I don’t normally pat myself on the back, but I was just notified of this today…

I am happy to announce that I recently passed the IVAA Certified Virtual Assistant examination with flying colors and am now considered a Certified Virtual Assistant ( a.k.a. CVA) by the one of the leading VA organizations, the International Virtual Assistants Association.

More on my CVA announcement from IVAA:

This designation is the industry standard for excellence. It is no small accomplishment to have passed the CVA examination, which tests VAs at an advanced level as opposed to core competencies. The IVAA CVA examination is the only VA examination-format certification that tests a VA in many areas of a VA practice.

I am happy to have this certification under my belt and a plan to display it with pride and to uphold the same high professional standards as always. Thanks for the opportunity IVAA!

Thanks for letting me toot my own horn for a minute!

Posted via web from megbarberva’s posterous

Here I am having more fun with using video. Here is the latest video I posted just yesterday. It’s a little bit of a company intro giving some history on my business and why I became a Real Estate Virtual Assistant. Enjoy!

Doing a little housekeeping here.

Don’t mind our little mess here at The BVAS Connection. Just changing up the theme and playing with images and colors. I’ve got some plans and I want to make this blog as fun, informative, and dynamic as possible.

So please excuse us if we look a little discombobulated for the next few days.

Long time, no see! I truly have a great reason for my small blogging hiatus here. Which brings me to my post today. Not only am I a Virtual Assistant, I use Virtual Assistants as well.

Obviously, I have been known to promote the value of using Virtual Assistants to help agents and other businesses streamline their admin overload, and marketing tasks. I AM a Virtual Assistant after all, so of course I want encourage all to engage with those in my industry (and most of all, use ME as their VA).

Well not only do I talk the talk, but I walk the walk as well. In the beginning of May, my family was blessed with the arrival of our beautiful baby boy. It was necessary for me to take a maternity leave so I could figure out being a first-time mom and get to know my son. But I did not want to abandon my clients and leave them in the dust for the couple months I was taking off. So I did what any savvy business owner would do and used my Virtual Assistant team to handle the reigns of my business while I was away. My awesome VA team members, Sandra Sims and LoriAnne Rehrig, took over for me and covered all my client business so I could take that time off. My business was able to run without me! If it wasn’t for them, I surely wouldn’t have been able take that time, or my clients would have been very upset if I just dropped the ball on them for a couple months.

That is one of the wonderful things about partnering with a Virtual Assistant in your business. You can take a vacation, sabbatical, or family leave, and you can be comfortable that your business continue to run without you in the hands of your Virtual Assistant (or multiple VAs). Your lead follow-up can be handled like clockwork by your VA as well as your listing updates, marketing activities, etc. None of it has to stop because you’re not there!

Now that I’m fully back, I am roaring to go and excited to be adding new services and activities to offer busy real estate agents. And with the backing of my VA team, my return has been seamless. Again, I couldn’t have done it without Sandy or LoriAnne. Thanks ladies! I truly have a fabulous team!

Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC,  and runs blogs, The BVAS Connection and The Virtual Perception. Megan has been in a Virtual Assistant for 4+ years and has spent 10+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.

Have you vistited our main site, www.BarberVASolutions.com lately? Well I am excited to announce that our BVAS site now has a new look! After 4+ years of having the same website design, I thought is was time for a facelift. So after many hours of hard work,  and many nights dreaming about CSS, I did it! (thanks to WordPress) With our new site, we’re also in the process of adding a few new services, products and resources. A few of the most exciting services we will be adding it the coming months:

• Social Network Marketing packages and more
• More graphic design services including Twitter backgrounds, custom web/blog headers and buttons

And as a celebration for our celebration of our site’s new look, I am running a New Look Special! For any new clients that sign on with us before March 31, 2009, we are offering 5% discounts on all of our retainer packages for the first 6 months of your contract. So don’t delay and contact me today for more details. Be sure to stay tuned and check back to our site frequently to see our new services, new resources and new team members we add in the coming months.

Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC,  and runs blogs, The BVAS Connection and The Virtual Perception. Megan has been in a Virtual Assistant for 4+ years and has spent 10+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.

The mobile phone is one tool that most real estate agents cannot live without. It’s a rarity when I find an agent who operates without one. The mobile lifestyle is very much a part of the lives of real estate professionals. And many agents that I know frequently update and upgrade to new phone, always looking for the latest and greatest tech tool. So what is one to do with those old used cell phones?

Recently I joined the mobile web & networking world by upgrading to a Smartphone. My old phone still worked great, but with my wireless company I was “eligible” for a new phone, and I wanted the capability to receive email and search the web. So I took the plunge. But what to do with my old phone?

So after pondering what to do with my old phone, I remembered watching my one of my favorite news programs (Glenn Beck) and they had talked about the Cell Phones for Soldiers program.

Cell Phones for Soldiers is a great non-profit organization formed by two amazing kids, Brittany and Robbie Bergquist, back in April 2004. Their mission with this program is help our soldiers serving overseas from all branches of the military, to call home. Through collection donations and the recycling of used cell phones, they have sent prepaid calling cards to soldiers all over the world.

Each phone is sent to ReCellular (the company involved in the recycling), and they pay Cell Phones for Soldiers, where each donated phone is worth about one hour of talk time for a soldier abroad.

Is is easy for anyone to donate to this great cause. To donate your old cell phones, simply go to their website, www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com and find a local drop off location from their list, or print a pre-paid shipping label right their on the site and mail in your phone to them. Individuals can also help by donating money directly to them. They have really made it so easy for you.

So donate your old mobile phones and help our troops call home.

Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, and publisher of The REAL Advantage E-Zine. Megan has spent 9+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.

Since social networking for the real estate industry has become heavily woven into the internet marketing fabric, many new and unique opportunities have cropped up. This week, my focus is on the fun micro-blogging tool, Twitter, and some great ways to use it for real estate. And I am probably the last one in my industry who hasn’t yet blogged about it. So here I go.

In case you are scratching your head and wondering what in the world Twitter is, let me tell you. From Wikipedia,

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

140 Characters is what you get to quickly tell people what you are doing, what is going on with your business and what is going on in your life.

So why should the real estate professional care? Twitter is fast becoming a popular social networking tool, and a growing number of users in the real estate industry are starting to use Twitter to their advantage. Real estate is all about relationship building, and what better way to build a great repoire with your clients, colleagues, and online prospects, on a regular basis by telling them what you are doing, announce important neighborhood news, share articles you find interesting, and build your reputation as an expert.

And Twitter is completely free and super easy to set up.

In future posts I will be covering ways to use it for real estate, draw leads and market to your internet prospects. For now, here are a few tips for beginners that want to successfully get started with Twitter.

1. Create & Update Your Profile – Make sure to put in a url to your website and let the world know what you do your profile. I personally do not follow those that do not fill out profile information. i like to know who I’m following and what they do.
2. Meet people – Start with following or inviting people that you know. Then branch out and ad people in your community and colleagues in the business.
3. Promote Your Twitter Profile – People will only now you to find and follow you if they know you’re there. When you join Twitter, you get a unique url that you can promote anywhere to direct people to you. Or, generate a badge (or widget) in Twitter to use on you other social network and blogging spaces like Facebook, Myspace, Blogger or TypePad, etc.
4. Contribute Interesting Info – Do not be one-dimensional and only use twitter as shameless self promotion, or to only market your listings. People will want to follow you if you have something interesting to say, not a constant commercial.
5. Humanize Yourself – Don’t look like just a real estate robot. Grab people with things like what you are currently doing, even if it is reading a book or eating lunch. People like to see a glimpse into real people’s lives. But still keep it professional. You don’t need to air ALL your personal dirty laundry.
6. Be Choosy About Following – You do not have to follow everybody that follows you. You could end up spending a lot of time sifting through your tweets so follow those that you think are interesting. There are twitter spammers about so beware.
7. Don’t Over-Tweet – One way to get blocked or ignored by fellow tweeters is by tweeting way too much. It’s annoying and can look “spammy” to some. Minute by minute accounts of what you are doing are not necessary.
8. The Lingo -

• Follow – Way to receive messages from people
• Followers – People who get messages from you
• Tweets – Twitter messages

Coming up later, specific tips on Twitter for real estate and ways to market and use it to your advantage.

Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, and publisher of The REAL Advantage E-Zine. Megan has spent 9+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.

As you may have noticed, there have been a few changes here at the BVAS Connection recently. Last week I had made the recommended update from WordPress for this blog, then all of the sudden, *poof*, my blog was gone…. Well, almost gone.  My header was there, but the rest of the blog disappeared behind some ugly error message.

So I spent a couple days trying to see if I can fix it myself with my amateur web skills, but to no avail. I realized this was a job for someone that had more advanced skills in this web design stuff. So I called upon some of networking groups to see if anyone knew the solution to my problem. Thank goodness for networking!

Thanks to another wonderful Virtual Assistant, Cyndi Papia of Office To-Go, I got my blog back! Out of the kindness of her heart, she looked over my code and then discovered that it was the theme I was using that was causing the problem since the update. We now have the blog up and running with a theme that I’ll keep temporarily until I have my new customized design ready. 

This goes to show me two lessons:

1. I am not an expert in EVERYTHING and so to save me time and anguish, I should leave some things to the real experts. (this is what Virtual Assistants are for!)
2. Online networking groups are extremely valuable, especially when you need help with a problem or an answer to a question.

Again, I want to thank Cyndi Papia for helping me out and getting this blog going again.  You can check out her website at www.officeto-go.com or her blog at http://officeto-go.com/blog.

For Immediate Release

Vineland, New Jersey. Megan Barber has successfully completed the REAL ESTATE WEBOGRAPHER^TMcertification to join an elite group of real estate professionals who have earned the prestigious certification offered through the National Institute of Webographers, LLC (http://www.webographers.com/). Megan has successfully completed 12 short courses which include: Online Business Strategy, Agent Websites, Single-property Websites, Lead Generation and Management, Virtual Tours, CMA and AVM technology, Neighborhood Search, Online Transaction Management, Electronic Forms, Virtual Assistants, Mobile Technologies and Blogs.

The REAL ESTATE WEBOGRAPHER^TM certification teaches real estate professionals how to develop and maintain an effective online business strategy in a web-based environment. Candidates learn how to establish an effective consumer-facing, all-inclusive web presence; while increasing their knowledge on real estate technologies and strategies clients expect. The program helps real estate agents and affiliates increase marketability by aiding them in determining where they should invest their resources to generate leads, acquire new clients, advertise and facilitate closings.

About Megan Barber
Megan Barber, owner & CEO of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant and a REAL ESTATE WEBOGRAPHER^TM professional. She specializes in providing high quality support services to real estate professionals knows how to assist her clients in winning more listings, attract buyers by turning a listing process into a marketing process. For more information about the valuable services that Megan provides to her clients and web-savvy consumers, please feel free to make contact with:

Megan Barber
http://www.barbervasolutions.com/
Megan@BarberVASolutions.com

About National Institute of Webographers, LLC
Since 2004, The National Institute of Webographers, LLC has specialized in the education, training, assessment and certification of web-based technologies for the Real Estate industry. The REAL ESTATE WEBOGRAPHER^TM Certification (REW^TM) provides consumer-facing solutions, education and training through a series of interactive online courses. Certification, online modules for REALTORS® and Assistants include Agent Websites, Single-property Websites, Lead Generation and Management, Virtual Tours, CMA and AVM technology, Neighborhood Search, Online Transaction Management, Electronic Forms, Blogs, Mobile Technologies, Virtual Assistants, and the Learning Laboratory^TM, where Certificants can access an array of showcased technologies for hands on learning. Available 24/7/365, these courses provide the opportunity for working professionals to learn at their own pace while enhancing the skill sets necessary to compete and excel with today’s web savvy consumers. REW^TMprofessionals provide consumers with a positive and profitable Real Estate experience. For more information regarding the National Institute of Webographers, please visit http://www.webographers.com/or contact Scott Lau at ScottLau@Webographers.com.