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Referenced Links:
- Facebook Live Video: Virtual Assistants Need To Take Vacation Too
- Article About New Facebook Selfie Filters
- Beginners Guide to Creating Your Own Facebook Live Show
- My Old BlogTalkRadio Show
- Benefit Cosmetics Facebook Page
Tweetables:
You’re all one person, not divided into your business and personal side.
Gotta Tweet!
The people that tell you that you failed are ones who’ve never done anything.
Gotta Tweet!
Always check the fruit of the people that want to give you advice. Gotta Tweet!
In Words:
Hi, you’re listening to episode number 66. Now, I am still on vacation, but want to make sure that I maintain consistency with the podcast episode so I am keeping your same schedule. By the time you listen to this, by the time it goes live, I will be in Orlando, Florida. I’m really excited about that, looking forward to it. It’s going to be an absolute blast. While I am there, I will work just one day.
I posted a Facebook Live last week and shared with you that virtual assistants must take vacation as well, and shared a couple of tips on how I did that last week. So make sure you check that out. It will be linked in the show notes so you can check out that Facebook Live. It also speaks to the whole brainstorming thing we talked about last week.
This week, it’s kind of funny. I’m still on vacation mode, so I want to have some fun in this particular episode. Not that all the other episodes aren’t fun, but they’re pretty meaty, teaching you something motivational. But today is just going to be fun and also show you how we could have fun in our business. I think we take it too seriously. We get too wrapped up into what people think, what our family thinks, what our friends think, what a prospective client thinks. Will they like me? Will they like my work? You just get caught up in all the stuff, right. So this week just kind of loosen it up and relax.
What I’m inspired by was as soon as I logged onto my computer this morning, I went to Facebook and I saw an article where they’re testing out selfie filters on Facebook. It rolled out today. Well, let’s see, today. Today, I’m actually recording this on Saturday morning, so it will have been a few days since it rolled out. It’s going to start out in Brazil and Canada. I’m curious to know, I don’t know if that has anything to do with the Olympics. So Facebook is diving into this.
I’m not sure if you heard last week, Instagram released Stories, which is similar to Snapchat Stories. I’ve been playing with that. Nothing has gone live. I’m just kind of playing in it before I publish and all that good stuff, figuring out how it works, and loosening up myself, because sometimes I can get too much into my thoughts and the thought process of how this will work, you know, and part of that is from being so wrapped up into reading business information and business training.
Taking that hat off because our friends that are on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms that are the fun ones – I don’t think LinkedIn is a fun one. That one is designed as professional, but the fun ones. Our friends aren’t always hopping on there for business, business, business. Most likely they’re not.
We can wrap business up into fun just checking out these little selfies.
I don’t take a lot of pictures. I realize I need to take more pictures and not care about my hair. Yes, I’m one of those, you know, not getting wrapped up into what my hair looks like. I said this a long time ago on my Facebook when I was thinking about waiting for the right hair day.
It’s like if we worked in an office together you would see me on my best hair day and my worst hair day because it’s not like you can’t go in the office because you’re having a bad hair day, or maybe you start out with a good day and if it’s humid where you live like it is where I live in North Carolina, curls when you leave the house, flat when you get to where you are. Anyway, let that stuff go. I’m telling you, just like I’m telling me, to just let it go. Put it back in a nice little cute ponytail or just brush it back and move forward.
They’ve got these fun little filters that we can put on our selfies. I’m sure it’ll be rolling out to all of us very soon, but if you’re in Brazil and Canada you probably have this already. Maybe even by the time you listen to this episode, you’ve already played around with that. That’s the Facebook selfie filters. The point would be for you as a VA on your business page posting this, is to show the human side of yourself. Show the human side.
I know I always say this in the intro about the title, and it’s like whatever you call yourself, but when clients search a lot of times they’re looking for virtual assistant, so we go with that. If you do a general Google search on virtual assistant you’ll get all kinds of stuff. Siri is considered a virtual assistant, and there are other things like Siri out there that are considered virtual assistants.
It’s important that we put a face, a human side, to what we do. Having a little fun on social media will help with that.
Yeah, you might appear goofy. But your clients are goofy too, right? They’re the same people that we are, so it’s no different. Take off the corporatey hat. Enjoy what you do. Enjoy your business. If you’re doing things in your business that you don’t like – and I don’t mean tasks, I mean services. If you’re providing things to clients that you don’t like, don’t want to talk about, don’t enjoy, then it’s time to stop doing it.
Okay, so that’s the Facebook selfie filter that they are testing out. Can’t wait to see when we get it in the U.S.
Instagram Stories – what’s the big deal about Instagram Stories?
They are directly a copycat from Snapchat Stories, and I think the developers of it have said that and they are not secretive about that. But you’ll see them at the very top. Make sure your Instagram app is updated. You’ll see them at the very top. It’s pretty cool. They last 24 hours. The Instagram Story lasts 24 hours, so you can have fun with that. You can do videos. You can do pictures. Videos. Pictures. I think that’s it, and you can draw on it with your finger. You can write on it with your finger.
Just have fun with that. Bring out the inner child. We all have an inner child, and some of us our inner child has just been locked up way too long. Social media just might be the ticket to help us get out of it, and Facebook Live, another thing to get outside of the box.
Something I’m going to start doing is a Facebook show. There’s an article I want to share with you. This lady, I had read her book, I want to say last year, and I now have signed up with her – she has a membership program. I signed up with that just to get some tips on doing direct sales parties.
But there’s an article that she recently wrote about Facebook Live that you may find helpful as well. It’s about having a Facebook Live show, something you do on a consistent basis. Taking last week’s brainstorming and combining that with the article, and I’ll link it up. I’m trying to see if I can find it real quick and at least give you the name, but I’m not finding it fast enough, and link those two up and get an idea of what you want to do and how you want to do it.
It’s kind of like this podcast. This podcast started out as practice for teleseminars back in 2011. It started out because I was writing an article about getting prepared for your teleseminars, and really back then teleseminars were more heavy than webinars as you probably know as well just from your experience and attending different online events.
That’s how this particular podcast started because I was using BlogTalkRadio as a practice platform. I used to do an 11-minute podcast every Saturday morning. If you go to BlogTalkRadio it’s still there. We may link it in the show notes. [Laughs] We’ll link it. I’ll find it. We’ll link it.
The funny thing about that show, the first I don’t know how many segments, they were live. Like I was on – you had to dial in from your phone, and it was almost just like talk radio without the talk back. I was on the phone because that’s how BlogTalkRadio did it, and you literally were talking live and that was just so scary for me. Then I figured out a workaround. I figured out how to prerecord my audio but play it live on the radio show.
Did that, and then I had this brilliant idea down the road a few episodes later. You’ll see how it evolves because there are only so many episodes on BlogTalkRadio, and then I had a bright idea to do interviews and interview people that I knew who provided virtual services, all different people. So there was an interview segment, and then I wanted to go back to the platform like I had with BlogTalkRadio where I am sharing tips. Because when you’re doing it by yourself, I didn’t have to worry about anybody else’s schedule but my own. Saying all that to say you may find that there’s something you want to do with Facebook Live and have a regular show – it doesn’t have to be long – on your Facebook page.
I am debating on what to actually do on my own Facebook page. I’m sure it will be a mix of VA tips and technical tips. The technical tips I give to clients also apply to you as well in your virtual assistant business. As far as those tips go, there’s no difference. There are things that you would do if you wanted to be a technical virtual assistant to serve your clients that your client wouldn’t do. But I don’t really share all that because I don’t know how many of you are technical virtual assistants or interested in being technical virtual assistants.
I need to make a note to do a survey just to get a poll to find out what you all are interested in learning more about. Putting pressure on myself here and I’m supposed to still be on vacation, right. There will either be a survey link in this episode or for the show notes, or we’ll do it next time. Let’s do it next time. I’ll have it next time.
Okay, anyway, let me check my time. Okay, we’re doing good. Talked about Facebook filters, Instagram Stories, and if you don’t know what Instagram Stories are and you’re not using Instagram, do a Google search – Instagram Stories.
Oh, I know where we started – the article and consistency and what to provide. There’s one page I want to share with you. They do something on a regular basis. If you look up on Facebook Benefit Cosmetics, they have a weekly show that they do every Thursday. Check that out.
On the last podcast episode we were talking about the whole purpose starting out on Facebook Live is to get comfortable with the camera, and you will see how they are. What’s neat about them is they are a cosmetics company, but their Facebook Lives aren’t totally polished. Yeah, they’ve got a nice backdrop, a nice table, but the people aren’t totally polished. It’s just like we’re in their office with them and they’re talking to us about the different makeup.
I don’t want you to feel pressured like you have to have studio quality equipment to get going, because that is not required.
In fact, Facebook Live, I think it’s strictly mobile. There’s some software I had downloaded, haven’t gotten a chance to test, that is supposed to allow you to share your screen on Facebook Live. I haven’t tested it out, so I won’t link that in the show notes.
Now, most people are doing their Facebook Live from their smartphones, which is perfect because you don’t feel pressure to get an expensive camera and all this stuff. Go for it. Enjoy yourself. Have a good time. If there are other things you do besides your virtual assistant business, like myself, apply it to those areas as well and have a good time.
Go live on business pages, not on personal profiles.
Personal profile is for your family and your friends to see what’s going on, whatever you want to share from a personal standpoint. Your business page is for business, not strictly business, but that’s where the business happens. Because you are a person, you can’t separate, you know, you’re not divided into two – your business and your personal side. You’re all one person. Regardless of what people may think or what has been taught or shared, you’re all one person. You don’t divide it up.
Your business page definitely should have some personal and business all together, making it so that you’re so likeable that people have to work with you because of who you are. They just enjoy you. They know you’re smart. You know your stuff, but you’re fun.
This week the goal is to loosen up in your business, check out some of these new tools. Play around with it. See what you like about it.
Test it out. If I only look at Facebook Live and I never go live, I can’t decide whether it’s for me or not, and doing it one or two times is not going to decide it either. You have to do it over and over again and be consistent with it to decide if it’s for you, and also really to even decide what you want to do.
Just like this podcast has evolved, if you decide to do a regular Facebook Live video every week that will evolve. Don’t feel like because you come out with something and say you’re going to do this on a regular basis and you describe what it’s about, don’t feel like if you want to switch what it’s about that you failed. No. Not at all. Hopefully, you wouldn’t feel that way. Don’t feel that way.
The people that would tell you that you failed are people that they’ve never done anything. I always check the fruit of the people that want to give me advice. Always. Always, always check the fruit of the people that want to give you advice. If somebody has never been married, would you take marriage advice from them? If someone has never been a parent, would you take advice on parenting from them? If someone has never experienced loss, would you take advice from them regarding loss? I could go on and on and on giving examples, and I’m sure you’re thinking of some examples as well.
Have fun with this. Enjoy your business. Thank you for listening.
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you like what you heard, stay tuned. We’ll be back. Tell me what’s going on with you. Come on over the Facebook page: facebook.com/tiffanyparsonbiz, or if you prefer a little shorter message, come on over to Twitter: @tiffanydparson.
See you next time!
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