Virtual Assistance and You

Any virtual assistant will tell you there’s an art to developing virtual relationships.

I wish virtual meant the same thing as virtuous, but it doesn’t. Yet virtuousness can take you a long way in the virtual universe.

I wish we had a better term to apply to those activities and relationships that come about because of the internet: specifically, the relationships that are not likely to involve face-to-face encounters. All those peeps we know and love but have never seen in person – our friends, followers, fellow social media hounds, online business liaisons – those folk with whom we now co-exist, digitally speaking: they’re our virtual communities, and they each have their own virtual quirks and eloquence.

Your online communities are as full of peculiarities as any local networking group, corporate unit, or sewing circle. A key to skillful use of the internet is to constantly perceive the person behind the words, and to respond / speak to that person. No matter how imposing a facade they present, every business online is still made up of real people, and it must bend to the transparency rule or accept eventual failure. Your design may be sleek or sloppy, but really it’s you that matters, you whom we seek and with whom we become virtually acquainted.

The web may be digital, but on the other hand, it’s eminently humanist.

Being ultra sensitive to nuances and hyper-tuned to ways you can be of assistance is the skill of an online community builder. (Note: everyone using the internet for marketing purposes is an online community builder.)

• Have you ever worked with someone who needed you to complete their project, but simply never read your messages to them?
• Have you encountered the type who pushes you with deadlines but refuses to tell you what is expected?
• What about the cohort who passionately exchanges ideas with you one day, and then disappears for a week?

There are a million ways we fall short in the demands of virtual relationships, because the web is a harsh master (mistress?) Each of us must conceive the extent to which we will become involved in these relationships, and then stick to our convictions. But there’s no doubt about it: the more constant your presence, the more valuable your return will be.

However, it takes more than constancy. If you’re always there, but full of spite and venom, that won’t work either. So being there, with both passion and compassion are required.

For a virtual assistant, the process is intensified, since we forge such new virtual relationships all the time. We learn every day to listen more acutely, speak more responsibly, react more judiciously, and to be more sensitive to our client’s state of mind and being, through the tangles of cyberspace.

I’ve become more patient, and I have increasing confidence in my ability to navigate the delicate get-to-know-you process when it’s digitally-based. While I have a long way to go still, it’s good to know how warm, alive, and real-life the virtual world can be.

There are many reasons why branding is an aspect of business that no one can ignore. One of the coolest reasons is that by considering our brand, we anchor our work in sustainable ways that are rooted in authenticity.

The importance of branding increases as we journey deeper into cyber space because it’s through branding that we are able to capitalize on the tools the internet offers. Without our avatar, our “About page,” our profiles, and bios we are nothing on the social networks. These articulations of brand are what constitute our identities.

Of course, these identities can be faked, and there are as well many users who hide the person behind a company name or other mask. An online profile is not automatically good branding.

On or offline, a brand can be deceptive. So how do you know when one is trustworthy? Perhaps more to the point, as a business owner, how can you tell your community that your brand is to be trusted?

You can learn to discern the difference between hype and authenticity in branding by sincerely working on your own process of branding. Once you’ve been through the process, you’ll be able to recognize the phonies right away. How? By their predictability. Pretend-brands are predictable; real ones catch you off-guard, amazing you in some way (Seth Godin’s Purple Cow), sounding in your soul like a summons.

When working on your own branding, you have to constantly remember that brand is reputation, and therefore ultimately out of your control. You work to shape it in the same way we plan and grow a garden, hoping it will turn out as envisioned.  We seek to affect, but don’t expect to dominate the end result.

And then, your process of discovery as you ferret out the nature of your brand must be couched in your most honest efforts, or it will lack the gut-wrenching value that makes all the difference.  Any modicum of inauthenticity in your seeking will spoil the whole crop. Look for the truth that is, the YOU that is, your particular gifts and skills that help the world go ’round.

Branding is so important because it’s a process that forces us to be brutally honest, matching up our insides and outsides to create something that helps other people. It’s a requirement of adult participation in society that demands that we increase our self-knowledge and become transparent to our communities.  It’s part of our evolution as we adapt to the cyber/global age.

Could you use a few ideas to jump start your branding inquiries? I invite you to read my mini-eBook, Discovering Your Brand.

Image by Gale-Franey via Flickr

I came across a good article this week at Advertising Age: Stuart Parkin comments on the phenomenon that involves the lack of personal branding amongst marketing executives – who nonetheless insist on it for their clients.

The fact that marketing gurus hypocritically preach branding without practicing it makes us question its very worth. It would be a lot easier to continue in our accustomed anonymity, and not bother with laying a claim to a specific brand. Do we really have to take this stuff seriously, spending time thinking about values and all that? What difference does a brand really make?

Maybe we think we will enjoy a broader appeal if we don’t characterize ourselves too finely. But one of the coolest things about the internet and our global society is that you can be as eccentric as you wish, as long as you’re consistent about it. People love personality in all its quirkiness. Show that you are willing to consistently participate and be truly helpful, and your personal brand can be whatever flavor you choose.

However much we may wish otherwise, reputation is and always has been at the heart of business success. Small-minded, cheap, untrustworthy people may sustain an income, but they never experience success. There’s a big difference between sustaining an income and living a fulfilled life.

How you are perceived by other people makes all the difference to your business accomplishments. What do you do to paint an attractive image of your business in the mind of your market? Or, from the individual’s point of view – whether a solopreneur or an employee – the question may become, what do you do to paint an appealing image of yourself in the minds of people on your radar?

The challenge is to present and share yourself fairly and frankly with the world, or at least with your world. It may be relevant at this juncture to refer to Tiger Woods’ unfortunate dilemma in the current press. His insistence on closely guarded privacy could not protect him in the long run. Our tools, and our culture, now demand that we each own – and own up to – the business that is our Selves. Since ownership includes accountability, personal transparency is critical. To be caught with a brand that lies is a major offense in our culture.

Branding is the work of thoroughly becoming yourself while being authentically compassionate towards those around you. It’s taking responsibility for your reputation, and steering it with purpose towards the best you can be. Branding is articulating the value of  You to Other People.

In any service industry, for example in the virtual assistance industry, branding takes on even greater importance. More than people who sell only products, a service provider is selling their brand. You’ll have better luck selling ball point pens or Cadillacs, for instance, if you have an appealing personal brand. But you’ll have no luck at all offering a service like virtual assistance if your brand is unattractive or untrustworthy.

While reputation has always been a factor in adult life, the idea of branding is relatively new, at least on a widespread basis. We’ve not been schooled to develop personal brands, so we hardly know where to begin. If I may make a humble suggestion, you can start by realizing that every post, comment, picture, video, email, newsletter, and other tool you use online in your daily work is a place where your brand is shared. Every single communication you make manifests your brand. You probably want to be sure it reflects your value without compromise.