Guest Post by: Karen Wessels, co-founder and COO of VA Connect
I know how busy you get during the day, tying up loose ends and making sure the boat is still floating at the end of the day. The key to saving valuable hours in the day as a busy entrepreneur is quite clear – get the help you need by hiring a Virtual Assistant.
By now you should know what a Virtual Assistant is and the value that they add to your business. However, if it’s your first time coming across this term, very briefly a Virtual Assistant is an admin support person to your business who works from a remote location.
Below is a list of 10 tasks you can easily delegate to your Virtual Assistant. By allowing someone else to manage this, you will save yourself at least an extra two hours per day.
1. Hand over your inbox to a Virtual Assistant
To save time you can assign email management to your VA. She will help by filtering the really important emails and responding to the rest. To make sure your VA manages this in the appropriate way ask her to copy you in on responses until she has learned to mimic your writing style.
2. A Virtual Assistant can manage your Social Media platforms
Social Media platforms like Twitter and Facebook are great ways to market your business. Promoting your business and spreading the word through posts and tweets can be done by your VA. Handing over these daily tasks means freeing up more time in your calendar.
3. Travel research couldn’t be easier
You may travel quite a bit for business or you may take bi-annual family holidays overseas. Either way, ease the usual headache of trying to find flights and hotels by assigning this task to your VA. She can do all the necessary research and narrow down the choices to fit your needs and budget.
4. What about asking your VA to manage customer support?
Excellent customer service is invaluable. Avoid dropping the ball by hiring a Virtual Assistant to troubleshoot and respond to customer emails, or by using live chat on your website. Not only will customers appreciate the quick and professional response, they will continue making use of your service/product.
5. Your VA can research the competition
You should welcome competition in your field. The best way to make your business stronger is to be challenged. The biggest part of the challenge is understanding your competition, seeing how your prices and customer service stacks up to your competitors. Get a research fundi to do this for you!
6. Delegate your website & e-commerce management
A website developer may charge you the world for this, why not get your VA rather to manage your e-commerce and make sure it’s running smoothly. She can do other webmaster tasks like updating the CMS, to entering new products on the website.
7. Get a Virtual Assistant to do your book-keeping
Find yourself pulling your hair out at month-end to catch up with all those loose lying receipts and filing the expenses? These are recurring tasks so delegate them to your Virtual Assistant. She can use a cloud based accounting package to keep track of expenses, cash flow and issue invoices.
8. A Virtual Assistant can post blogs on your behalf
Blogging is a great way to share your knowledge with your readers and subscribers. For your blog to be successful you need to do this regularly. A Virtual Assistant can research topics for you with relevant keywords. Once you are done with the blog she can optimize and publish the blog post.
9. Calendar management is your VA’s responsibility
A Virtual Assistant is a very organised assistant and will keep your calendar updated. In this way she will make sure that you don’t miss important meetings and ensure that this task doesn’t consume your time.
10. Build your email lists with the help of a Virtual Assistant
Have you started building your email list? This is a great way to build your business. You’ll need an email service provider to manage your list. Tools like Infusionsoft or Mailchimp are perfect solutions. Your Virtual Assistant can create lists and send the emails by using a similar tool.
Concerned about handing over these tasks to a Virtual Assistant?
You’ll find that VAs are expert business coordinators and will keep all client information confidential. A good VA will ask to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) with you.
There is no time like the present to start freeing up time in your busy schedule. Start handing over those tasks to a VA today and live the life you’ve always wanted!
Karen Wessels is the co-founder and COO of VA Connect, a South African virtual assistant platform that provides outsourced administrative support. Prior to establishing VA Connect, Karen spent over 10 years in different sales, marketing & admin support roles. Having worked with MDs, SMEs and professionals, she is very familiar with managing different workloads within tight deadlines. This has equipped her with the invaluable skills required to run a successful VA business. Follow Karen on Twitter | Facebook | Google+