So, two years ago you ordered a box of 500 business cards, but as a virtual assistant, most of your work is done at home. You don’t have a lot of regular opportunities to hand them out, and you end up needing to update them before you’ve used them all. Of course, you can just recycle them, but first, consider these 15 creative ways to use those old business cards:

1. Use them as bookmarks
2. Leave short notes for family members
3. Create new ones
4. Use them for crafts
5. Build a card castle
6. Fold them in half and use as a money clip
7. Use them to level a wobbly desk
8. Shred them to make confetti
9. Wallpaper your office (maybe a stretch, but still…)
10. Make cubes (this is COOL!)
11. Use them as name labels for books
12. Tape them together to make a drawer liner
13. Use them to clean tiny cervices (like the space next to the oven, in between the keys of your keyboard, around the bathroom sink, in between tiles…you get the idea)
14. Use them to get organized
15. Give some to the kids (trust me, this provides at least 20 minutes of entertainment and gets rid of about 30 cards at a time…more if you have a kid that eats paper.)

What do you do with your old business cards?

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And why should you care? Because you are a woman (most likely) who is at home with technology and there didn’t used to be that many of us not that long ago.

Fellow Mac-chick Nora Rubinoff put out the word where I and thousands of others would find it (on Twitter, naturally, where she goes by “ays”), and all you need to know is that this is “an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.”

I’d been trying to find a good topic for my first post over here on GeekGyrls, and this just seems right.

Read more about it here.

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Have you heard of the Faces of Millions project?

Faces of Millions is a project which aims to create the biggest photo mosaic yet, that will be about 30×30ft big (approx. 10×10m or 3 stories high).

If you want to be a part of it, just upload a picture of yourself.  I just uploaded mine.  We’ll be immortalized together! 

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I read TONS of books and Rob will attest that I buy TONS of books too. He actually had the audacity the other day, to say that I was going to create a sinkhole in our basement with my vast collection. Humph… he just doesn’t get it.

One of my favourite and often referred to books is  by Maria Veloso. I haven’t read another book that has given me so much inspiration or guidance in creating great sales copy for the online world.

One of the best tips she offers is to find a sales page online that you think is really great and effective, and literally sit down with pen and paper and copy it word for word, five or six times. Yep, it’ll take you forever – some of those pages are LONG but you’ll soon start to feel the rhythm of the copy and understand the methods they use and it can become second nature.

This book is chock full of awesome ideas with plenty of examples to get you in tune to write your own dynamic copy that sells!

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Ever wonder how you can become a content machine? Not to worry! If you’re not the creative genius you always hoped you’d be, you’re in luck. You don’t have to be a writing machine if you know where to look…which is right in your own backyard.

There’s something I always want you to continue saying to yourself – “repurpose my content, repurpose my content, repurpose my content”. Take newsletter or ezine articles you’ve done and repurpose them. Take forum answers you’ve spent time on and repurpose them. I find some of the best topics for articles comes in the form of questions my target audience is asking. Forums and Yahoo Groups I belong to make an excellent breeding ground for what people really want to know more about or are having trouble with, and which you can provide answers to…in the form of an article, of course.

Where can you post all this content treasure you’re building up?

Using content sharing sites such as HubPages and Squidoo are not only easy, they are fun to use. These sites have widgets and gadgets to make a more interesting article page. By adding pictures, user interactivity, videos, or incoming RSS feeds, Twitter Search to pull in tweets about your topic, eBay, countdowns, sports information, newswires…the list goes on, they offer up some great design and layout options for the complete newbie.

Plus, here’s the real bonus: the search engines just love them! Both are free to use. Both offer stats so you know how popular your articles are, where the traffic is coming from, what outgoing links were clicked on, etc.

New features are regularly being added to these sites. Recently, Squidoo announced that you can push your Squidoo lens (the article) out to your Twitter stream, making your content even more viral. What a marketing bonus!

When creating your hubpage or Squidoo lens, don’t forget to give yourself some link love by including a link back to your own website, for those all-important external links. Both sites encourage their authors to post multiple articles on as many topics as you want. Try to keep them centered on your business or industry. You are not limited to just one.

Blogging vs. Article Marketing vs. Non-traditional article sites

Sometimes I struggle with this myself, but the real point to spreading it around is to give you more exposure in various places on the Internet, plain and simple. Repurpose your content and create different versions of your articles to post on all three areas, and you’ll be good.

Think of it as a magic triangle of Article SEO:

1. You have your article posted as a blog post,
2. you have a slightly different version of the same article posted in an article directory, such as www.ezinearticles.com,
3. then you have another slightly different version of the article published on HubPages.

It’s quite common to easily own several top spots on Google for the same search term. All with links to your website and including your primary keywords and phrases. What a great opportunity to display expertise in your field!

Sound appealing? Yeah, thought so.

Be sure to visit and participate in these websites to gain a greater advantage in search engine visibility over your competitors:

HubPages: www.hubpages.com

Squidoo: www.squidoo.com

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I have no idea if anyone else will find this funny…. but this is just a quick little story of the weird text conversations I have with my husband, a fellow geek… this may only be funny to us, but what the heck… we’ll share.
(Not a bookkeeping term in sight, don’t be scared!)

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This July I will be doing a 13-day, 200 mile walk across England: from the west coast of Cumbria (and the Lake District) across hill, dale and moor to the Yorkshire coast and North Sea. It is something I made my mind up to do about 18 months ago and is something that I committed to sort of on a long-term whim. I get a few incredulous responses when I share my plans – most people wonder why I would possibly want to schlep up mountainsides in what will probably be typical, drizzly English weather if we are lucky – driving rain if we aren’t! Insane – maybe? But the impulse to do this goes back a long time, and was rekindled in recent years when I was working 16-hour days. Long days in my office made me gain weight and feel like I had literally become chained to my desk and the victim of my own success. Remember the old cliché “be careful what you wish for…”? After a little restructuring and talented help from others, I dug out and started training daily and found I absolutely loved it! Fighting back from the constant lure of the keyboard and get back in touch with the part of me that had nothing to do with technology, clients and deadlines – the anti-geek. It’s the part of you that doesn’t want to be in touch at a moment’s notice. To have the space sometimes to be where people can’t find you, to be beholden to no-one. Somewhere it’s just you, your boots and that giant pile of rocks ahead. Then there’s the wonderful feeling climbing up to a summit and looking down on how little everything is …putting everything back into some kind of manageable perspective.
Oh, and the other challenge here is that there is no tour group. It will just be me, Carla (my good VA hiking buddy) and a set of maps. Directions are not my strong suit. A little push out of my comfort zone, some adequate preparation, and a good set of navigation tools….It’s sounding more likely a business plan than a walk!
I just can’t wait to get going and there is something about the physical and mental challenge of it that keeps me braced and ready for tasks that I take on each day now. The lesson I learnt is about re-establishing balance in my life, and how important it is — whether you cook, garden, hike, run or whatever — to take the energy and passion from one side of your life and use it to recharge the other. More on the hike later too…we are hoping to set up a blog. Happy trails!

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One of my first clients calls me periodically to ask questions, and get my advice for free, sometimes keeping me on the phone for hours. She recently purchased a new laptop computer, and was having problems with Outlook and getting her contact list restored to the new system from her backup copies. She made a series of appointments for me to come out and help her make the transition. I say “series” because she would make the appointment, and then the night before call to say that she thought she’d figured out the problem, or finally got some help from the company she purchased the new laptop from, one of my first suggestions.

I started asking about the software and hardware she had purchased, and in making comparisons to the old system we happened along the problem. What we found was that she had some pirated software on the old system. Now she didn’t consider it pirated software, I mean, her husband had been working for the company she’d purchased the old laptop from, and the software came with her system. She’s pretty sure she paid for it. If it came with the system, they should have provided her with the actual software CD’s. If they failed to do so, she should go back to them to secure a “certified” copy. It took some time, but she did finally admit that perhaps she didn’t pay for it.

I proceeded to suggest a few of my favorite software “deal” sites so she could purchase the software she needed to be able to transfer her contacts back into the new laptop. When she started considering asking her husband to get her a copy of the software…I proceeded to tell her that I considered her to be a good ethical business owner, and hoped that she would reconsider doing anything that could jeopardize her credibility with her clients. How would she feel about the ethics of a company that “stole” someone’s product?

I must admit I don’t get through to everyone, but on this particular occasion, I had struck the right cord. She called me back the following week to tell me that she’d upgraded her entire Microsoft package to the latest version, and felt really good about it. She also told me that she felt really bad about having taken up so much of my time and canceling so many appointments.

Incredible! I felt like buying a new leather belt just so I could cut a notch in it. Not only did I reap the rewards of having helped someone move in a more ethical direction, but two days later I received a check from her for $100, with a wonderful thank you card. She said that she really felt good about herself and the direction of her business. Needless to say, I felt pretty good, too.

What we both were experiencing was the POWER of ethical business practices. When you take the time to consider the impact of what you do, you come away not only with the pride in knowing that you did the right thing, but you give your self-esteem a boost as well. Ethics can be a powerful elixir in attaining your business goals. Use it liberally and watch your business GROW!

Wishing you continued success and the wisdom to consider ethical options.

©Copyright Accurate Business Services 2009

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Realtor.com released an article today, “Real Estate Firms Favor Virtual Offices,” creating a greater need for Virtual Assistants.

I have a client that has done this very thing. He is the broker/owner of his own Re/Max office and went totally Virtual. His overhead was too much and his agents were not showing up at the office making it look very barren.

Having worked together for over 5 years, he decided that our relationship worked so well for him, he would take the plunge and go totally virtual and things couldn’t be better. He, his agents, and the staff all work remotely and if he has a need for a conference room, he generally utilizes one at his Title Company’s office or rents a conference room by the hour to do a closing.

This rise is expected to continue at least over the next 2 to 3 years.

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Everyone is talking about social media marketing.  All of my clients and the leads I receive call me telling me that they need, want and have to have a blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  They don’t know why…they just know they do because everyone’s talking about it and everyone’s doing it.

So I get a barrage of phone calls and emails saying “I need it but why do I need it?” Some people get it, some people kinda get it and some people – you know – get that glazed over look in their eyes where they’re thinking “crazy marketing girl say what?“

If you’ve been struggling to wrap your head around social networking, this video by Perry Belcher on Social Media Marketing will definitely be helpful!

If you want to save half an hour to an hour of unbillable time (not to mention your sanity) explaining social media marketing to people over and over again, then definitely put this video into your toolbox for explaining to clients what it’s all about and why it’s so dang important! 

Okay, here’s the parental advisory – I think there’s one “bad word” Perry drops in this video…nothing you haven’t heard before and not bad for a 10 minute video actually – I probably would of had more slip than just one – however, just in case there are kids in the room or in ear shot, be advised. Other than that – this dude is freakin’ hilarious and makes me giggle while clearly explaining social networking in a way we can all grasp.

If you can’t see the video below, click here.   (also look below the video for some great book resources on social media marketing!)

By the way, here are a couple of fabulous books over on Amazon that I recommend on Social Media Marketing.

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