Send Your Christmas Mail With Style

Instead of using a regular stamp or the franking machine with your post this Christmas (business or personal) how about personalising your mail with Royal Mail Smilers?  You can add a photo, choose a stamp design, this is then printed for you by Royal Mail and the finished product is sent to you for you to use on your envelopes.  You can opt to just have a stamp design and no photo.  Not only is it a great way to cheer up that envelope but it can be a good marketing tool for business mail.  You can find more about them by using this link to the Royal Mail site – http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content2?catId=3800007&mediaId=3800008&keyname=SMILERS

As an alternative how about the Scouts?  In an earlier blog post I mentioned using your local scout group for card deliveries, it has official clearance to run a Scout Post Service and will cost up to 20p a card.   Ideal if you have lots of cards or mail to be delivered locally.

Whatever you do happy mailing!

Choosing A Professional Secretarial Service

I had a conversation this week with a business about what was different about us compared to hiring a temp?

Our focus is on the admin and secretarial service as a dedicated business resource and we work for a few hours or much longer depending on your project or requirements.  In some cases we have clients that started with us over 3 years ago.  But we try to establish a business relationship with our clients to provide a high quality service and become more of a business partner to you.  Additionally we only bill for time worked, not for any breaks, holidays, sickness, pension, NI – the list can be endless!

As we have grown and become more established our skill base has increased, we offer support for typing, data entry, invoicing, presentations, record management, newsletters, mailing services, event management, personal assistant, telephone calling, researching – our list seems to keep growing! 

We like to think we offer a service that provides real value – why not contact us to see how we can help you? 

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Then shall I begin………….No this is not Listen With Mother but it is about whether you are sitting correctly at your PC or Laptop.

I have been doing some work on my Laptop recently and found that I have had some neck strain because with a Laptop you have to look down at the screen.  It is not very ergonomic and then I discovered you can get Laptop stands which lift the screen to make it more user friendly.

You can also get Copyholders to hold paper next to your PC/Laptop on a stand or you can get a clip to attach to your PC/Laptop instead.  This will help when you are inputting information onto the PC/Laptop.  For your wrist when working with a PC you could also get a gel mouse pad to ease the strain.

Some of the ones to shop for are:

• Kensington Easy Rider Stand for Laptop
• Fellowes Easel Copyholder for your Laptop/PC
• Kensington Flexclip Copyholder for your PC
• Belkin Waverest Gel Mouse Pad

Of course you should also take regular breaks and if you can - do some neck and arm exercises to loosen your muscles.

Happy working!

Personalising The Display Name In Email Messages

When you add a contact to your email address book or send an email from your own account did you know you can personalise this in Microsoft Outlook?  So instead of using the same standard email that you are sending to or from i.e. instead of info@name.co.uk you could alter it so that it shows up as Comapny Name (for instance Your Admin Assistant) in the recipient’s in box.   Also you could alter the display name of the recipient so that it is more personalised when the recipient opens the email and sees the “To” field at the top.

To change it:

• For your own email account to change how your name is displayed in the recipient’s in box, go into – Tools/EMail Accounts/Change existing account/Change/ – then change the Your Name field.  Make sure the email address field however is fully correct.
• To change how recipient’s see their own name go into – Contacts/Choose the contact you wish to change/change the Display Name As field.  Again make sure the email address field is fully correct.

If you need help with this function please do not hesitate to contact me.