The virtual assistant market has been growing rapidly over the recent years. You can hire a virtual assistant to perform a wide variety of tasks. From managing a website to quality research, a virtual assistant can prove to be extremely helpful. Not only does this boost your productivity but also, ease out multiple processes of your business.
What are Virtual Assistant services?
When you are overburdened with the plethora of responsibilities in a business, it becomes necessary to sort out the core objectives from non-core ones. In such a scenario, hiring a Virtual Assistant becomes a prudent decision. These services are basically tasks that you can trust another expert with and divert all your focus where the business needs it the most.
What you can outsource to a Virtual Assistant
When you outsource Virtual Assistant services, it helps free up plenty of time. This can be utilized in handling other important tasks yourself. Instead of spending extra time, money and energy on an in-house team, you can outsource to experts who would work round the clock to guarantee on-time delivery. The wise way to go about it is to outsource the non-core areas of your business to a Virtual Assistant. Let’s take a look at the most important VA services you can outsource.
What services should a Virtual Assistant offer?
Virtual Assistants can be very versatile and highly skilled in multiple domains. Services related to design, management, social media strategies, liaison, IT and content can all be handled expertly by a Virtual Assistant.
What skills do Virtual Assistants need?
Depending on the type of services you choose to outsource to a Virtual Assistant, the necessary skillset can vary. To begin with, they should be tech-savvy in order to be able to communicate with you remotely and manage your projects independently. Virtual Assistant services are not limited to one job alone. Hence, the specifics depend on what you are looking for. For example, if you need a VA for content writing, the hired professional should be adept at writing and familiar with writing styles that you are looking for.
Primarily, Virtual Assistants can be categorized into 7 types:
- Virtual Research Assistant
- Virtual Administrative Assistant
- eCommerce Virtual Assistant
- Data Entry Virtual Assistant
- Virtual Bookkeeping Assistant
- Virtual Marketing Assistant
- Social Media Virtual Assistant
How can a Virtual Assistant help your business?
A professional VA is an asset who should be treated like a permanent employee. By making room for growth in the core areas of your business and freeing up your time, Virtual Assistants will make it possible for you to excel as an entrepreneur. Essentially, VAs are time-savers who serve as an important commodity in any business.
- They help reduce your cost of business by providing budget-friendly solutions.
- VAs make it possible for you to scale and organize your business.
- They can help build lasting strategic partnerships.
- Virtual Assistants also help you capitalize on specialization.
Let’s take a look at 5 of the most in-demand Virtual Assistant services that your business can benefit from.
- General Virtual Assistance
- Content Writing
- SEO, Social Media and Digital Marketing
- Data Entry
- Customer Support
You can hire a VA for all your administrative work and to handle general office responsibilities. This can be very helpful for the growth of small businesses while boosting productivity for entrepreneurs. Examples of general virtual assistance include bookkeeping and payroll, banking and funds transfer, Calendar maintenance, sending cards and invites, cloud computing accounts and so on.
Creating effective content is no easy task. You need a qualified professional who is well-versed with content marketing techniques and industry trends that are useful for your line of work. A team of content experts can help streamline work and connect better with a specific audience. Articles, blogs, press releases, brochures, reviews, market reports and even relevant interviews can be performed by a VA who specializes in content writing.
Your plans for the future of your business are incomplete without a proper digital marketing strategy in place. If you can’t find a team who can work in this area, hiring a Virtual Assistant becomes imperative for you. Such a VA proves to be a very valuable asset for any business as they ensure your brand gets all the required visibility online. Starting an in-depth competitor analysis, conducting keyword research, link building campaigns, logo designs, branding and even regular reports about the performance of your campaigns are crucial details that a dedicated marketing VA should be able to work out.
Businesses run on data. Every business, regardless of the domain and size, will inevitably have to deal with hundreds of thousands of records and data. Properly recording, managing and implementing lessons from that data is a specialist’s job. It is also something that is extremely time consuming, error prone and hence, a job that everyone hates doing. Managing data by yourself on top of your core activities is a sure recipe for disaster and unwise, when you can easily hire a VA to do this task for you.
Customer support via calls, web, chat boxes, social media and messages help you stay connected with your target market in the best possible way. You get real-time feedback which can say a lot about the performance of a campaign, service, product and the perception of your brand as a whole. There is maximum room for improvement and success if your customer support is strong. You need to look for VAs who are adept at engaging with customers and addressing their concerns in the most professional manner. Since your reputation is at stake, it becomes all the more important to have professionals on board to take care of this area round the clock.
All businesses aim to reduce cost, boost productivity and get leaner. However, with soaring costs of employment, it can get quite difficult to always meet your goals and timelines. In such a scenario, outsourcing virtual assistant services proves to be a very smart move that yields results faster and cheaper when compared with conventional business models. The fact that is now possible to outsource every aspect of your work today gives you more options and better room for growth.
