Archive for the ‘Training’ Category
It is not 100% necessary to be certified in order to become a Virtual Assistant but it does help with building up your credibility. Depending upon your experience, skills, and education will determine your ability to start your own professional virtual business. To compete in an industry that is growing quite quickly your services are still high in demand but you must show your potential clients you are that much better than your competitors.
Certifications/Schooling
There are many companies advertising their certification programs that may not necessarily be reputable and provide the courses or certificate you need to add to your professionalism. Do your research, ask other VA’s, ask potential clients what their needs are and what is the best way you can serve them. That will give you the information needed to determine whether you need upgrading or training. Just because someone touts themselves as offering a certificate program does not necessarily make them good.
A small sampling of reputable schools or training organizations include:
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The International Association of Virtual Office Assistants (IAVOA): They are dedicated to the professional education and development of member of the Virtual Assistant profession. They are also interested in educating the public on the role and function of a VA.
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Red Deer College VA Certificate Program – this Canadian College has an excellent program and is highly recognized.
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The International Real Estate Assistant Assoc. Training – for those who wish to specialize in working with Realtors this organization should be researched.
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REVA Training Center
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University of Virtual Assistants
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A brief message from Craig Cannings on Virtual Event Services
Vaclassroom – this is an excellent resource for targeted programs that relate strictly with this profession. Examples include social media specialist and event planning.
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VBSS – this is a start up system that guides you from beginning to end in starting your business. This comes with a mountain of material that is extremely helpful from creating your business name to finding clients and learning how to market yourself.
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Virtual Assistant University
Technology changes at a rapid pace and it’s important to stay up to date with classes that will help you improve your services. The most used programs of administrative assistants or office clerks are MSOffice – Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Bookkeeping programs, Simply Accounting or QuickBooks are extremely popular and useful both for your own business and potential clients.
Other related classes may include event planning, organization, photography, time management, wordpress, web design, social media, html code, accounting, graphic design, desktop publishing, and anything else remotely related to providing a service or assisting the VA in her own business.
Although certification is not necessary a business owner who wishes to succeed should believe in continuing to better themselves and give themselves the tools to provide better service to their customers. Certification or any training that relates to operating a Virtual Assistant business will only enhance your professionalism.
All the best,
Start your own Virtual Assistant Business today!
During the time we started Lorac Virtual Solutions I found there was so much to learn and do, at times it became overwhelming. During the process I took courses, attended workshops, made contacts with other VAs, joined forums, and wrote pages of notes.
Truthfully, I had a huge learning curve.
I have already done all the research! Why reinvent the wheel?
I have put all of the material I gathered and have published an E-Book – “Start a Virtual Assistant Business“. In this E-book I am sharing with you the basics of what I learned, enabling me to start and operate my Virtual Assistant Business “Lorac Virtual Solutions”.
I wish you success in starting your home based business as a VIRTUAL ASSISTANT!
All the best,
PS: Have you received your FREE copy of
”7 Steps to Online Marketing – PDF“?
I’m not sure about the rest of you but I used to struggle with learning the ins and outs of writing press releases, articles, and reports! I know that proper training is important, especially with reputable trainers who are not out to make a quick buck and then not offer any support.
Online CopyWriting Training for FREE
The same applies to copywriting for the Web. Most people I know really struggled with writing copy when they first started. Truth be told: many still do! That’s because they never chose to get the proper training.
Online Copywriting 101 now to get your free pass to this world-class beginner’s copywriting event.
Just like me overcoming my challenge with article writing, you can – and will – learn to write great online copy once you educate yourself under the right teachers.
Let me introduce you to my friends Chris Cobb and Karon Thackston:
Because of all the folks they had coming to them with a fear or frustration of copywriting, they decided to do something about it.
The first step is to enroll in their FREE online copywriting telesummit specifically for beginners.
It runs September 1 – 10, 2010. Here’s the kind of people Chris and Karon are. They decided to broadcast each session free for 24 hours so as many people as possible could hear this vital information.
That’s almost $300 worth of expert teaching for absolutely nothing. No strings attached.
And their lineup has some of the biggest names in copywriting and content creation on the ‘Net including:
Kevin Hogan on the Science of Persuasion
Michel Fortin on Sales Letters 2.0
Lynn Terry on Blogging
Jeff Herring on Article Writing
Shannon Cherry on Press Release Writing
Brian Massey on Landing Page Creation
and
Karon Thackston on Knowing Your Target Audience, Basics of Online Copywriting, Headline Creation and SEO Copywriting.
You can see the complete schedule on the website. But that covers just about everything you’ll need to know to get started writing online copy like a pro.
Click over to Copywriting 101 to get your free pass to this world-class beginner’s copywriting event.
I’ll be there!
Just over a year ago I was searching for resources to help me start my Virtual Assistant business. I found many sites that proclaimed to have all the answers but few actually offered me anything substantial except charging me a great deal of money.
I was looking for some basic training that I could do online, help me grow my business but not cost me an arm and a leg. I found it with VAClassroom.
Craig Canning has definitely found his niche and is addressing many of the needs not only for Virtual Assistants but business owners too. VAClassrooms online training definitely met my needs and expectations.
Social Networking is here to stay.
One of the most popular training certification courses right now is VAClassroom’s Social Marketing Specialist Program. Craig Cannings, the co-founder of VAClassroom and developer of this program, has seen so many amazing testimonies on how this niche training program has helped to increase many of their graduates’ client and income opportunities!
The Social Marketing Specialist Program, which I took by the way, includes over 30 interactive videos, supplementary resources guides, action-plan templates as well as an exclusive Social Network designed for our Social Marketing Students to connect with instructors and each other – a great learning atmosphere!
Not only have the training I took from VAClassroom given me more skills to offer my clients, I apply what I have learned to my own business too.
Blogging for Business
As you know, the business of blogs has grown and evolved significantly over the last 24 months. A quote from the WordPress.com site puts it best…
“Blogging is growing both in the US and especially internationally. Tens of thousands of new WordPress blogs are created every day – by regular bloggers, companies, large media publishers, and many others. In addition, we seeing a trend that’s potentially even bigger than blogging: Publishers are starting to use WordPress as a platform to create all kinds of sites beyond blogs – large and small company sites, online magazines, social networks, travel sites, scrapbooking sites, contact managers, startups, multimedia archives, video sites, sports sites.”
Isn’t this cool? Ten of thousands of blogs being created DAILY! Businesses are using blogging technology to create company websites, social networks, video sites, membership sites and so much more.
The sad reality is that a good portion of these blog sites won’t last more than a year as they are lacking some key success strategies for optimizing and marketing their blogs.
Well now there is a great remedy for that problem….”Blog Marketing Tips, Tools & Tactics“
As I have taken this course, I believe there are two valuable reasons for taking this blog marketing mini program:
1. This program offers some advanced and current marketing and optimization skills that you can offer as a high value and “in-demand” service to a fast growing base of blog site owners.
2. This two-week training program will essentially provide you with a blog marketing tune-up and blueprint for your wordpress site, so that you can increase your targeted traffic, business visibility and new client leads.
This two-fold purpose will have a strong impact on both your business visibility as well as new income opportunities!
To get all the details on this important new training program, just click on the link below:
http://www.vaclassroom.com/socialmarketing/cmd.asp?Clk=3296686
Clients are hiring VAClassroom Students
As you can see I am very passionate about the courses VAClassroom offers its students. Not to be overlooked is that many clients are now approaching VAClassroom’s students and offering contract work for the services they need for their businesses.
So if you are looking for the following online training look at VAClassroom closely.
Facebook Fanpages Training Course
Building a Profitable Niche as a Virtual Event Specialist (Even in a Down Economy)
Virtual Event Specialist Preview Call
Blog Marketing Tips and Tactics
Interested in Starting a Virtual Business from the Comforts of Home? Click Here for More Details.
Visit VAClassroom and find out how you can learn the skills you need to skyrocket your business
Internet Marketing Certification Course
Do check out the courses from VAClassroom if you are looking for any online training. Their prices are reasonable, customer service is great and the benefits are definitely worthwhile.
All the best,
PS: Don’t forget to sign up for my “Business Tips for YOU” monthly newsletter!
Do you find Google Analytics Confusing?
I do. Actually I am learning more about them each day and truly understand how important they are to my business and now understand what the numbers mean to draw traffic to my website.
These are some of the problems I had:
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I had trouble installing Google Analytics on my website
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Could not understand what the numbers meant
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Did not know how visitors found my site
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I did not know what content was my most popular
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I did not know anything about my visitors
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I did not know how long people were staying on my blog.
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