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You know what they say about the word assume?  It can make an Ass out of U and Me.  Or something like that.

I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to set up times to meet with people online in the US.  But somehow it never gets through to them that because I don’t live on their shores I have no idea what city might be inside which timezone and how a timezone relates to me specifically.

I mean, I don’t know what city is in CST or CDT.  I do know that means Central time but does that mean I have geographical knowledge of their country?  uh uh.  It doesn’t.  Same with MST, PST and so on. I do know that New York is EST/EDT and I do know that is 14/15/16 hours behind Melbourne, Australia depending on the time of year and which side of daylight savings we’re in.

Make it easy on your audience please, and those you email. If you’re setting up a telephone or online meeting, webinar, podcast, etc and you’re inviting people to participate or attend, then be kind to them and make it easy for them to look up the time difference. Give them the name of a MAJOR CITY and not the timezone.  Or give them options for finding out the relevant time in their own city. I have seen links on sites where people are registering for an event, and they can click on it to work out the time and add it to Outlook if they wish.

Stop making assumptions that everyone knows and understands the geography of your country.  You may find you’ll get even more attending events because you’ve made it easier on them.

By the way – I’m not picking on those in the US because they’re in the US. This can well apply to anyone in any country. It’s just that the majority of people I deal with for events are in the US and I don’t really want to have to take up studying US geography just to work out the right time to attend an event.

Tags: Business Operations, Working Online by Kathie Thomas
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… unless you do something to let people know you exist.

I  have recently taken on some new clients – all of them requiring websites to promote their new businesses.

I love doing this type of work.  Setting up a brand new site, giving them an identity or brand and helping them to let others know they exist.

But their level of knowledge or expectation vary considerably.

There are those who really put the research in, know exactly what they want and in what order and then are ready to do the promotions and marketing as soon as the site is ready. They’re raring to go and can’t wait to take over the site (by the way, did I tell you I build CMS sites so that clients can have the control?).

And then there are those who have a loose or vague idea of what they want. They’ve heard if they build a website they can make a lot of money but they have no idea what it will take to get them from their idea to the reality of that goal. There’s a lot of information missing inbetween and I have to try and draw it out of them:

• What will their domain name be?
• What information will be on the website?
• What will the site look like (colour, number of pages, style, etc)
• How are they going to promote the site?
• Do they want to write articles, have a blog or newsletter, build a subscription list?
• Do they know who their competitors are?
• Why do they think they need a site?

And the list goes on. These clients are harder to service, or should I say more challenging?  I still enjoy the work but I wonder if they really understand what’s involved, other than having a website up one day and then they’re expecting the money to come in a few days later…

I frequently feel like I’ve shifted from webmaster to business coach as I try to get them up to speed on the information they should be providing me with.

If the content is there and they know what they’re talking about, they will get an audience… eventually. But they need to spend time networking online and offline, letting people know they exist and understand their topic well.

If no-one knows you exist they are not going to find your website, except by chance.  The site needs to have worthy content and if your name is not well known, then no-one is going to be searching for you by name at all. Only by topic and you’ll already have at least tens of thousands of sites to compete with out there.

And if a logo is all you want on the front page, well I’m sorry but that’s not going to work for you – unless you’re Coca Cola or some well known brand.  No-one wants to click on an image to see what’s behind it, unless they already have some idea of who you are and what you do.  All sorts of nasties live on the web and they won’t know you from Adam, so why would they want to click on a logo or image if they don’t know what you do or what your site is about?

Apart from that, search engines need text on the home page of the website – how can they catalogue and list your site if they have nothing to work with?

So, if you’re looking to get a website – that’s just the seed.  It needs to be planted, nourished and fertilised in order to grow and develop so that your site becomes an integral part of your business.

Oh, and if you’re a website virgin, then here is what you need to get started:

1. A domain name – that’s the address people enter into the web browser to find your website.
2. Webspace – you need to pay for webhosting to get webspace. Your webhost will help you get the domain name pointed to your particular webspace so people can view your site after entering the URL or address into the browser
3. Website – this is what is built to show up on your webspace at the address you have for your site.

And that’s just the beginning. Next there is content, images, logo, decisions to be made on how people will contact you, what email addresses you might use, what your site will look like, what colours you will use, how you are going to promote the site so that people will visit it, how often it will be updated and so on.

Once that is done the rest is up to you – the website owner.  You need to be networking, meeting people, speaking to people, adding your web address on all your printed material, in your email signature block and anywhere else that people might see it. After that, they will come…

Tags: Business Operations, Working Online by Kathie Thomas
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Recently a client has been having challenges with their Outlook file and then they sent me an image of a message they’d received because Outlook had stopped working.  The pst file was over the size limit.

I had explained previously the importance of deleting from the Sent folder, archiving regularly and generally maintaining the file but I guess it’s something that just isn’t thought about regularly and in fact, not until it crashes.

Unfortunately Outlook does have file limitations (you can’t let it go on forever) and whilst some say that 2gig is the recommended size I encourage people to consider keeping it at 1gig or less.

I restart a new pst file at the beginning of every year. Quite easy really. I rename the outlook.pst file to the year it’s for, i.e. outlook2008.pst (when Outlook is closed) and then when Outlook re-opens it will automatically recreate outlook.pst because it can’t find the other file.  You can then use the import/export function to import your contacts list and any other folders you created which need to be kept.  But don’t import the whole old file – otherwise you’re back where you were before.

This article at Microsoft will give you more information should you need to do further exploration.

Tags: Business Operations, Working Online by Kathie Thomas
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I became aware today of a new conference taking place in September of this year. The topic is about Embracing Your Virtual World but the conference is on site in California with no mention of any virtual participation. I went and checked out their website with the hope of filling out a form or making contact – no contact information on the site at all – unless you register. What is this? A website (virtual presence), a conference about the virtual world, but no way of contacting these people virtually (or even by phone or fax) and no mention of any virtual participation. I emailed them care of their newsletter address so hopefully someone will get it!

I was recently made aware of your forthcoming convention but there is no contact information on your site promoting this and no way of making contact, unless you register.

I was interested in finding out why this isn’t being held virtually since it is about embracing the virtual world? And I am serious. I am a Virtual Assistant and belong to a fast growing worldwide community of virtual business operators. We’ve been holding annual conferences for two years now, over a 3 day period in May – all entirely virtual with speakers from 7 different countries or timezones.

I’m sure the topic of your convention would be of interest to people globally but because of airfares, accommodation and global unrest, many would not want to travel all the way to California.

What do you think? Shouldn’t a conference about something of this nature have a virtual component for virtual attendees? For those of you who aren’t aware, the Online International Virtual Assistants Convention was held online with attendees from many countries with a total of 23 speakers from different countries and timezones and was a fantastic event. Whilst the OIVAC focused on the Virtual Assistant industry anyone was welcome to attend as the variety of topics presented applied to anyone in business. KMT

virtual business, virtual assistant, starting a business

Tags: Author's Thoughts, Working Online by Kathie Thomas
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