, although Yellow Highlighter didn’t receive the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval — the fact that I was featured in the magazine has had some great spillover into my business.

The idea of a seal of approval is very powerful. According to a recent issue of Fast Company, Chlorox recently sought the Sierra Club’s seal of approval for their products. This idea is very easily transferrable to the Web. This works for both companies. Chlorox gets third party validation that their products are environmentally friendly. The Sierra Club gets recognized as a leading expert on the environment.

Seals of approval work very well in a virtual world where third party validation (internet marketers call this “social proof”) is very important. You see this at work in the “badges” that people display on their blogs. PoshMama and BlogHer rate blogs. If you pass their tests, you get to display their seal. The seal is an advertisement for the blog and validation that you know your stuff. I was trained as a virtual assistant by AssistU – as a graduate, I am entitled to display their seal on my website. The seal links back to a page with a list of AssistU graduates. When clients see my site, they know that I’ve invested some time and effort into my continuing education.

Do you have an seals of approval on your site? Do you offer one as part of your business?