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12 Days of Thanks – Day 1

November 15, 2009 By 1 Comment

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. And no, it’s not only because of it’s the time of year where we have an

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Image by Markus Rödder via Flickr

excuse to stuff our selves silly with yummy food loaded with carbs. The

reason it is a favorite holiday of mine because because it is gateway to the holiday season and a day to give gratitude to people and things in our life that mean the most and truly give thanks for all that we have.

Today I’m starting my 12 Days of Thanks, leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday. I’m putting it out there, the things that I am thankful for. Gratitude is the attitude.

Today I am grateful for…

  • A laid back Sunday morning with my son and husband
  • The huge toothless smile my baby boy gives me when he spies me in the room
  • A day without rain so I can go and take a walk, which always makes me feel good
  • The fact that I have started this today and get to reflect on those things that I am truly grateful for.

“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.” – Buddha

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 nearly 5 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.

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Have You Met My Office Partner?

November 13, 2009 By Leave a Comment

New video I just posted. Working along side my little office partner, Joey. Hope you are having a successful fall and looking forward to a wildly successful 2010 coming up. We’ve got some big plans coming. 

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.

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Great post on Active Rain – Time To Dump The Desk??

September 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment
media httpactiveraincomimagestoreuploads93838ar125372746883839JPG ulIjbBmpiDddDzF.JPG.scaled500 Great post on Active Rain Time To Dump The Desk??

via activerain.com

If you want to ditch the desk and go completely mobile, here are the necessary tools to do so. This is a great post from Clint Miller on Active Rain. Follow him on Twitter too – http://twitter.com/therealclint

Posted via web from megbarberva’s posterous

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Contribute To A Great Cause With Your Old Mobile Phone

September 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment

sol shippinglabel Contribute To A Great Cause With Your Old Mobile PhoneThe 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.

cell phone 300x300 Contribute To A Great Cause With Your Old Mobile PhoneEach 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 E. Barber, Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC

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.

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In a slump? Tips to Increase Your Productivity

February 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Feel like you have too many plates spinning at once? Having a hard time remembering birthdays, appointments or other important dates? Do you have piles of clutter around your home, work and other spaces that seem like they’ll never go away?  Are you being easily distracted by "time wasters"? When your home life and work life are unorganized, your productivity can drop dramatically.  I understand the life of a busy real estate professional and know how easily one can fall into a slump due to disorganization and bad time management. On my blog, I am planning to share a few new items each week to help increase your personal and professional productivity which will improve your life and your business.

Tip #1: Take care of clutter in baby steps Got piles and piles of paperwork or mail cluttering your desk, your floor, your car, your kitchen counters?  Don’t fret!  It may seem very overwhelming at first, but it does not have to be. It didn’t get there all at once, and it doesn’t have to be taken care of all at once. Take care of it in baby steps by focusing on one pile in one area for 15 minutes at a time each day. Set a timer for 15 minutes and start going through your piles, throwing out what is not needed and filing (in your labeled file folders of course) the papers you need to keep. When your time is up, stop what you are doing, making sure you can mark where you left off, and come back to it the next day for 15 minutes. Any new mail or papers that come to you in this time, automatically file away as you get them. Do this for 21 days (it takes 21 days to make something a habit right?) and see where this takes you. Little by little you will purge and file all the cluttering paperwork you have laying about and before you know it, you have trained yourself into being nearly organized!

© Megan E. Barber, Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC 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.

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Snap Shots from Snap.com

November 20, 2007 By Leave a Comment

I just installed this fun little tool on my blog called Snap Shots from Snap.com. You can use Snap Shots to enhances all the links on the your blog or website pages with visual previews of the destination site that you are talking about. You can also view interactive wikipedia articles, videos, RSS feeds, MySpace pages and much more.

Snap Shots can sometimes bring your visitors the information they need without them having to leave the site. And other times it give them to the opportunity to preview the site and decide whether to visit the link or not.

And if site visitors decide that it is not for them, they can simply disable it by clicking on the options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and disable.

Warmest Regards

Megan Barber, Owner, CRESS, PREVA
Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC
www.BarberVASolutions.com

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Just in Time for the Holidays: Give the Gift of Choice

November 20, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Sick and tired of searching high and low for the perfect closing gift for your clients? Tired of giving the same old gift basket? Don’t want to give something that’s too impersonal? Now there’s a way to let your clients select their own perfect closing gift.

One of the vendors that had generated a lot of buzz among us VAs at the NAR conference was this company, Ribbon: The Gift of Choice. To give your clients the gift of choice you choose to send one of Ribbon’s gift albums to give your recipient and that consist of page after page of quality brand name gifts where your client can pick the perfect gift for them. They can choose from the latest technology, apparel, sporting goods, kitchen items, jewelry and more.

There are several different gift collections that can fit every budget with prices ranging from general “Variety” at $25  and all the way up to the “Luxe Royale” collection at $750.

How does it work? 1st you select the gift collection you would like to give your recipient. Then you choose the “All Pieces” ensemble that includes the catalog, a gift card and an envelope that make a lovely package to give to your client. The packet will then be mailed to you to give to your client. Your client then goes to www.ordermygift.com to make their gift selection that will then be shipped to them within 10 business days.

It is as simple as that! And your client will have no idea what price range you chose for them, just that you gave them a great selection of gifts to choose from.

Happy giving!!

Ribbon can be used for any occasion including birthdays, weddings, baby showers, housewarming and holiday gifts. I will even be considering using this myself this Christmas season.

© Megan E. Barber, Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC

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.

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New Year, New Outlook, New You

January 4, 2007 By Leave a Comment

The holiday season has come to an end and the 2007 is upon us. Now is the perfect time for personal reflection on your self, your business and your goals for the upcoming year.

First, take the time to evaluate your outlook on the previous year.  How did you fair in this last year? Did you attain any personal or professional goals set for 2006? What goals did you not reach in 2006?  What can you do to make the year 2007 better?

Now is the best time to start outlining your goals for 2007.  The simple way to get started is to write down a list of personal and professional goals you can reasonably attain within the next year. Then write down a plan on how you are going to go about attaining each of your goals. Post your list on your bulletin board or on the first page of your day planner to continually remind yourself what you need to do and how your’re going to get there.  And don’t forget to reward yourself once you reach those goals.

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How NOT To Do Real Estate

November 22, 2006 By 1 Comment

In my business I my efforts are mainly focused how I can help my Realtor clients build their business, sell more homes, serve more clients, increase their marketing presence… I don’t even bother with the investor side of real estate, thats not my business, so this post may seem off topic a bit for me. But I happened to stumble upon this blog today, http://iamfacingforeclosure.com/ . I absolutely cannot find the words to describe it… maybe it is somewhere between blind optimisim and absolute stupidity

This is how to NOT Successfully Invest In Real Estate.  And boy he messed up bad. And through it all, he still doesn’t seem to be in touch with reality whatsoever.

An interesting read to say the least.

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Protect Your Website’s Content

August 29, 2006 By Leave a Comment

In recent weeks, I had discovered that our main site, http://www.barbervasolutions.com/ had been plagairized. The offender had stolen several of our pages’s content almost word for word (including a typo). This is web content that I took great care and lots of time developing to convey my VA business’s message. I was shocked and saddened that someone had done this, especially since this person is someone who works within the same VA industry.

I was a victim of “copy-and-paste plagiarism”. Taking one’s content from their website and without their expressed permission, putting it on your website representing it as your own work is not only wrong, but it is illegal and against federal copyright law. Not only could someone take legal action against you, but your site may be banned by search engines as well. When developing your own website content, it may be useful to use other sites similar to yours as a frame of reference or inspiration, but be careful to craft your content in your own words.

How do you make sure your site is protected from plagiarism? Copyscape to the rescue!  A free tool from Copyscape.com can be used to help find possible word-for-word plagiarism of your site.  Just put in the page url and search.  You can also place this banner cs pu 234x16 Protect Your Websites Content on all of your pages to warn others not to copy your site.  Copyscape also provides premium services that will regularly check your site for content theft.

What do you do if you found someone that plagiarized your site? If you have found someone that has stolen your content, you must act quickly. It may be best to first consult an attorney for legal advice or to draft necessary documents. The first thing you should do is investigate as much as possible and keep thurough records to document what content has been stolen.  You can do a Whois search to find the contact information of the sites owner and their hosting company.  All that you may need to do is send them a polite email informing them to take down the content from the site.  For more in-depth information about responding to plagairism, check out http://www.copyscape.com/respond.php or copyscape’s resource center.

After we had sent the offender a simple cease and desist email, the content had been removed and we were given a sincere apology. 

Remember to protect your rights and fight against online plagiarism.

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Filed Under: BVAS News, Misc., Online Marketing, Real Estate Technology
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