by Francis
(October 11, 2012)
Use Google’s free tools. They are awesome!
Google shares us a set of free tools with everyone who wants to use them. It is a smart move as an employer to teach your virtual assistants how to use those Google products to their fullest potential as fast as possible.
Personally, in one of the very first messages I share with a newly hired virtual assistant I tell them:
“I like Google Mail. I need you to use Google Mail too.
If needed, please create a free account and let me know your email.”
Google Mail itself has a lot of advantages like big storage, being free, great spam filters and so on. But the good thing is that many Google products play well with each other and work especially well when used as a team.
The Google Messenger
I like to use the Google messenger and their voicemail functionality a lot.
Since I already have the Google account, it is easy to locate the contact in Google messenger and send them quick chats. Whenever I have an idea, I like to share a chat with my virtual assistant.
I’m not sure if this is a specific thing for Germany but, unfortunately, Google voicemail doesn’t work anymore for me.
Some years ago, I loved to use it to send my virtual assistants and my personal assistant specific voice instructions on the run. I’m now using my mobile phone or Jing.
Google Documents
Like Google Mail, Google Docs has huge storage capacity. You can share and work in real time at the same document as your virtual assistant does. This is awesome for all sorts of online collaboration.
You could be creating content at the same time. So if you have any documents to cooperate on, why not use Google Documents.
Google Search and Google Suggestions
Google search and Google suggestions are, of course, very central. Who have not used Google nowadays? But even in the search there are many hidden functionalities that you can ask your virtual assistant to look into.
For example suggestions: When you type in a keyword other ideas might pop up. If you need some quick brainstorming, just ask your virtual assistant to get suggestions around the keyword using Google suggestions or let them research more topics based on that.
Google Reader
And the last tool I want to talk about: Google Reader. Google reader is a great tool to follow along many discussions at the same time.
Honestly, I get overwhelmed by the amounts of threats and feeds I’m following.
That is why I outsourced this to my virtual assistant again to save time. He screens all the feeds for me and lets me know of the most important things. I then act on them.
Take home message:
Use the free tools of Google as much as you can and let your virtual assistant in on your secrets as well. Both of you can only win from that. Don’t you agree?
Comments for Why You Should Make Your Virtual Assistants as Google Savvy As Possible
| Oct 12, 2012 | recommenation by: kittycat I switched to gmail two years ago. At the beginning I was very sceptical and found it confusing. But when you get used to gmail it starts getting better and better! I’m still impressed how good it works for me today! I can only recommend it. |
| Mar 11, 2013 | data privacy of googlemail by: Nadine Can you tell me how safe it is to share documents, voicemail-data via googlemail? |
| Mar 13, 2013 | Don’t Upload Critical Data to Google by: Francis Nadine, let me give you my take on this question. Although I think that in general it is safe to use Google, I would not trust it with major top secret data. In other words, stuff you would not like to lose by accident or do have published to others by accident, should stay away from Google documents etc. For your day to day stuff or for all projects that involve your free time, it is more than good enough. If you have work related data for which you have signed a non-disclosure agreement, I wouldn’t go to Google either. In principle, I think it’s safe to assume that Google knows what is saved where and uses it for some analysis on its own. Perhaps even only to show you specific advertisements, but I’ll also ask my virtual assistant to research this issue a bit and give you his opinion also. But it’s a good and important question Nadine. |
| Mar 13, 2013 | Re: Don’t Upload Critical Data to Google by: Virtual Assitant Hi Nadine, Internet is like real life, your secrets are secret unless you share them with anyone. Although Google tries it’s best to make their services safe and secure, but still there are tons of possibilities that your personal files can easily go Public. No matter how strict their security settings are, once you share a file with a third person, it’s up to his credentials whether he keeps the data confidential or makes it public. Although in Google docs you can set a shared document’s setting to ‘view only’ so that the third person would not be able to edit or copy it, but still there are so many ways one can copy your restricted documents. I think you know what I am talking about. However, there are certain remedies you can take for making your data more safe and secure. Please go to this helpful link about security in Google drive. |
| Aug 07, 2014 | Newbie VA by: Jomvie I think it is really important that VAs are internet savvy since most of our task rely on the internet. The technical stuff is a plus if the VA is good at it. And I think I need to work on it since I lack the technical skills. 😀 Although I know how to use Google, there are some features I am not yet familiar with, might as well check them out to see how it works. |
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