Move past the fear and just do it: Michelle Mangen

Having been in Corporate America for over fifteen years, Michelle decided to follow her passion and become a solopreneur. Determined and ambitious to meet the immense needs of other solopreneurs and small business owners, she created Your Virtual Assistant.

Michelle’s vast talents and expert skills in accounting, bookkeeping and Excel, far exceed the average assistant’s scope of knowledge; thereby further enhancing not only her backend office, but those of her clients.

Extending administrative and other remote admin services to her global client base, Michelle creates personalized virtual assistant solutions for each and every client, ensuring 100% customer satisfaction, loyalty and professionalism.

Interview

Q: Welcome to Speakbindas. Tell us since when blogging has been a part of your life? Was there any motive or inspiration as a backbone of it?

Ans.: I’ve been blogging since June 2009. While I have not yet established a regular frequency my overall goal for 2010 is to post 5 times per week. My main motivation was because I knew it was a crucial step on providing fresh content to the search engine spiders. Additionally I have a lot of knowledge to share to “showcase” my expertise.

Q: What is your blog all about? Which topics you cover there? Is that you alone running/maintaining the blog, or have a team?

Ans.: I am the only one who maintains my site. I blog various tips – typically directed towards Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn); WordPress tips; Small Business Tips and personal items.

Q.: How important is it for the blogger to interact with their readers? Do you respond to all the comments that you receive?

Ans.: I am gradually building my blogging community. While I may not always respond the same day a comment is received I do reply to every comment left. Even if it is just a quick “thank you, glad you found this helpful”.

Q: What are the present statistics for your blog, i.e. number of daily visitors, visitors geographical status etc.?

Ans.: Daily numbers have been sporadic lately due to my infrequent postings. I typically get over 2000 hits per month, which – while still very small is a massive improvement to the hits I used to get on my website prior to blogging. The majority of my traffic is coming from within the United States.

Q: Is blogging for you just a passion or a medium for earning too? Does it help you to earn enough cash to quit a 9 to 5 day job?

Ans.: I do not earn any money as a result of my blog. While I may get new clients as a result of a post I do not have the actual blog monetized. That is something I want to learn more about; though it is a “backburner” project.

Q: Who are your favorite bloggers, whom you read frequently?

Ans.: Oh my – I have a list of over 70.

Here are just a few:

http://www.thesitsgirls.com
http://blog.owengreaves.com/
http://www.rawmazing.com/
http://www.lovelifedesignsllc.com/blog/
http://jimcollier.me/
http://www.marketingsherpa.com
http://website-in-a-weekend.net/
http://freebloghelp.com/

Q: From the secret bucket of your blogging experiences, what tips you would like to share with the fellow bloggers?

Ans.: I would def. say that maintaining a consistent schedule is crucial to keep fresh content for your visitors. Def make sure you have the option for people to sign up for your RSS feed via email.

Q: Do you believe that blogging completes you? If yes, tell us how?

Ans.: Ha ha….not for me, sometimes I feel it more of a burden than pleasure. Blogging takes time and in my case it’s not billable time so to do posts for me means I am giving up discretionary time.

Q: What was the happiest and gloomiest moment of your life?

Ans.: Wow, not sure…..happiest probably when I landed a huge, well-known client as a result of Twitter. Gloomiest – probably when loved ones have died unexpectedly.

Q: Say, you are sponsored to travel to 3 world destinations, where you need not to worry about costs for food, hotel or anything. Which destinations would you pick up, and why? Would you like to take someone along with you? If yes, whom?

Ans.: Only three? Since I am forced to provide three here you are, in no particular order.

1. Costa Rica – I have heard it’s gorgeous and I would love to do both the zip lines and see the monkeys
2. Australia – who doesn’t want to go to the great “Outback”?
3. Egypt – I’ve always been mesmerized by their rich history and amazing architectural feats so to go there to see them in real life would be a dream come true
1. I’d take a different person for each location

Q: Are you into watching movies? If yes, which fills your list of favorite ones?

Ans.: Not so much but my current favorite is “The Hangover”

Q: How has blogging helped you other than money?

Ans.: Meeting new people – my little community. Through meeting those people I have been able to help them with things I know about and have also learned a great deal from them .

Q: What would be the one thing you’d change about yourself?

Ans.: Get up earlier!

Q: What will you do without internet?

Ans.: Probably freak out for a few days; go through massive withdrawals and then spend the rest of my days reading!

Q: What is your deepest fear?

Ans.: Failure.

Q: If you could meet one person, dead or alive, who would it be?

Ans.: Winston Churchill

Q: Which is your favorite television show? Favorite songs?

Ans.: Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice; Songs: Anything by Nickelback, Tim McGraw and KT Tunstall

Q: How much money do you have in your purse/wallet right now (including change)?

Ans.: $14.32

Q: What is your favorite food? Any particular dislikes?

Ans.: Anything with pasta or potatoes

Q: What’s your take on the technological advancement these days? Does it make people’s life simple or complicated?

Ans.: To keep up with technological advancements is easily a full time job for several people. In many ways it makes one’s life easier by allowing us to do many things faster and more efficiently than what we’ve done in the past while also allowing us to share information in a split second. In other ways it makes life more difficult because as soon as we learn one piece of software or application it is easily outdated and no longer applicable.

Q: What do you think of “blogging is the next BIG thing”?

Ans.: Have no opinion on this…..probably too new to have an opinion

Q: Any special message you would like to share with your blog readers as well with everyone else?

Ans.: If blogging is something you are interested in, get started….move past the fear and just do it!

———–

Michelle can be reached Michelle at michelle@thevirtualasst.com or www.TheVirtualAsst.com