Tracey D’Aviero, Virtual Assistant

Teleseminars, webinars, podcasts, online radio or talkshows, and webcasts are really changing the way many business owners conduct their meetings and training sessions.

Setting up, managing, and delivering virtual events is one of the newest service offerings on many Virtual Assistant menus these days, and VAClassroom is right up there again, providing this new Certification course.

From organizing to repurposing content, you’ll learn everything you need to provide your clients with the expertise they deserve. Check it out! I sure intend to!

As a solopreneur, one of the most important things that you can do in your business (and for your business!), is to grow with it. Although you might go into business for yourself with a very static view of which services you will provide, you need to be aware that the old adage ‘a change is as good as rest’ is really true. You can breathe new life into your everyday work by keeping an eye out for change and growth opportunities!

I have been a solopreneur for many years, but over the years I have grown from providing financial services to providing Internet marketing and social media services. I am certain that I could never have predicted that I would be working with shopping carts and social media when I started my business so many years ago as a food & beverage consultant, but I grew with my business when I saw change approaching, and I would never look back.

How did I grow? I learned everything I could about what I was doing at the time, and then I kept an eye up ahead in the road to see what else was coming my way.

I have said I am in perpetual learning mode, and that is true. When I worked in finance, I studied accounting and business and took workshops in Excel and databases. I needed to know that I was always using the most current methods in my daily work.

It just so happened that I needed to take over some projects from a colleague that were closely related to my financial work. They were documents and training manuals. So I grew in the direction of words, and away from numbers.

I began to focus mainly on document work, and I took writing courses and learned about back-of-the-book indexing. I refreshed my education in the principles of grammar and sentence structure. I expanded into proofreading website copy and then realized that HTML was really not as difficult as everyone said it was. So I took a course in HTML.

That has been one of the smartest moves I ever made in my career. I do not do web design, but being able to set up sales pages and do website updates is a really big business for a Virtual Assistant.  I have continued to grow with Internet marketing and now social media.

Perpetual learning is a great way to keep growing with your business. By recognizing the changing needs of your business, you can bring a fresh, new perspective to your clients. Give them what they need, maybe  even before they realize they need it!

This week I was able to attend the Ottawa Virtual Alliance (OVA) October breakfast meeting. OVA is the association for Virtual Assistants who are located in the Ottawa area. We keep in touch via email, but we get together several times a year for breakfast and a chat, and that’s what I really like about this group.

When you work on your own, it really helps to get together with people who ‘get’ what you do for a living. I am aware that there are many people who don’t understand what I do for work, and it’s always nice to get together with my colleagues to have a bit of a chat about how work is going.

I have mentioned before that I really value the face time that I can get with my colleagues, and OVA is no exception. We enjoy breakfast while using each other as sounding boards for ideas and issues, and sharing industry stories.  Barbara Best (Virtual Works)and Raymonde Lemire (Documents Etc.)are the founders of OVA and together they provide support and direction for new and aspiring VAs, as well as great advice and insight for those of us who have been in the business for a while.

We have just set up a Facebook Page for Ottawa Virtual Alliance. Check it out here, and please feel free to contact us if you are a VA in the Ottawa area. Our next breakfast meeting is December 11 and there is always space at the table!

And if you are not in the Ottawa area, seek out your Virtual Assistant association in your area – you will be able to share and network with people who truly understand our industry.

VAClassroom is offering a new course that will teach you to create fantastic Facebook pages!

Facebook fan pages can be used as a great marketing tool for your product or service, because so many people are connected to social networking sites these days.

Fan pages integrate with your other marketing tools, such as your blog, and can help you reach a bigger audience. By getting increased exposure, you can increase traffic to your website or blog, and connect with more potential clients and generate more income opportunities.

Visit VAClassroom to learn more about the course, and to register!

I recently finished my Social Media Marketing Specialist certification through VAclassroom.

I love taking courses through VA classroom. The ones I take are self-paced, which means that you do them on your own schedule. This can be very helpful for people like me who have a full schedule of client work and a busy family life.

I am in perpetual learning mode. I love to learn new things, and I am constantly seeking out places to learn things about my business.

However, if there is a course, seminar or event online that doesn’t offer a self-paced element (or if a follow up mp3 or document can not be sent to me after the live event has taken place), I won’t sign up for it.   At times I have found myself logged in at 2 a.m. just because it suited my schedule, so, for me, self-paced learning really is the way to go.

Of course, self paced learning is not a new concept – the option of taking correspondence courses was available when I went to high school many years ago.

In fact, my girlfriend took a correspondence French course while we were in high school. She was not great in French, but I used to help her through her lessons, as I plugged away at a similar curriculum in our high school. She studied mainly business courses like informatics and accounting in high school, and I stayed with the mainstream academic stuff, so she took her French elective via correspondence.

Long story short, she got her French credits and it was a good thing she did, as she moved away after high school and worked for the Disney chain, and she was able to go to France to help open EuroDisney. Now she lives in Holland with her husband and two boys, and runs her own business.

So for many years self-paced learning has been beneficial for people like my friend, but now with the internet, this form of learning can really help you enhance anyone’s personal life or business.

The concept is simple: someone puts together some training materials in the form of PDFs or PowerPoint presentations along with audio files or video files with the training instructions on them, and there is the course. You sign up for them and you are able to study when it’sconvenient for you.

So whether you call them correspondence, self-paced, home study or long-distance learning courses, the concept of taking someone’s prepared materials and learning at your own pace, is a great way to continue to improve your education and tending to your busy life.

It can give you the edge over competitors online, by helping you to stay current with the changing trends of the internet. I highly recommend to find a place like VAclassroom that offers programs on subjects that interest you, and get learning!