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.

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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!

Last week I went to a Women in Business networking breakfast, hosted by our  MPP, Lisa MacLeod.

Although I network online all the time using Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, I have not done too much business networking in person in recent years.

Oh, I have my elevator speech, and I talk to everyone about what I do for a living, but I don’t actively seek clients in my own area. In fact, as a virtual assistant, I have purposely built a clientele that is located away from my hometown.

There are reasons that I have done that, of course. Prior to being an internet marketing virtual assistant, I was focused on the hospitality industry, working mainly with variable costs in restaurants and bars.

I worked from my own home office, and could compile, analyze and report on the data from my own office, I found that the clients I was working with preferred that I was on their site more than I thought I needed to be.

So, for many years I still travelled back and forth from my office to restaurants … and also needed to be available at some crazy times of day, being that the restaurant industry is not open ‘regular office hours’. I worked many holidays and weekends, and although I was very good at what I did, sometimes it just didn’t seem like it was worth it.

When I decided to swap my hospitality clients for online clients, I made a conscious decision to work with people whose offices or businesses I could not possibly drive to. Harsh? Probably. But it wouldn’t have worked for me otherwise.

Now I have established myself over the last three or so years, and am comfortable with setting my own work boundaries … and so I am finally getting out there in my own city!

Needless to say, the breakfast was great, and I enjoyed meeting many women who are running their own businesses like I am.

I learned from going to FoVA last year that getting together with people who understand my line of work is an invaluable source of support for me. That’s what this breakfast did as well, and I am sorry that it took me so long to realize the benefits I could gain by networking locally.

I will definitely look forward to the next networking meeting, wherever it is!