It can be confusing when you first look to grow a team. There’s a good chance that your business has been run solely by you since it began. Looking at your options can be a little baffling, especially when it comes to taking on that first team member – and especially if it’s been suggested that your first team member is a Virtual Assistant. After all, what is a Virtual Assistant and why might you need one?
What is a Virtual Assistant?
A Virtual Assistant is a remote team worker who is employed on a contracted or freelance basis. They typically work with several clients at any time, providing them all with the services they need, to run their businesses more efficiently and effectively. Each client will usually have a contract that stipulates the set amount of hours they’re hiring the Virtual Assistant for – so they’re only paying for the hours needed and used.
As a small business owner themselves, Virtual Assistants understand how you may be feeling about getting your business organised and on a path for growth. More importantly, they can help you with both of those tasks!
What does a Virtual Assistant do?
In over 12 years of owning VA Agency, I can truthfully say that this is one of the most commonly asked questions by businesses looking to hire a Virtual Assistant! And, it’s an important question to ask. Without a clear understanding of what your Virtual Assistant can do for you, it’s tricky to visualise the true benefit a Virtual Assistant can bring. How can you be expected to make business decisions about how much time you need to hire your Virtual Assistant for if you don’t know what they can actually do for you?
A Virtual Assistant can provide a vast range of different services. For example, VA Agency provides UK based Virtual Assistants to our clients that specialise in specific areas – such as social media management, marketing, lead generation or using a particular software platform. We also offer our clients more generalist Virtual Assistants, with expertise in business administration and day to day business operations support.
Interested in finding the right VA for your business? Click here to request a Discovery call today
Our Virtual Assistants are a varied bunch, but have in common passion and service and a dedication to get the job done. Let’s look at a breakdown of some of the more common tasks a Virtual Assistant can provide:
Administrative tasks
Tasks such as filing, data entry, document creation and managing your to-do list.
Social media management
This can include anything from engagement, content creation and scheduling, right through to analyzing reports and implementing ad campaigns.
Event organisation and management
Events take time to organise and run. A Virtual Assistant can liaise with attendees and suppliers, take notes at meetings, research suitable venues and even follow up with attendees after the event.
Email and calendar management
Tasks such as ensuring your appointments and meetings are scheduled, updating your contacts, filtering and replying to emails and inbox management are commonly outsourced to a Virtual Assistant.
Digital marketing tasks
Content creation, website management, email and sales funnel set up and management, and editing videos are all Virtual Assistant friendly tasks.
Customer relationship
A Virtual Assistant can take on a large chunk of your customer relationship and retention tasks. Tasks like sales and call management, dealing with queries and competitor research, for example.
Personal tasks
Virtual Assistants aren’t limited to helping you with your business life – they’re great for personal tasks too! Tasks such as organising the family holiday, gift sourcing and purchasing, as well as calendar management for the family – to ensure you’re all where you need to be with time to spare!
Travel arrangements
Itineraries, tickets, and hotels, as well as handling your expense and travel claims are great jobs for your Virtual Assistant to handle.
Research
Competitors, blog post ideas, keyword research and even candidate selection are commonly and easily outsourced to Virtual Assistants.
eCommerce Assistant
A Virtual Assistant can deal with eCommerce tasks, such as chat and email queries, customer support, order processing, product descriptions, stock monitoring etc.
Call answering service
Don’t miss a call again, our telephone answering service gives you various options for a Virtual Assistant to answer your phone calls and either taking a message for you to get back to them or supplying them with the information they are looking for.
So what is a Virtual Assistant and what do they do for you? As you can see above, a Virtual Assistant can be a huge asset to your business. Not only will they help you get more organised, but they’ll also free up your time and your to-do list so you can focus on what you do best. And the next time you want to expand your team, you can even outsource that process to your Virtual Assistant too!
Interested in finding the right VA for your business? Click here to request a Discovery call today.
Until next time, stay productive!