From the Desk of Janet Barclay

I recently had the pleasure of reading Love Every Leaf, The Life of Landscape Architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander by Kathy Stinson. Perhaps you are wondering what interest the stepmother of two grown children might have in reading a biography written primarily for young people, and why this particular book - unless of course you already know that the author is my sister, and one of my clients. While she was writing this book, to maximize the use of her time, she had me conduct some of the research into the historical background, and I was very eager to see how she wove these facts into the story. That in itself was quite exciting to me personally.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, maybe you’re wondering why I’ve decided to write about this in my blog. Why would this book interest you, as a small business owner? Well, let me tell you!

While studying landscape architecture at Smith College nearly 70 years ago, Cornelia learned "3 P’s" that would benefit any of us to keep in mind:

1. Be Patient. People often need time to come round to your way of thinking.
2. Be Persistent. Stand up for what you know is right.
3. Be Polite. People are more likely to be convinced by your arguments if you present them in a pleasant manner.

During her impressive career, she added two more "Ps" to her arsenal which also contributed to her success. Can you guess what they were? If not, I highly recommend that you read Love Every Leaf! In addition to finding the answer to this question; you’ll be fascinated to learn about this amazing woman who has contributed so much to the world, and continues to do so in her 80s.

*This post was featured in the Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival #4 

One of the questions I asked in my recent Online Marketing and Networking Survey was Do you have a blog? I received the following responses:

A couple of people contacted me to let me know that I should have included Yes, but I have not posted to it recently as one of the answers. I realize that lots of people get excited about the idea of blogging, but then lose interest, run out of ideas, or are unable to make the time to keep it up. It would have been very interesting to capture that information, so I‘m absolutely kicking myself for that omission! 6% of the participants skipped this question, and maybe they fell into this category.

What’s noteworthy here is that 44% of the people are active bloggers, and an additional 23% plan to start blogging. This means that the number of people who are not interested in blogging is about half of the number who are! This may of course be due to the fact that at least a third of the participants work in online businesses - I have no doubt that a survey of professionals working in traditional offices, or in retail or manufacturing settings, would yield very different results.

On the topic of blogging, I’ve added a new widget to my sidebar, linking to the Virtual Assistant and Home Business Blog Carnival, as I plan to be a regular participant. Word is starting to get out, with 16 submissions in Issue #2 and 18 in Issue #3. Be sure to check it out for some great tips! If you blog about marketing, communications, blogging, networking, or other topics related to virtual assistance or other home businesses, why don’t you join us?

I had a disappointing experience last week. A relatively new client, with an extensive list of future projects, decided to stop working with me. Although I was sorry to see her go, I understood why she made that decision. After all, it had taken several weeks to complete the first project, which could have been done in a couple of days. This was not due to incompetence or laziness on my part, or due to taking on more work than I could manage. I believe it came down to a lack of communication.

When you have someone working in your office with you, they can pop their head in, ask you a question or two, and continue working on the project. When you’re working remotely, you do not have that luxury. It is therefore critical that you answer your virtual assistant’s emails as promptly as possible. If your schedule doesn’t allow you to respond on a timely basis, your VA may have moved on to another project by the time he or she receives the information they requested. This is especially important in the early stages of your working relationship, as your VA is getting to know you and your preferences. After you’ve been working together for a while and your VA has had an opportunity to gain a good understanding of your business and the way you like things done, these "check-ins" will become less frequent.

If e-mail is not your preferred method of communication, it would be a good idea to schedule regular telephone meetings with your virtual assistant, keeping in mind that you will usually be billed for the time. Once again, you’ll probably be able to reduce the frequency of these meetings once a regular routine is established, except perhaps when a new project is underway.

Things may have worked out differently with my client had I explained all of this at the onset, and I’ll be sure to do that going forward.

For more on this subject, read Kathie Thomas’ recent blog post, What Can a Client Expect in a Virtual Working Relationship?

I don’t know if I’m typical, but I receive way more ezines than I can possibly read. Some I signed up for, hoping I’d have the time to read them. Others I signed up for in order to receive a free e-book or other information of interest. And then there are those people who just took it upon themselves to add me to their subscriber list because I bought something from them or they received my business card at a networking event (a big no-no) or found my email address online (an even bigger no-no). For a long time, I was putting them all in a Reading folder until I could get to them, but when it reached 100, I realized it was time to take action.

In an effort to be realistic, I deleted most of them, unsubscribed from quite a few, and am not signing up for any more. This whole experience has made me wonder how many of the people who receive my ezine, The Organized Assistant Resource, are actually reading it. Over the past month I conducted a survey to learn how people are using blogs and social networking sites to gather and share information and to establish and build relationships, and one of the other things I wanted to explore in the survey was whether people still read ezines.

I included a request in my ezine for readers to complete the survey, and only 4% of the subscribers responded. I realize this doesn’t necessarily reflect the number of people who read the issue, as some people don’t like to complete surveys, and others may not have thought it pertained to them because of the way I worded the request (something I didn’t realize until it was too late).

In any case, the responses to my question How many electronic newsletters/ezines do you subscribe to? were as follows:

This tells me that if the majority of people subscribe to five or fewer ezines, and there are thousands to choose from, yours had better be pretty outstanding to make the cut! This is confirmed by the responses to my question How many do you actually read?

These numbers tell me that:

• Even though 95% of the people subscribe to at least one ezine, only 91% actually read any.
• Even though 45% of the people subscribe to 6 or more ezines, less than half of those are getting read.

This not being a scientific survey, I decided to do a little additional research into the subject and came across an article, Why Blogs Are Beating Out Ezines … And Matter So Much to Your Platform, in which Suzanne Falter-Barns states that the ezine is dead and that blogs have taken over as a means of getting one’s message out. Surprisingly, this article was written in 2005! This is of course, just one person’s opinion, but it is still very interesting.

What are your thoughts on this subject?

The last seminar I attended was Enjoy Promoting Your Website with Web 2.0, which was presented by Suzanne Falter-Barns, Chris Muccio, and Peggy Murrah. If you’re not familiar with the term, Web 2.0 refers to a site that allows some kind of interaction with the user, rather than a traditional static website. Of course, I already "enjoy" blogging, and establishing and building relationships on social networking sites, but I wanted to learn from the experts how to make the most of my activities.

As I learned in the two previous seminars, the key is to effectively communicate how you differ from others in your industry, or your personal brand. It’s also important to be aware of the various sites that are out there for social networking, content sharing, social bookmarking, and so on, so you can determine which are most suitable for your purposes. You then need to decide which sites you will use, and how often. Then, as with any marketing strategy, you need to have a measurement system in place to evaluate how you are doing.

I found it most interesting to hear that 79% of all media now find their expert sources through blogs. That in itself is a reason to make sure that your blog really shows your expertise and your passion for what you do! It’s also given me an extra bit of motivation to move forward with the exciting new changes I have in store for my own blog!