Virtual Assistant Services is a major feature of aiding start-ups and companies that are in their initial stage to get off the ground. Entrepreneurs like to believe that they are superheroes but micro-managing every little detail may be required in the beginning, but as time passes it is essential to let go a little bit.
Create These 3 Lists To Identify Everything You Can Outsource
When you’re the only manager of a small business, numerous tasks need to be done before the day is done. As a small business owner (SBO), you have to accomplish a lot from bookkeeping to social media management.
Chris Ducker, a virtual CEO and publisher of ChrisDucker.com suggests that entrepreneurs should form a “3 Lists to Freedom” to be successful. These three things will aid you in using your time more efficiently and increase productivity.
The three things are:
- Things you hate doing.
- Things you can’t do yourself.
- Things you shouldn’t be doing.
The first thing is very simple: jot down about what exactly you don’t like doing in your business every day. From bookkeeping to administration, this could be anything.
The second thing is the regular essentials of the company in which you are not experienced, such as social media marketing to graphic designing.
Lastly, the third situation will change your business profoundly and that is asking yourself what you shouldn’t be doing?
This is the plan to taking on a virtual assistant or VA.
What are Virtual Assistant Services?
The economic downturn that happened a few years ago has led to the growth of virtual assistant services. Being a virtual assistant (also known as a VA) is appealing because of flexible hours, remote working, a good salary, and more family time.
VAs have become popular because a VA can both manage your business and reduce the time from your workweek. Hiring a VA can help SBOs a lot. You don’t have to bear expenses related to employees, office space, and no worries regarding downtime. You just have to pay the VAs for their services as per their contract.
Below are the seven primary roles that your virtual assistant can perform:
- General Virtual Assistance
- Content Writing
- SEO & Digital Marketing
- Social Media
- Web Developer
- Audio & Video Editor
- Miscellaneous
1. General Virtual Assistance
Like labor costs, administrative costs including emails, payrolls, invoicing, sales reports, and customer inquiries are a major liability on small businesses. It requires both time and resources. General virtual office responsibilities such as writing and sending invoices to clients, bookkeeping and payroll duties, checking email, replying to customer queries and database building, entry and updates, etc. will be given to a VA.
2. Content Writing
Not everyone can write content. A lot of content marketing projects fail because it is believed that anyone can write content. Content writing is an art. Writing and/or marketing experts can write content, not graphic designers or web developers. Content writers know how to write to a particular audience, using a conservative but engaging tone to get the point across in few words. Content writers are responsible for article and blog post creation, creating content marketing material, such as infographics, white papers, and ebooks, generating list articles on industry-related matters, and more.
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Digital Marketing
A website, a product, and plans for the future are great, but a VA who knows SEO and/or digital marketing will prove very helpful to your company. The right VA will use the right SEO and digital marketing techniques and approaches to increase web traffic, sales numbers, and brand ubiquity.
4. Social Media
Social media marketing is imperative when it comes to boosting businesses. A VA with a good social media insight will know the ways to get noticed, retweeted, liked, and shared on all of the social platforms. It is not that simple to tweet and like on social media but don’t spend your time it. Hire a VA to save time and money.
5. Web Developing
Starting a website has become easier with content management systems (CMS) but hire a professional to take care of the web development of your business. There has been an evolution in web development in the last 10 years, and the coding part has become a lot tougher to get. Hire a VA having the necessary skills to create a website with features like a good navigation system, a high ranking on search engines, easy usability, etc.
6. Audio & Video Editing
Audio and video editing have been made fairly simple by YouTube and Microsoft. However, you need to employ better software, equipment, and editing if you want to increase the superiority of a podcast or a YouTube video. Your VA will know about such aspects including editing and will make your webinars and podcasts not only good but amazing which will give you an edge over your competitors.
7. Miscellaneous
There can be some miscellaneous things such as taking notes during meetings or buying items for the office etc. that need to be done. The productivity of your business can get badly affected if you spending a lot of time on non-essential tasks. Such general tasks can be done by your VA while you can focus on other more important work.
Final Thoughts
Costs of taking on employees are rising which is why businesses of all sizes are trying to decrease costs and increase profits by outsourcing work to virtual assistance services.