Do You Need the Help of a Virtual Assistant?Written by Nita L. Ammon
Running a business, whether large, small or in your home, is full of challenges. Getting day-to-day tasks completed, e-mail, faxes and telephones answered, bills and statements sent out, reports run, schedule updated, travel arrangements made, marketing pieces and website updated, as well as a plethora of other tasks, can be downright daunting.In swoops "Virtual Assistant" to handle these and many other tasks for you and help your company's bottom line. In case you're still working out of a cave (as you may be if you're still doing it all yourself), a Virtual Assistant, who has been touted as one of must-haves of modern entrepreneurial arsenal of time and money-saving tricks, is a highly skilled independent contractor who handle their client's administrative (and sometimes personal) needs in a large variety of ways. Because Virtual Assistants (VAs) are business owners themselves, they have a vested interest in your company's success -- your success leads to their success. They really aim to please because their business depends on it. And who better to understand trials and tribulations than another business owner? Also, most VAs came from corporate world and were executive or administrative assistants (secretaries), customer service managers or representatives, paralegals, project managers or coordinators, database administrators, or bookkeepers. Here are just some of services a Virtual Assistant can provide: Typing / Word Processing Database Management and Entry Proofreading and Copy Editing Accounts Payable and Receivable Calendaring / Scheduling / Reminder Services Travel Arrangements Customer Service (including answering forwarded phones, making outgoing calls and answering e-mails) Presentations Event Planning Research Web Services Ordering Supplies and Equipment Project Coordination / Management Marketing Projects Incoming and Outgoing Mail Expense Reports Reporting You have a lot of work you could delegate to a Virtual Assistant, but you're still not convinced one would be right for your business. According to Hackett Group, a Hudson, Ohio consultancy, "outsourcing, in general, can cost 50% less than hiring a full-time employee." Because your VA is an entrepreneur and not an employee, you don't have extra expense of paying additional taxes, providing insurance, purchasing office supplies and equipment, updating software, sick, vacation and personal time, office space to provide, and you only pay for time VA actually works (you're not paying for coffee breaks, downtime, etc.).
| | How You Can Proofread Your Own WorkWritten by Nita L. Ammon
Producing a high quality product is a given these days. With all competition out there, you have to look great in every aspect. Proofreading all copy is extremely important and here are some tips to help you to proofread your own work:Read through your copy next day -- many times your eyes tend to 'deceive' you by reading what's supposed to be there rather than what may actually be there! Reading it a day or two later helps you to look at your copy with a fresh perspective! Use 'spell check', which is available on most programs. Although they're not perfect, they will help you to find many errors. Print it out. Reading it in print can many times help you catch things you didn't catch on screen. If at all possible, have someone else read it. They can catch sentences that may be too long, be unclear, etc. You know point you're trying to make in your copy, but if others don't understand it, rewrite it so it's more clear to everyone. There are a lot of questions about hyphen (-) versus dash (--) and here's basic rule: A hyphen is used when you are putting two words together or adding a prefix to a word. Here are some examples: twenty-four, re-signed or long-time. A dash is used when you're interjecting into a sentence (such as, "I love taking dog for a walk -- especially on warm days -- because it is great exercise for us both."). In many programs a dash will look like a long hyphen instead of two hyphens next to each other. Dashes are also many times used in place of parentheses in more informal writing. Punctuation inside or outside quotes? Here's basic rule for this one: if you're using a comma or a period, they go inside closing quotation mark. Colons and semicolons go outside closing quotation mark. Question marks and exclamation marks are different and depend on how they are being used. If you are directly quoting someone and a question mark or quotation mark is needed because what you're quoting is a question or exclamation, it would go inside quote.
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