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VA Toolbox: Tools to help you “batch”

February 9th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in systems, tool

Have you heard of a word “batching”? When you try to maximize your time, it very often saves time to do work by batching similar tasks together. For example, you may want to block a time to concentrate on your social media efforts, handling your emails, etc.

With the technology today, it’s possible to do batch many common tasks. For example, I often write emails that need to go out on certain dates. What I do instead of writing those emails when they have to go out, I write some of them in advance and schedule them to go out on certain dates/times. Same with my blog articles. Here are some of the tools that I use to make batching possible:

Blog Platforms
Many blog platforms allow you to schedule exactly when your blog entry gets published. I normally write a blog entry (I use WordPress.), then schedule it to get published to suit my needs. For example, I normally schedule to publish my article right before my newsletter goes out so that my newsletter subscribers will be able to follow the link to read the full article at the right timing.

Email Tools
I use Outlook as my main email client, and I can easily schedule future email deliveries. The only problem is that my PC needs to be up and running when the scheduled emails go out. I also use Gmail to handle one email account that I have with one of my clients’ domain. I love Gmail for various reasons, but it does not offer any future delivery scheduling functions.

Then I recently came across a great free service that solves both problems above. It’s called LetterMeLater.com (http://www.lettermelater.com/). It does not only let you schedule emails within their interface but also allows you to schedule and send out emails from your own email client by using a special lettermelater address. For me, this service comes in quite handy.

Social Media Tools
There are several tools out there that let you schedule your tweets/status updates, but by far, my favorite is HootSuite (http://www.hootsuite.com/). HootSuite’s other handy features include updating your status on multiple social media sites, letting you see what people are saying about you or anybody you specify, and much more. It’s such a time saver and, oh so user-friendly, too!

Happy batching!

Tags: time management

10 Ways to Get Out of a Funk

December 30th, 2009 by admin | No Comments | Filed in mindset, tool

frustration I don’t know if this happens to everybody, but I’m sure it happens to many of us. Without any clear reason, out of nowhere, you simply do not feel motivated to get stuff done. This actually happened to me during this past month. There were many things that I knew I wanted to work on to move my business forward, but I found myself putting them in the back burner, day after day. It’s true I had other things to take care of, but I was also aware that I was not *in the mood* to work *on* my business.

That sure was a very uncomfortable place to be! However, I knew I could handle the situation because that was certainly not the first time something like that had happened to me. There are many things you can do to get out of a funk. Here are the ten tips that I personally found helpful for myself.

1. Turn to a motivational expert: If you are like me, you probably have a collection of books and audios that have inspired you in the past. Revisit them. Or go to a library and pick up an inspirational book that you have been curious about. This is exactly what I did this time. The book was Happy for No Reason by Marci Shimoff, and it instantly lifted my spirits. Highly recommended.

2. Talk to other soloprenurs: It sometimes helps a lot to speak and open up with people who understand your business. I network with other solopreneurs and found that I could get motivated just by talking with them. Just yesterday, I had a chance to have a coffee with a friend who is also a solopreneur, and man, I was motivated after listening to his plan for 2010.

3. Change the posture to change the mood: More and more experts are now pointing out the strong connection between body and mind. If you spend most of the day in front of a computer feeling you are stuck in a funk, get up on your feet. Lie down in a couch to brainstorm instead. Or get out and take a walk. Instead of typing up a business plan, grab a pen and paper. Making physical changes could really help you unstuck. Just give it a try.

4. Get a good night sleep: Not so long time ago, while I was trying hard to be a good mom/wife as well as a successful solopreneur, I used to stay up until 2:00am on many nights. Sure, I was able to get a lot of stuff done, but after doing that for a while, I found myself tired and not very productive during the day. I’ve finally come to the conclusion that human beings are meant to have plenty of sleep! Lack of sleep is simply not healthy, physically and mentally.

5. Look at your eating habits: You hear many moms blaming sugar for their kids’ hyperactivity, but we rarely think about how foods could affect our mood (well, except for alcoholic drinks, I guess). Aren’t you taking too much sugar in your diet? Or, maybe too much caffeine just to get that perk, only to get exhausted afterward? Think about eating healthy alternatives that would give you some real energy.

6. Exercise: This is in line with “change the posture” above. Taking short breaks during the day to stretch yourself, or even better, taking a long break to get out and do some fun physical activities can really help you get out of the unmotivated state. You do not need to go to a gym. Just take a brisk walk or jog. Or even a Wii Fit (My favorite, LOL).

7. Meditate: I recently learned about the “happiest person in the world” Matthieu Ricard from one of my clients and have been fascinated about him. People have pointed out one of his big secrets to be calm, focused, and happy is his daily meditation. Your “funk” may be a sign that you should pay more attention to your mind, and meditation is a great way just to do that.

8. Watch a movie, read a book, sing a song… Entertain yourself: Have you watched a movie that made you smile for the rest of the day? Movies, books, and music all can have a great positive impact on our feelings. I’ve been reading Diary of a Whimply Kid with my boys every night, and boy, that book cracks us all up and helps us go to bed in a great mood. Just try it! (No, you don’t have to read the Diary, LOL. Choose whatever that would make you smile.)

9. Count your blessings: Acknowledging the things you are grateful for is a great way to empower yourself. Just this past November, I’ve participated in a fun project called “30 Days of Thanks” and blogged about what I was thankful for every day, which turned out to be a great experience for me. You do not need to blog, just keep a gratitude journal or put up a big sheet of paper on a wall somewhere and keep writing down what you are grateful for every day.

10. Surrender and go with the flow: I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. If none of your efforts to get out of the funk works, maybe you are meant to be in a funk for a few days or longer to grow bigger. It’s like that dreadful “Terrible Two’s” (that my youngest is going through right now, I might add) — It’s annoying, inconvenient, and frustrating to parents, but all kids eventually grow out of that stage, and when they do, they are more mature. And you know what they say… You often feel very uncomfortable when you are ready to go up to the next stage of life. Maybe it’s the same with business.

VA Toolbox: Microsoft OneNote

September 17th, 2009 by admin | 2 Comments | Filed in organizing, productivity, tool

Recently, there was a discussion on Micrrosoft OneNote on AssistU‘s VA forum that I visit pretty much every day.

I did have an instllaton CD of this application because my husband somehow received it as a freebie from Microsoft several years ago, but had never even checked it out. But all the positive comments I found on the above forum made me curious enough to finally install it on my laptop and give it a try.

OMG, why didn’t I do this earlier!! After using it for a few days, I’m in love. It’ such a handy application to have to keep all sorts of notes and much more! Here are some highlights:

Your OneNote sits on the taskbar and can be accessed quickly and easily. You don’t even have to save your notes… The OneNote takes care of that for you.

Organizing your notes is easy! You can use folders, sections, and tabs, making it easy for you to find what you need later.

Capturing the image on your screen is a breeze with OneNote’s Screen Clipping feature. I know I will be using this more than Print Screen in the future.

You can import a document as an image, and make comments, etc. on it, right in OneNote.

It’s integrated with Outlook.

Crating to-do lists and flagging tasks are super easy.

You can have “shared sessions” with other people with OneNote.

If you tend to lose notes that you wrote down, or have a hard time organizing your notes on paper, OneNote could be a godsend!

Do you have any favorite applications that not many people do not seem to know? Let me know, and I’d love to include your story in my blog and/or newsletter.

(This article was originally published in my September 2009 Making Things Happen eNewsletter. To receive this complimentary eNewsletter directly in your inbox, please sign up in the sign-up box on the top-right corner of this page.)

VA Toolbox: Sharing Constant Contact Newsletter on Social Networking Sites

August 26th, 2009 by admin | 2 Comments | Filed in email marketing, online, tool

Thanks to the popularity of many social networking sites, more and more tools are popping up so that your message published in one place can also be shown at many more places without you having to manually repost it multiple times. This particular blog post, too, will be shared on Facebook and Twitter once I hit the “Publish” button in my WordPress Admin panel.

Constant Contact just added a new “Share Button” feature to their Email Marketing Plan with Email Archive option. This is what they say:

With our new Share Button feature, your old email newsletters can have new life on Facebook, Twitter, and other networking sites. Our Share Button lets your online visitors share those old newsletters on their social networking sites. It gives them a way to spread the word about you. And it gives prospects a real understanding of what it’s like to be your customer or member.

Simply put, if you choose to archive your Constant Contact email newsletters, you can add a share button to the archived newsletters (like the one you can see at the end of this post) that will let the visitors share them on Facebook, Twitter, and many more.

I personally do not archive my Constant Contact newsletters on their server, but for people who do, this could be a handy feature to have.

Speaking of archiving newsletters, do you archive them on your email marketing provider’s server? I do not see a huge benefit of doing that at this point, but if you do, please share!

VA Tools: Email Marketing – Confirmed Opt-in could be tricky

August 3rd, 2009 by admin | No Comments | Filed in email marketing, online, tool

yes

In my last post, I talked about confirmed opt-in (COI, aka double opt-in) process that is becoming a very popular method of adding subscribers to email lists. Well, I recently encountered an unexpected problem caused by it… Fortunately, it was not a major problem (at least for my client, that is), but I felt it was something that we all should be aware of when deciding whether to use a double opt-in or not.

Many email marketing services offer two ways to add subscribers to your lists.

You (account owner) add subscribers.
People add themselves to your lists via sign-up form on your website (like the one you see on the top-right corner of the pages on my website), etc.

And with the senario #2 above, you as the account owner need to decide whether people need to go through the confirmed opt-in process or they can just put themselves on your email list by clicking on your subscribe button without having to confirm their email addresses.

OK, let’s say you’ve set up your email marketing service account so that people need to confirm opt-in when signing up for your newsletter. But you also have some lists beside your newsletter subscriber list in your account. For example, you may have a list of people who have signed up for your teleseminar at some in-person event, and you want to send a series of emails to this particular list. The easiest way to do this is for you to manually add the names to a separate list, and choose this list when sending out the emails that you want to send them, right?

So Ms. Jane Doe signed up for the teleseminar. But when she got home, she decided to check out your website, saw the “Subscribe to my newsletter!” button, clicked on it, but totally missed the email with the link to confirm the subscription. So in your account, Ms. Doe’s status shows up as “unconfirmed”.

Well, once an email address is marked as “unconfirmed”, the system will not allow you to add the same address to any of your lists until the subscriber confirms the subscription! So, even though you know she really wanted to sign up for your teleseminar, you cannot add her to the “teleseminar” email list by yourself. I found this out when I was using Constant Contact, but most likely, the same rule applies with major email marketing services, I would think. And accoring to Constant Contact, even if you manually delete an email address with unconfirmed status and try to add the same address by yourself, the system will not let you do that as it remembers that address being on the list with unconfirmed status before.

So, the only way for Ms. Doe to be on *any* of your email marketing list now is for her to go back and find that confirmation request email (or start the subscription process all over) and go through the confirmed opt-in process. This can be done, of course, but it will most likely take up your time to communicate this with Ms. Doe… (I seem to recall some email marketing services have “confirmation reminder” emails that you can send to unconfirmed subscribers, but I do not think everybody does. I’d love to hear any input from you on this!)

I still think double opt-in is a great thing, but we should also remember many people either miss or do not pay attention to that confirmation request email, and there are some consequences, either obvious or not so obvious. Keep that in mind when you plan your email marketing!

Tags: confirmed opt-in, constant contact, double opt-in, email marketing

VA Toolbox: Email Marketing Services

July 31st, 2009 by admin | 3 Comments | Filed in email marketing, online, tool

Nowadays, email marketing seems to have become a must-have tool for solopreneurs and small business owners. There are so many benefits! Ali Brown, aka Ezine Queen (used to be), says:

“Publishing your own e-zine (e-mail newsletter) is one of the most effective ways to stay in touch with prospects, gain “expert” status, build a massive mailing list, and get more sales and/or clients.”

And naturally, so many service providers have been popping up in the email marketing scene, confusing everybody. How do you know which one is the best option for you?

As of the writing of this article, I see four major players in small business email marketing services: 1ShoppingCart (or its variations), AWeber, Constant Contact, and iContact. Each service has its unique strength, and it’s a good idea to evaluate each by taking advantage of the free trial offers. (Don’t we all love those free trials!) It’s worth taking some time to compare the services before making a decision because, once you start building your list with one provider, switching to another provider at some point could be a little (or sometimes big) headache. Why? Because you can’t simply transfer your list from one provider to another, and you will most likely lose lots of your subscribers in the process.

Let me explain this in a little more details. Have you ever signed up for an email newsletter, and received an instant email, asking you to click on a link to confirm the subscription in order to start receiving the newsletters? This whole process is called “double opt-in” or “confirmed opt-in”, and is becoming very popular in the email marketing industry. Constant Contact lists the advantages of double opt-in method as follows:

By adding the confirmation email to the subscription process, you ensure direct permission and lower your chances of having spam complaints made against you.

COI (confirmed opt-in) is an industry best practice that reduces the probability that a bad address may be added to a list, i.e. someone signing up with a spamtrap or another individual’s address.

COI provides a higher deliverability rate for those contacts who confirm. Mail to those contacts is sent from special mail servers and IP addresses that are very rarely blocked.

COI has become more prevalent within the past 2 years so your contacts will not be surprised by the confirmation email.

COI is looked on favorably by the general ISP and receiving community.

All good stuff. But, if you change your email marketing provider, you may need to request your subscribers to double opt-in again with the new provider. And the chances are, many people will not bother with this double opt-in, hence, dropping out from your email list.

Some email providers (at least at this point) allow you to manually transfer names from your old provider, but the deliverability rate will most likely drop if you skip the double opt-in process. I also have a sneaky feeling that, in the not-so-distant future, double opt-in may become mandatory as anti-spam law (CAN-SPAM Act) becomes more strict.

I plan to write my review of some of the major email marketing services in the future. Stay tuned!

Tags: 1SC, Aweber, constant contact, email marketing, iContact

VA Toolbox: Coaches Console

July 12th, 2009 by admin | No Comments | Filed in coach, online, tool

Are you a coach? Or maybe have worked with a coach?

I have so much respect for the coaching profession. I have received some valuable coaching myself, and I also work with a few clients who are coaches.

Especially when it comes to individual coaching, coaches need to spend tremendous amount of time not only having coaching sessions with their clients, but also scheduling sessions, keeping track of the dates/hours/number of appointments for each client, collecting various information from them, processing payments, creating and reviewing many forms, and so on.

Coaches Console provides coaches who are pulling hair to take care of all these time-consuming tasks with great automated system. It’s like having one place where you can perform all kinds of tasks very easily because the information you need for most of the tasks can also be found right there as well.

Here are some of the features:

Each of your client will have his/her own web pages where call prep forms, etc. can be filled out and submitted online.

Calendar offers an option for your clients to schedule their own appointments based on the available coaching times that you specify.

You can choose to send out confirmation and reminder emails for each appointment.

The system keeps track of the dates/times of appointments for each client.

It’s easy to create invoices because the agreement and appointment information is already stored in the system. Your merchant account can also be linked to the system to receive credit card payments.

It also offers communication tools like email newsletters to stay in touch with your clients between sessions.

Once you become a member, they will give you an access to so many helpful resources like teleseminars by renowned experts in related-fields.

Although the client’s web pages are designed to be pretty much self-explanatory, you may need to train your clients to use the system especially if they are not comfortable with using Internet tools. Also, there are some more features that I’d like to see added in the future, like more robust reporting options, a better help menu, and customizable appointment reminder emails. Nonetheless, I have to say, this is a very well thought-out system for busy coaches and their assistants. I would use it if I were a coach.

If you are currently using Coaches Console and need somebody to manage it, I may be able to help. Just drop me a line!

Tags: VA tools