What is a VA?

I'm asked, all the time, "What is it you do? A VA? Virtual Assistant? What is that? So just *what* is it you do again?"

Seriously.

All. The. Time.

So here's the professional definition of a virtual assistant taken from my own homepage:

A Virtual Assistant is a professional who provides support out of their own office utilizing their own equipment to other business professionals, entrepreneurs, small business owners, etc, who have a lot of work to do but not enough time to do it. A Virtual Assistant is a business owner, just like you.

Partnering with a Virtual Assistant reduces stress, protects cash flow, eliminates administrative hassles and enables business people to find the success they originally set out to achieve. You eliminate the need to pay for vacation time, sick time, employee taxes, benefits and the high overhead associated with having an assistant in-house.

The short and sweet of it?

Whatever an administrative assistant would do in your office is what I do for you off-site.

Plus some.

There's alot of collaboration involved. Alot of proactivity. Strategizing. Planning. Executing. At Scratchpad Secretaries we not only offer Administrative services, but our Online Marketing and Brand Management services are highly sought after in this day and age of Web 2.0. And our creative and technical side is very busy with website development and maintenance. And then there's our Personal Assistant services...we really have alot to offer!

So that's a Virtual Assistant. That's what we do. And that's just a few of the offerings at Scratchpad Secretaries.

Questions, anyone?

;)

Psst... Have you heard...

...about this thing called the internet? It's not going away. It's always there. It doesn't sleep.

And it never forgets. (Marty Fahncke has a great example.)

What's your brand reputation? Do you know? Do you google yourself to see what the masses are saying? Do you know that doing just that, googling yourself, is part of marketing? (Here's something to get you started: sign up for Google Alerts. Put your business name in as the criteria and see what ends up in your inbox each day.)

You can spend big bucks on big agencies to advertisie your product. You can spend massive dollars on focus groups, pilot projects and traditional marketing campaigns. You can spend years trying to tell the world how your product is different than your competition's. The thing is, you're no longer in control. This isn't traditional media. It's the "new" internet. It's Web 2.0. It's social. It's collaborative. Consumers aren't just sitting back believing what the masses are telling them. They are the masses. They're connecting with others, networking online, creating and sharing information - on Facebook, on Digg, Twitter, forums and message boards...the list goes on.

It's a shift from advertising to PR. It's consumer-driven. It's fascinating. It's exciting.

We find it thrilling!

Shake it up. Do things differently. See where it takes you!

Let us help you, this is what we love, this is where we shine!

Don't just think out of the box. Step out of the box.

Blogging for Business

Are you not getting the attention you deserve? Do you need to get a new product in front of a crowd? Have an announcement to make but don't know how to tell the world? Don't even know how or where to start?

You need a blog. And we can help!

A blog is like an online dairy. It can be about, and be used for anything at all. It can be used for personal thoughts and opinions, news, reviews, keeping in touch with family... but we're talking about Blogging for Business.

Quite simply, it's a method of quickly updating content on your website. And the search engine spiders LOVE eating up fresh content! It automatically increases your exposure.

Automatically.

There are many ways to get your blog seen and read by people, not just via the search engines. There's a whole new world out there, Web 2.0, where people are collecting information and sharing it with their friends, contacts, etc. It's a digital word-of-mouth. And you know you can't pay for word of mouth.

At Scratchpad Secretaries, we can set up a Blog for you. Better yet, we can update it for you if you're too busy to write yourself. We can submit it to social bookmarking sites. We can add the RSS Feeds. We can make it happen for you.

Make sure you get noticed. Call us for your free 30-minute consultation!