How Virtual Assistants Can Increase Your Productivity
Published on 26 September 16
Kaylyn1
If you are reading this hub, it means you want to hire a virtual assistant to increase your productivity. This hub will provide you with an overview of how a virtual assistant can increase your productivity.
What is a virtual Assistant?
Virtual assistants, also known as virtual office assistants, offer creative, personal, administrative, technical assistance to their clients. Virtual assistants work remotely and connect with their clients via telephone, Skype, and chat. Unlike regular in-house employees, virtual assistants don’t get paid on a monthly basis. Instead, they receive payment on an hourly basis for the assigned work they complete.
Now, you might be wondering that there is no point in hiring a virtual assistant as you can take an in-house employee on board. However, this is not true. Hiring virtual assistants can save you both time and money.
Unlike a regular employee, a virtual assistant is not entitled to sick leave, casual leave, earned leave, or retirement benefits. You will pay only for the work you assign to your virtual assistant. So a virtual assistant can save you oodles of money.
Types of Virtual Assistants
These days, you can hire a virtual assistant for a wide array of tasks. Here are some of the most common types of virtual assistants you can hire:
â— Virtual research assistant
â— Virtual administrative assistant
â— Virtual data entry assistant
â— Virtual social media assistant
â— Virtual real estate assistant
â— Virtual personal assistant
â— Virtual e-commerce assistant
We will discuss each of these types briefly.
Virtual Research Assistant
Needless to say, entrepreneurs and busy professionals spend a great deal of time in doing research on the Internet so that they can find better ways to serve their customers in a more satisfying manner.
Virtual research assistants can do internet research according to the needs of their clients and then compile data into spreadsheets. Here is a list of some tasks that you can assign to your internet research assistant:
â— Research about your competitors
â— Research about your industry
â— Finding data & statistics that you can use for marketing purposes
â— Sharing data with your staff members
Virtual research assistants, if used properly, can save you a significant time.
Virtual Administrative Assistant
There is no doubt that administrative tasks need to be done with utmost perfection for a smooth and seamless functioning of your business. There are many unimportant tasks that you can delegate to a virtual administrative assistant and save your precious time.
Virtual administrative assistants can manage contact list, handle billing and accounting, send marketing emails and newsletters, prepare meeting materials, and more.
Virtual Data Entry Assistant
Be it a small, medium, or a large business, data is in the center of everything. Whether you are going to devise new marketing plans or you are thinking about sending a discount coupon to your high-value customers, you need data. So data management is vital for success.
Virtual data entry assistant can manage your data efficiently. They can do a wide range of tasks, including compiling and verifying the accuracy of data, inserting data into the CMS system, and more.
Virtual Social Media Assistant
Without leveraging the power of social media platforms, businessmen cannot achieve their goals. However, it requires a great deal of time to manage different social media platforms.
Virtual social media assistants can effectivity:
â— Update your social media profiles
â— Engage with your audience
â— Promote your business on various social media platforms
â— Keep an eye on your competitors
â— Search for influencers in your niche
If you delegate social media management tasks to a social media virtual assistant, it can save you a great deal of time, which you can use in planning core business activities.
Virtual Real Estate Assistant
Real estate virtual assistants can do a variety of tasks, which include but not limited to, listing coordination, closing coordination, adding properties to real estate websites, and more.
If you are a real estate businessman, a virtual real estate assistant will certainly increase your productivity.
Virtual Personal Assistant
One can hire a virtual assistant for personal tasks as well. Whether it is a maintaining a calendar or making travel arrangement, a virtual personal assistant can ease you out of burden.
Virtual Ecommerce Assistant
Virtual ecommerce assistants are a secret weapon of businessmen who have estores. Here is a brief list of tasks that can be assigned to virtual ecommerce assistant:
â— Product entry
â— Product description writing
â— Product inventory management
â— Product category management
â— Coupon data entry
â— Catalog content management
Most virtual ecommerce assistants are well-versed in various e-commerce platforms such as eBay, Amazon, and Magento. So it won’t be any problem to hire a virtual ecommerce assistant as per your requirements.
Now comes the point how a virtual assistant can increase your productivity.
Let us, for saying, assume you bill your clients $100 per hour and you work 7 hours daily as you have to manage other tasks (social media management, administrative tasks, internet research, etc.) that take around 2 hours.
If you hire a virtual assistant for these tasks, you can work 2 hours more. And you will pay your virtual assistant around $8 to $20. If you pay $20 to your VA for 2 hours’ work, you can earn $160 more in a day.
This is a simple calculation. Even if you don’t follow this working model, virtual assistants can help you save time, which you can spend on planning core business activities that are directly related to the growth of your business.
Do you need to train your virtual assistant?
The best thing about virtual assistants is that you do not have to train them. They are trained professionals in their respective domain and work efficiently, though you may need to brief your virtual assistant about your business objectives.
In some cases, they may need a little training as well. Suppose, you have hired a virtual assistant for social media promotion and your VA has 5 years of experience in promoting lifestyle products on social media platforms. If he/she is going to promote products other than lifestyle, he/she will need a briefing of your business to devise marketing plans. As you have been working in your niche for many years, you must be having an idea of what works and what doesn't. So you should guide your VA initially. Once he/she develops an understanding of your niche, he/she can plan awesome marketing plan for your business.
Conclusion:
As an entrepreneur or startup head, you should be spending your time in planning strategies for the growth of your business, checking on your competitors, and other tasks that drive growth. You should not entangle with petty tasks, such as social media management, data entry work, low- value data entry tasks, etc.
Hire a virtual assistant for these tasks and save some time so that you can focus on your core business activities. This will certainly improve your productivity.
What about you? Have you ever hired a virtual assistant? If yes, then share how he/she improved your productivity in the comment section.
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The power of the internet is such that even those tasks that were previously thought to be impossible to complete from home can now be completed through the use of a computer. One such job is a virtual assistant. Whereas most people would like to have assistants for their businesses, not everyone can afford one. This is where virtual assistants come into play as they can be hired for almost half the money on a full time, on the job, assistants. Virtual assistants can earn up to $20 per hour and earn a substantial income if they have a liking for working at home.