Virtual Assistant

A Virtual Assistant or VA is a self-employed business operator providing business services, in particular, administrative, secretarial, technical and creative via remote means, usually from their home office, utilising the Internet as well as phone, skype, zoom and other means.

A Virtual Assistant (VA) is not an employee of yours although you could choose to and they usually services multiple clients.

Why use a Virtual Assistant?

Reduces Costs. There are a lot of cost benefits of hiring a virtual assistant. You can hire them by the hour for certain business tasks rather than paying a part-time or full-time employee.  If you were to hire one employee they might need extensive training to do every task.

What can a Virtual Assistant do?

Outside of work, virtual assistants can can still be available. They can maintain daily tasks of your personal life like scheduling appointments with your doctor, sending gifts on your behalf, and answering phone calls.

25 Tasks to Outsource to a General Virtual Assistant

1.    Email Management/Filtering
2.    Setting up Autoresponders (Aweber, Mailchimp)
3.    Booking appointments with clients
4.    Following up with clients/customers (sending thank you and other reminder emails)
5.    Receptionist duties (answering occasional calls)
6.    Calendar Management
7.    File Management (organizing files using Dropbox etc)
8.    Database building (eg. updating email or contact lists on your CRM)
9.    Research on certain topics for blogposts, newsletters or others
10.  Personal errands (purchasing gifts for loved ones / family members online)
11.  Hotel and Flight Booking
12.  Transcription (transcribing voicemail, video or audio, podcasts etc.)
13.  Taking down minutes of meetings
14.  Creating basic reports (reports on weekly tasks, deliverables, sales)
15.  Preparing Slideshows (Powerpoint Presentations)
16.  Liaison between you and other team members
17.  Recruitment (source for other team members like writers or graphic artists)
18.  Set-up Social Media Accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube)
19.  Manage and update Social Media Accounts
20.  Manage your Blog (Basic WordPress Skills)
21.  Publish posts on your Blog (content you provided)
22.  Filter  and reply to comments on your blog
23.  Answering support tickets (with the use of Zendesk)
24.  Blog commenting (to increase links to your site)
25.  Participating in discussion forums or message boards (more promotion!)

25 Tasks You Can Outsource to a General Virtual Assistant (GVA)