Showing posts with label Virtual Assistant Tools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Virtual Assistant Tools. Show all posts

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Turn Your Business Card into a Business Weapon

Do you have a business card for your Virtual Assistant business? Most of my networking is done online, but once in a while I meet someone who asks for a card. I've learned to keep them with me at all times. You never know where your next customer will come from!

Here's another tip I recently learned about giving out your business card: Never give your card to someone who hasn't asked for it first. Have you ever been to a networking event where everyone passes out those cards? How many of those cards do you actually keep?

Business cards are expensive, so you'll save yourself money (and the recipient time from having to recycle it!) if you only give it out to those who really want it. Wait until they ask. ;-)

I designed my own cards with a template in the Virtual Business Startup System, then had them professionally printed.

Colleen Davis has some more good ideas for printing your cards and the most effective ways to use them.

How To Turn A Business Card Into A Business Weapon by Colleen Davis

Business card printing is not merely a tool in introducing yourself to other people. No sir. In truth, custom business cards can be turned into a very powerful business weapon that will help your career as well as your business to achieve success. To transform your business card into a business weapon though, you must first do a few important changes into your business card strategy.

1. The right weapon for the right job: Now you may not know this but business cards can be geared in different ways depending on your objective. There are advertising business cards for sales product promotions, corporate business cards for deals with colleagues and of course there are also personal business cards for friends and family. You will need to determine which business card is exactly what you need. This will define how your business card will be designed, and how it will succeed with your objectives. So choose the one that should get you nearest to your goal.

2. Good quality equals good results: Another tip that should turn your business card into a potent weapon is to use good quality materials in the production. Expensive textured paper, with a glossy sheen and smudge free inks are quite impressive. People will respect such quality with ease and that should give you better results in business deals and with social business networking itself. So as you can see, with the advantage of high quality, business cards can be quite effective at convincing people of the sincerity and the power of your business deal.

3. Continuing innovation: You must also know that weapons are always changing and people are always trying to come up with some innovations on existing ones. The same is true with business cards. You must continue changing and recreating your business card design, so that they will always look new and fresh. Try new materials, new formats and new techniques to make sure that your business cards can take advantage of the prevailing sense of style. You should also try to update yourself with prevailing design trends so that you can apply them to the design as well. This should maintain the competitiveness of your business card so that it can still remain as a potent weapon at all times.

4. Use it or lose it: Finally, the best way to turn your business cards into a business weapon is basically to use it. You must not let your business cards remain lying on your desk, car or your house. Always try to give it away to probable business contacts, investors and customers as well. If you do not distribute them and use them, then there is little point really in making them. So use your color business cards or you will loose them as you business weapon.

That should be all the information you need to turn your simple business cards into powerful weapons of trade. Use the weapon wisely once you make it. There are a lot of opportunities and problems connected with it. Good Luck!


Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com

For more information, you can visit this page on business card printing and custom business cards
Your Write Assistant

Friday, May 2, 2008

Virtual Assistant Tools at Discounted Prices

You're only as good as your tools, right?

You know you need the very best, but if your business is just starting out, you probably don't have any extra cash to invest in more software.

I just found a site that sells Adobe products at majorly discounted prices.

Hmmm, think it might be time to go shopping!

Your Write Assistant

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Virtual Business Niche Idea – File Conversions

A service many virtual business owners need is file converting documents into pdf format.

If you don't have a PDF converter tool, here's a link to a free one.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

10 Handy Tools for the Savvy Virtual Assistant

By Crystal Redhad-Gould

If you were just getting started as a Virtual Assistant you would obviously need to prepare a list of tools needed to get your business up and running. Over the years I have found a lot of new innovations to make my life as a Virtual Assistant as trouble free as possible. I have a completed list of over 40 tools that I use at some point or another. For the purpose of this article I have listed my top ten, these I use almost daily.

VANA

Add some VANA to your day! If you have a quick question, need some motivation, need to connect with another Virtual Assistant, have a work overflow, or simply need to vent, then head on over to VANA and I promise you will always find the support your are looking for.

Skype

I have to admit that this is one of my all time favorite tools. It’s quite a bundle wrapped in one small package. You get an instant messenger, free video calls, free calls to people on skype, cheap sms, cheap calls to phones worldwide, conferencing and more.

Microsoft Outlook

I use Microsoft Outlook as an email client. It is superb for organizing, calendars, has solid spam and phishing filters, and seamless integration with to-do lists and scheduling. You can also create virtual folders, a great tool for keeping emails organized and the search feature makes finding emails a snap.

EverNote

EverNote is an all-in-one notes organizer that enables you to keep track of notes, To-Do items, memos, sketches, website snippets and more. It integrates with Internet Explorer and Firefox, allowing you to add website excerpts, source code snippets and other items directly from your browser. You can choose to sort your notes into categories, password protect them, export them to XML and more. EverNote supports several notes templates, which allow you to add T-Do lists, Excel-like spread sheets for expenses (that automatically calculate a total), phone notes, contact information and shopping lists, in addition to regular text notes or handwritten notes (via mouse or pen tablet). All that PLUS the ability to search through your notes! Bottom line I use EverNote for everything. There is a Pro Version but I personally never felt the need to upgrade, the free version meets all my needs and more.

Cutepdf

After trying several other print to PDF packages which left watermarks or other nags, I finally found CutePDF and have discarded all the others. It is freeware and contains no nags. It does require Ghostscript to be installed as well but both installs are straight forward, I just take all of the defaults. Once installed, it is maintenance free. Just select CutePDF from the list of printers, click OK, give the output file a name and folder, and you are done.

Smartftp

A Virtual Assistant just needs to have some sort of ftp software to update websites and to accept and transfer files. I use and recommend SmartFTP. Simply put, this is the best FTP software you can acquire for FREE. I was having trouble connecting with other programs, so I decided to try SmartFTP. Best decision ever! The interface is very "user-friendly" and it connects on the first try. The ability to click and drag and have multiple sessions open is also extremely helpful.

Wordpress

Every Virtual Assistant should seek to set up a blog. I recommend that wordpress as the platform for your blog. It’s free, easy to install, and you can find thousands of high quality themes and plugins.

Timestamp

A Virtual Assistant must have a means to track client hours. I use timestamp, it is a very simple reporting utility that helps you stay on top of working time. It also comes with a handy reminder, letting you know w hen its time to go home!

MyFax

Myfax lets you send and receive faxes through email from as little as $10 per month including 100 faxes free per month. The price is standard and the support is terrific.

Groove Virtual Network

Groove Virtual Network is a great tool for keeping in touch with clients far and wide. Maintain a sense of teamwork between yourself and your client as you can do virtually anything in Groove. You can hold online meetings, store files and folders, save threaded discussions, scribble on whiteboards, share calendars, and track project information and timelines, very important to my clients.

There you have it, ten handy tools that you can easily access and most of them are free. For an up and coming Virtual Assistant, it doesn’t get any better than free.

(c) Five Star Executives. All Rights Reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Crystal Redhead-Gould is the managing principal of Five Star Executives a Virtual Assistant Practice that specializes in Internet Marketing and Graphic Design. She is a pioneer for Virtual Assisting in the Caribbean. She serves as President of the Caribbean Association of Virtual Assistants. Crystal draws on over 15 years of experience in the industry and seeks to help small and medium sized businesses with their marketing tools in order to increase profits.

Crystal is a frequent speaker at small business forums across the Caribbean. She is also author of Unwritten Rules: Become an In Demand Virtual Executive. Feel free to visit her online at http://www.fivestarexecutives.com or pop in on the Caribbean forum at http://www.caribbeanassist.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Crystal_Redhad-Gould

 
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