I have come to learn that one of the single-most important hires a supervisor/manager can make is to hire an outstanding and highly effective administrative assistant.  The responsibilities of the “admin” are critical to the operation of an office.  And, finding the right “match” in personalities and work styles may be of even more importance.

The fact is this–the job, at least at Iowa Connections Academy, is going to be challenging.  It will require an individual that has superb communication skills, the ability to multi-task, be entrusted with confidential and sensitive information, is detail-oriented, can maintain a high morale in the office, and is a people-oriented person.

My prior work experiences have allowed me to work with a series of different administrative assistant types.  And like most other workers, there are good administrative assistants, great ones, but also bad ones.  Some administrative assistants either can’t keep up with the overall work load, have difficulty prioritizing tasks, lack the appropriate people skills that match the culture of the entire office, and/or won’t accept their responsibility for job tasks as they attempt to push-off workload to others.

Lastly, a highly-effective administrative assistant should possess the ability to perceive tasks.  Over time, they will develop a strong cohesion and work-relationship with their supervisor/manager and should be able to “sense” actions to take.  Quite simply, an administrative assistant should quickly assume the role of “gatekeeper” to a supervisor, thwarting away various aspects that can drain the efficiency and effectiveness of an administrator, supervisor, or manager.  Loyal administrative assistants will know what to say to others during times that the supervisor is just too consumed and busy.

In return, an administrative assistant should be revered by their supervisor for all they do.  The job is immense and they ought to be treated/rewarded as much as possible for their loyalty and efforts.  It’s probably no lie–the administrative assistant is generally the person who knows the most about the operations and logistics of an office.  They are the true “heart and brains.”

It’s not an easy job, particularly at IACA.  I look forward to conducting phone screen interviews today and identifying a “best fit” for the IACA office.  This will lead to my first hire at IACA and will be paramount to the process of building a culture for our entire office.

Quite frankly, I welcome opposing viewpoints and believe the process to be quite democratic.

I do not agree with manipulation of factors or the publishing of misconstrued ideas.

For instance, the op-ed piece reported that online schools like IACA will hire teachers that won’t work within state boundaries and will leave students to fend for themselves.

This couldn’t be any further from the reality at all.

IACA will hire only highly qualified, fully licensed Iowa teachers AND will require all teachers to work on-site in our school facility located in Anita, IA.  Thanks to the forward-thinking and accommodating folks at the Anita Development Council, IACA will have a new building constructed for our faculty/staff, with an anticipated project deadline around mid-August.

Upon reading this information, it would have been easy to fire an emotion-laden response or comment negatively, attacking the authors.  Instead, I composed a diplomatic response in their comment section to correct the facts.  I made sure to not do so in a condescending, or rude, tone.  (Although tones are very difficult to perceive in digital communication.)  I opted to not personalize the negative op-ed and played a very professional role in my response.

I understand my comment will not alter the editorial board’s decision to halt future negative pieces.  As a matter of fact, I’d be surprised if they even read the comment.

But, I know that at least one other reader did read my comment.  And for that reader, it is vital that IACA was well-represented and conveyed our mission to educate all students in the best manner possible.

This past month has been one jam-packed with information.  I’ve had the opportunity to meet outstandingly talented Connections Academy team members, learn the various aspects and intricacies of Connections Academy curricular and education management system tools, as well as reach-out to many Iowa families that have applied to enroll their children in our virtual school.

Overall, my one-month experience has been amazing.

Here’s to many, many more exciting and memorable months ahead!

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ill employment status, etc.  I thought we did a pretty solid job disseminating, and likely over-analyzing, the career shift.  But, now that I’m “on the job,” I have come to realize I was completely blinded by a virtual school professional learning challenge.

As a former public school administrator, I was inundated with plenty of professional development resources, research, and tools.  I am a member of several outstanding organizations, all of which provide awesome research and reading materials on a daily, weekly, and/or monthly basis.  For instance, I LOVE getting ASCD’s latest research book tackling a specific issue relevant to school administrators.

But now that I’ve shifted to the world of a virtual school principal, I’m struggling at finding good resources that are specific to my professional development needs.

Certainly, I will continue to remain privy to the latest pedagogical and curricular research…but I fear such research will have limited relevance to my virtual teaching and learning needs.

So, this blog is a humble request for others to help yield great resources that may be of assistance during my virtual school professional learning journey.  If you know of any effective, informative resources or professional organizations that specifically cater to the virtual school education crowd, please do share.

IACA is Iowa’s first state-wide K-12 virtual school, operating under the auspices of the CAM School District, located in Anita, IA, and under the management of Baltimore-based Connections Education.  IACA is scheduled to launch in fall 2012.

As a virtual school principal, I will shoulder many responsibilities in a sector of the education profession that has been deemed uncharted, innovative, and individualized for student’s true learning needs.  I am extremely excited to help lead IACA and foster a highly-effective educational option for students and families throughout the state of Iowa.

Obviously, a virtual school principal assumes job duties that are significantly different from those associated with traditional, brick-and-mortar school settings.  Such changes will also have an impact on my role as an education blogger.  In my future blog posts, I will begin concentrating more attention to topics related to virtual schools, online schools, eLearning, and educational technology.  But, despite these strategic changes in blog topics more closely aligned with my daily operations, I will continue blogging on topics related to digital marketing for educators and social media coaching for educators.

So, my sincere apology for a lull in blogging.  But, I’m excited to return to my blogging activity, particularly now that I can share a different aspect of the education world with you all.  And now, my virtual school principal journey begins…

Some of my regular blog followers quickly realized that I was M.I.A. this past week. I even received one email asking if I had abandoned my blog entirely. Fear not, I was off completing my comprehensive exams, required to progress through my doctoral program. In case you care to know, I clocked over 45 hours of writing. And my efforts generated over 94 total pages of APA-style research papers.

Photo by UMKC University Communications.

Needless to say, I’m a little exhausted.

Doctoral Program Requirement

As a part of my doctoral program in Education Administration at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, I am required to complete a series of comprehensive exams to gauge our comprehensive understanding of all the courses we had previously completed. The idea behind the comprehensive exams is to integrate theory and practice, while demonstrating our knowledge acquired from the courses and readings in which we had immersed ourselves over the past few months.  Students are not allowed to complete their comprehensive exams until all coursework is completed.

Each of the exams are “pass” or “fail.” While I feel confident that I demonstrated enough proficiency, mastery, and “withit-ness” to earn passing marks, my fate remains in the faculty graders of the comprehensive exams.

Time will tell.

Next Steps in the Doctoral Program

Pending successful completion of the comprehensive exams, then it’s time to complete the dreaded “literature review.”  Ok, so it’s not exactly dreaded, but it has been personally difficult for me to actually get started and completed.

UMKC education administration doctoral candidates are required to submit their draft dissertation chapters 1-3 as their dissertation proposal.  I have solid drafts of chapters one and three.  But again, it’s that darn chapter 2 lit review.

Ugh.  I will get this done!

Once the proposal is submitted, and hopefully approved, I can begin collecting data for my study and complete the dissertation.

Back to the Business of an Education Blogger

As I mentioned, while completing my comprehensive exams this past week, I literally completed over 45+ hours of writing. I was impressed with my ability to crank out that much work, in a 2-day time span. Of course, I gave up adult interaction, tv shows, radio shows, online music, YouTube videos, blogging, eBook writing, Facebooking, Twitter, and other social media time-wasters.

(Oh, the humanity!)

But, after recuperating from my stint with binge-writing, I’m ready to return to my duties as an education blogger, focusing on more social media and information marketing coaching for educators.

Truthfully, I’m more energized than ever to take my blogging to the next levels. I’m hoping to begin recording more video over the coming weeks and WOULD LOVE to launch an online radio show on topics related to education.

Education Blogger? More Like Education Geek?

What can I say, I love the education world and most things associated with it. I like finding ways to bridge my skills, with my knowledge-based, and my passions.

Ultimately, it’s an education blogger and overall online social media education-themed geek.

I can admit it!

Here’s to some more writing…

Making money from viral traffic is a bit different than making money from any other kind of traffic.

People who land on your website generally come there for a specific piece of content or because it was shared through social media tools. Often times, your readers don’t have a clue who you are, nor do they care much either.

As a result, most people find that the bounce rate on viral traffic is much higher and their conversion rates much lower. This is to be expected, and if you have any experience looking at your website analytics, you may find this to be extremely accurate.

But, despite this reality, there are still many ways to make money from viral traffic.

Get People on a List

Knowing that it’s hard to get viral traffic to convert on a sale right away, a more effective tactic is to get them on an email list…QUICKLY! And once they’re on that mailing list, so long as they opted-in, you can send them content they’re interested in with an occasional marketing message.

Get Them on an RSS Feed

Make your RSS feed big on your site and prominently promote your RSS feed. Once you have someone on your RSS feed, you’ll be able to get them coming back again-and-again and build a relationship with them. Over time, the likelihood of them buying something from you goes up significantly.

Advertising

If you have a consistently high traffic volume, but you’re lacking sales from your own products or services, you should probably look into advertising.

Unless you have a steady stream of traffic, it’s difficult to rely solely on advertising platforms to generate you revenue. But, if you already have the traffic, it can be an easy way to monetize your blog, website, or online business website.

Start with self-serve platforms like Google AdSense, then move on to direct advertising deals when it makes sense. (But I caution you, read and get to know Google’s AdSense rules and restrictions!)

If you’re getting a lot of viral traffic in YouTube, you may have a shot at getting into YouTube’s partner program. YouTube recently provided an advertising program for basic users, providing a split-agreement between them and the YouTube video producer.

Get Paid for Leads

If you can’t convert viral traffic into actual sales, another great way is to get readers to fill out leads.

Cost Per Action (CPA) companies are often willing to pay anywhere from $2 to $12 just for leads filled out in specific industries.

Let’s say you’re in the habit of producing videos about “tricking out your car,” which produce great traffic volume. Well, you can easily find insurance companies who’ll pay you $2 per email that they get when you send people to their site. They never have to take out their credit card and you’ll still get paid decent money.

These are some of the best ways to monetize viral traffic.

As a rule of thumb, you want to move away from trying to make a first-time sale and instead use lower commitment methods of monetization.

Just a thought…

I was inspired by a recent INC magazine article written by Howard Greenstein (@howardgr), reflecting on his earliest experimentation with entrepreneurship.  While serving as a Congressional intern in the mid-80s, Greenstein found himself buying politically-themed t-shirts for a low price, while unloading them on the local college crowd for a decent profit margin.  Overall, his small business was a success.  Despite some of the basic challenges any entrepreneur faces, he was able to pull-off a successful small business.

So what themes can be shared from his early entrepreneurship encounters?

• Create a business that fuels your passion AND your customers.  Most small business owners will tell you, they work real hard launching their business.  As a matter of fact, for many entrepreneurs, it becomes a second marriage.  To create a business, or website, that is aligned with the things you ACTUALLY like will help it feel less like work and more as a hobby.  More importantly, if it matches the interests of your customers, not only do you have a market for your product or services, but you can also begin building a community.
• Ignore those who doubt you.  There’s no room for those who are going to doubt you.  Yes, you want practical advice and constructive criticism.  But ultimately, if you doubt every decision you make…you’ll only spin your wheels.  I’ve already received feedback from one person indicating that my magazine name, “edDominators” should be reconsidered, citing it may sound too strong to the “education community.”  While I appreciate and respect the feedback, if I ponder and question renaming this magazine site, I’ll spend days coming up with the next title.  Or weeks.  Or months, because eventually I’ll want to change this.  And then that.  And then that too.  At some point you must stay firm to what it is you created and then implement it.  Full-throttle.
• Locate your market.  Before wasting any of your time, make sure you have a market to which you can provide your products or services.  Even though a business idea may really excite YOU, without some market research, there’s no guarantee that it will be needed/wanted by consumers.  edDominators was strategically created to fill a much-needed void of providing educators with information about how to effectively create and launch their own blogs, websites, and online businesses.  There are TONS of websites encouraging and preaching the use of social media for educators, but few websites actually HELP educators do it.  And more importantly, NOBODY helps educators get their blogs, websites, and online businesses ranked high in the search engines or followed by ample visitors, readers, and traffic.  Thus, how edDominators.com was born!
• Forget about your competition.  One thing you CANNOT do–worry about your competition.  In business, and in the Edusphere and “online world,” you’re ALWAYS going to have competition.  You will always need to create the best product, otherwise your competitors’ products and services will be sought after by readers–readers that could have been yours!  So rather than fret about the competition, ignore them and keep doing what you do best.  Keep providing the best online content you can provide, the most unmatched services, and the more useful products…trust me, your customers and readers will keep coming back for more.  Keep abreast of your competition; nothing wrong knowing what they’re doing right and wrong.  A little intel is good for you.  But don’t let your reconnaissance intimidate you.  Instead, let it further motivate you to provide the best all-around services/information you possibly can.

These tips are definitely the most basic advice for startups, but for some, it’s much needed.  Entrepreneurship carries many challenges, many of which lead to great anxiety and stress.  Keeping the basic fundamentals in mind, can help keep an individual focused and committed toward building their small business, or website, into an empire.

You ready for the greatest Google search transformation to date?  Earlier today, Google announced its industry-changing method of personalizing the online search engine process for users, launching “Search, Plus Your World.”

Google states that searching for content online is a personal process.  The keywords you submit to their search engines are unique and personal, based upon your needs.  But, that hasn’t been good enough for Google.  They know sleeze-ball internet marketers have been using various black-hat SEO methods to inflate webpage search engine rankings, basically offering you crap instead of the useful content you were originally seeking.

Several months ago, Google began experimenting with their Social Search program, which paired search engine findings along with online friends’ content or social media contributions.  But yet again, this wasn’t good enough to Google.

Over the next few days, Google intends to fully roll-out “Search, Plus Your World.”  According to Google, here are their three latest features:

1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

Basically, when you search for content on Google, you will not instantly receive information that is aligned with that of your online friends’ interests.  If you are searching for an awesome Royal Caribbean 7-day cruise to the Caribbean (which my wife and I have taken many!), your search engine results will likely include my profile pic and several photographs of my past cruises.  (If you’re an online friend of mine, that is.)

As you search for various keywords, you’ll also come across profiles in the search bar.  Again, as you type cruise words, who knows, maybe my “mug” will show up with a link to my Google+ profile.  My favorite part of the Google+ profiles being added to a user’s search inquiries, is the ability for them to immediately add you to their circles.  This makes is so easy to make online connections now!

On the prominent blog Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan writes that the updates fundamentally change the way Google’s search engine functions, calling it the “most radical” change ever.

“The new system will perhaps make life much easier for some people, allowing them to find both privately shared content from friends and family plus material from across the Web through a single search, rather than having to search twice using two different systems,” he writes.

So, what does this mean for you?

First off, register your Google+ account NOW, if you haven’t already.  Search engine optimization is about to be forever-changed.  Now, you’ll need to focus your optimization efforts toward establishing “market credibility” and “market leadership” for yourself.  You will want to have generated social proof and a social presence in the particular topics and niches within which you wish to be highly-regarded.

There will be those greatly concerned with various privacy issues, which is legitimate and understandable.  But, I love the idea that my personal social networking is about to become that much more feasible to share content with my network connections when they’re seeking information but not directly engaging with me.

Should be very interesting to see where this all leads.

I’d love to read your comments on the new Google Search Plus Your World.  By the way, it’s running live right now, but will not be fully viewed by everybody for a few days as it phases-in.

The timing couldn’t be any better either.

If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you’ve probably learned that Google has forever-transformed its Google Search to be more personalized for users.  Yesterday, Google launched Google “Search, Plus Your World.”  I’m already seeing the search engine changes during my Google searches and can’t wait until its completely rolled-out for all users.

Basically, it’s more important than ever to help others develop “marketing leadership.”  The times are unprecedented to harness the power of social media to brand and market one’s self as an expert.  Notice I didn’t say “fool others” or “trick others” into believing you’re an expert.  YOU ARE AN EXPERT.  And now, you need to tap into the powerful social media platforms to use that expertise to launch your own consulting and/or expert business.

We can thank Google for this opportunity!

So, the question is…are you ready to leave money on the table?  Are you ready to not leverage your expertise?

Hopefully not!  I help brand and market experts!  Check out my program today….

http://access.eddominators.com/waitlist-prelaunch1/