Online Executive and Admin Assistant Training

What’s the key to online social media?...

October 14, 2009 at 03:10 PM | (0) Comments

social media chart ...The key is to mind your manners!

We ALL participate in online social media in our world today… and if you think you’re one of the people who DOESN’T, I’ve got news for you: Just reading this blog is participating in the world of online social media.

See, our blog has a comments section where back and forth communication of ideas and positions about any of our posts can take place—granted, we don’t get a ton of comments but we do get some—and that interaction is social. Inside our member’s area on our private forum, these conversations and interactions are very robust and we’re all learning a lot from them. Forums—private or open—are another form of online social media.

Other social media outlets are everything from YouTube to Twitter to Facebook to MySpace to Linkedin to Digg to StumbleUpon to FriendFeed to… well, you get the point. There are so many different ways for people to communicate online nowadays, I can’t image anyone being able to keep up with all of them.

But whatever platforms you decide to participate in, you should also realize that there are un-written rules to interacting and communicating on each. No one is going to spell these rules out for you and as a matter of fact, they’re not even written down anywhere… basically, it’s to mind your manners.

I find it humorous that the most important thing about online social media is to be nice… if you’re nice, most people will respond positively to you and what you have to say. Take this list of “LinkedIn Pet Peeves” that users have… most of them are about having common courtesy and being nice!

As assistants, you will continue to grow your online social presence by communicating more and more with people in your network so keep your parents voice in your head and “mind your manners” because in this new world of communication, everyone is watching.

Flickr Creative Commons image by garyhayes

All Posts, Technology,

With cloud computing, who needs to back-up their data?

October 12, 2009 at 04:19 PM | (4) Comments

Just so we’re all on the same page for this very important blog post, cloud computing is any account (email, bank, contacts, calendars, social media, flickr, YouTube, etc.) you have with some company who then holds and protects your data in the cloud which in reality is some server sitting somewhere “out there”.

This is a great thing that allows you to get at information, pictures, videos and a huge chunk of your online life from any computer or device connected to the Internet from anywhere… how cool is THAT? They could even restore this data if you lost your computer or device which is doubly cool. Really, this concept—in the abstract AND in action—is pretty awesome BUT (and this is a HUGE BUT) what if that information and data ever got lost, destroyed or infected with a nasty computer virus?

“Don’t fret, it’s a huge company with a reputation to protect. They would never do anything to threaten that.” you say. I’ve told myself that many times too: “I don’t need to back-up that data because they got it.”

And then you read what happened at the end of last week with Microsoft, T-Mobile and their popular “Sidekick” phone/email/texting device… the cloud died and so did everyone’s information in it.

When I first read that over the weekend I said, “Nah, never would Mircrosoft and T-Mobile screw up THAT much… they’ll get the data back.” But now that doesn’t seem like a possibility… the data is gone and all of those Sidekick users are out of luck. Ouch.

We spend a great deal of time in our training on having back-up systems and printed out information for just these kinds of situations… whether it’s a power outage, a cloud server going bust, a hard drive blow-up, a lost cell phone or—God forbid—another 9/11/01. As an assistant, you need to be prepared for such occurrences and this most recent fiasco from heavy hitters like Microsoft and T-Mobile is just another reason why.

Moral of the story? Back up your computer electronically (hard drives have gotten so cheap that there’s no reason not to) AND have printed out copies of your contact lists and anything else that you just couldn’t live without cause who knows, if a cloud goes bust, you might have to.

All Posts, Organization,

Is “zooming” better than multi-tasking?

October 08, 2009 at 02:46 PM | (0) Comments

multi-tasking woman We’ve all heard about multi-tasking and how every successful assistant needs to be a good multi-tasker to succeed in their position. Here at ProAssisting (and in our positions as working assistants) we believe in multi-tasking so much that we teach it in our assistant training program along with downloadable templates to facilitate this kind of work.

However, Alyssa Gregory recently wrote a blog post over at SitePoint about “Zooming” which got me thinking about multi-tasking and if there is a “better way”.

I’m assuming that most of you know what multi-tasking is and if you don’t, just take a look at that picture in the upper right hand corner and you’ll get the idea pretty quick. As for “zooming”, a term coined by Terri Lonier which she describes in an article over at Inc.com, it’s about being singularly focused on one task at a time while being able to see the big picture in between each task.

Both Alyssa and Terri look at zooming from a small business owner’s perspective but after reading both of their articles, this kind of thinking can have a positive influence while working as an assistant. What I suggest however is that we don’t throw multi-tasking out the window but rather combine if with zooming to get maximum efficiency.

Here’s what I mean: As an assistant, we all have to do tasks that we could do with our eyes shut and one hand tied behind our back on a daily basis which is just part of the job and for these tasks, multi-tasking works really well. But when we’re dealing with coordinating a big meeting or trip, if we are able to look at our project from a “30,000 foot level” as Terri explains—the big picture—, we give ourselves the opportunity to find solutions to specific issues or problems that we wouldn’t normally see.

Additionally, if we are able to stay completely focused on these larger projects when we’re working on them, as “zooming” suggests, we are less likely to make mistakes while getting the project done in a shorter period of time.

Approaching work as an assistant in this manner is a mind-set shift more than anything else but the more I think about it, the more I want to make myself a “zooming-multi-tasker”. Who’s with me?

All Posts, Tricks of the Trade,

Ever been stranded at an airport?

October 06, 2009 at 03:52 PM | (0) Comments

Being stranded at an airport just stinks… canceled flight, no connections and you can find yourself stranded pretty quick.

I’ve experienced this personally a couple of times but usually, I deal with such occurrences when my boss calls as they’re trying to get back home and are stuck in some far off airport due to a canceled or delayed flight. My course of action in such instances is to get the travel agent on the phone to scour for other flights and hotel rooms as a back up… but I could never point my boss in the right direction to the best place for them to ride out the delay short of sending them to a hotel.

Until now.

Given that my boss has an AMEX Platinum card, they can get access to just about any airport lounge so when @nmarasco pointed me to a wiki online that lists and rates a ton of airport lounges, I knew I was going to use this resource in short order.

And soon enough, my boss was delayed and I pulled this little resource out of my assistant tool kit to lead them to the best rated lounge of that airport. Needless to say, I looked like a superstar and they’re still talking about that lounge two weeks later.

So, if your boss is either an air traveling warrior with “frequent flier” status for each major airline or is an AMEX platinum card holder, you now have a quick and easy resource in your assistant tool kit to come in and save the day. Remember, having the right tool for the job makes all the difference.

Flickr Creative Commons image by mk30