Hiring a virtual assistant is seen as a savvy business practice, because a dedicated assistant can prove invaluable. In addition, the tasks you can outsource are comprehensive and varied.
Primarily a virtual assistant performs admin tasks that save time and money for your business.
Your new hire will work remotely worldwide, be self-employed, or work for a virtual assistant company.
An experienced VA can perform several different administrative tasks, and I’ll give you a list of priorities you should focus on first.
13 Priority Virtual Assistant Tasks
1. Data Entry
All businesses need to handle data entry correctly to ensure the daily running of their company functions smoothly.
The main issue is that data entry is time consuming, and the time spent doing it is better suited to money-generating tasks.
Data inputting may be regarded as a primary task, but it still needs to be done and keeping all your client, sales reports, and stock data updated is essential.
Data accuracy is vital, as is data accuracy, so your VA needs high concentration skills due to the time-heavy nature of all data tasks.
2. Social Media Management
It is safe to say that your business won’t reach its full potential unless you have excellent social media management in place.
Many businesses employ a social media VA to handle their social media marketing. They take responsibility for all the written content that needs to be done when you create blog posts.
Managing a company’s social media can also be part of a general virtual assistant’s role, depending on your company’s size.
A VA with experience in scheduling posts, blog post management, google analytics, and blog analysis would be advantageous to any business.
The VA you hire would have to have excellent knowledge of working on social media pages on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
3. Graphic Design
A general virtual assistant could also be responsible for all your graphic design requirements if they had experience in this area.
It can be easy to overlook graphic design among the other administrative tasks, but your business can thrive from having excellent graphics that stand out.
The last thing you want is blurry logos and images on your press releases or company website. An experienced VA will also have good knowledge of copyright laws.
As well as quality graphics, basic video editing skills will help when using videos alongside all that written content on your website or Facebook page.
4. Update Real Estate Listings
Running a successful real estate business means ensuring all your property listings are accurate and updated regularly.
It won’t reflect well on your business if all your listings are outdated or incorrect on your website and will detract from would-be-buyers interacting with your company.
Maintaining property listings is essential, but it can be a time-consuming task — this is where your VA can help by managing your listings and doing various administrative tasks.
It is essential to be accurate and communicate with sellers about which photos and videos they want included in the listing.
An engaging property listing on your website goes a long way to helping promote your business positively to a broader audience.
5. Bookkeeping Duties
Bookkeeping duties can be monotonous, but you must keep all your accounting data entry up to date; otherwise, it will cause major long-term issues.
Hiring a virtual assistant and making it their responsibility to manage all your financial admin will take the pressure off you.
For example, they would create and send customer invoices, update and maintain financial cash flow and receipt records, and pay outstanding invoices.
Excellent knowledge of bookkeeping software is vital to help you avoid any mistakes, and it also is your VA’s job to send out payment reminders to customers.
6. Market Research
Putting your virtual assistant in charge of all your market research can save you a lot of time which can be spent on other areas of your business.
Your VA could spend time analysing the data from a recent digital marketing campaign and data from customer feedback forms.
VAs play a vital part in attracting potential customers by sending follow-up emails to any lead generation enquiries.
Also, your VA collecting data for analysis on your nearest competitors is vital to stay ahead of the competition.
General online research is vital to launch a new product or service. Likewise, finding out what customers like and dislike is critical but time heavy, so hand this task over to your VA.
7. Customer Support
Your virtual assistant can play an integral part in your customer support network by dealing with online queries from customers.
An experienced virtual assistant will have the right skills to handle all customer enquiries, be it by phone calls, via email or by offering technical support through interactive means on social media or your website.
Offering instant customer support will always be an excellent way to show that you are proactive as a company and value your customers.
8. Content Writing
Having engaging written marketing content that makes customers and potential customers stop and read about your service or product is vital.
If you don’t try to attract people to your business, you won’t thrive long-term. Writing engaging content for your website or social media is hard and takes time and skill. Therefore, it may take some training for your virtual assistant to upskill in this area.
However, your VA must be able to write basic blog posts and interact with your customers by replying to blog comments.
Your VA will also ensure that your company information sections on your website are accurate and updated at all times.
With experience, your VA will be able to handle your more challenging written content without you having to outsource to professional writers.
Having excellent touch-typing skills is vital if you want your VA to be able to write company newsletters or press releases quickly as you dictate the information to them
9. Basic Web Maintenance Tasks
You can save on the hefty costs of employing a professional web developer by hiring a virtual assistant with the right skills to look after your WordPress plugins on your company website.
Hiring a VA with the skills required to monitor your WordPress plugins and update them regularly and ensure all database files are secure and backed up will save you a considerable amount of money.
However, they will need to know how to use the website user interface, off-page optimization, on-page optimization, and other basic web development tasks.
10. Email Management
Your VA can provide administrative support with email management and take the pressure off you and the rest of your in-house staff.
Most virtual assistants are highly experienced in dealing with company emails, which is a vital part of a virtual employee role.
The inbox of a company email can be overflowing if not managed correctly. Although, as a business owner, you don’t need to worry about this time-heavy administrative work. Your VA can handle it.
Setting an automatic response to emails is acceptable to show you have received the email, but it counts for nothing if your inbox is not organised correctly.
You must assign tasks relating to email to your VA, things like managing the contact list, creating email drafts that need your approval, and making a database of potential clients’ email addresses.
In addition to this, your VA must respond promptly to emails, especially regarding client invoices.
11. Calendar Management
Having a VA who keeps your calendar running efficiently with prioritised scheduling is invaluable to your company.
Online calendar management takes skill and experience because it requires the VA to schedule meetings, both in-house and off-site, which takes a lot of organising.
For example, if the meeting is in an out-of-town conference centre, travel arrangements will need to be booked, and the logistics need to be planned well.
Allowing enough buffer room to get to and from meetings while sticking to a set time is vital.
VAs use the time-blocking method, where the working day is split into manageable sections. This method allocates a set amount of time for tasks when scheduling meetings.
12. Invoice Management
Hiring a virtual assistant experienced in balance sheet and invoice management is vital.
Keeping on track with all your company invoices and cash flow receipts is critically essential.
There is a wide range of software available to help the invoice process. Software platforms like Scoro, QuickBooks, FreshBooks and Xero are market leaders.
In some cases, virtual assistants may need further training in how to use the preferred invoicing software.
Keeping on top of all your accounts is vital when it comes to filing your annual tax returns; failure to do so will land you with serious issues.
13. Social Media And Search Engine Advertising
Knowing how to take full advantage of search engine advertising and social media adverts is vital in our modern technological world.
Your virtual assistant will play a key role in attracting potential customers to your business with their knowledge of online advertising.
Knowing how to use search engine optimization effectively will increase the number of viewers to your company website or Facebook page.
SEMRush, Moz Pro and Google Search Console are software packages your virtual assistants will find helpful.
Let Us Help You With Finding The Ideal VA
Hiring a virtual assistant to help your growing business handle the busy day-to-day tasks is a must-have in any modern business.
As you have read, gone are the days when virtual assistants were only used for basic admin tasks. Instead, you can hire them for anything from web design, video editing, marketing, social media content, and even bookkeeping.
We can take away all the stress by sourcing, hiring, and training your virtual assistant. We will even manage them for you if needed.
Give us a call to chat about your virtual assistant services requirements.