Ok, so you have a website, a cell phone and a wonderful plan to make your presence felt on the internet. What you probably don’t have, is a voice mail system that makes you sound like a Fortune 500 company.

In the highly competitive field of Web Development and Virtual Assistance, having a voice mail system in place has been essential for our marketing efforts.  We chose GotVM (Got Voice Mail) because it successfully handles every aspect of our toll free and messaging needs at a very affordable monthly cost.  Even if you are a start-up company with little to no cash flow you can afford this voice mail system at under $10 a month. You can even get local service and they offer a 30 day money back guarantee.

Potential clients can now call one of my toll free numbers and be routed to the proper person within our companies. Since we work virtually, our clients and staff are all located in different time zones and we can now make sure that no calls are missed. GotVM has been an excellent resource for our companies as has allowed us to link our cross-nation staff  via our toll free numbers.

GotVM is a VERY affordable service (starting at $9.95 month) and we recommend it to all of our clients who are in need of a reliable and affordable virtual voice mail service. Even if you only have a cell phone,  your calls will be answered and routed properly which makes your company sound much larger than it really is.

As both a Web Developer and Virtual Assistant I am always on the lookout for automation tools. There are a couple of free tools that I use daily and want to share them with you.

The first one is a nifty little tool called “ShortKeys” which is intended for use with programs that allow text input such as a word processor, text editor, e-mail program, etc. It replaces a text string of up to 32 characters with a word, sentence, paragraph or several paragraphs, saving you valuable time by not having to manually type the text. Errors in typing can be eliminated. Save time hunting for that brilliant email or chunk of text that you want to duplicate by keeping it handy in ShortKeys. You will wonder how you ever got by without it. Did I mention that is is free? You can download it here: http://www.shortkeys.com/lite.htm.

The second tool that I use a LOT is a virtual yellow sticky note. It literally allows you to write a note on what appears to be a yellow sticky note on your desktop. It will stay there until you delete it. It is another free tool that will save you a lot of time when you need to jot a quick note to yourself or keep a reminder front and center where you can see it. You can read about it here: http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/index.html and download here: http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/download.html.

Enjoy!