Monday, August 23, 2010

3 ways to work without a fax machine

by Sarah Santacroce

If you are like me, you don’t really see the point in owning a fax machine anymore. Faxes are history, right?
But I admit that even in my virtual business, I sometimes work with clients who still prefer to work with faxes.
Did I buy a fax machine? No, I looked for other ways. Here is what I found:

1. Scanr

This is a great application for the iphone. It basically turns your phone into a scanner and fax machine.
You take a picture of the document you would like to send. Your camera turns into a scanner and scans that picture. Then a message asks you if you want to send the document by e-mail or fax. If your client prefers a fax, you just type in the fax number (works in over 90 countries) and off it goes ! Neat, isn’t it? Oh, did I mention that you can also use it to print ? In my opinion worth the price of $29.99.

scanr

2. e-Fax

E-fax is an online application which lets you send and receive very cheap faxes. You will get a local number where your customers can send you their faxes.
You then get them by e-mail. I like this option especially to receive faxes.

efaxpng

3. Echosign

This is my favorite one. If you work with contracts, you will love this one! Echosign gets rid of the back and forth between the two parties who need to sign a contract. You draft the contract, upload it to the echosign online interface and then send it to the other party. They will receive an e-mail, inviting them to e-sign the document. It is convenient because they can sign wherever they are, even from their iphone.
They offer a free services for up to 5 signatures per month. The basic services costs $14.95 per month, for unlimited signatures.

echosign
Find out more about the legal aspect of electronic signatures.

Now it’s your turn. Do you use any cool and practical ways to avoid fax machines? Share them in the comments !

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Thursday, August 12, 2010

How to manage a multilingual Facebook page

by Sarah Santacroce

Even though English is usually the common language for international business people, most non native English speakers still prefer to read their daily information and communication in their mother tongue. The same goes for Facebook. And according to Facebook, 70% of their users are outside the United States. Once a user sets his/her preferred language, he/she will see most of Facebooks site in that language.

Which are the two main reasons to have a multilingual Facebook page ?

  1. You live in a country where there is a big majority of people who speak an other language (in America 10.7 % speak Spanish, in Switzerland 63.7% speak French, 20.4% speak French and 6.5% speak Italian, in Canada 21.6% speak French etc. )
  2. You do business internationally and your target audience is multilingual

If either one of those reasons applies to you, you might want to start managing your Facebook page in multiple languages. You will see that you will get much more return (comments, likes, interactions) from people, if they get to read your content in their own native language. You could even go a step further and personalize the content with country specific information. For example: in the USA a majority of people uses Linkedin, in France Viadeo is more popular and in Germany it is Xing. So if you post an update about this Social Media tool, you would post Linkedin for the Americans, Viadeo for the French and Xing for the German speaking members. For more details on localization you might find this post about website localization and multilingual SEO interesting.

So now that I have convinced you that a multilingual Facebook page is the way to go, I’ll show you quickly how easy it really is to do:

1. Go to your Facebook page, write a status update and click on the custom button

Multilingual Facebook page

2. Define your audience by choosing the location and the languages

Multilingual Facebook page

3. Share your update and recognize the customized posts by the little “custom” icon

Multilingual Facebook page

That’s it, that’s all there is to it. Of course you have to be fluent in the other language, since grammatical mistakes are not very sexy :-) If you’re not, hire a bilingual Virtual Assistant to help you !

If you found this post helpful, consider joining a growing international community on my Facebook page (and let me know by posting a message in your mother tongue on my wall) or signing up for more helpful small business tips by subscribing to my RSS Feed. Thanks for reading!

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

How can a Bilingual Virtual Assistant help you?

by Claudia Amendola (IT), Sylvie Guiziou (FR) and Sarah Santacroce (CH)


A virtual assistant (typically abbreviated to VA, also called a virtual office assistant) is an independent entrepreneur who provides professional administrative, technical, or creative (social) assistance to clients from a home office.

A virtual assistant can help you with your daily tasks that need to be accomplished in order to run your business successfully. She or he can work on both short-term and long-term projects without becoming your employee. You can save money by hiring a virtual assistant as the costs will not include the usual ones related to having a permanent employee (equipment and rental costs, payroll, taxes, benefits and non-productive hours).
A bilingual VA who speaks and writes at least two languages fluently is highly beneficial for a firm which does business in those languages.

Bilingual Virtual Assistant

Below you find a non exhaustive list of some tasks that you can delegate to this administrative partner.

Administrative tasks:

A bilingual virtual assistant can organize and manage your correspondence or an email campaign for your business. She can manage your database, updating and entering new information. If you need travel arrangements, calendar management, email data research, date entry, transcription or other administrative services in two languages, a bilingual virtual assistant is the person that can solve all these things, while you focus on more lucrative work. All you need is a computer, a phone and an internet connection to stay in touch with a virtual assistant and delegate the tasks to her or him.

Marketing:

Some virtual assistants are specialized in Internet and/or social media marketing. They can help you set up an article or press release marketing campaign, improve the SEO of your website and give you other helpful tips on how to increase your client base trough Internet marketing. They are also experts in how to use social media to increase your leads: create a business blog, set up an engaging Facebook page, help you how to use Twitter and other trendy social media tools.

Customer Services:

If you are looking for customers worldwide, a bilingual virtual assistant can help you communicate with your clients in countries whose language you do not speak fluently. A bilingual virtual assistant can connect with your prospects or customers in their native language and help you develop your business.

Translations:

Bilingual virtual assistants can translate your website, articles, press releases or Powerpoint presentations to their native language or to another language they are fluent in. Human translations are always better than machine translations and a bilingual or multilingual virtual assistant can offer you a level of translation that will take your business to the next level. A virtual assistant is more involved in your business so the translation can be more accurate and more focused on your needs. Certified translators usually charge more for the same translations.

Internet Marketing and SEO:

A bilingual virtual assistant can also perform SEO for the targeted language, which is more than translating the text word by word. He or she will know which keywords are relevant in the target language so that your translated site will be better ranked in Google or Bing.
The efficient, cost-effective solutions offered by bilingual virtual assistants allow you to devote more time to your core business, increase productivity and save money.

***

Italian and Spanish native speaker, Claudia Amendola of MTvirtualassistant is a multilingual virtual assistant (it-sp-en) specialized in bilingual customer services, website translation and travel concierge. htpp://www.mtvirtualassistant.com

French national, Sylvie Guiziou, of Optim Office is a bilingual (fr-en) virtual assistant dedicated to working with small business owners and individual entrepreneurs to help them focus on strategic activities that require their full attention. Sylvie delivers virtual assistance in general administrative services, bilingual En-Fr services, transcription, copywriting, data entry, Internet research and much more at http://www.optimoffice.fr

Swiss national, Sarah Santacroce runs Simplicity Admin Solutions, a virtual assistance business working with small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to help them dedicate their precious time to their core business. Simplicity Admin Solutions offers tailor made virtual administrative solutions, Internet marketing support, translation service and much more at http://www.simplicityadmins.com. All services are available in English, German and French.