Hello,

I’ve had a ‘cherry’ good response to last week’s free online resources and tips that I may try to make this a consistent blog event.

I look for resources which not only help business owners improve productivity but those benefits which offer greater exposure and publicity. I have also decided to expand this selection to include ‘fun stuff’; namely sites that entertain without being terribly distracting.

www.helpareporterout.com Looking for ways to get your name and business recognized? Do you want to be quoted in major publications? Help a Reporter Out, also known as HARO, is a venue set up by celebrity blogger Peter Shankman to help reporters find material for article topics. Once you sign up at Shankman’s site, he sends a morning and an afternoon email listing of topics which reporters wish to address. Shankman organizes reporter queries with contact information so it is very easy to click on a topic for reply and then quickly send your expert advice to the inquirer. If your thoughts are deemed worthy and are published by the reporter, this can only mean greater exposure for your own business. Several of my clients have been quoted and published in books, major magazines, newspapers and online sites through HARO. (It can be a little tedious going through the email topics each day…which is why hiring a virtual assistant to do that for you is tremendously useful. Whether you do it yourself or hire someone to scan the topics for you, the public relations exposure from this public relations opportunity is priceless.)

http://www.15secondpitch.com/new/ Has anyone ever asked you want it is that you do for a living and you’ve replied with, “I’m a speaker” or, “I’m a publicist.” This type of a response does not always elicit great interest. If you are attending a networking event, people really want to know what it is that you can do for them. 15secondpitch is one of the neatest sites for creating an elevator speech, which is a short speech that you would give to someone explaining in brevity exactly what it is you do and what it is that you can do for them. Follow the prompts in the 15secondpitch link and the end result is a speech you can practice and fine-tune to use the next time someone asks you, “What do you do?”

http://www.echosign.com/ Aiming for a paperless office? Bogged down by paper contracts, expensive postage rates and the lag time waiting for a client to return a signed document to you? Enter EchoSign. This is an exceptional electronic signature program which is great for sending contracts electronically for legal signatures. Sign up free for 5 transactions per month. Once a contract is created, upload a document to the EchoSign site where a signed copy can be sent to the client and returned to you with the client’s signature. Contracts can be stored and tracked in EchoSign for future reference allowing for a completely paperless sign, copy and file system.

http://www.hulu.com/ Hulu enables you to watch popular TV shows and movies online. There are no downloads required and there is no charge. This is not a YouTube-type site, rather this is a comprehensive directory of TV programming offering good quality reception. Quoted from the site itself, “Hulu has thousands of videos and movies from Fox, E! Entertainment , MGM, Sony, NBC and many, many more. Popular shows like The Simpsons, The Office, House, Firefly and others are archived and made available for audiences. They are all archived and you can view the content by genre, or alphabetical order, or by doing a search.”

My Hours http://www.myhours.com/ This is a time management, timesheet, time tracking solution. It enables you to track your work time, projects you work on and tasks you perform. It is web-based and can be used from any location at any time.

Pandora http://www.Pandora.com – If you like to work to music this is a great site to set and forget. It will play your favorite songs from any number of genres you choose. Nothing to download and no cost to the user.

RoboForm http://www.roboform.com/ Is an online program for managing, filling in, encrypting and generating random passwords. This is a great tool if you handle multiple client websites. RoboForm saves website passwords into Passcards. Then RoboForm can automatically fill in login information from these Passcards. RoboForm can save secret text snippets such as ATM passwords or lock combinations in to what is called Safenotes. Once registered, there are videos to take users through every aspect of this useful program.

I’ve got plenty more useful sites to blog so please check back next week for more.

In addition to working as a virtual assistant, I also work a few hours a week in a popular children’s clothing store. I took a seasonal position last year and was honored when the manager asked me to stay on as a permanent part-time employee. While news of layoffs was on every media channel, it seemed foolish to turn down any job and one that I enjoyed. The merchandise is of great quality, bright and trendy while the interaction with customers and co-workers served as a nice diversion from my frenetic but thriving virtual assistance business. Although managing my professional time around the two jobs has been a challenge, the flexibility of being a virtual assistant affords me such opportunities.

Retail work is very difficult. There is no other way to describe it. Anyone who has worked in retail knows how trying the job can be emotionally and physically. Each customer transaction is different, so a good sales associate has to be ready to handle a variety of personalities as well as have the ability to ‘stomach’ the way customers treat sales associates. Some customers feel I am the ‘bottom of the food chain’ while others are grateful for the service I provide.

Often we read about how a sales associate should treat the customer who is ‘always right’. But little is said about good customer etiquette. A positive attitude toward the associate can actually bring out the best in the sales transaction.

10 Rules of Customer Retail Etiquette

1) When checking out at the service desk and you only have a large bill to pay for your items, it is respectful to ask the associate if she can ‘break’ the bill first before handing it to her.

Reason: I am not an ATM machine and my drawer is usually set up with change (bills and coins) for about $100 for security purposes. If I just signed on for my shift, chances are I cannot make the change for your large bill. If you ask beforehand, often times I can tell you if I can break the bill or not and move the transaction along. Please do not assume I can make change.

If I cannot break the large bill…

2) Please do not take it out on me. There is no reason to get testy if I say I do not have change for a $100 and the receipt is for an $8.00 item. I do not have access to the store safe and I cannot open a co-worker’s register to make the change.

3) Please hand the money to me in my own hand. Please do not lay the bills on the counter with change. It takes time to pick money off the counter and the transaction will go much faster if you hand me the money. Although it is my job to take the money from you it is just courteous to hand the money to the associate just as I directly hand you the receipt and your filled bags.

4) Please do not act upon any last minute shopping while you are on the line. Decide before you get up to the register if you want to buy something or not. I am responsible for keeping the line moving and other customers look to me to move everyone in and out quickly. Our time is as important as your own.

5) Please do not come into a store with open food container even if you do not see a sign that states so. Children are messy. I cannot take the time to clean up spilled ice cream or fruit juice. Please do not throw your food trash in my own counter trash can. There is a mall garbage can outside the store to dispense of food items. Someone handed me a leaking smoothie the other day that would have made an even bigger mess in my counter trash can.

6) Please keep your children busy while you shop. I cannot babysit your children while they pull down clothing from the racks or play hide-n-go-seek in the dressing rooms. I once saw a father throw a football to his son in my store near the store entrance. Teach your children that public shopping places should be respected. A store is not a playground.

7) Please do not take the tags off clothing and shoes and let your children wear them out the door. Wait until they are paid for. I will gladly cut off the tags for you. If you rip the clothing before paying for it while trying to take the tag off, we incur a loss which is passed onto the customer in the form of higher prices.

If you need something on a high display, please do not grab the hook yourself and try to take it down. Ask me, I will help you and I can do it much faster. Someone can get hurt trying to use the metal hook.

9) Please use the public restroom in the mall. Please do not ask to use our employee bathroom which is located in our busy and stacked stockroom unless it is an emergency. We cannot leave customers in the bathroom by themselves so it is not a good use of my time to stand in the stockroom waiting for the customers to come out of the restroom. If it is an emergency, I understand and can make an exception.

10) Please do not place your baby on the counter while you check out. Diapers leak and the counter needs to stay clean. This is my workspace. Please respect that. Children are curious, often grabbing my register supplies and credit card digital pens.

Thank you.

Janine

It’s the VA in me…always seeking ways to simply improve my virtual-ness… searching for virtual resources to assist in my clients’ businesses and for new ways to improve my own methodology.

I look for plug-ins and free programs to allow me to run faster, jump higher and improve creativity. Here are five of my most recently used free resources I recommend.

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1) Xobni – (Inbox spelled backwards) For Outlook users, I believe this plug-in has become one of the most powerful email tools ever created, really! Xobni is easily downloaded. All emails are automatically categorized by conversation. Viewable in a separate frame, one email is selected from my Inbox and then all emails pertaining to that particular sender or topic are listed by date and categorized together.

When I need to find an email or an attachment, I just click on the sender’s name and all emails line up. A brief synopsis of those emails appear in a separate frame so it is an at-a-glance set-up which allows viewing and sorting in far less time than finding and searching myself. I am particularly impressed with Xobni when I have several emails from a client which need to be sorted by topic. So if I am working on a newsletter, all the emails pertaining only to that newsletter are grouped together.

The greatest time saver has been the ease in finding attachments sent via email. Connected to Facebook and other social networking sites (optional selection) the sender’s social networking info and Facebook photo appear in the heading. Additionally…any connections I may have with the sender appear in another column as well (under the Facebook photo) so I am able to see who I have in common with the sender of the email. Clever, clever.

Oh, and one more feature…if I click on a sender’s Xobni frame, I can view a chart which offers a line graph when the sender replies to the most email. This is a great tool for deciding when someone might open my email and to send it at a time when the recipient is most likely to answer the email.

2) If you are looking for a list of contacts to use for your next project or direct mailing, I recommend a site called Jigsaw which is an online directory of free, downloadable Company information and more than 12 million business Contacts. Copied from the company site: “Think of it as an exchange of Contacts you have for Contacts you need. The more you contribute, the more you earn. That’s it. This makes the Jigsaw system self-correcting, rewarding you for doing what you would do on your own. Points are also awarded when you update incorrect Contacts or challenge bad Contacts, keeping the system timely and accurate.” Easy sign up and a great option to buying mailing lists.

3) If you are looking for a way to make a website page printer friendly so that I can add as a pdf to my website or blog, Print Friendly is the way to go. When I find a page I think will be helpful for my blog readers, I insert the URL into the program and Print Friendly copies the document for you to edit to a readable format. You can remove images and make edits, while any edits can also be undone.

4) Remote access to my own computer and my client’s computers has been useful on many levels. I have used Logmein for about 3 years now. I use the free version for my home use but I have used the Pro version for client use. The main difference between the two versions is that the Pro version allows me to print from a client’s screen to my own printer. Once Logmein is downloaded, I can access my computer using any other computer from any location. In my case, I access my desktop located in my office which holds most of client programs and files doing so via my laptop from anywhere I go. If I want to step into another room with my laptop or take this with me to the library to work, I can easily access my desktop and work with all the programs I need from wherever I am! I collaborated with a real estate client in California using her ACT! database and did so from my location in Florida. Great for the time spent waiting in a doctor’s office. And…I recently read that Logmein is available as an iPhone application, which was the clincher for me to purchase an iPhone this fall.

5) www.Openoffice.org If you do not have Microsoft Office, you can use this program which is an open source program to open and save any document using the Office extensions such as .xls, .doc and .ppt. (Excel, Word or PowerPoint documents). The only program that Open Office does not work with is Microsoft Publisher. Email me if you want the link for an open source desktop publishing program.

Bonus Links: Did you ever want to take a screen shot of something on your computer an convert it to pdf to send as an attachment to someone or post to your blog or website? If so, then I recommend Screenhunter 5 and PDF995 . Once you have the image you want to take a snapshot, click Screenhunter 5 and it will save the document to wherever you indicated. The free program even allows for some editing and saving as a jpg file. Once you have that image, PDF995 easily converts any documents to pdf format to use as you wish. I have used both of these for years and have never looked for an alternative.

Next week I will post an additional 5 free resources (maybe more!) to help you grow your business. Please subscribe to my blog here for updates. For even more tips and resources, subscribe to my newsletter.

Please feel free to email me with any questions.

Thanks,

Janine

I’m taking this poll for my newsletter entitled, “A Good Sandwich” where I will offer information about how a Virtual Assistant can help you grow your business. I’ll share stories and offer great ideas (some free!) to help market you and your company.

Please sign up here for my newsletter if you are interested http://www.YourVirtualWizard.com and scroll down to the sandwich!
Identities are confidential in case you don’t want someone to know what kind of bread you like!

Thanks for your help!

Janine