As VA's we communicate mostly via email. Here are some Do's & Don'ts to make your emails more effective:

Don't:

1. Send unnecessary and/or long emails. People will not read your emails if they are super long, especially if they are not broken up into small paragraphs. Use bullet points if you have to include a lot of information. Don't forward emails with funny stories. It's not appropriate for the work environment.

2. Don't leave the subject line blank. Make sure the topic of your email corresponds to the subject line. I have a lot of email to go through each day. I look at the subject line to determine if an email needs to be acted on right away or if it can wait a day. I try to respond to people right away. Things come up so I have to prioritize what I can respond to each day.

3. Don't use exotic fonts. They will make your emails difficult to read. Stick with Tahoma or Arial.

4.Don't send an email at the end of the day if you are upset or tired. Wait until the next morning. Re-read it. Edit it to make sure you are being diplomatic and clear and then send it.

Do:

1. Keep your emails as short as possible. Get to the point in the first sentence.

2. Only address one topic per email. If you need to schedule a phone call appointment and ask for a document to be sent to you, send one email for each task. Most of the time people don't read emails carefully. So, just ask for one thing. They can handle that. You will get a better response that way.

3. Clean up emails. Delete unnecessary text when responding to an email.

4. Get back to people as quickly as possible. If I have to go out of town and I'm not able to respond to an email right away, when I do email the person, I will say "I'm so sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I was out of town." So they know there was a reason I didn't respond to their email right away.