From one hand it sounds a bit sad, that the holiday period is now over. However, from the other hand, we have our own findings from this summer: our team used, tried and tested a few programs that you, dear Reader might find useful too, so in this article we would like to share our experience.

The whole story began with the fact that at Proficient VA we are bilingual Virtual Assistants, and we have family members in various other countries in Europe. Therefore the summer holidays meant a lot of travelling, but of course the work and collaboration couldn’t stop for weeks. As VAs we are using various programs for our everyday work and to collaborate within our team, but from another point of view these are also excellent if you need to work together with your colleagues who are based in other countries, or just at other parts of the UK.

Our favourite programs this summer were the following:
1. Skype
Getting in touch free of charge couldn’t be easier. You just need to download a small program, create your account and with a simple headset that you can buy in almost every supermarket (or on Ebay, if you prefer to do it online) you can talk to your colleagues or family members all around the Word.

You can download your free Skype from here

2. Google Mail
Gmail is the popular webmail service with over 7 GB free storage. We normally use this for our personal emails and also to occasionally access our company messages.

You can sign up to Gmail here

3. Google Docs
Google Docs is the free tool to create, manage and share documents or spreadsheets. It also allows your team to view documents in the same time, and we could also chat about the docs right there, which is great.

You can access Google Docs here

4. Dropbox
Dropbox is a real classic for us now, as our team is using it for a while. We have this installed on our PCs and also on our phones so then we can easily share and access our files, wherever and whenever we need them. It’s good to know that you can use it for free, and if you choose this option you get 2 GB storage.

For Dropbox click here

5. Flickr
Flickr is a great photo sharing and management application which can also be used for managing videos. It’s useful if you would like to upload and share your holiday photos, but it can also be used for more formal company purposes.

You can access Flicker here

We hope you find these useful, and if you have your own favourite programs or applications please use the comments section to share it!

“Henley Royal Regatta is undoubtedly the best known regatta in the world and is both one of the highlights of the summer sporting calendar and the social season. It attracts thousands of visitors over a 5 day period and spectators will be thrilled by over 200 races of an international standard, including Olympians and crews new to the event. Aside from the rowing, visitors can take in the ambience enjoying the facilities within the Enclosures.“ (

How did Maria from Proficient VA get there?

Thanks to our valued partner, iTransact Ltd Proficient VA received an invitation to attend this special event on a sunny Friday. iTransact is a well-established company based in Cambridge, providing IT support and website hosting to many businesses around Cambridge and London – the main area of Proficient VA as well. Maria has been working with this company for years – both as a Virtual Assistant and as a Web Designer – this is the reason why she got the chance to take part in such a fantastic event.

How did Virtual Assistance prove to be helpful on this occasion?

A short while ago when the Proficient VA team was on its way to a meeting, they needed a taxi. After many minutes of waiting and the taxi not showing up Maria made a complaint to the taxi company and as a response they blocked her number from further services. This is the reason why she was unable to call a taxi on the morning of the Regatta. Judit came to her rescue, and remotely ordered the taxi for her – a Virtual Assistant always comes handy.

This is only one of the endless examples of how you can use a Virtual Assistant to improve your work-life balance. Thanks to the instant help, our colleague could enjoy a day at Henley. The photos tell it all.

Hopes, aims of attendance

At Proficient VA we are determined to build up a strong brand identity, supported by efficient online presence. I have had the chance about a year ago to attend a Business Link workshop concentrating on website development, which was far too basic from a Web Designer / Developer’s point of view, but its advantage was that it gave me the chance to take a peak into the basics of Search Engine Optimisation. As a Web Designer I found that this knowledge could strengthen my skills. This is the reason why I was so excited to learn more and to go deeper into the mystery of this topic.

The workshop

The morning session of the workshop was about SEO in general, and Sean Proctor from Phoenix Internet Consultancy explained that it must not be confused with PPC campaigns – something that always confused me before. We were warned from the beginning that Search Engine Optimisation is a time-consuming process, therefore it might take months to achieve the aimed ranking. It also explains why it can be costly – something that many people do not understand and think that SEO is “just about leaving links” to their website around the world wide web.

On the contrary: SEO is a much more complex area – it requires patience, commitment and readiness for digging deep into keyword research and implementation. The wonderful thing is that whatever platform the website developer uses, if one follows the basic rules of SEO, one’s website will be successfully displayed in search engines. In certain areas, such as title tags, meta keyword and description tags, links and image alt tags keywords must always be placed. Also, don’t forget to highlight your keywords – when appropriate – by using bold and italic styles. The content of the website should be using keywords, but always keep the users in mind and do not overwhelm them unnecessarily with text just to spread more of your targeted keywords.

Make sure your website contains a site map and that you utilise the different Google products to increase your site’s visibility, such as the Wemaster sections. Social media can help in increasing the number of visitors of your site, but bear in mind that eg. Twitter’s links are not regarded as proper inbound links – therefore they do not help your Google ranking directly.

Outcomes, next steps

All the hard work can be monitored through two useful tools: WEBCEO and Analytics. The prior helps you check your actual ranking, whilst the second is used to track the visitors of your website. At Proficient VA we are hoping to see steady rise in both parameters, as the result of some SEO activities planned for the next few months.

The workshop was a definite success for us – there is a lot of work waiting for us to complete, but at the end it will definitely be worth it. Afterall, as Virtual Assistants our online presence is very important to us and we would be thrilled if more and more businesses found us through the Internet. We are also adding our SEO services to our Web Solutions Services, therefore our SEO expertise will be available to all our clients as well.

An article has been drawn to my attention recently. The sender knew that I am a bilingual Virtual Assistant (working as an English – Hungarian virtual administrator/PA in the UK for several years now) and thought the article would interest me. The article (original to be read here) is about the increasing need of remote working in Hungary which is an important topic, as a VA I am also supporting my clients remotely, working from a well-equipped office and not from home.

According to the editor’s research in Hungary the traditional 8am – 4pm working pattern is still typical. However, Hungarian HR experts started to emphasise back in 2009 that for a lot of companies it would be a possible route to have most – if not all – of their employees working from home. The real breakthrough hasn’t happened since then, however, the economic downturn made this shifting quicker.

Flexible office solutions: a way of cutting costs without damaging customer experience

The second paragraph regarding the office solutions is really timely. The author is quoting Sandor Olah, Managing Director of DataLogic Kft who suggests: “when organisations try to cut their costs, they should consider whether they could function using a smaller office, or even without an office”. We all know that office rent is a significant cost for businesses, and eliminating that could hugely improve cash flow. Of course not all businesses can function without an office, but this question is still one worth to be raised. At Proficient Virtual Assistance we also help our clients with arranging virtual office for them. This means that when a business doesn’t have a physical office they can still have a prestigious address which can be used for advertisements and correspondence. This can also be linked with a telephone answering service. As a result the customers will perceive that the business has an office and a professional team that answers the telephone calls, but in reality this means a much lower monthly cost for the business owner.

At the end of the article the author is talking about small and medium-sized organisations (SMEs). The directors of these smaller businesses often want to do everything themselves, but this doesn’t always mean that the process will run smoother or that they will save costs. I’ve been told in many places that these business owners should really consider two things:

1. What is their usual hourly rate in their field

2. Is there anything (e.g. administration, telephone answering, accounting etc.) that they could outsource to another company where this can be done in a professional way, but cheaper?

Usually this comparison shows that business owners, who could easily earn £50-£100 per hour waste their time on things like filing and telephone answering that another company – which is specialised in doing that – would do for as little as £25 per hour. This means that outsourcing can be a way of cutting cost, freeing up time to gain bigger profit. Besides, at the end the work that we outsource would be done in a more professional way. What we need is a cultural change so then business owners can see all the benefits of working remotely with their Virtual Assistants.

Does your assistant take long lunch breaks?

Do you struggle whilst your assistant is having a break?

Do you pay lunch breaks and nobody is there to answer phone calls during lunchtime?

If you answer to the above questions YES, then you might want to consider hiring a Virtual Assistant! And let us tell you how we got to this conclusion:

An employed assistant requires a half an hour/one hour lunch break every day. His/her salary (provided by you) covers this break and, as a consequence, the break is not covered by assistance towards your office needs: urgent emails don’t get answered on time, ad-hoc urgent jobs aren’t done promptly, important telephone calls go to voicemail, etc.

Opposed to your in-house admin assistant or personal assistant, a Virtual Administrator works flexible hours – therefore their lunch breaks are flexible too. They take their lunch break whenever it is the most convenient from their clients’ point of view. You don’t pay for their break, holiday or sick leave either, as Virtual Assistants are usually self-employed.

Your Virtual Assistant is always available to you, whether you need to cover your in-house assistant’s lunch break or you just need extra help in the office. Furthermore, you only pay for the time your Virtual Administrator spends on your project – no need to pay lunch break, even if he/she works for you all day.

Virtual Assistants don’t starve though! They eat their lunch as well, but you will never notice that: they will not charge you for any extra time, only for what is needed to complete the project given by you. Another great advantage is that they will never be unavailable to you – let it be lunchtime, holiday season, or flu epidemic.

Not convinced yet? Let us prove to you that You can only win by hiring a Virtual Assistant! To find out more about the advantages of hiring a Virtual Assistant for your admin support needs, click here, or read our FAQs. To talk to us about your wide range of options for virtual admin support, visit our office or give us a call today.

Recently I came across some companies who have a contact telephone number on their website, but disappointingly instead of talking to a representative from the company I could talk to the telephone answering machine only. How did this all happen?

With summer approaching, I decided to get our home deep cleaned. Two things I needed help with: bin cleaning and the cleaning of the outer side of the windows. One day, two companies to contact – not a hard job, is it? Unfortunately it is, if none of these companies employ a receptionist/assistant. As these kind of things need quick solution, I did not want to wait for somebody to get back to me, so I simply hung up and called the next company listed on Google. As a result of not being able to talk to a human being and order the service I needed, the above companies lost a potential client – probably forever.

Can small companies afford to lose clients? I don’t think so. Telephone answering plays a huge role in getting more clients and keep the existing clients well-looked-after. Market research shows: upon hearing an answering machine 7 out of 10 people hang up. We don’t want to leave a message and wait for a call back (very often in vain…). It is amazing that in today’s virtual world it is so hard to get instant help and attention. What’s more, even though we are used to “talking” to automated telephone answering machines, isn’t it friendlier to interact with a person on the other end of the phone line?

Business clients prefer a professional and friendly customer service advisor to handle their phone calls who deals with them in a proficient manner. If my call to the bin cleaners was answered by a person instead of the answering machine, they would have gained a loyal and regular client, who might have recommended their services to friends and family.

How Telephone Answering Service Works

When a call comes in, your company name is displayed on our screen allowing us to answer the call as if we were sitting in your office, taking the caller’s details and the purpose of the call before passing on all enquiries to you via email or text message. Our Virtual Assistants are not impersonal telephone answering machines, but they are professional administrators who can handle all phone calls in an effective way.

To make this service available to all sizes of businesses, we have set packages. Choose the right package for your needs. If you have many more or many fewer calls than expected we will automatically change your package to provide you with the best value-for-money option.

It is absolutely hassle free to call our virtual assistants and arrange phone redirection with us. And the advantages are endless! Choose our Virtual Reception service and never lose a business opportunity again. For prices and packages and to sign up for a one-week free trial click here.

Do you struggle to get and keep on top of your inbox? Do you receive a lot of emails, which you can delete right away, as you are just copied into those and they are, in fact, not important? We can help you with that right here and now. If you have no time to read this article, then bare in mind that we offer remote assistance with email management ­– one of the most required virtual admin task our team deals with on a daily basis.

Well, most of our problems with our inboxes are caused by the bad habits. About a decade ago, when we’ve started to type a business letter, we’ve spent quite some time on considering the content, the wording, the subject, the layout etc. With emails things became easier and quicker for the sender, however, in most cases, quickness seems to be more important than quality. As we are virtual admin assistants, writing effective emails is absolutely crucial for us. Besides, we know that using emails can be hugely useful but can also cause a real headache if we don’t follow some simple, but important rules. Read and consider the below three golden rules, and maybe, if you put these into practice, your email communication will become more effective, and you and your Clients or business partners will benefit from this.

Rule 1: Clear and eye-catching subject

Let’s be honest: the subject line of the email determines how quickly we open the message, and whether it is considered as important, or something that can wait. The top tip is to use only a few, but well-considered words, so then the recipient can see what the email is about and can make a correct judgement.

If it is appropriate you can also add a call to action to your subject line, for example when there is a deadline that the recipient should consider then you can add “Please reply by 2^nd June” or something similar.

Rule 2: One email: one subject

Emails should be quick and effective; therefore we shouldn’t send long messages regarding a few different subjects. If we do this then we should expect that we won’t have all our questions answered, and it’s also possible that the recipient won’t even read the full message (if he or she will start reading a very long message at all). To keep things simple and easy for the other party only write about one subject in your email, so then it is easy to see the topic and the reader will see that it shouldn’t take too long to reply, so there is a pretty good chance that you will get a response soon (if not right away).

Rule 3: Specify what you want / need

It’s important to be clear about what you want. This sounds logical, but sometimes when we write emails we just miss the point. To avoid the problems remember the following good practice: use the first sentence to give a short description of what you want, and then you can give a bit more detail (only write as much as needed!). After that, at the end you can sum up what you want, e.g. “Considering the above details, please confirm whether you would like to attend this Board meeting at 10:00 on 19^th June”.

Of course there is much more that we could say about writing effective emails. However, the above three – simple but important – rules are a good starting point. If you remember these when you do your everyday work then hopefully it will help you to get the responses you need, and to get them on time.

Earlier this year (26th March) Proficient VA had the great opportunity to attend James Fenton’s (Art Director at Tribal Group) talk at Red Gate Software, Cambridge. James let us take a sneak into his talk prepared for the Future of Web Design weekend coming up in May in London. At Proficient VA we are known mainly for our reliable virtual assistant services, but we also provide graphic and web design for small businesses, therefore all the information gained from the talk was highly appreciated and will definitely be implemented into our future design work.

“Art direction in traditional media involves the measured and meticulous control of a visual style across a product, exhibition or campaign. An art director would oversee all aspects of the visual, establishing structure and layout, whilst ensuring graphic elements such as typography, illustration and photography communicated a consistent visual message.” Also, art directors are the connection between the designers and the marketing team – two teams who hardly ever understand each other’s duties in the design process, but their co-operation is essential for a successful outcome.

 “The web has moved the goal posts however, handing over increasingly more control to end users and third party tools. So what role does art direction play in a world of choice, customisation and user generated content?” In his presentation, aiming to answer this question James discussed the role of the art direction within large web projects and project teams, exploring the challenges of delivering brand consistency across several differenttypes of viewing device, a large scale of environment and the never-ending list of applications. To achieve this, a more flexible and dynamic approach to brand guidelines is necessary.James’s suggestion was to give a strong role not only to the graphic/web  designers in a project, but also „calling on developers, UX, writers, marketeers and clients, to help champion the principles of good design, rather than simply adhere to a strict, rigid set of rules“.

Proficient VA’s own experience on the importance of branding flexibility:

Nowadays the presence on social media websites is a must for all businesses. When we started registering Proficient Virtual Assistance Ltd. on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, all of them required a square thumbnail as a profile image. Having a rectangular logo, this caused several problems: it bacame either unlegible or stretched disproportionally. We had to come up with a solution for this challenge, so we started using the circle from our logo containing the letters VA (for Virtual Asssistance). Later a more stylised version of this was introduced, and finally we ended up with what we call the „Batman Sign“: stylised V and A in a steel circle – this seems to be working very well, don’t you think so?

Have you had to face this problem with the logo? Did your branding guidelines allow slight changes to the logo so that it could be used for social media?

(Photo credit blipfoto.com)

The right time to start our blog: Proficient VA is moving into an office

Monday the 15^th is a big day for Proficient VA: we are finally moving into our own office! Our core team will move into a lovely new office space in the centre of Cambridge – we are extremely excited about this big step in the process of taking our Virtual Assistance business to the next level.

The move was preceded by long conversations about the necessity of an actual office space for Virtual Assistants. The pros and contras were lined up neatly, the list growing day by day – on even days the solution of the home office as the winner, whilst on odd days the rented office space taking it over. In between, we also took into account the possibility of registering for a virtual office.

Let’s see the list for each of them, give us a shout if we missed anything (I may be biased now that we made our decision and want to see no way back…).

After all, we are two professionals who not only want to keep business “out of our bedrooms”, but look and feel professional when it is about work. We tried working from home and although enjoyed it very much, sharing an office where we feel more flexible looked like a more appropriate solution for us. Also, we must admit, Proficient VA was lucky to get a very generous offer on this office, which was hard to resist. And of course, there are more options between the ones above, eg. working from a real home office (and not a corner of the bed/living room), hot desking, etc. But these were not options for us.

Dear Virtual Assistants and small business owners, do you prefer working from your home or renting your own office space?