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Getting started with a Virtual Assistant ? Few tips on how to manage the work

The growth and development of a business or work lie in the capabilities of its team and their work. To create such a team, one must know how to work upon the things and make the best come out of your team. Each business needs some assistance in one or the other kind. In general most of the persons look for regular employees for their work. Some entrepreneurs look for help to manage a part of work and go for hiring a Virtual Assistant.
Small startups generally look for starting with Virtual Assistants. VAs can help businesses without hassles of paying them hefty perks on regular basis. This results in getting the work done by paying a reasonable amount for a specific time.
If you are assisted by a Virtual Assistant or planning to hire one, then the below pointers may help you to get the best outcome from them.

Working with a Virtual Assistant

Working with a Virtual Assistant has its own pros and cons. It can be difficult but you can break the ice by following some of the general guidelines.

The business owner may worry about the credibility and loyalty of the person hired as a Virtual Assistant. It may first put you into a state of the doubt but later the pros may outshine anything. Check the credibility and get to know about your Virtual Assistant’s past work is the best thing you can do here.

Building a bond of trust

This can be the first step in getting started with a Virtual Assistant. Have an informal talk with your Virtual Assistant. This can help in building trust on both sides.

You can ask about his experiences, work ethics, and beliefs. At the same time let him know about the quality of work you expect. Talking about some general topics in the start can help in building the required bond.

Give assurance and get assured

We all want to be assured of the people we hire or people we work for. Try to make your Virtual Assistant assured of your services and payment procedures. Also, proper guidance may not land him/her in a state of doubt.

The credibility of your work and services is important. So that he can proceed with the tasks assigned. An assured person generates better results. Ask for the assurance of things that matter for you. Meeting the deadlines of the work, quality of work etc. matters more than anything else and gets surety.

The guarantee is the key here. The Abroad Assistant team can help in providing assured services of a VA.

Do you need the help available at some specific time of the day? Let the VA know your expectation.

What type of work to give them?

Start with giving a small amount of work. Analyze their work; this will inform you about his strength and weaknesses. The small works will give them an idea upon the work culture you offer. On the other hand, this also prepares the VA to handle a big amount of work. A bond is developed here, which will bring out the best in your Virtual Assistant.

The Virtual Assistant work from a remote location, thus makes sure to give detailed instructions in writing. Guide them from time to time, and provide them suggestions on a regular basis. All these things will make them feel better as well as bring enhancements in their work.

Manage the deadlines and never mention the actual deadlines before him/her

Assume you want a work to be done in 2 days or you get work with the mentioned deadline of two days and you accept it. But, you already have a large amount of work to be done in these two days and think to hand over it to the Virtual Assistant. While doing this, never commit the mistake of telling him the actual deadline. If you tell the actual deadline, chances are you may get your work at the last moment and may not get the time to review it. This can lead to further problems.

Sometimes it really has a very short deadline. In that case, you should mention the deadline of a few hours before the actual deadline. This will get you a chance to review the work and it becomes possible to make the changes wherever necessary. In this way, you can expect timely completion of your project.

Offer a decent reward

In some cases, you may consider it as the offered amount. Offer them the amount they deserve for their work. This will let them perform excellently. Rewards can be added as a bonus to payments.  There can be other rewards as well.

Say thank you and appreciate the service of your Virtual Assistant if they have done good work. This makes the assistant more motivated and he/she puts in efforts to perform better.

One can also come up with a job offer and proceed with the satisfaction of both the parties with the offer. Getting rewards for their work will build their confidence in you as well as attract them to work more for you. In this manner, it can help you as well.

Most of the entrepreneurs are proceeding in the direction of hiring a Virtual Assistant for their short-term projects. A Mumbai based ‘Virtual Assistance team’ is up for the business solutions who have a huge database of VA. You can find one as per the choice of role to perform. Virtual help lets you enjoy your priorities and maintain the work-life balance. Check their services at https://www.abroadassistant.com//.

One can hope of having a wonderful experience working with a Virtual Assistant working on these points. These are the general pointers to consider and there can be a lot more. So, finally, it’s time to work upon the things and getting the best out of your work.

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Why should you Hire Virtual Assistant

Type
Advantage
Disadvantage
Employee / Contractor
Productivity, Expertise, Control, Growth HappinessHighest cost (Salary Training, Management, etc)
Freelancers
A Specialist (One Person) in the task you need, job-based (easy to let go)Higher cost ( in short term), Communication, deadline, management,( often remote worker)
Outsourcing
Expert company at the process you need (payroll, accounting, SEO, etc) Project-based easy to goYou’re on their terms, communication, high cost
Offshore
Low cost’ expert in whatever you need, full-time controlCommunication (languages), Quality, market perception

 

What can we outsource?

  • Pretty much anything online can be outsourced –Social media, Content Creation, which can be document & delegate as like machine based
  • Daily Repetitive & time-consuming task you can get it off from your plate
  • Understand your industry & what the important actions to acquire new & manage clients.
  • You need content for clients engaging content on FB or Instagram (fitness & fashion)
  • This works best for execution, not planning & strategy ( Doing vs. Thinking)

You have to think the way to grow business not spending most of the time doing all the things.

You should have your task clearly defined & built out; how?

  • A written guide in Google docs (SOP) complete with a screenshot, step by steps tutorial and logins
  • Screencast videos explaining the process in detail. We host all videos on a private YouTube channel.
  • A checklist in Google sheet, itemized by task so we can track progress and status of the of the job

Focus on the micro process ( Instagram Postings)

You have to take what’s in your head and build it into something so simple a 3rd grader

  • Remove all thinking and decision making from their jobs – that’s done on your end
  • Think about your process like you were building it for a machine – is it simple ? or is it scalable?
  • Give them images, filter, copy and has a tag (you can outsource this as well)

To Save money you need to spend time

  • You don’t need to be an expert but you need to communicate what you are hiring for figure it out. E.g. – you can hire SEO but you should know what they are doing
  • To do this right, you need to build out which you need, it takes work upfront but saves times in the long run E.g. – you need to post daily on Instagram or twitter about you products entire life which takes an hour from your daily schedule so it’s time to delegate other, in order to delegates you need to build a process it will take a long time but you will save some time.
  • The organization, communication, and process are the only way to make this work
  • Create a checklist for your Virtual Assistant, building a process to help you reduce time.

Case study – E-commerce store run on autopilot with the help of Virtual Assistant

Day to day management and marketing is handled by the single person in Abroad Assistant India including

  • Social media management
  • Research and building content
  • Produce page creation & optimization

Let take a look at the process we have built to allow this

The social + Content generation process

  1. Go to the top sneaker news sites and grabbing the top headline about sneakers release
    1. Create unique videos from images
  2. Save images to your desktops then upload them directly to the LO facebook page, creating a video slideshow from the images
    1. Schedule the post to go live on the FB page every 3 hours
    2. Copy the headline from the site and use it as the title of the post
  3. Automating Instagram accounts
    1. Download the video created by Facebook, upload it schedugram to push the LO Instagram account
    2. Schedule the post to go live twice a day.
  4. Creating a blog post framework based on content
    1. Title it “sneaker name” release date pricing info & where to buy
    2. Embedded the Facebook video into the blogs post
    3. Paste the link of where you found the headline into the body of the text for the writer
    4. Open the Photoshop templates and replace with the image of new sneakers – upload to WP as a blog image

Using multiple people for 1 task

  • We build a content calendar with the dates, types & posting times
  • The file gets passed to a graphics designer to create images and copywriter to write text for each post.
  • After these are completed our agency assistant scheduled the post via Facebook, buffer & hoot suite

Blogger outreach / PR

  • Our team locally comes up with the pitch/value proposition
  • Our team in the Abroad Assistant then combs Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest & Google search to find bloggers & journalist. They record them in a sheets file along with their contact info.
  • Our agency assistant email pitches ( based on templates) to reach the contact
  • The response is here manages by our local team (USA)

Advanced SEO  / Analytics

  • We built a checklist of the item to review on a website. each line item has a short video walking through exactly what to check
  • our technical specialist goes through each item and build out the file as pass/fail
  • We are able to deliver affordable, advanced work that other agencies charge tens of thousands for. plus our mark upon the labor is insane.

 

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Know What is Virtual Assistant

If you run a small business and you have to keep track of small things and important issues. You may not be getting enough time to complete all your work. You may not be getting time for personal commitments either. You can hire somebody who can help you in your tasks so that you get enough time.

You can hire the services of a virtual assistant to help you out. A virtual assistant is a perfect partner who can help you in your daily tasks. You do not have to provide extra office space, equipment or supplies to the virtual assistant. They work under the management of their company. They communicate through email, internet, phone conferences and online work space.

Benefits of hiring a virtual assistant

There are many benefits of hiring a virtual assistant.

  • As you get somebody to do your daily tasks you get time to focus on the key issues of your business. You can focus on business growth.
  • You get time for personal commitments.
  • You get skilled based services and the quality of work is good as virtual assistant are professionals. As they are qualified and trained and they can work effortlessly.
  • You can organise and manage your business better.
  • You can achieve a work life balance.

Types of virtual assistants

There are different types of virtual assistant who are skilled professionals in different fields. They are

Real estate virtual assistantOffice and administrative
Accounting & financeTranscription
Technical supportGraphic & web designing
Search engine optimizationData analysis
Search engine marketingMarket research and analysis
Personal tasksCustomer support
Start-upSocial media marketing
Office automationE-mail chat and support

How to hire a virtual assistant

You can approach a company which offers virtual assistant services. You should be clear about what services you need. Select a virtual assistant. You can give work list to the virtual assistant. You can review the work done. If you are satisfied with the work then you can hire a virtual assistant.

If you are not sure about hiring a virtual assistant then you can go for the trial run. Many virtual assistant companies in India offer trial run.

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