by Kimberly | Dec 23, 2008 | Blog, Facebook, Social Media, social media marketing, Social Media Virtual Assistant, Twitter
Within Facebook you have the ability to add an application which will sync with your Twitter feed and supply all of your tweets to your Facebook Status. There are a couple of benefits to using sending your twitter feed to Facebook. The first is that it will often place you on your friend’s home page so they will see it almost every time they log in. This increases your visibility on Facebook. It may also garner you more twitter followers who like what you tweet and will go choose to follow you. There can be a couple of downsides to consider as well. Being constantly on the homepage with updates from your twitter conversation may be annoying to some people who can then choose ask for “less” about you in their home page feed. If you tend to be a prolific tweeter, your tweets will also fill your Personal Profile page as it will be considered a new “status” every time you tweet. So, it’s best to consider the positives and the possible negatives when adding this application. However, if you do add it and decide that it’s just not for you, then you do have the option to remove it as well. Here’s how to add the application: 1) At the bottom of the Facebook window, click on “Applications” and a small box will pop up. At the top of the box, click on “Find More”. 2) After you’ve clicked on “Find More” a new page will come up and in the upper right hand corner, there is a search box where you can enter “Twitter” and hit...
by Kimberly | Dec 9, 2008 | Blog, Virtual Assistant
Recently I have been wondering more and more about what are the current thoughts around email etiquette. Not with regards to how do you draft your emails, what you say or how you say it, but what are the current expectations regarding responses, response time, follow-up and basic communication. If I send out an email to someone following up on a conversation, or to check in with someone, there is an expectation for a response. But after a couple of non-responses, I began to wonder if it was just me who was wondering if common courtesy had completely fallen by the wayside. Has the age of electronic made it easier for us to connect or to ignore each other? Am I way out in left field by myself thinking that a response should be forthcoming? Just like anyone else, I’m busy and am not always able to answer right away, but it’s always been my policy to try and respond within 24 hours and no later than 48 hours, even if it’s just to acknowledge receipt of one’s email and to let them know I will provide them with a more detailed response later. Other than spammers or auto-generated responses, I have never felt that it was okay to just completely ignore an email with no response. Given that everyone is busy, I also do not send out unnecesary or lengthy, overly wordy emails. Am I mistakenly under the assumption that email is still a communication tool? As a Virtual Assistant, email is a critical tool for communicating with clients from any location. This is one of the advantages...
by Kimberly | Oct 16, 2008 | Blog, Internet Marketing, Marketing, small business, Social Media
While twittering today, I clicked through on a link to where I could download a free version of Seth Godin’s latest and greatest book, “Tribes.” In his blog Seth writes that he originally set out to write a book leadership but it ended up being a marketing book. He describes the basic premise as, “the next frontier of marketing is in leading groups of people who are working together to get somewhere.” It’s a concept that’s been around since the beginning of time. Using the web to create your tribe with a purpose and a goal is much easier now with Web 2.0. Networks like Twitter and Facebook are prime examples of how this is taking place. It’s just a matter of identifying who the leader is or becoming the leader yourself. Twitter is based on who’s following who, but in reality, there are leaders embedded into that whole premise. Inevitably and not surprisingly, there are those within each industry who simply must be followed if you want to know the very latest of what they are saying and doing. Which will you be– are you a leader or a follower? How will you build your tribe to get your message out and your goals...
by Kimberly | Sep 23, 2008 | Blog, small business, Virtual Assistance, Virtual Assistant
My son found a rock in the parking lot the other day…actually it was more like a large piece of gravel. Nothing particularly outstanding about this rock. It wasn’t smooth or a pretty color or even remarkable in any way. But suddenly, this rock became an almost animate object to my son. He gave it personality. He gave it a name. (Ok, the name was “Rock” but that’s not the point.) He built it a house and he played with it just like it was a toy or a stuffed animal. He never thought twice about the fact that this was really just a non-descript, dirty, random piece of gravel. His vivid imagination brought this rock to life. He is a sensitive and caring soul and has an amazing capacity for believing that everything in the world has feelings and wants to be happy…even a rock. And, if we stop to think about that, it’s a philosophy that we’d all be better off living by. Watching him bring this rock to life made me think about the awesome power of the imagination. We all have it, but sometimes I think we sort of loose the ability to use it to it’s full capacity. Using your imagination to imagine greatness and success in your own life can be a powerful (and inexpensive) tool that we should all be taking advantage of everyday. For those of us who are small business owners or solo entrepreneurs, we are where we are because we imagined it could happen and it did. We imagined that we could be successful and we are or we...
by Kimberly | Sep 7, 2008 | Blog, small business, Virtual Assistant
My son started Kindergarten this week. He was so excited to be starting school. He was asking all sorts of questions, wanted to meet his teacher right away and just couldn’t wait to get started on the learning process. On the morning of the first day, when the moment came for me to leave him, I could see little tears start to well up in his eyes. It seemed no matter how excited he was to venture off in Kindergarten, he was still a little nervous and scared at something so big and so new. He was fine after some reassurance and once the classroom activities actually started, he was the first to join in. All in all, he dove right in and he was excited to go back the next day. Eager once more to begin learning and making new friends. Still a little nervous, but not quite so much as the first day. The whole experience has made me think about how young children have such a unique capability to have such wonder and excitement about the world around them and about new experiences. Somewhere in the process of growing up, we seem to lose this carefree ability and start becoming more reserved in our excitement and are not so eager to jump out and try new things. Sure, young children can get nervous and scared, but yet it seems the desire to try something new wins out over that fear. As a business owner or solo entrepreneur perhaps you find that you’d like to try something new and innovative that might just be the thing that...
