When you start a new business, it is easy to get overwhelmed by all the things you have to do. You’ve got to produce products or provide services, fill orders, ship packages, create content, and maybe even send out a weekly newsletter.
Chances are you’re trying to take care of everything by yourself and that's great for keeping costs down. Your business may be growing fast, but it isn’t quite at the point where you need to employ a couple more people full-time. Plus, when you hire a new person, you’ve got to train them. That’s going to take even more time. How are you going to find time with all the things you already have to do? You may be able to do it all, but chances are you’ll also burn out and feel overwhelmed by everything you have to do.
Don’t let your business suffer the consequences. A virtual assistant may be just what you need! These individuals can lift some of the burden off your shoulders by taking care of those boring, but necessary, administrative tasks so you can put your time and energy into really running your business.
How exactly does a virtual assistant help my business?
Client Relations
A virtual assistant can make the dreary task of getting back to clients a little bit easier. They can help you filter emails, voicemails, and other messages from clients and prioritize them. Any useless messages can be deleted, and the remainders can be sorted by urgency. That way, you’ll know which clients have important messages that need immediate replies, and which ones can wait for a better time. A virtual assistant can also help schedule meetings and keep you on top of any events you have scheduled for the week. Why plan yourself when they could do it for you?
Administrative Services
Virtual assistants do a lot more than schedule meetings. They can do lots of administrative work — document creation, file type conversion, travel arrangements, and other things that are too mundane for you to be doing yourself. It’s a great way to enjoy an organized business so you can spend your time focusing on the business’s core activities. Virtual assistants can also do research for your business, searching for cheaper suppliers or ways to streamline the production process.
Content Creation
If you’ve got social media for your business and a blog area on your website (which you should), a virtual assistant can aid you in creating content to publish. They can also properly format any content from external sources and write good captions for posts online. After content has been published a VA can also reply to comments and interact with your audience.
Social Media
Just about every business has social media accounts nowadays. It’s a great tool to reach and interact with customers. However, it takes a lot of time and effort to manage it. With a virtual assistant, you won’t have to worry about it. They can create content, schedule posts, and interact with your community online. They can also assess the effectiveness of each channel and help you determine which should receive your main focus.
Marketing
Marketing is an essential business activity for every company. You have to know how to present your goods and services to the audience you are trying to reach. Most virtual assistants are well-versed with different marketing tools — and they can help you market effectively. This may be through press releases, social media, influencers, and even newsletters.
Basic Website Help
If your business isn’t ready for a full-blown designer website, a virtual assistant may be able to help you set up something simple first. Most are knowledgeable about the basics of WordPress — web hosting, installing themes and plugins, posting content, and a lot of other things. He or she can help you develop a web design that is attractive and effective so your customers can have a great user experience on your site. Virtual assistants can also help you get started on SEO so you rank higher on search engine result pages, securing you a greater amount of traffic and therefore greater leads and sales.
Save Money With Part-time Help
Generally, virtual assistants don’t work full-time. Rather, they work when they are needed, so you won’t have to pay for a full-time employee (including wages, benefits, office equipment, deductions, etc.) if you aren’t even sure you have enough to keep them busy for the whole day. All you’ve got to pay for is the work they perform.