
Building Digital Products With The Help Of A Talented Virtual Assistant

As an entrepreneur or solo business person, you in all probability wear numerous caps to keep up the achievement of your business. Viably dealing with your anxiety and requiring some investment for yourself, is essential to keep away from wear out and at last evade the disappointment of your business.
Particularly in today’s economy, numerous entrepreneurs are deciding to do the greater part of the work themselves as opposed to picking to contract on location staff. An option to contracting extra staff is to outsource the additional work to a Virtual Assistant. Enlisting a Virtual Assistant, might be one of the best choices you could make to keep up the achievement of your business.
First of all, you need to know the best way to find a Virtual Assistant. There are several methods of finding an assistant quickly and easily. You can look online and search for Virtual Assistants, advertise on one of the many, virtual assistant association sites, or ask friends and colleagues if they can recommend anybody.
You’ll also need to be extremely specific about what you want and how you want the Virtual Assistant to help you. This will enable you to get the right assistant for your needs.
However, before you do this, you must think about how you can best work with your new Virtual Assistant.
Detailed below are some of the key elements you’ll want to address.
1. Probing your to be VA
The first thing to decide is how you’ll conduct a Skype or phone session. Are you happy to partner with somebody based on the information on their website or on their portfolio on a freelance site, or do you want to find out more about them to get an idea of how they work?
If this is the case, then you might want to consider meeting with them over Skype, phone or if locally sometimes over coffee so you can get a better idea about the person you’re considering working with.
Show and not tell is also a great strategy. Most VA’s would offer a reduced fee for a trial time period.
2. Giving instructions
You’ll need to decide how you will give instructions to your new Virtual Assistant. Will you give them the information over Skype or will you send the details via email so that you have a written record of what you need? Virtual Assistants have different methods of communicating so finding the one thats right for you should be one that fits your business needs.
Will you require your new assistant to manage your calls and take instruction throughout the day, and if you do will they use their own phone or will you supply it?
3. Questions to ask
One of the first things you’ll want to ask is about the experience your Virtual Assistant has. You also need to make sure that they have experience in your particular field as this makes working with them much easier.
Although the majority of Virtual Assistants like other business owners, have a set hour of work. You will also need to check what their work hours are. For example, some people just aren’t able to work weekends while others won’t be available in the early evenings.
You might also need to ask if your Virtual Assistant is happy to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and you might want to check if your new assistant is happy to sign a contract. Most VA’s already set up, have their own agreements that both party has to sign before the start of any project.
4. How will you educate your new assistant?
Sometimes, a business owner will want a Virtual Assistant to manage their calendar and emails for them. However, this can sometimes be quite a challenging task if your new Virtual Assistant is not sure how to respond to some tasks.
To avoid this, draw up a list of common scenarios that occur in your business. For instance, you might have to regularly send out items in the post and sometimes a parcel might go missing. Your Virtual Assistant will need to know how to respond if this happens. Otherwise, this would simply mean passing the query on to you to handle and it won’t help to lower your workload.
To find and utilize a VA is one aspect but do you have the right information for them to work with? Most Virtual Assistants are proactive and are able to ask you about the culture of your business and the do and don’t’s. If you find one that knows and acts on this basic step, you can be rest assured, that they would be a good fit for your business.
For every business owner there will come a point when you start to become overwhelmed with the everyday tasks of running a business. Eventually it will become necessary to find someone to take on these tasks for you, or these chores will take you further away from running your business.
If you are not ready to employ a full or part time member of staff, then this is when a Virtual Assistant will become extremely useful to your business. A Virtual Assistant can take over the tasks that stops you from running your business, and always be there when you need them the most.
Here are some essential tasks that a Virtual Assistant can help you with to make your business run smoothly.
1) Schedule your Dairy
In less than 25 minutes, a Virtual Assistant can help you to schedule all of your appointments for the coming day or week. By using a simple system such as Gmail calender on google, a Virtual Assistant can arrange for alerts to be sent to you ahead of all of your important dates, ensuring that you are never late for an appointment or essential meeting. Evernote is another great tool a VA can use to collaborate with you.
2) Manage your Emails & Voicemail Calls
Answering emails eats into everyone’s valuable time and it can often mean that a business gets swamped with administrative tasks. If you assign a Virtual Assistant to manage incoming emails, then they can forward all of your essential emails directly to you; you won’t be hassled with all of the emails you don’t need.
Perhaps arrange for your Virtual Assistant to forward your emails to you at a set time of day so you can manage the important messages effectively. A VA could also assist with assigning folders for your emails.
A Virtual Assistant can also manage your phone calls in much the same way.
3) Manage Advertising
As a business owner, managing advertising can be a tricky task, but it is also an essential part of your business.
However, a Virtual Assistant can quickly get advertising quotes, find out prices, research circulation etc. In addition, they can also help to get quotes for creating a leaflet campaign or for arranging the distribution of flyers.
4) Create a Flyer
Many Virtual Assistants are used to creating advertising to promote their own businesses so they often have experience in creating eye catching flyers and advertisements.
In less than 25 minutes, a graphic Virtual Assistant will be able to create an effective flyer ready to be sent to the printers. most VA’s also offer printing services. This takes away the hassle of having to do it yourself.
5) Create a To-Do List
A To-do list is essential to the smooth running of any business. A Virtual Assistant will be able to quickly create a To-Do list to ensure that the essential daily and weekly tasks are completed on time and in order of priority.
6) Create a Website
As business owners themselves, Virtual Assistants often have experience in creating their own advertising platforms. A Virtual Assistant can help establish a simple, informative website that will help to promote your business and give potential customers a place to find out more information about your company.
7) Write a Blog Post
These days, connecting with your audience or potential customers is essential to the success of any business. The preferred platform for connecting with customers is often an up-to-date blog.
A Virtual Assistant can help keep your blog updated and keep your potential and existing customers abreast of the latest news, customer offers etc.
8) Manage Social Media
Social Media is a vital part of business promotion. In just a few minutes a day, a Virtual Assistant can keep your followers updated with all of the latest news and promotions, and they can interact with potential customers.
For every business owner there will come a point when you start to become overwhelmed with the everyday tasks of running a business. Eventually it will become necessary to find someone to take on these tasks for you, or these chores will take you further away from running your business.
If you are not ready to employ a full or part time member of staff, then this is when a Virtual Assistant will become extremely useful to your business. A Virtual Assistant can take over the tasks that stops you from running your business, and always be there when you need them the most.
Here are some essential tasks that a Virtual Assistant can help you with to make your business run smoothly.