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INNOVATE! Technology, Tools, Tips, & Techniques
 
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August 2009
 
Dear Client,
 
Welcome to INNOVATE!, an administrative resource for small business owners. INNOVATE! is a product of Cybertary, a professional Virtual Assisting company. In these monthly emails we will be giving you numerous resources and tips you can use in your business, your home, your office, and your life!
 
School is just around the corner.  For some parents, it is a relief to get back to a routine, still others feel anxious about transitioning back to the hustle and bustle of busy mornings, evening homework and harried bedtimes. Either way, there are some simple steps you can take during the last few weeks of summer to ease both you, and your kids, more smoothly back into a regular routine.

The first days and weeks of school should be a special family time, not a chaotic rush to get everyone out the door. In August, Cybertary offers a few tips to alleviate the stress that comes with getting your family back to school.
 
Enjoy!
Back-to-School Basics
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Getting Your Back-to-School Groove Back
 
Summer is a time for relaxed evenings and lazy mornings, a time when the sun stays awake longer and the kids follow suit. In the morning, kids get to turn off their alarm clocks and wake up with their body clocks. Mealtime is mellow as breakfast turns into brunch, lunch becomes “linner”, and dinner… well, it just happens when, or if, it happens. Even working parents feel more relaxed when they don’t feel the pressure of crowding homework, a healthy dinner, and bedtime routines into a precious few hours. When school is out, they can come home, take the family to the park or the pool, eat dinner, and relish in the fact that the kids will fall asleep easily from pure exhaustion vs. clever coercion. It is a fact, summer months are a time to cherish, but every year, the lazy days of summer must come to an end.
 
Shop Smart:  Save Time and Money
altSchool Supply Shopping Tips

Remember when back to school shopping was as simple as buying a new pair of shoes? Back in the day, if teachers needed a little help, students provided their own pencils, paper, and maybe a folder or two. These days, parents are expected to shop for a long list of items–from zipper baggies to facial tissues, to even the basics, like paper, pencils, glue, and markers—for their student. This can all be a little overwhelming, both for the busy parent and for the pocketbook so we’ve compiled some tips to help make school supply shopping easier on the budget while also saving some precious time.
 
Time is Money
altSave Both with Cybertary

As an independent professional or small business owner, you’re likely running on a shoestring budget because a penny saved, is a penny that goes to your business’s bottom line.  You probably can’t afford the luxury of a full-time bookkeeper, marketing manager, and administrative person, yet you’re swamped with related tasks. If you find yourself spending your own valuable time managing projects like these, here are ten signs that it’s actually costing you money:
  • You spend more time at the computer than with clients
  • You skipped last week’s networking event in order to catch up on your books
  • You can’t remember the last time you reviewed your business plan
  • Your elevator pitch is rusty
  • You’re not doing as well as you think you should be doing
  • You’re not generating new leads
  • Your website is out of date
  • You can’t follow up in a timely manner
  • You don’t control your time
  • You are overwhelmed with tasks
In other words, you’re spending too much time working “in” your business and not enough time working “on” your business. Using a virtual assistant to manage your billing and bookkeeping, produce your marketing materials, manage your social media presence, and manage your ongoing projects will save you time and money. Hire a Cybertary and reclaim your valuable time so you can focus on building relationships, marketing your business, improving your skills, networking, and living your life instead of letting your business run you. 
CyberQuick-Tip:  TweetDeck
altAir Traffic Control for Twitter

Twitter can be pretty overwhelming for both new and established users. The more people you follow, the more overwhelming the flood of updates and information and the more likely it becomes that you’ll miss something important. After all, Twitter is more than just a way to stay in touch with friends, it has become a resource for instant support, feedback and solutions, a way to connect with like-minded people, a critical business networking and marketing tool, and an immediate outlet for breaking news events. So, if you’re starting to get the Twitter jitters, you’re probably ready for TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a free application for Twitter that allows you to organize, update, and manage all the messages, updates, retweets, and @replies that come through on Twitter 24/7. With TweetDeck you can easily set up groups, searches, and notifications to stay in touch with friends, share links, record video and use Twitter much more efficiently. Here are just a few of the really cool features TweetDeck has to offer:

  • Create groups to easily stay up to date with friends, family, or colleagues, or interest groups so you never miss an important tweet again.
  • Stay up to date with keyword searches. Search for your brand, name, or subjects that interest you and organize saved searches in columns.
  • Update Facebook on the fly and view your friends’ status updates by linking TweetDeck to your Facebook account.
  • Keep your TweetDeck data safe with automatic sync and back-up features that sync your columns and groups on your computer or iPhone.
  • Use TweetDeck to manage multiple Twitter accounts without switching between them. Simply create a column for each account and you can keep track of everything all at once.

Can’t wait to get started? Download TweetDeck now. It’s free!

Cybertary Wins 2009 APEX Award 
altCybertary has been awarded the APEX 2009 Award of Excellence in the "Newsletters – Web & Electronic" category for our work on the monthly Cybertary INNOVATE newsletter.
 
APEX 2009 -- the 21st Annual Awards for Publication Excellence -- is an international competition that recognizes outstanding publications from newsletters and magazines to annual reports, brochures and Web sites.  Cybertary's tireless efforts to maintain an up-to-date, graphically pleasing and informative newsletter has paid off.

The APEX Awards for Publication Excellence is an annual competition for writers, editors, publications staff and business and nonprofit communicators. It is sponsored by Communications Concepts, Inc., publishers of business communication reports, including Writing That Works, a subscription bimonthly for professional communicators, and special reports on topics such as writing feature articles and Web publishing.

APEX 2009 awards were based on excellence in graphic design, editorial content and the success of the entry -- in the opinion of the judges -- in achieving overall communications effectiveness and excellence. APEX Grand Awards honor the outstanding works in each main category, while APEX Awards of Excellence recognize exceptional entries in each of the sub-categories. With close to 3,785 entries, competition was exceptionally intense. 100 Grand Awards were presented to honor outstanding work in all of 11 major categories, with 1,158 Awards of Excellence recognizing exceptional entries in 122 subcategories.
Preview of Upcoming INNOVATE! Newsletters...  

 THEME - Blogging for Business

  •   Blogging Basics
  •   How to Remember Things
  •   CyberQuick-Tip: What is a Widget?
  •    ...And More!  
Thank you for taking the time to read our monthly newsletter. We aim to create articles that are informative and useful for the small business owner and entrepreneur. If you know of someone else who would enjoy our newsletter, please forward this to them using the link below and suggest that they self-subscribe. If you know of someone who can benefit from our services please let us know. We are always here to help. 

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