A Virtual Assistant Can Help With Your Online Content

So you’ve had your website designed. It’s looking beautiful. Now it’s time to put content on it, but you’ve got your business to run. You’re busy but you know that keeping your website updated will generate more traffic for your site and hopefully those visitors to your site will become clients. Perhaps your website is one of the main ways you communicate with your client base, or perhaps you deliver exclusive content to your customers via an online membership programme.

Virtual Assistance to upload your online content

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You have all this great content in your head, but formatting is not your thing and you tend to miss the typos. Wouldn’t you love to be able to write/type out your words and hand it over to someone else to proofread, format, add photos and upload to your site?

Sound good? Well did you know that you don’t have to hire a permanent employee to help you with these sorts of tasks? You could hire a virtual assistant to help you with uploading your content. A virtual assistant provides admin services but operates as his/her own business, so you only pay for the hours worked. Hire a Virtual Assistant to help you with your online content, and get on with running your business.

Contact Michelle today to discuss your business needs.

Is Your Email Inbox the Bermuda Triangle?

Recently, I happened upon a Life Hack article by James Clear. He shared with us five excellent ways we could employ to get faster email responses. James said that in his discussions with people about their email habits:

“The number one complaint is that people don’t get responses to the emails they send out.”

This made me think that there should be a responsibility for us as receivers of email to do our utmost to keep on top of it all. You don’t want your inbox to be known as the Bermuda Triangle of inboxes: messages go in, never to be seen again.

Here are a few tips on how to manage it:

  1. Unsubscribe. Try to limit the email ‘noise’ by unsubscribing to all publications that you haven’t read in a certain period of time, depending on the frequency of the publication. If you want to check in with a particular blogger or business, put the site in your browser favourites and check in when you have a spare few moments. You probably won’t even miss knowing what Lady Gaga is up to, and you’ll definitely lessen the burden of a bloated inbox.
  2. Automate. If there are certain subscriptions that you just can’t part with,  many email applications allow you to manage your inbox by implementing automated filing of messages into a folder for later perusal. This helps to separate the later reading from the messages from your boss/client that are important and need action. Plus, if you automate it, you don’t have to lift a finger. The emails will be waiting for you when you are ready to read them. You can catch up on all the celebrity gossip at your leisure.
  3. Delete. If you are starting to feel weighed down by all those unread email messages in your ‘Later Reading’ folder, delete. What are you missing in the grand scheme of things–an email telling you 5 things you should never do on Twitter? I can assure you the cure for cancer is not in one of those deleted emails.

So that’s the decluttering, what about how you manage email?

Many people procrastinate and the fact that the person is not right in your face demanding something somehow makes it easier to ignore email.

But think of it from the sender’s point of view. He or she is probably wondering:

  • Did she receive my email? Is she working on the task I have given her? Am I going to have to, heaven forbid, do it myself?
  • Why doesn’t he respond to my email, is he offended by my suggestions that he use a more effective deodorant?
  • It’s been two days since I sent that email to XYZ service provider and they’ve not even acknowledged my email message, perhaps I should look for another person to do this lucrative, career-boosting project?

Here are a few things you could do to be a courteous and effective email communicator:

  1. Do it now. If it is something you can do quickly, just do it. You’ve just unsubscribed to that celebrity gossip blog, so you should have some free time to do, you know, work.
  2. Close the loop. If you have done something that someone has asked of you, let them know it is done. Plus, because you ‘did it now’, they will be pleased with your quick turnaround.
  3. Acknowledge receipt. If you are unable to do it now, acknowledge receipt and try to advise an estimated time/date that you can get back to the sender.
  4. Thanks but no thanks. If someone is touting their business to you  and you don’t have any interest in their services/product, tell them so. Be polite and to the point, but do take the time to respond. It costs nothing to be courteous.
  5. Use the phone. If you are reading an arm-length email with many questions, rather than type out a response, sometimes it is much quicker to address the email in a telephone conversation.
  6. Use Auto-reply messages. If you have a high-volume of email due to some common trigger such as a promotion or registration for an event, it can be useful to use an out-of-office/auto-reply message to confirm receipt and to advise the senders when you will be able to respond to their queries. Most people are happy to know that you received their email message and will get back to them within a reasonable timeframe.

I hope you found these tips helpful. Do you have any suggestions on how to manage email?

Wanna See My Fonts?

Have you ever seen the sitcom, ‘The Middle’? One of my favourite members of the TV family in this programme is a boy named Brick. He is extremely intelligent and endearing, but could be classed as odd.

He always has his nose in a book and he has a love of, well, fonts. His idea to persuade a girl in his class to like him was to show her his fonts. Have a look at this little clip and you’ll see a bit of Brick’s quirky charm.


This reminded me of one time when I was working with a colleague, and we were composing an email message to a software vendor. The fonts got muddled up, and part of the message was in Times New Roman, and the other part was in Arial. Both my colleague and I stopped immediately and said, “Wait a minute! What’s happened to the fonts? That simply won’t do, tsk, tsk.” and we quickly fixed the inconsistency in the fonts.

Magnifying Glass

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Meanwhile, our neighbour in the next cubicle was shaking his head at us, thinking we were mad to worry about such a detail. My colleague and I? We had an appreciation for The Font. If you are going to do something, then it should be done well…in a uniform font, preferably in a serif font that is easy to read, not too big, not too small…

I think I just realised that Brick is not the only one who could be called odd!

My strange font fascination aside, if you are not the kind of person to notice where the fonts have got muddled up, then chances are, you would do well to be supported by someone who notices these things. Having an appreciation for the details adds polish to your written communication and is well worth the effort to make sure it is right.

Need help proofreading your documents? Want someone to manage your email communications to eliminate typos and grammatical errors? Contact michelle@magicvasolutions.com to discuss your business needs.

So What Do You Do For a Living?

This is the question that is inevitably asked at any social function. It’s the conversation opener when standing around the BBQ, kitchen or pool.

Unfortunately for me, my occupation is a bit of a mystery to most people. Here’s how a typical conversation might go:

Person at Dinner Party: “So, what do you do for work?”

Me: “I’m a Virtual Assistant”

Person at Dinner Party: “What’s does a Virtual Assistant do?”

Me: “Well, it varies, but I work with list management software, manage membership sites, upload content, do HTML editing, monitor email accounts, create content for social media updates, edit audio, manage customer contact activities, set up teleseminars, broadcast emails and newsletters and do some diary management.

What's a Virtual Assistant

You're a what?

Person at Dinner Party: “Oh.” Blank look.

Me: “I do admin work from home.”

Person at Dinner Party: “Oh! It must be great to work from home.”

Me: “Yes, it really is.”

A lot of people don’t know what a Virtual Assistant is, but that is changing and more and more small business owners are beginning to recognise the value in having a Virtual Assistant to do all the admin tasks they dread or are just too busy to do themselves.

A Virtual Assistant is paid only for the hours worked. You don’t pay for coffee breaks or chats by the water cooler. That’s 100% productivity! You wouldn’t get that from an employee working in your office.

You don’t have to give a Virtual Assistant a desk or a computer, all this is provided by the VA in his or her own home. There’s no fiddly withholding of tax or paying of superannuation, because the Virtual Assistant is not your employee, but rather a business contracting out its services.

To find out more about what remote administrative services Magic VA Solutions can provide for you, feel free contact me: michelle@magicvasolutions.com