Go Go Mama Go » Day-to-Day

For The New Year

Christine — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:44:52 +0000

What a way to start the year – I have a guest post published on Problogger today: Writing It Down: The Importance of Forecasting your Blog’s Performance. For those of you who might not be serious about blogging, Problogger is one of the top places to find information on the business of blogging.

As the title suggests, the article is about goal setting and the importance of writing your forecasts down. So, with that in mind, I thought I’d set out some high-level goals for Go Go Mama Go and VancouverMom.ca. I won’t focus so much on my revenue, pageview and visitor goals for this post – simply on some specific tactics that I plan to execute this year:

Go Go Mama Go

Launch an information product. I have some thoughts on what this should be – either an ebook or a collection of videos, articles and other materials to create a downloadable course of some type.
Nail down the voice of this blog. I’ve been waffling a lot and admit have been putting this on the back burner but this blog won’t be as successful as I’d like to see it without some true focus.
Evolve this blog into more of a revenue source for me. I’ve always intended it to be this way but it’s currently more of a hobby than anything.

VancouverMom.ca

Position VancouverMom.ca to be the premiere source of hyper-local information for moms living in Metro Vancouver.
Establish an expansion strategy. I have some thoughts on what this should be and will share over time.
Formalize operational processes around VancouverMom.ca so that my newsletters and posts are not so labour intensive (that is intensive on my labour).
Focus on traffic and revenue growth.

These are a bit vague, I know. I’ll be putting more detail in a playbook document that I will reference on a more regular basis.

Happy New Year everyone!

Cultural Divide

Christine — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 04:00:32 +0000

So, the stroller site is not progressing as happily as I would like it to. I’ve been stalled because my project manager in India has been sick. I’ve also been hamstrung by the fact that I did not provide them with a spec as I assumed that they would speak up if they were missing anything. Note to self: never assume – especially when dealing with a remote team that speaks English as a second language and who lives in another country with major cultural differences.

A friend of mine named Chris has worked quite extensively with outsourced offshore teams. He told me this hilarious story describing the differences between working with a team from India and another from Bulgaria. When you get status from a team from India, they typically will tell you that everything is going great, but when you press them, their response will be that the project is going to be about three months late. When you work with a team from Bulgaria, it’s the exact opposite: they will tell you that the project is an irreparable disaster and will be late. But when you dig a bit deeper to find out how late, they’ll tell you that their plan is tracking one hour behind.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the power distance index (PDI), something first introduced to me when I read Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book Outliers: The Story of Success – one of my all time favourite books and one I recommend to anyone and everyone.

Conceived in the 1960s and 70s by psychologist Geert Hofstede, the PDI ranks countries according to how much its culture values or does not value hierarchical relationships and respects authority. A low PDI score, like Canada’s 30, means that the society leans towards egalitarianism, blame is shared between superiors and subordinates, and managers socialize with their employees. On the other hand, a high PDI score, like India’s 77, means that there is generally more class division, subordinates expect clear guidance from above and are expected to take blame when things go wrong.

Incidentally, the PDI isn’t limited to countries. As far as I can tell, it also applies to corporate culture. In my last company, I saw two VPs at the helm. The first VP was friendly and entrpreneurial. I had known him for 8 years and felt very comfortable with being extremely informal with him. I wanted to be very approachable to my staff and generally had an open door policy where people could consult me on basically anything and everything that was on their mind. My staff regularly shared information with my own boss and I never felt threatened by them doing so. We definitely modeled a low PDI.

When the new VP and his regime joined the company, everything seemed to change. Speaking up was viewed as “self-entitlement”. All communications were to be crafted and deliberate. What a difference.

My troubles with getting my stroller site launched is largely due to these cultural differences. For example, I did not provide the India team with a spec document because I expected the company to speak up if they needed something. Wrong – it wasn’t until the very end that I determined that they did not understand my requirements and could not efficiently function without me providing much more guidance. Also, although I felt completely in the right, I did expect them to put up much more of a fight when I challenged them on some of the items they were considering to be out of scope. Instead, they immediately conceded and said that they did not want to debate every single point and that their goal was to make me a happy customer.

Here is world map of Hofstede’s Power Distance Index.

Here are some tips when dealing with a country with a higher PDI than yours:

Ensure that your directions are clear and direct. Emphasize deadlines.
Don’t expect your outsourced company to take initiative and identify when things are not progressing.
Employ a much more direct and authoritative management style. I sometimes feel downright bossy, but that’s my own cultural sensibility kicking in. It’s what’s required to overcome the distance in the power relationship.
Expect more bureaucracy. My outsourced team is much more about protocol and procedures than I am accustomed to.

Cross your fingers that the site will be much more closer to launch worthy this week!

Re-inspired

Christine — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:00:02 +0000

Baby Steps posted on Flickr by See El Photo

Darren Rowse posted this terrific post on Problogger today 9 First Step Goals For New Bloggers. He posts a lovely picture of his two boys in their pajamas and draws parallels between his 12-month-old learning how to walk and the evolution of a blog. Just how babies need to learn how to stand unassisted or walk with the help of a push toy, “[n]ew bloggers would do well to spend more time thinking about their ‘first steps’ than just the big picture dreams and goals that they have.”

Admittedly, I’ve been getting a little bogged down. After getting let go a few weeks ago and hosting a family visit from Vancouver for a week, I’ve been busy, figuring out Big Life stuff, and in the process lost a bit of momentum. I have been blogging for nearly two months and find that the most challenging part of blogging is maintaining confidence in the content direction of my blog. Are the topics interesting? Will people be compelled enough to come back? After all, if no one is reading, it’s hard to stay motivated.

I’ve also be distracted by, well, my core business of getting Upside Guides‘ first property up. I am very very close to getting it live on my domain. It will be in a sorry state: content will not be updated, images will not display nicely, product data will not be plentiful, and bugs will abound. However, the important thing will be that it will be UP, happily accepting spider crawls from Google and Yahoo, as well as a place for me to show potential advertisers, partners and affiliates.

But Darren’s post has re-inspired me. It’s a reminder that things don’t happen overnight and that this blog is not a flash in a pan. Here are his goals:

Publish 10 Posts
Getting your first comment from someone you don’t know
Get your first link from another blog
Build your readership up to more than 20 readers a day
Hit a level of 20 RSS subscribers
Getting your blog indexed in Google
Get your blog earning $1 a week (update: only if making money from your blog is one of your goals – it’s not for everyone
First guest post on another blog
Having someone (not you or your mum) tweet about your blog

I have accomplished numbers 1, 2, 6, 9. Not bad really. I think the others will just come once I have more content in the blog. I also have some pillar article ideas that will hopefully draw more interest, as well as a nugget of a guest post idea that I’ll shop around when I’ve got a little bit more content.

A couple of others I’ll add for myself:

Publish 100 Posts. Seems that a lot of people give up. 100 seems like a good number that proves that I’m pressing on.
Elevate the design of the Thesis template.
Post five Straight-Talk Tuesdays articles. (I’m always looking for candidates by the way!)

Anyway, do go visit Darren’s blog Problogger if you have not done so. He’s got terrific content for blogger newbies like me.

Thanks Darren!

Progress (Or Lack Thereof) with India

Christine — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:12:44 +0000

I’m starting to get a bit frustrated with my India team. Progress is not going as quickly as I had hoped. They seem to think that they are further ahead than they are and claimed that many of my requests could be handled post launch. Now I am the first one to put things off to after launch but there are some items that need to be dealt with (like navigation not working, pages not displaying the correct data, etc). They’ve opened access to their bug tracker and I am doubly concerned that there is no traction on the issues I have reported.

Thankfully, my family has been in town so I had very little time to focus on my business. Instead, I’ve been working with my VAs to get content ready for my blog. They are doing some very simple things for me like formatting and inputting content, as well as researching and sending emails on my behalf. It seems like a tad bit of overkill to have these VAs – especially since, let’s face it, I’m currently unemployed – but my plan is that my “idleness” will be temporary and I should really be creating systems to run a business on remote control.

After I put my family on a plane back to Vancouver tomorrow, I’ll be heading out to an interview and then a networking mixer hosted by a major interactive consulting agency here in Toronto. On Thursday, it’s a meeting with a labour lawyer then going to my old work after hours to clear out my office and then maybe a few drinks with some ex-colleagues.

So you see: I’ll still be incredibly busy and I don’t really see my schedule letting up until next week – if ever. It’s important that I leverage the power of remote workers to help me move my business along.

Anyway, still maddening that the development company isn’t making progress fast enough on the stroller site. I’m hoping that by the end of next week, we’ll be 95% there.

Review of HootSuite

Christine — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:00:09 +0000

I started using HootSuite off and on a couple of weeks ago. HootSuite is a web interface that allows you to manage most of your Twitter activities.

Considering that I’ll be using Twitter a whole lot in the future, I thought it would be great to use some kind of Twitter console or dashboard that helped me schedule tweets as well as allowed for multiple people to tweet on my behalf without exposing them to my own username and password. Although I’m still deciding whether or not having someone else tweet for me is a good strategy or not (I’m leaning towards Yes, with some caveats), HootSuite seems good for a whole bunch of reasons:

1. Schedule your tweets.

This was a big plus for me. I wanted to pace tweets throughout the day instead of just in the evening between 7 and 10 which is really when I get online to work on my business. HootSuite handles this quite easily and very reliably (I recently tried a competitive product and it sent the tweet immediately, instead of when I had scheduled it).

2. Shrink URLs

You can shrink URLs right away without going to TinyURL or another site that does that. I’m pretty new to Twitter so maybe other products do that native to their product.

3. Manage several Twitter IDs.

Very useful considering I will be adding another Twitter ID for the stroller site in the next coming weeks. I haven’t tested it yet, but you can also tweet the same status from several profiles at once, which is convenient.

4. Hootlet toolbar

You can add the Hootlet toolbar to your browser, which allows you to quickly tweet on pages you are browsing. The flow of posting this way also allows for scheduling your tweet for later.

5. Add several editors

This feature was a big winning point for me. I liked the ability to create “editors” who could submit tweets for me, without revealing the username and password of the main profile. I won’t be having them create tweets (although I might get them to go through a set of blogs and tweet about posts within some set guidelines); instead, I’ll be drafting a bunch of tweets for them to schedule on my behalf. It also might be event-driven – i.e. they might post a tweet everyday about the latest post on my blog. Or new posts to the forums of the stroller site.

6. Track the performance of your tweets

I just re-read the feature list for this post and apparently HootSuite allows allows you to track your URL clickthrough stats. I didn’t find this feature very intuitive to use (hence I didn’t know it was there) or maybe I wasn’t looking for it because I didn’t need (or know I needed) it. Anyway, I can see how this feature is a value-add.

One downside is that I can’t add friends through the HootSuite dashboard. I suppose that’s ok since this isn’t Twitter afterall – it’s just a tool to make tweeting a bit easier.

Bottomline: if you are looking for a Twitter tool that can help you manage several profiles and allow many people to tweet on your behalf, check out HootSuite. It might be right up your alley.

Update on My Site Progress

Christine — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:00:27 +0000

Thought I’d give everyone a little update on the progress of my site. Here’s what I’ve accomplished to date:

I have completed a pretty exhaustive list of product information that will make the backbone of my web site. I used a company in India to complete this. However, I will admit that I’m not entirely pleased with the result.

The company also collected the accompanying product images. Again, not happy with everything they found, but it’s about 99% there.

The company also looked up manufacturer contact information, including url, address, phone number.

I’ve hired a virtual assistant to help with collecting advertising information and vendor contact details.

I’ve commissioned a writer in Seattle to write several articles for me. She written about 20 to date with another 10 to come. She’s been perfect and requires very little oversight from me.

I hired a person in Spain to complete 10 Top 10 Lists for me. I’ve read that Top 10 Lists enhance a site’s performance.

I have been working with a vendor in India to build my web site. It’s been pretty good so far. The team has been very accommodating, although communication has been a bit patchy. I’m curious to see how they will do for development and am starting to play around with the Joomla CMS interface now.

I launched this blog to document my progress and meet a few new people online. I’ve published 20 articles to date.

I’ve set myself up on Twitter and have been experimenting with what that might bring for my business.

I’ve been devouring several blogs, ebooks and web sites to get myself as informed as possible on this stuff.

I started my 5 Questions feature and have thus far published 2 posts and have several queued up for the next few weeks.

I’ve been participating in various forums and commenting on blogs in the hopes of learning more and have met a few people along the way.

Wow. When I look at that list, I can’t believe I’ve done all that in the span of about a month and a half. All while maintaining my full time job as well as being a mother and wife. Since I don’t have a boss to tell me I’m doing great, I guess I’ll do it for me: Great job, Christine!

10 Things to Assign to a Virtual Assistant

Christine — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:00:54 +0000

I’ve decided to hire not one, but two virtual assistants (VA). Not because I’m angling for world domination, but because I think it’s better to put two candidates through a trial period. I’m going to assign them both analogous tasks and see what they come up with over the next month.

I’m not sure if a VA will be good for the long run, but I can see the value that they will bring me:

1. Web research – and lots of it. I’ve used a VA a few times to help with product research, as well as to build Top 10 lists. Some immediate tasks I need to off load are researching advertising prices of similar sites, as well as building a list of stores and distributors. This task is perfectly suited for VAs since they can do them mostly anywhere.

2. Moderating my forum. Once I get my site rocking and rolling in a few months, moderating the forum will (hopefully) take up a lot of someone’s time.

3. Approving comments on my blog. Probably 80% of comments can just be approved with little intervention, likely going to 90% or higher with some training. But in the few that are problematic, my VA can forward them with me.

4. Twittering (possibly). I’m debating on whether I should include this since just yesterday, I read this post in Copyblogger, since I might be kidding myself about how effective I’ll be using Twitter as a marketing tool. Anyway, if I do decide to go this route, I’ve found HootSuite, which allows me to queue up tweets and allow someone to tweet on my behalf.

5. Optimizing and formatting my blog content. I love blogging, so I’ll continue to write for this blog. However, there is some work in ensuring that it reads well, creating the links, making sure that the tags are right, assigning it to the correct category, etc. It probably adds 10% to blogging time. So if I’m blogging 5 days a week and require 1 hour to write each post, then I can shave about 30 minutes off per week by assigning this task to someone else. I can also see them helping to source content for me and aid in some researching for the blog.

6. Inputting content into the content management system (CMS) on my site. First off, for my stroller site, I’m going to need to clean-up a spreadsheet of nearly 400 products and then enter them into Joomla, the site’s content management system. Well, I’m not since I’m going to assign this to a VA. I then plan on having my VA input the content into the site’s CMS on a regular basis.

7. Responding to email requests through my site (first contact). I recently sent an email to site publisher and got an automated message that told me that I would receive an answer me within 24 hours. I thought that was a bit of overkill since it goes without saying that the site should respond to me within 24 hours. However, it did get me thinking that I shouldn’t allow myself to get bogged down by emails and it seems to be a good thing to assign to my VA. I plan on developing some standard responses to commonly asked questions and providing them to the VA to use before emails get flipped to me. I’ll also get them to own an FAQ to cut down on email as much as possible.

8. Responding to insertion orders for advertising on my web site. Once I get the ads working on the site, I’ll get my VA to load the ads into the site, quality check them and ensure that they are being removed when the ad is done.

9. Managing my eLance postings. It takes a lot of time to post jobs, review and respond. I can see a lot of value in getting my VA to filter out the junk before I see it, as well as responding to bidders with a stock email that I provide them. If anything it would make for a surreal experience having a VA in India managing bids from other providers in India for my site in Canada.

10. General admin tasks. I may ask them to put together a Powerpoint presentation or selling packages, and other admininistrative tasks.

I’m really busy these days, so there is certainly a lot that I could get a VA to do for me. If you’re using a VA yourself, I’d love to hear about your own experiences!

How To Hire a Virtual Assistant

Christine — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:00:37 +0000

I just hired my first virtual assistant (VA). I got the idea from Tim Ferris’ 4-Hour Work Week and thought that it might be great to use one for when the business is more mature. However, I’m getting pretty swamped between work, home, and Upside Guides, so I decided to bite the bullet and hire one now.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Consider what you’ll need this person for. I suppose it goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway), you’ll need to think about what you’ll need your VA for. Is it for inputting content onto your site? Answering email? Completing online research? Whatever it is, have a clear picture in your head so you’ll know what to look for.

2. Think about what kind of constraints you have. After thinking about the kinds of activities, are you limited by time zones? If you need immediate answers, having someone not in your time zone might be a challenge. Is impeccable English important?

3. Draft your posting. Be specific as you can about the tasks required, as well as the skills your looking for. I didn’t include it in my post, but it’s also useful to include your expected response time. Here is what mine looked like:

I am in the process of launching my company’s first product and I am seeking a virtual assistant to help me with my administrative duties. Initial duties include:

Researching emerging and established entrepreneurs and inviting them to participate in my blog’s feature. This will be an ongoing task.

Assisting in the administration of my web sites, including moderating comments and participating in forum posts.

Compiling a list of links to be posted on my blog on a weekly basis.

General research activities, as needed. I frequently require information compiled into spreadsheets.

Inputting content into my CMS, including formatting and QAing data.

Writing press releases and correspondence, as required.

Any other administrative tasks as they arise.

Required skills/requirements

Impeccable English with perfect grammar, spelling and punctuation.

Excellent reading, writing and verbal skills

Proficiency in MS Office suite, including excel and word

Ability to respond to most email requests within 12 hours, 24-hours maximum.

Previous experience as a VA.

Desired qualities: My sites are geared towards women, particularly mothers and entrepreneurs. If you have particular experience in this area, please note it in your bid.

I will be hiring the chosen applicant for a 1-month trial. If successful, this will be a longer term engagement spanning at least 3 more months, but likely beyond. It is difficult to estimate how much weekly time is required and I will not be able to guarantee a steady stream of work. However, it can range from 4 to 35 hours / week.

4. Put your post on a site that allows you to connect with freelancers. My experience and preference is eLance.com, but truthfully I haven’t tried others. Here’s a more to add to your list (feel free to suggest others):

5. Evaluate bidders. Obviously, it’s important to evaluate bidders based your criteria and constraints. I always have a few deal breakers in the back of my mind. In hiring my VA, price was an easy one to eliminate providers by since I’m on a pretty tight budget. I then looked at the quality of the responses: Did the writing meet my standards? Was there thoughtfulness in their response? Narrow your candidates to just a handful.

6. Interview. I didn’t complete an IM or Skype interview in this case (I probably should have), but here are the follow up questions I sent in lieu of an interview:

Thanks for you bid. Please advise on the following:

Are you an independent, or do you have a team of people? If you are an independent, how do deal with your client re vacations, sick time, etc?

What hours would you be available?

What experience do you have with Twitter?

Please send examples of research spreadsheets you have created.

Please send examples of powerpoint presentations you have created.

What is your experience with WordPress?

What response time should I expect?

Please send examples of your writing (300 words minimum).

What experience do you have with marketing plans?

Looking forward to your response.

Thank you,

Christine
Upside Guides

After a few back-and-forths with the provider, I then sent one final message that confirmed our understandings and terms. Most importantly, I asked this question: “Is this the best rate you can propose?” I always ask this question.

7. Select. Seems so simple, but sometimes making the choice is the most difficult part.

8. Hire. Cross your fingers and hit that “Award” button. I followed up immediately with an assignment.

So far, I’ve had very positive experiences hiring outsourced, including off-shore, providers. I’ll keep you posted on how my experience is going, but I’d love to hear about your experiences. Please comment!