Could you use a virtual assistant?  Do you ever find yourself wishing there were more hours in the day to get everything done?  Even better, do you ever find yourself wishing somebody could take some of the overwhelming tasks off of your hands?  A virtual assistant can do just that.

A virtual assistant can’t pick your kids up from school, fold the laundry, or mow the lawn, but for just about anything computer or telephone-based, a virtual assistant can be extremely useful.  Virtual assistants can answer telephones, schedule appointments, or plan vacations.  They can also go beyond the realms of secretarial services.  For example, they can do research for you online, or perform other sorts of marketing research.  Basically, the virtual assistant can handle all of the online or virtual tasks that you feel comfortable delegating, which will help make your life that much easier.

The benefits of hiring a virtual assistant:

•    Hiring a virtual assistant can be much cheaper than hiring an actual part-time or full-time assistant.  A virtual assistant can save on the costs of payroll taxes, as well as the costs of providing an actual assistant with all the necessary things needed in order to properly do the work you assign.
•    With the number of virtual assistants continually growing, there are more and more people whose expertise will meet your criteria.

When hiring a virtual assistant, you want to make sure you pick the right one.  Virtual assistants are normally freelance or contract workers, so you want to make sure the person you hire is someone you can trust.  The person you hire may be a college student, a recent grad, or even a veteran who has been doing this for years, so make sure you make your needs clear and that whoever you hire can perform.

Integrating social media into events can be invaluable in terms of promotion, engagement, and measuring analytics.  Here are 3 ways to use social media for events:

Promotion

Social Media can be a great resource for promoting your event because it allows you to reach out to a giant audience, as well as keep attendees reminded and up-to-date as the event gets closer.

Create A Facebook Event Page

A Facebook Event Page allows Facebook user to RSVP to your event, and it provides them with all of the details about the event.  Attendees can see who else is going to the event and they can interact through the comments section where you can also engage.

 

Create a Twitter Hashtag for Your Event

A designated Twitter hashtag for your event will allow you to see what guests and viewers are saying about your event during and after the fact.

Social Media Engagement

Social Media can be helpful for not only promoting your event, but also for getting people to engage DURING your event.

Hashtag

As people enter the event, provide them with a card or a flyer that has the hashtag you created for the event so live-tweeters are all using the same hashtag.  You should also have a slide at the beginning of the presentation that mentions the hashtag so people will be more likely to use your hashtag and talk about your event.

Live Stream Your Event

By live streaming your event, people who were unable to make it to your event will be able to watch it live from home, or watch it after the fact when the event is over.  This will also help people that are not present engage via Twitter and Facebook.

Social Media Monitoring Tools

There are a lot of social media tools out there that will help monitor the activity and the success of your event.  Check out these really cool and useful tools:

• Brand Mentions
• Buffer
• Trackur
• Facebook Insights
• Google Analytics

These are 3 of the best ways to use social media for events, and if you decide to implement them into your next event, you can expect some really great audience activity!

Are you welcoming new co-workers to your co-working space?  If not, you should really consider doing so!

Co-working spaces are great working environments as well as places to network with other entrepreneurs.  But meeting people in a co-working space can be difficult without a little bit of help from the existing coworkers.  Whether you are running a co-working space, or you are just working out of one, here are a few things you can do to help welcome new co-workers into the community:

Take them on a tour

When new co-workers joins your community, take them on a tour of the facility and introduce them to some people you regularly interact with.  Show them popular break hangouts, or lunch spots so they can immerse themselves into the community.  A tour will help a new co-worker become familiar with the facility as well as the people working there.

Make an announcement

If your co-working space has an email system or intranet for making announcements to co-workers, consider sending out notifications of when new co-workers will be joining the community.  Encourage current existing co-workers to introduce themselves to new co-workers and help get them situated.

Host a monthly potluck

Not only is this good for welcoming new co-workers, but it is also a great community event.  Hosting a monthly potluck gives co-workers a chance to bring in their own dishes, and it allows them to network with each other.  New co-workers can easily meet people and learn about what others in the space are doing.  A lot of connections can be made between co-workers all because of a little potluck lunch.

Welcoming new co-workers to a co-working space is important for fostering the right type of community for your co-working space.  It’s kind of luck welcoming the new kid on the first day of school, or bringing a pie over to the neighbors who just moved in across the street.  Making that new person feel welcome will make their transition into an unfamiliar place much smoother, and it may even result in a friendship!

Promoting events has been made easier and more convenient than ever with the help of social media and some really cool web tools:

Lanyrd

Lanyrd is a great tool for finding conferences near you, and seeing which of your friends are attending or speaking at events.  If you can’t make it to an event, you can always check out slides, videos, and podcasts that are uploaded after.  This tool is great for promoting events because it allows people come across your events and then remember you for the next time you have an event.

Smore

Smore is a really cool tool that lets you design your own online flyers, which you can publish instantly.  Smore provides you with a list of custom-made themes, and it also allows you to embed test, images, videos, tweets, products, and reviews.  This tool also provides you with analytics in the form of an easy-to-read infographic, which highlights incoming traffic by source (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Website, Search, Email, etc.), interactions, and outgoing links.  All in all, a pretty cool tool for promoting events.

Eventbrite

Eventbrite allows you to create a professional event webpage that allows people to register for your event.  This tool makes promoting events a seamless process by automatically listing your public events on search engines, and allowing you to send out personalized email invitations.

Plancast

Plancast is a great source for finding out about events as well as planning and promoting your own event.  This online calendar allows user to share events and plans on their calendars, and then share with friends via Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.

Eventasaurus

Eventasaurus is a tool for promoting events on all major social networks with an extremely useful dashboard for managing and engaging with RSVPs.  Comments and RSVPs are all compounded into one manageable page.  The ability to spread an event over several social networks, and then manage all of those pages in one convenient dashboard is a luxury for event planners and managers.

Experiment with some of these tools next time you are planning an event, and see how much easier the promotion process will become.

Waiting until the last minute to plan an event can lead to a lot of stress and possibly a failed event.  Planning an event only a couple of weeks before the actual event is very possible, but that time crunch can make all the difference in the turnout of the event.  Here are some compelling reasons to avoid last minute event planning:

You may not be able to find a date that works for your key players

There are a lot of people that need last minute event planning in order to make the event a successful one. Unfortunately, waiting too long runs the risk of people not being able to attend.  You need to think about your speakers, caterers, attendees, and any other sort of help you may need to run the event.  With only a couple of weeks notice, you may not be able to secure all of these important components, which would take away from the event.

You’ll explode your travel budget

Even with a 2-month lead time, many affordable seats in economy and premium economy classes are sold out on some airlines.  Finding alternate flight/travel plans last minute could potentially cost you a lot more money than you had originally planned.

It will take a lot more work to find a venue

You run the risk of not being able to find a suitable event space, especially if you are trying to hold an event during a really popular conference time or location.  You may have found dates when all key players are available, but if you can’t find a place to hold your event, you’re pretty much screwed.  Your best bet would be to try and book your event space AT LEAST 2-3 months in advance in order to secure a spot.

Last minute event planning will increase the likelihood of errors

The less time you give yourself to book an event, the more likely you are to overlook things or make errors.  A successful event requires minimal errors, so give yourself the time to avoid making any errors.  Most events will have changes in plans before the big day, and if you forget to keep track of the smallest change you can run into some serious issues.  Plan ahead and make sure you have time to check over all of the logistics.

Attendees and speakers need some time to settle down

Sometimes, especially when the event is planned last-minute, the only options for travel are the longest and most convoluted routes.  If your keynote speaker has a two layovers on his way to your event the day of, he is going to be tired from travel and it will probably have a negative effect on his performance.  If you can plan the event so your speaker or guests can arrive a day or two before the actual event, they will have time to get settled and not be so exhausted once they get to your event.

A lot of work goes into planning an event, so make sure you give yourself enough time to book event space, speakers, and travel accommodations.  Last-minute event planning can work out, but the chances of failure increase exponentially when you only give yourself a few weeks to plan.