What Does a Virtual Assistant Do?

If you participate in business-related Facebook groups, then you must have heard about VAs (virtual assistants). Business owners are constantly hiring VAs and virtual assistants offering their services to small businesses. But what does a virtual assistant actually do? More importantly, how can hiring a VA help you in your business development efforts? Let’s find out!

Virtual Assistants: Who Are They?

Most VAs are freelancers that came to this line of business from various backgrounds. Most of them work from home, although there are companies with strict office hours offering VA services. Traditionally, virtual assistants are there to manage administrative tasks for your business but there are VAs out there who offer a variety of services that not only let you safely outsource administrative tasks but also grow your business, market your products more effectively, boost your social media engagement, and more. VAs usually charge per hour but you may find people who’ll agree on a fixed per-project fee.

How Can a Virtual Assistant Help You?

Well, it really depends on the type of your business. But let me give you some ideas what a VA could do for you:

Database building and management

If you hire a virtual assistant to help you build a database, you’ll free up a lot of valuable time. Common database building and management tasks include updating your email and contact lists, creating a spreadsheet with names and contact details of influencers in your niche, and more.

Research

Don’t have the time to research ideas for blog posts, email blasts, or LinkedIn articles? No problem, a virtual assistant can do that for you.

Social Media Accounts Management

It’s not a secret that maintaining and updating your business accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest can take more time than your actual business activities. A virtual assistant who specializes in social media management will not only do the job for you, but also improve your engagement and CTR.

Blog Management

A virtual assistant can manage your blog for you and often even produce the content for it. You won’t have to spend time on posting to your blog, keeping plugins up to date, and finding relevant copyright-free images.

Basic Tech Support

A VA with the right background will be able to take care of your support ticket system and filter out inquiries that don’t need your expertise.

Marketing Activities

With a virtual assistant, you won’t have to spend hours on contacting bloggers in your niche, posting on forums and Quora, publishing press releases, and other necessary time-consuming marketing activities.

Why You Should Start Using a VA Today

As a small business owner, I know how easy it is to lose the hang of things and start playing superman (or superwoman). We tend to try to do everything ourselves and end up wasting time on tasks that can and must be outsourced. The important thing to understand is that hiring a virtual assistant is not really an expense because it leaves you free to concentrate on high-earning tasks rather than on updating your calendar and such.

But don’t assume that a virtual assistant can do everything for you. You need to choose your VA carefully and make sure he or she has the right experience to work for you. For example, if you need a VA to manage your WordPress blog, the person you choose must have experience working with WordPress. And if you need someone to design catchy graphics for your Pinterest account on Canva, look for a VA with design experience.

If you’re considering hiring a virtual assistant, contact us now and we’ll have a chat about it.