Congress gets its own YouTube Channels

I guess you can teach an old Congress new tricks!  In a desire to emulate Barack Obama’s success in using the iternet to raise funds and build an army of volunteers online – Congress is launching official YouTube channels where members of the House and Senate can create and control videos of floor speeches, hearings or ribbon-cuttings. (See the welcome video message below)

Whether you voted for Barack Obama or not – one thing everyone can agree on is his campaign had a very effective strategy for using the Internet to raise awareness and build community.

One of the refreshing things about his strategy for modern politics is the transparency and grass roots approach he believes in.  Using a mix of offline and online media and extensive use of videos on YouTube Obama released a constant flow of information about what he was doing, how he was doing it, and where they were spending the money they raised.  He connected with his supporters and the public was given the ability to respond, share their opinions, and get involved.

According to a recent NY Times article – Campaigns in a Web 2.0 World:

Not since 1960, when John F. Kennedy won in part because of the increasingly popular medium of television, has changing technology had such an impact on the political campaigns and the organizations covering them. For many viewers, the 2008 election has become a kind of hybrid in which the dividing line between online and off, broadcast and cable, pop culture and civic culture, has been all but obliterated.

I applaud Congress for taking these bold but necessary steps.  This new direction which involves a using a combination of video sharing and social media, will provide a level of access and transparency never before seen in government. This will make it much easier to follow what is going on in Washington and for people to voice their opinion about it.

Read more

Starting or Growing a Virtual Assistant Business

We got a comment on one of our Podcasts from a visitor named Collette Schultz. Her question about the Virtual Assistant industry is one we get pretty frequently, so I thought I’d include my reply here as a post.

Collette Schultz on October 26th, 2008 11:21 pm

As a new virtual assistant subcontractor I’m getting into researching the VA industry through podcasts. I listened to this one last week and am bound to hear more. What I find most frustrating is knowing where to start. Do you offer a beginners series to help getting started?

While we have never blogged or done a segment specifically on Virtual Assisting, I do not believe it differs greatly from other types of internet based businesses: that is to say that it relies mostly on abilities and training, networking, and marketing.

There are several places people can obtain training to become a virtual assistant or, as in Collette’s case, improve their existing skill base; some of them offer certification:

Certification Programs

• AssistU
• International Virtual Assistants Association (IVAA)
• VA Certification
• Certified Virtual Professional (Thanks to Collette for this resource!)

Our Jumpstart Kit is also intended to improve people’s fundamental skills with virtual teamwork and remote work technology. Also, Phil wrote a book called Lose Your Commute about finding legitimate work-from-home opportunities in general and it contains a lot of insights and resources. Read more

Tips to improve your web searches

In my last blog post I explained how to use Google Alerts to automate your most common web searches and have Google deliver pertinent information directly to your inbox.  However the sad truth is that most people don’t know some of the basic techniques and strategies for searching the web effectively and narrowing down the often thousands of search results to key in on the specific information they want.

If you are like many people you take a shotgun approach to searching the web by typing in a few simple words and then wasting time weeding though pages and pages of results looking for the articles or websites that contain the information you are looking for.

I recently discovered a great series of web videos called The Common Craft Show. There website features a series of short explanatory videos that explain often complex topics in plain English. They use an innovative and entertaining video/animation style they call “paperworks” and publish a new video about once a month.

The video here features their easy to understand explanation of how to search the web more effectively.  Watch this short video and improve your web searches today!