Client Testimonial: SJK Consulting Pty Ltd

In November 2008, we had recently returned to Sydney from living in Croatia for 2.5yrs and my initial priority was settling into our new home before returning to my virtual assistance business. Since starting several months earlier, I had been continuously busy with branching out my inlaw's family business as well as a few virtual clients of my own, so I wanted to update my business and marketing plans before hitting the ground running.

However, thanks to the wonder of Twitter, Stephen Kelly of SJK Consulting Pty Ltd stumbled upon a tweet of mine that piqued his interest at the right time and the rest became history. A few discussions later I started assisting him on a daily basis and it was a really comfortable and easy partnering lasting 6 months. I appreciated the fact that Stephen was understanding and flexible allowing me to take care of my young family, and he in turn had the benefit of my support and commitment outside of office hours and on the weekends, so the arrangement suited us both.

Here Stephen talks about his experience with his first Virtual Assistant!

How did you find out about this type of virtual support?

I found information on what exactly a Virtual Assistant is and can do via Alex after meeting her on Twitter. I had briefly looked into it before, but not seriously. I actually wasn't thinking of hiring one until I got to know Alex online, and after talking to her about it, thought it was worth giving a try.

What were the most important qualities you were looking for?

For me it was probably availability and reliability. I work many strange and unpredictable hours, and knew for something to really work the person had to be accessible during those unusual hours.

What sort of tasks did VIP Virtual Solutions do for you?

Alex provided a variety of services such as calendar, email and task management, brainstorming, invoicing of clients, proofreading, digital transcriptions and documentation preparation. I'm sure there was a lot more!

Calendering was probably the most important thing I wanted and needed ie prioritising an updated “to do“ list every day and ensuring I completed the many tasks I was juggling and their deadlines. She always put her hand up offering to take some tasks off me, which was handy as it saved me from having to think about or decide what I could or should delegate in order to be more productive.

What was the best thing for you about having a Virtual Assistant?

The flexibility and being highly accessible. I could easily contact Alex wherever I was via skype, DM (direct message via Twitter), email, phone or SMS and ask for certain or urgent information such as researching relevant topics or just double checking and/or rescheduling meetings.

For me, it was essential I could contact my assistant quickly, feel comfortable about dealing with them, be totally confident they were actually doing what is required unsupervised (as they work remotely) and lastly, but most importantly, had my best interests at heart.

Another bonus is not having to provide office space for them or computer hardware, and the service provided was totally on an “as needed“ basis which is convenient as it's adaptable to my needs.

What is your advice to those considering working with a Virtual Assistant?

Make sure you get to know the person a bit before working together, they have relevant experience, are flexible to your needs and have a wide knowledge base. It's essential your VA know a little bit about everything, and also keeps up with new online and industry developments.

For more client testimonials click here!

Google Wave FAQs

Not so long ago, it seemed everyone was scrambling for a prebeta invite to google wave. Initially they were only for the privileged, but I managed to score a few from Twitter friends who wanted me to come along and join their gwave party! :)

I was quite curious after all the hype, however, after trying to familiarise myself with it and checking out the activity (or lack thereof), I soon got bored with listening to the echo of my own typing. I was drowning not gwaving as whenever I was "riding a gwave" none of my friends were, which is a stark difference to when I'm on Twitter so I guess I've been spoilt! Still, I've often read that in it's infancy Twitter was much the same before users starting really testing and developing it, so I haven't given up totally.

I have a feeling as 2010 progresses there'll be much more information and many examples of google wave's uses, so I thought I'd share some FAQs about the basics of Google Wave by Lifehacker, along with a few other worthwhile links to get you thinking about it's possibilities.

I'm also happy to now offer my readers the chance to grab 1 of 20 invitations I have available!! Just drop a comment here along with your gmail address, or you can tweet or email me and perhaps then we can ride a wave together?

Cheers
Alex ;)

Google Wave - A Complete Guide by Mashable
How I Came To Love Google Wave by Chris Brogan

The Google Wave Preview has been available to one million+ people for over three months now, but questions about Wave still abound, even by the early adopters who have gotten in and taken it for a test drive.

After publishing a book on everything I know about Wave, I still get many of the same questions I heard back when I started. Even folks usually bullish about new technology still don’t understand what they can use Wave for, how to sell it to their friends and co-workers so they have someone to use it with, and how to fit it into their workday.

As much as I’d love it if everyone bought a copy of my book for every person they invite to Wave, reading 102 pages just to “get” a product is ridiculous. So, I’ve compiled some of the most frequently asked questions I’ve gotten about Wave and my best (and briefest) answers for them right here in quick-fire format.

Step inside to hear a two-word definition of Wave, what it’s useful for, why you’d choose it over similar products, and how to do the things in Wave that most often trip up new users.

Q: How do you describe what Google Wave is in the fewest words possible?

A: Two words: Google Wave is multimedia wikichat.

Ok, I cheated a little. Wikichat is my made-up word for the combination of document collaboration (wikis) and messaging (chat). Imagine a Wikipedia page that only your workgroup can access and that multiple people can change simultaneously, with live, inline chat embedded in it and the ability to add online multimedia like an image slideshow, videos, maps, polls, a Sudoku game, video conference call and other interactive widgets. See it? That’s Wave.

Q: Why would I use Wave instead of email?

A: You’d use Wave instead of email because you can have real-time, IM-like conversations inside it, and cut out the lag time of asynchronous email communication — you know, when you send an email and have to wait for your recipients to read, reply and send one back. In Wave, if your recipient is online, you don’t have to wait. In fact, your recipient can start typing before you stop. It’s wacky.

Q: Then why would I use Wave instead of IM?

A: You’d use Wave instead of instant messenger because you can edit the same text, images, captions as someone else is at the same time. During an instant messenger conversation you pass back and forth a series of single-author, uneditable messages. In Wave, anyone can edit any message (or blip, in Wave-speak). Imagine correcting someone else’s typos during a chat yourself, without pointing out to them that they mistyped.

Wave also supports conversation threads, which means that instead of one linear discussion where new messages appear on top or below old ones, you can branch off sub-chats on different topics in one wave.

But mostly you use Wave to collaborate on a single copy of a document with multiple people at the same time.

Q: Then why would I use Wave instead of Google Docs?

A: GDocs is more like collaborative/web-based Microsoft Word, where the object is to create a flat file that gets printed or emailed to someone. Wave is more like a real-time wiki, which creates pages meant to be linked and constantly revised, pages that contain web-based multimedia and interactive gadgets.

In Wave you can drop multimedia like image slideshows, YouTube videos, Google Maps and countless other gadgets that you can’t in Google Docs. Like a wiki (and unlike Google Docs), you can link waves to each other very easily.

Wave is more like a real-time, workgroup Wikipedia than Google Docs or email.

Q: So, what would I actually use Wave for?

A: Wave works when two or more people need to co-write a document. A few common use cases include:

• collaborative meeting, conference, or class notes — whether or not everyone’s in the same physical room, several people taking notes in one place is much more efficient than everyone taking their own individual notes
• interviews — each question and answer series can be one thread within the parent interview thread, where the interviewer and interviewee can revise and expand questions and answers inline
• group event planning, like a party, trip, wedding
• co-writing and editing — whether it’s books, blogs, brochures, policies
• surveys
• translations
• project management

The following are questions I’ve gotten from people already in the Wave Preview, trying to figure out how to use the system.

Q: Now that I’ve gotten into the Preview, how do I invite other people in?

A: Search for a wave called “Invite others to Google Wave”. Enter title:”Invite others to Google Wave” into the search box, and press Enter. One wave with only you as a participant on it should turn up. In it, you can enter the email address of the folks you want to invite.

If no wave gets returned, be patient! Google may not have doled out nominations to you yet. Save your search to check back later by clicking the Save Search button on the bottom of the Search Panel.

Q: How do I use Wave if no one I know is ever online while I am?

A: To experience the real-time magic of Wave even if your friends aren’t online, search for public waves in action using the with:public search operator. Select a wave at the top of the list of results, and watch as others type into it — then jump in yourself.

Q: How do I make a wave public?

A: The easiest way is to use the Easy Public bot. Add easypublic@appspot.com to your Contact list, and then drag and drop it onto any wave to make it public.

Q: How do I see the next unread blip in a wave?

A: Press the Spacebar. In a big wave with lots of unread blips in various locations, the Spacebar will take you to the next unread blip in one press.

Q: How do I publish a wave in a blog post?

A: Right now the Madoqua Bot can give you the embed code for putting a wave on a public web page. Add Madoqua to your wave to get started.

Remember, though: the people viewing your blog post or web page will have to be logged into Wave to see the embedded wave. Otherwise they’ll just get a prompt to log into the Wave Preview, which is frustrating for people who aren’t in Wave yet.

Q: How do I remove a Wave contact?

A: To remove a contact from your Wave contacts list, you’ve got to do so in the regular Google Contacts interface. Click on the Manage contacts link at the bottom of Wave’s Contacts panel. Here’s how to remove a contact step-by-step.

Q: How do I remove a participant from a wave?

A: You can only remove bots from waves — not regular users. Yes, this is crazy and needs to be fixed stat. Here’s more on the inability to remove participants from a wave.

Q: How do I link to another wave inside a wave?

A: You can create a link to a wave in another wave by simply dragging and dropping the destination wave from the search panel onto the linking wave while you’re editing it. Make sure all your participants have access to the linked wave, otherwise they won’t be able to open it.

To link to a wave outside of Google Wave, first open the wave then minimise your Search panel. Copy and paste the link in your browser’s address bar — that link will open that wave with those panels minimised for anyone who clicks on it, is logged into Wave, and has access to that wave.

Q: How do I set my Google Wave icon?

A: Click on your name at the top of the Contacts panel. From the profile pop-up, click the Edit profile button. A special profile wave opens, and there you can upload an image that will appear as your icon whenever you participate in a wave or appear in others’ Contacts lists.

Q: How do I remove a gadget from a wave?

A: Hover over the gadget, and an arrow will appear on the top-right corner. Click it to view the drop-down and choose “Delete”.

Q: Since my friends and co-workers don’t use it every day, I forget to check my Wave inbox. How can I get notified when waves are updated without logging in?

The Google Wave Notifier (Windows only) is a system tray application that notifies you when you have unread blips in waves.

The Google Wave Add-on for Firefox notifies you of unread waves in Firefox’s status bar.

Now I’ve got questions for you. I’m working on the next edition of The Complete Guide to Google Wave, and I want to know: What do you want to see get added to the book? What burning questions did I miss here? How are you using Wave day-to-day — or what’s stopping you from doing so? Post your thoughts in the comments, and thanks in advance for your help expanding the book.

via lifehacker.com.au

Posted via web from VIP Virtual Solutions's posterous

10 Social Media Do’s and Don’ts

I was asked to be a part of a "Social Media Mastermind" Virtual Blogging Event and here is my post so I hope you enjoy.

If you'd like to receive more valuable information on social media, be sure to check out all the posts in this blogathon throughout January! :)

Are you one of those business owners who is quick to pass off social media as just another online fad? The truth is if you invest in learning how to leverage it, the opportunities are endless with the potential to provide the ultimate customer service, something sadly lacking in today’s world. So the choice businesses must now make is either embrace it, or risk being left behind.

Rather than focus on the hottest tools, I believe it is essential to firstly emphasise one’s approach to this new medium and the importance of creating valuable online conversations whilst developing worthwhile communities. This is central to your success, so here are 10 do’s and don’ts to consider before entering the socialmediasphere:

1. Don’t jump on the social media bandwagon just because it’s trendy. You’ll only wind up wasting your time if you don’t commit properly or believe in it, so educate yourself first. Subscribe to great bloggers who use and write about social media and marketing such as Chris Brogan, Pete Cashmore of Mashable, Chris Garrett and ProBlogger.

2. Many delude themselves thinking their "brand” will impress the masses, but that’s just superficial packaging. The person behind the brand is now the focus. You’ll receive credibility and respect only if and when it’s earnt by helping your online community.

3. Forget about using social media as just another way to broadcast your marketing "message” en masse. If you do, you’ll only wind up being ignored and popular with “me, myself and I”. It’s about engagement of your audience, so listening and conversation is key. Create your own community via free tools that make it easier and more manageable eg Seesmic and Tweetdeck.

4. Don’t put emphasis on being popular, obsessing over statistics and analytics of how many fans/followers you have. Focus on what makes you so younique; showcase your character, values, personality, knowledge and experience. Remember it’s quality over quantity as the number of fans bares no relation to the number of opportunities.

5. What worked for you and your business 5 or 10 years ago is now irrelevant in this new arena. This new age form of customer service is all about people to people, so invest in learning techniques on how to conduct yourself to ensure you make a positive and lasting impression.

6. Don’t construct what you think is a compelling personality to attract your "target market”. Those that succeed in social media are authentic and transparent about who they really are, and the true value of their services/products. Create a blog making it your hub for showcasing YOU. Start with free platforms such as Wordpress or Blogger.

7. Strategy is definitely not “one size fits all” so what might work for someone else, may not for you. Research other business case studies for inspiring examples but bear in mind your business’s needs should be assessed and a practical, productive strategy customised to those needs, as well as to you.

8. Don’t rely solely on online tools for all your business networking. Yes they can be quick ice-breakers and often lead to fantastic opportunities, however they can’t replace meeting prospective clients and partners face to face. Tweetups (Twitter meetups) are being held all over the world nowadays so search for those near you or when you’re travelling. Better yet create your own!

9. Social media is not in place of a marketing strategy, it is another piece of the marketing pie. What other marketing activities are you involved with both online and offline? Plan realistically what your business and marketing objectives and goals are, including measuring your progress, so you can change your strategy when necessary.

10. First impressions really count, and you have less than 5 seconds! Put your best profiles forward, be consistent with your business branding and make sure your information is always up to date.

Visit me at VIP Virtual Solutions to take advantage of my FREE social media evaluation (for a limited time only) or for more information on social media management and training services.

About the author: Alexandra Popovic of VIP Virtual Solutions is a Virtual Assistant based in Sydney, Australia and has been using social media for her business and clients for the past year. She is a social media specialist, consistently in the Top 20 Twitterer’s in Australia and her services include personal assistance, marketing and sales support, as well as social media management and training in the use of current main platforms such as Twitter, Facebook business page, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Alexandra ensures her clients leverage these tools as part of their overall marketing strategy, customising a plan and schedule which allows them to tap into their client base, establish a high profile in their industry and provide the ultimate customer service.

Related posts:

1. Dynamic Changes in Virtual Events
2. The Social Network in Education Part 2
3. The Social Network in Education Part 1
4. Over-Sharing in Social Media
5. Social Medias Mastermind Event

via olindaservices.com

Ten Technologies That Will Rock 2010

Now that the aughts are behind us, we can start the new decade with a bang. So many new technologies are ready to make a big impact this year. Some of them will be brand new, but many have been gestating and are now ready to hatch. If there is any theme here it is the mobile Web. As I think through the top ten technologies that will rock 2010, more than half of them are mobile. But those technologies are tied to advances in the overall Web as well.

Below is my list of the ten technologies that will leave the biggest marks on 2010:

1. The Tablet: It’s the most anticipated product of the year. The mythical tablet computer (which everyone seems to be working on). There are beautiful Android tablets

   , concept tablets, and, of course, the one tablet

   which could define the category, the Apple Tablet. Or iSlate or whatever it’s called. If Steve Jobs is not working on a tablet, he’d better come up with one because anything else will be a huge disappointment.Why do we need yet another computer in between a laptop and an iPhone? We won’t really know until we have it. But the answer lies in the fact that increasingly the Web is all you need. As all of our apps and data and social lives move to the Web, the Tablet is the incarnation of the Web in device form, stripped down to its essentials. It will also be a superior e-reader for digital books, newspapers, and magazines, and a portable Web TV.

2. Geo: The combination of GPS chips in mobile phones, social networks, and increasingly innovative mobile apps means that geolocation is increasingly becoming a necessary feature for any killer app. I’m not just talking about social broadcasting apps like Foursquare and Gowalla. The advent of Geo APIs from Twitter , SimpleGeo, and hopefully Facebook will change the game by adding rich layers of geo-related data to all sorts of apps. Twitter just recently launched its own Geo API for Twitter apps and acquired Mixer Labs, which created the GeoAPI.
3. Realtime Search: After licensing realtime data streams from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and others, Google and Bing are quickly ramping up their realtime search. But realtime search is still treated as a silo, and is not regularly surfaced in the main search results page. In 2010, I expect that to change as the search engines learn for what types of searches it makes sense to show Tweets and other realtime updates. In the meantime, a gaggle of realtime search startups such as Collecta, OneRiot, and Topsy will continue to push the ball forward on the realtime search experience. Realtime search will also become a form of navigation, especially on Twitter and Facebook. The key will be to combine realtime search with realtime filters so that people are delivered not only the most recent information but the most relevant and authoritative as well.
4. Chrome OS: In November, Google gave the world a sneak peek at its Chrome operating system, which is expected to be released later this year. The Chrome OS is Google’s most direct attack on Windows with an OS built from the ground up to run Web apps fast and furious. Already a Google is rumored to be working on a Chrome Netbook which will show the world what is possible with it a “Web OS.” It sounds like it would be perfect for Tablet computers also (see above). Chrome is a risky bet for Google, but it is also potentially disruptive.
5. HTML5: The Web is built on HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and the next version which has been taking form for a while is HTML5

   . Already browsers such as Firefox and Google’s Chrome (the browser, not the OS) are HTML5-friendly. Once HTML5 becomes more widespread across the Web, it will reduce the need for Flash or Silverlight plug-ins to view videos, animations, or other rich applications. They will all just be Web-native. HTML5 also supports offline data storage, drag-and-drop, and other features which can make Web apps act more like desktop apps. A lot of Websites will be putting HTML5 under the hood in 2010.

6. Mobile Video: With video cameras integrated into the latest iPhone 3GS and other Web phones, live video streaming apps are becoming more commonplace—both streaming from phones and to them. As mobile data networks beef up their 3G bandwidth and even start to tiptoe into true broadband with 4G (which Verizon is heading towards with its next-gen LTE network), mobile video usage will take off.
7. Augmented Reality: One of the coolest ways to use the camera lens on a mobile phone is with the increasing array of augmented reality apps. They add a layer of data to reality by placing everything from photos to Tweets to business listings directly on top of the live live image captured by the camera. Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera, Layar

   , GraffitiGeo and even Yelp are examples of augmented reality apps.

8. Mobile Transactions: As mobile phones become full-fledged computers, they can be used for mobile commerce also. One area poised to take off in 2010 are mobile payments and transactions. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s latest startup Square turns the iPhone into a credit card reader. Verifone has its competing product, as does Mophie

   . The idea is that any mobile phone can become a point of sale, and those mobile transactions can tie into back-end accounting, CRM, and other enterprise systems.

9. Android: Last year saw the launch of nearly two dozen Android-powered phones, including the Verizon Droid. In a few days, Google’s Nexus One will launch as the first Android phone which can be unlocked from any given carrier (it is launching with T-Mobile

   ). Android is Google’s answer to the iPhone, and as it reaches critical mass across multiple carriers and handsets it is becoming increasingly attractive to developers. There are already more than 10,000 apps on Android, next year there will be even more. And other devices running on the mobile OS are launching as well.

10. Social CRM: We’ve seen the rise of Twitter and Facebook as social communication tools. This year, those modes of realtime communication will find their way deeper into the enterprise. Salesforce.com is set to launch Chatter, it’s realtime stream of enterprise data which interfaces with Twitter and Facebook and turn them into business tools. Startups like Yammer and Bantam Live are also making business more social.

Chrome OS

via techcrunch.com

Posted via web from VIP Virtual Solutions's posterous