A virtual year in Poitou-Charentes

IT is a year to the day that Jo Harrison left the UK to live in France, moving closer to her mother and her French boyfriend.

From her home in Poitou-Charentes, Jo has been able to use websites such as Twitter and Facebook to help her fledging business take wing.

And with her initial plans to offer virtual assistant services through her Writer's Block Admin Services business having slowly transformed into providing ebook formatting and website advice as well , this willingness to be flexible has set her up for her second year in France.

"I didn't have a website when I first started, so I was literally using social media to get started and to put my name out there," Jo said.

"I do automate quite a lot of stuff on social media, although I know many people say it is a no-no, otherwise I wouldn't have enough time to do any work, but it does bring in clients.

"Just lately I have not publicised too much about my services, I do use a tool that sends out a few tweets to Twitter, but my website is quite high up in Google and the enquiries have been coming directly through the site.

"But on Twitter I will get clients coming to me about ebook formatting because I am always posting messages about books and publishing.

"I've never had anyone via Facebook, while on Linkdin a couple of clients have come through."

Jo took voluntary redundancy from her career as a program coordinator for the psychotherapy and mental health courses at the University of Kent, in Canterbury.

The appeal of a move also came from the fact that Jo's mother has lived in France for seven years, so she knew the Poitou-Charentes from travelling there over the past few years.

And Jo also met her new partner, who was the brother of her mother's next door neighbour, helping her with some of the French language challenges of registering her business.

But now with her second year ahead of her, Jo is beginning to think about turning her ebook formatting skills to her own advantage and possible write her own book.

"Everyone keeps saying I should write my own book, but I don't really have the time and I'm not really a writer beyond writing my blog posts," said Jo.

"But I think one of the first things I'll do is put my blog posts together into an ebook, as it would be nice to be earning a little bit of money on the side.

"I've got lots of plans, I've just got to find the time to do them really."

Hear more from Jo on how social networking helps her business.

listen to ‘Jo Harrison on using the web to help her business’ on Audioboo

Website: Writer's Block Admin Services

Comments

[Yasmin Selena Butt]

Jo was great at giving me little pointers when I was formatting my debut novel, Gunshot Glitter leading up to its publication.

I knew she lived in France but didn't know she was in Poitou-Charentes! There is an important part of Gunshot Glitter that is actually set in that region of France!!

I had a friend emigrate there about five years ago to be with her fiance and she spoke about it very vividly : ) Spooky eh?